1 Prolouge

The world was a whirlwind of bloodstained deadly weapons. Your weapon danced to the cold encompassing tunes of death, lifeless husks left behind its eerie rhythmic motions. A swirl there, a twirl there and another two were added to the butchers bill.

The floor beneath you was full of corpses, you stumble again, more than once had you stumbled across the corpse of a fallen as you navigated your way across the slaughter. An opportunistic gleaming slash comes racing towards you, eager to take the invitation. You raised your shield in defense, realizing only too late that you had lost your protective bulwark a while ago in the chaos.

The sword hits your master-crafted armour, carving a marred thin line across its surface.

With a roar you swing your weapon, with an effort that grew with each felled and a strength that waned for each swing, about from where it was planted in the chest of an enemy and tore it through the vermin who sullied your armour. He fell in two pieces and you stepped over half his body and once more entered the fray.

Time stretched on endlessly, your arm burdened by exhaustion, your body slick with sweat and blood. The mad desperate battle flew on endlessly until it didn't.

You gasp, blinking uncomprehendingly, staring down at the cold steel buried hilt deep in your chest. The weapon that had gutted you like a fish. Instinctively you grasp onto the sword with one hand with enough force to cut sharply into your own hand.

You hold it in place with the grip of a man dying. Lifting your own weapon you strike him, chuckling maddeningly at his frantic attempts to yank his weapon free from your grip and guts. Your weapon strikes true, killing him instantly just as he makes to abandon his weapon and flee.

The air smells of blood. Your own blood, you realize, taking another deep breath, feeling it gurgle in the back of your throat. Strength retreats from you. You feel weak.

Your blood splattered weapon clatters onto the corpse stained marble floor below you, armored knees thudding down shortly after. You collapse. A pool of blood slowly seeps out from groves in your armour entombed form, flowing down into the valley of corpses covering the floor and into the ocean of blood. Your body begins to leave you, ceasing to be yours, merely one of many strewn in heaps and grooves around the room.

Everywhere you look expressions of death stare back at you, afraid, angry, determined, headless, helmeted. Faces belonging to no one are everywhere. You stare at one longer than the rest, you recognized the face. He had been a friend, a brother even. He had seen his duty done with his own life.

You too had done your duty. You had done your part. Still desire burned deeply within you. You wanted to know, would they be defeated? Nevertheless the outcome was no longer in your exhausted hands, you had to trust your brothers to do their duty. Your heart knew the future, despite your brain being riddled with blaspheming thoughts of failure. The Order would be victorious and would stand strong until the end of time.

The light around you begins to blur together, the sounds of shouting, of weapons clashing against each other, of metal greaves thundering across marble, droned on endlessly in the background, an orchestra to the slowing beat of your heart. Around you men fought and men died.

With a scream another man collapsed, his strings of life cut mercilessly. His helmet rolls off his head from the impact and you see his scared lifeless eyes staring back at you. Your vision slowly disappears, the expansive world you once saw with vivid color now consist only of the soulless eyes a few feet across from you.

What was determination in the face of death? What was honor? What was duty? You ponder these questions as you feel your thoughts grow sluggish.

Arcane sigils flared to life, flashing with indescribable rainbow coloured light behind the mans dead eyes, visible only to you. Your eyes burn fiercely, the pain was overwhelming, tears flowed freely for the third time in your life only to instantly vaporize, a smoky vapor bleeding from your eyes as the sigils burned themselves eternally into your retinas.

Incomprehensible concepts, alien thoughts and ineffable emotions coursed through you. Your eyes struggling to follow their swift passage, one sigil becoming clear only for it to blur and shift into another, your mind shattering under the tsunami of knowledge, your soul begins to sputter, overloading and dying like a fire without access to air.

You suffocate physically and mentally under the uncaring endless waves knowledge and blood filled lungs.

You gasp for air only to choke on your own blood. Your eyes start to bleed, yet you stare deeply into the eyes of the man opposite you. A lone witness as they open to an impossible size to the sight of equally impossible views behind them.

You struggle to comprehend what you are seeing, knowing not if it the delusions of a dying mind or a divine miracle. The sensation of falling grabs a hold of you, hurling you straight into the eyes. You gasp, the taste of copper does not follow and all you know became the all encompassing blood colored world of shrieking winds.

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What did you see?

[A] Snowy peaks, glistening in the morning sun, their ice-covered tips cutting the wind itself that flew across them. They sat on top of an impossibly large mountain, covered in snow and storm. A large creature leapt into the air from a hidden cave buried above the clouds in the north face of the mountain. A leap of faith and wings unfurl, flapping desperately, the wind not catching their great width. The creature screeches loudly, slamming into the ground. The snow becomes stained with blood and feathers.

[B] An endless ocean, speckled with islands like the night is speckled with stars. Hidden dangers lurk underneath the tranquil surface, menacing large shadows seemingly floating underneath the topaz coloured ocean. Vessels of all sizes float determinedly across the surface without fear disturbing the peaceful waters with their wake. In the far distance a titanic wave stretches across the horizon, the sun hidden behind its surface.

[C] A great city aflame, smoke obscuring the sky, generations of architecture, and technological marvels powerless against the horde waiting patiently outside the walls like serpents in the grass. Thousands of people scream out as one on deaf ears. A wall crumbles into dust and hundreds of heavily bejeweled soldiers begin to flee, escorting a man wearing a ruby infused golden crown and his nobility.

[D] Obsidian pyramid pierce the veil of pathless sand. Stretching for as far as the eye can see. The sand moves only under the endless merchandise laden beasts and their handlers as they journey across the vast fields of sand, obscuring themselves beneath magical cloth, scurrying from the danger poised by giant worms that can be seen burrowing around the half eaten mountains that act as their nests. High above the mortal creatures, the celestial Sun blares unrelentingly on its zenith roasting the world below through sheer passion.