of stars and stone plotline by zachary andrew craft

Summarized Plotline - Of Stars and Stone
The protagonist (Islief) is a viking from a primitive planet called Soljard. His planet is assaulted by a legion of Space Pirates who pillage his homeworld and kill nearly everyone in his village. Those who remain alive are grouped up like cattle and taken aboard the mothership.  As far as he knows, Islief is the only survivor from his planet. After some time in captivity, the space pirates sell him into slavery, and he is taken to a large red planet, Garamont, and spends his sentence in an arena-prison where he is made to fight each and every day. Sometimes against other prisoners and other times agaisnt various creatures they release into the arena. The prison is fueled by a system of corrupt alien governments from many corners of the galaxy. Eventually, Islief acquaints himself with a long-time prisoner named Uuzu (a serpent like man from a jungle planet called Atris Arbor) who has plans for escape, and helps him lead an internal uprising against the prison. This takes years, but they succeed. They escape and head south across a massive desert until they reach a city where they are meant to meet up with a special contact. Thei contact is part of a massive rebel force aimed at fighting against the galaxy-wide government corruption. The rebels offer Islief a ship to get home if he can help them topple the dictator running Garamont. After a series of missions against the government, they succeeed, and the rebels keep their promise and gift Islief a ship to get himself home.

Upon returning to Soljard, he finds that it has been drained of all life. No water, the trees have withered away. The planet is a rocky shell of it's former self. At a loss, on the brink of madness, Islief finds closure by lighting a funeral pyre for everyone who once lived in his village. With no home, or family, Islief decides his only option is to return to the rebellion and officially join the fight against the rest of the corrupt galaxy. As he leaves Soljard, he is captured by the same Space Pirates that originally ravaged his home -only this time Islief is strong, and well equipped. He defeats every last pirate onboard until the captain releases the Locstrum, a giant tentacle-clad alien behemoth (space kraken). The fight is too much for the structural integrity of the Space Pirate's ship, and they tumble into the orbit of a massive jungle planet.

Islief wakes up on this planet to find himself seriously injured amidst the rubble of the ship and the remains of the massive beast. Eventually, a group of serpent-like nomads find him, and take him to their home. They live underground, but have very advanced technology, they patch him up quickly. Here, Islief sees a familiar face. It's Uuzu, his acquaintance from the uprising at the prison. Uuzu was given the same deal as Islief, a trip home after they saved Garamont. Islief divulges what happened to his homeworld and his plans to join the rebellion. Uuzu decides he can help him and they board the ship Uuzu was given and head toward the rebellion headquarters on the planet Londale. They reach the rebel headquarters and Islief sees yet another familiar face - a friend from his home planet - Ragthar. They spend moments catching up before Ragthar leads him to a room within the rebel bunker, here Islief sees his son, Lambert, whom he was unable to save during the attack all those years ago, sleeping in a bed. Ragthar explains that after Islief was captured, he and Lambert overpowered one of the aliens comandeering a smaller ship and made their escape. They were intercepted by a rebel ship and recruited. Islief wakes Lambert up and the three spend the night reminiscing about the past 8 years. Lambert who was only 10 when they attack happened, is now a man, and a powerful marksman.
The next day, Islief is introduced to the leader of the rebellion. An old but wise-looking man named Antioch. Antioch explains that what happened to Islief's home planet (life being drained from it) is an anomoly happening to planets throughout the galaxy, but nobody is sure why, but the prime suspect is the coalition of corrupt leaders they're already set out to fight against. Antioch appoints Islief, Uuzu, Ragthar, and Lambert as the leaders of an elite squad tasked with finding the source of dying planets. Antioch personally joins this squad as well, and they set off. After some leads here, and some missions there, they manage to capture the dictator of one of the systems most powerful planets. Ragthar, being the brutal nord that he is, manages to learn everything from him. The rulers of the galaxy work for someone who calls himself a god. He feeds on death. In return for keeping the cycle of life and death steadily in his favor, they are promised immortality, and power. This "god" is indeed the one responsible for draining life from planets throughout the galaxy. Antioch in particular seems concerned with this revalation, and tells the others to eliminate the dictator and send his corpse back to his planet in a capsule.

Alerts come flying through the system that a strange structure resembling a blackhole has appeared near the red planet Garamont. Using warp-speed, they head to Garamont's orbit.
A jupiter sized mechanism is suspended in the space outside the planet's atmosphere. A cloaked figure  is standing on a balcony jutting from the upper level of the structure, and points at Antioch, and back at the planet. A large barrel opens up from the structure and the party witnesses the quick death of the recently-saved desert planet as all life is absorbed into this machine. With all of their might, the rebel forces storm the structure with everything in their arsenal, but they fail.

Islief wakes up in an old, ancient temple. There are thousands of books, hundreds of globes, maps, and many statues lying around. Uuzu, Ragthar, and Lambert are here, they are alive but they are unconconsiouss. Islief stumbles outside of the temple and finds himself on a mass of dirt floating in the middle of space. Behind the temple is an absolutely massive and majestic tree. Islief sees Antioch standing at a shrine near the tree, and Antioch confesses that he should have told everyone what they were up against.

Antioch tells Islief that they are at the center of the universe, and that this massive tree is the fabled Tree of Life, the God Yggdrasil. When something dies, the essence of that life is passed through this tree and given new form. Antioch tells Islief that he is immortal, and the figure behind the dying planets and the corruption of the galaxy is his old friend, Ursory, an also immortal figure. They come from a world that existed millions if not billions of years ago. Their civilization used to worship the tree of life, but as technology grew and people began to war, they left the tree behind. Things became worse, and as their planet was about to be destroyed, Ursory and Antioch went to this ancient tree and made a sacrifice in an effort to save their home. They wanted to bring life back to their planet, but found themselves wrapped up within the very roots of the tree, and their universe collapsed upon itself. Yggdrasil took them in and made them gods of their own, and as the universe died, the tree recycled all of that life into a new universe. Antioch and Usory decided they would use their powers to build a utopia, a universe without conflict, but they failed. When they failed, the universe would once again collapse, and be reborn, and they would try again. An endless cycle. That brings us to the very beginning of this iteration of the universe. Ursory is driven mad by their failure and has decided the best thing to do is end the cycle by destroying the tree, effectively ending all life. Antioch sees differently, and they separate. All this time, Antioch has been leading a rebellion against Usory's efforts to destroy the Tree of Life, not government corruption. Antioch explains that as long as their is life, there will be corruption, because the very nature of living is to be fallible. Ursory uses his powers to harness the energy of blackholes, and drain all of the life in the universe for himself, by preventing Yggdrasil to recycle the essence of life back into the universe, it grows weaker, and begins to wither. Ursory has grown much stronger much faster than Antioch had anticipated, and there doesn't seem to be an obvious way to stop an immortal god capable of sucking the essence of life away from planets.