Waves could be heard surging below as Prince Morne started to regain consciousness. Brilliant red flashes of blinding light scarred his sight from beyond his closed eyes. At that moment, he awoke, staring at the scene before him. His thin night clothes he wore for bed were drenched all the way through. A metallic odor enveloped his senses as he looked up towards the sky. It had been illuminated by the constant red electrical storm as bolts jumped across it. Cracked lines would stay as an afterimage in his sight long after the bolts would dissipate. Thick, black clouds filled the stormy void between them. The awesome force of the thunderstorm shook the stony ground below. It made pieces of the structure crumble into the abyss.
He was on a bridge. Each flash of red would show the structure's impossible size. The black, corroded brick path was unending. Giant spires were placed on each side with more erected farther down at subsequent intervals. The high-reaching peaks could not be seen as they pierced the otherworldly clouds, no telling of how high they really went.
The constant turbulent winds and downpour obscured his sight, but static black figures could be seen in the foggy distance. They looked to be towers or platforms standing alone, impossible in scale. Roads once connected to each other fell into the depths long ago. The only vestige of them that ever existed was the remains in between them. Isolating the incredible structures in the raging sea, amidst the storm.
The prince approached the edge. His bare feet sunk in the water of deep puddles. Depressions in the stone had formed over time from the gradual erosion, making the ground uneven; they filled with water. As the prince advanced, he walked past a variety of dilapidated carriages and boxes that littered the manufactured landscape. Abandoned by their owners, they were left to rot in this never subsiding storm. Wooden poles could be seen where banners once stood on the edges of the path. The tops were rusted and the end was pointed. Whatever banner they held had faded away, torn from them long ago.
The boundary wall at the edge had large gaps missing from its foundation. No doubt from the constant electrified bombardment above. Just as he was about to look over it, a flash of lightning struck the adjoining wall farther down. The explosion it caused was massive, making the bridge shudder. It violently ripped a huge section of it, causing the stone to tumble into the abyss. In the aftermath, all that remained was a crescent-shaped hole missing from the structure.
After the prince regained his composure, he gazed over the side. Nothing could be seen. Obscured within the darkness, gusts of wind and mist came from its emptiness. He heard the waves as they crashed against the side of the bridge. Another bolt had skipped across the sky at that moment, illuminating the sea below once more. The water was a crimson red, it roared and hurled itself at the structure. Almost burgundy plumes of mist would erupt from the impact as it mixed with the black stone.
Another red bolt manifested overhead. He glimpsed at the sides of the megastructure for a brief moment. As the waves receded, they appeared to be worn over time from their intensity. The base had been turned more to a maroon tone than black. Waves towered at moments, causing pieces of rock to fall sporadically off the sides as they pounded into the sides of the walls. They would at times surpass the top, casting water in every direction. The boxes, the whole carriages themselves, and miscellaneous pieces of wood shifted along the surface.
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After the needed light was gone, Morne looked down at the waves, they were cloaked in shadow once more. They stayed vivid in his mind. Now when the flashes would recede into the void again, this place remained crystal clear to him. A dream that felt like it had bled into reality, a lost fragment of a land long dead, and an artifact from an ancient world he did not understand.
He held out his cradled hands so they would fill with the maroon rainwater. It was as red as the sea below him. The metallic odor returned from before as he held the water close to his face, filling his nose with the familiar scent. He examined it for a moment before he let the water fall beyond the edge, returning to the source.
As he looked at one of the unclear shapes in the distance, he heard something else. Further down the black bridge, he heard hooves as they clattered on the stone path. The shape wasn’t clear for a moment. After he took a few more steps towards it, he recognized what it was just by the silhouette; a stag, a giant one. Its head was adorned with a huge set of antlers with dozens of points. The set was four or five feet wider than the deer itself on each side. Slowly it strolled away from Morne, it passed beyond the fringe of his sight, now in the black oblivion.
For some reason, though, the trotted hooves became louder the farther it got away. The prince began to run after it, into the unknown. Only being able to see a few paces in front of him, he jogged at a slow pace. When suddenly out of the darkness the stag appeared. It laid on the ground, engulfed in flame. After a moment, the flames were snuffed out by a heavy wind gust. He could tell from the wounds, it was incinerated. All that remained was the charred husk. The antlers were blackened and torched but for one single end. The last point of the stag was all that remained of its original form.
A stream of water began to flow past the prince. Looking down, the raging water became more and more violent as it pushed past him. Another bolt struck one of the spires ahead, causing it to topple onto the bridge as the tallest section crumbled off the far side. Still unrevealed, the peak even as it fell it was too far away off the far side. The entire bridge began to shake as the spire collapsed. A massive tidal wave could be seen rampaging towards him. Once more, a red surge struck the dilapidated spot where the magnificent tower once was. The blood-red torrent overwhelmed everything in its path. Faster and faster it hurtled towards him. He began to retreat back the way he came.
The bridge was infinite this way as well. He had been defenseless against the unstoppable force. He peered over the edge to see if he could attempt to jump onto another level. There was nothing, it was just a straight drop. The stone structure quaked more and more with every second that passed. The prince now accepted his fate. He moved back to the middle of the bridge to face the wave head on.
The risen crimson flow now towered over him. Almost reaching the clouds themselves. More and more bolts of red lightning proliferated the landscape. Distorted web-like designs in the sky appeared from them, creating sudden divots in the stone as portions were ripped away by the skies onslaught; hurling shattered pieces of stone everywhere.
The wave had finally consumed the stag in its mass as it engulfed everything in sight. Stone and wood tumbled within. The whole bridge began to deteriorate under the deadly swell. After the utter devastation Prince Morne had just witnessed before him, the wave swallowed him up in its ever-growing stampede. All was now black. He was now one with the storm.
"For it will consume the world. For we shall be reborn within its wake."- Irazan