Incomplete Draft (again)

I think I have to be more disciplined about writing. I shall try to write a complete piece of work each month (a narrative piece followed by an expo piece). Here is the first few paragraphs of another short story (returning to the style of 'Jerusalem'):

Fean walked towards the growing mist, head hung, arms drooping, eyes shining with grey dreams of brooding night. The low light of dusk touched his robe, revealing white and red: a smooth, thin linen of Atlantean white streaked with the blood of old battles, a last wall girding his hardened flesh. He held his staff firm, as firm as he had held it many decades ago before the white towers of Tarasha Lehe. He was an old warrior, but tired, very tired.

He raised his arm, an ascending star. Diamond-white, flames, a deadly, cackling dance of meteors slicing straight, left a burnt taste wafting through the dark. A sun, then two, then multiple—blazes orb-like rose from the blue-red horizon, dressed in blood-stained, lethargic clouds. A march of blasting roars; then a fading, like falling leaves, of low, circling echoes.

He was tired.

The shadows swarm near. It was long, very long, since any machine or men could have reached him—unless he so willed it. And he often did, for canny reasons of his own. He was the Commander and his wisdom in the ways of war was matched by few: Master Atos, perhaps, and a few of his generals, maybe. But this time, there was no strategy, no plan, no all-annihilating trap of lethal finesse. The fires that should have cleanly consumed have failed.

The cursed Xastranz, the new armour donned by the soldiers and machines of the dark Atlanteans, had again proven its worth. The Guardians’ weapon of choice, the diamond-white fire that killed instantly without pain, had caused most to perish, but not all. Overwhelmingly out-numbered, this meant certain defeat.

When Master Atos taught him personally to wield it, in the days when the faithful of the Flame were few and hunted...