1 OVERTURE
ENRAGED FLAMES DEVOUR the endless plains of floral nature. The vivid hues which once painted over the viridescent dullness of Croia's barren lands burned a bright magnificent crimson.
This endless war of mother (nature) and child (flames) graces the greediness by which humans have indulged. As the wolves mercilessly tear into the corpses of the dead, the herons that perch above them cry in anguish. The vultures feast through day and through night, and the scent of both gunpowder and death cling desperately in the air. Swords clang and shiver against each other's opposing blades as men, children, and women sinfully beg for their lives to be spared.
From within the mass, a knight clad in white silver armor drags its feet across the toiled soil, a leg limp and a shoulder brutally battered. The fluttering white flag in which the knight gripped in one hand stains in the blood that seeps down the knight's arm.
The skirmish slowly comes to a halt.
Murderous gazes do not spare the knight from hostility. Their breaths are caught in their throats as the white blood-stained flag whips angrily above the knights head as it raised its arm to signal surrender.
• • •
It is a landmass of human dominion—nations at war and peace or plotting and praying for one or the other or more of the same. A land of diverse people slumbering under the command of a cowardly emperor, where aristocrats and commoners dream the same dream. Rulers, peasants, priests, minstrels, merchants, tanners, soldiers, sailors, seers, magicians, farmers, fishermen, philosophers, blacksmiths, brew wives, pilgrims, and fugitives all afflicted in equal measure.
Of all of them, a single child dreams...
Stars blazing in coal-black emptiness. Perhaps one could say celestial magnificence.
A heavenly firmament dulled by an unexpected brilliance of crimson light. A brilliance, both beautiful and terrifying all at once.
As the sun rises over the horizon, boots and bare clawed feet unlikely to that of a human tread the dust of a winding road. Thousands of eyes turn towards the horizon, following the tall back of a single silhouette trudging to its death.
They celebrate.
Both drunk and sober, in a stupor undignified of their noble lineage, they sport a celebration of victory for once again they are spared from the devil.
Life resumes, and the child is reborn.
Again, the fate that befalls is ominous. As the sand and forest and icy blue skies greet the rainbow that rises over the weathered temple stones, battered by time yet still functional and form. The clouds paint the sky in a sinuous spiral.
A woman greets the thousands that bow their heads below the temple dais where she stands in magnanimous confidence. A woman saint, garbed in black, with eyes as pitiless as her unfaithful heart; she offers the child to the crowd.
With a voice resounding otherworldly power—she speaks in every attendant ear,
"A cursed blessing, a damnable beast."
"A devil in the dark and an Angel in day."
"The goddess of Asyrim beckons you."
"The savior of our nation, the salvation to our revelation."
The woman raises her dagger nigh to the sky, the edge of her blade skins the crying child's palm. Her golden blood drips seldom into the chalice of the previous ancestors' hazings.
"Blessings, to Croia's infinite prosperity."
Through celebratory jeer, the woman lays the whining babe back onto the altar unaware of the changes the child had undergone.
she joins the thousands crying her name.
The joyous festivity proceeded until the sunset engulfs, as twilight swallows greedily the land. Night chasing day, the seemingly endless hours of destiny's gears churning spites the prophet.
The child who was to carry the crimson pupil both in left and right, had become blind in one eye.
To god knows where her sight had left her, the prophet grieved.
While the devil beneath the earth simply, laughed.
