I closed my eyes and let out a shuddering breath. My fingers were numb and cold, my arm aching where the needle pierced the vein. Something clattered onto the pavement, and I looked down to see the needle. It had slipped out of my hand. Nothingness swirled around me, bringing the first sense of peace I'd felt in my short, miserable life. There was no one to miss me, and no one I would miss. There's always someone else to beat or rape. The regulars would move on quickly. I died. Only...wasn't death supposed to be dark? And since when did 'nothingness' have so many gods? Discord: https://discord.gg/PX3xqJdZMY
The first snowflakes fell before the end of the week. By the beginning of the second, the low hills and forests were blanketed in almost a foot of cold, wet snow. It turned to mud beneath the boots of the last light company, a fifty-foot-wide scar of brown in the world of white.
It was cold and miserable, but the weather only got worse the closer we got to the heart of the Brithlite Kingdom. The anomaly's power was unlike anything I'd seen before, even the avatars it sent to answer my call. Millions of tiny threads of mana covered the sky, blotting out the sun and knitting a tapestry of winter clouds. Every few hours, a particularly strong current of mana flowed through the sky, followed quickly by a short blizzard. The snow fell so hard during those times the army was forced to wait it out, unable to see the soldier just a rank ahead.