Devryn parted the curtains of his tent and took a peek outside. It was early morning. The sun still hadn’t broken out. The camp was deathly quiet; Devryn could see no movements from the other thirteen tents that stood close to his. It seemed like no other person had woken up.

For a short moment, Devryn stared at the trees that surrounded the clearing where they were currently camped. He shrugged and let the tent curtains fall as he retreated into his space. His eyes remained open as he assumed his previous lying position.

He suddenly began to feel very drowsy. He’d been fully alert just a few seconds earlier, but a wave of fatigue was slowly washing over him. He tried to resist the slumber that called to him, but his resistance was quite frail. He yawned loudly as he closed his eyes.

When he opened them a second later, he was in a field covered with some ankle-length grass he wasn’t familiar with. The field seemed to border on every horizon; stretching endlessly in all directions.

“Where am I?” Devryn muttered.

He heard loud rumbles as great streaks of lightning hurtled across the night sky. Rain began to pour down in unrelenting sheets, drenching him completely in a matter of seconds.

Then came the battle cries.

Devryn looked around frantically and saw distant crowds approaching from all four sides. Even in the darkness, he could somehow tell that each of the four groups held nearly a hundred people. The approaching figures moved quite swiftly; he was soon able to see that they were all riders on horseback.

“What is this?” Devryn muttered confusedly.

The riders seemed to get quicker with every passing second; Devryn began to see them even more clearly. The figures weren’t just mere riders; they seemed to be soldiers. Each and every one of them donned some sort of armor. They kept riding full speed, rapidly converging in on him.

Devryn glanced around and noticed that the four groups of riders were distinct from one another. The flags they raised were of different colours: red, blue, yellow, and white.

“This has to be some sort of joke,” Devryn said aloud. His heart beat faster as he began to comprehend the situation.

The soldiers all came to an abrupt halt, leaving a large space at the middle of the field where Devryn stood. “For Pyrria, goddess of Fire!” Devryn heard someone yell. “For Pyrria!” came the resounding response.

Devryn turned around swiftly to face the direction the war cry had come from—the group of soldiers with the red flags. His attention was drawn away from the soldiers when a hundred tiny sparks suddenly appeared in the sky above their heads.

Devryn watched with wide eyes and a slack jaw as the sparks grew in size, rapidly becoming huge balls of fire. Their intense light set the battlefield aglow.

“May the infidels burn!” a voice from amongst the soldiers shouted. “May Pyrria reign supreme!” the others responded.

The first of the fireballs fell out of the sky. Devryn watched in terror as it fell towards the group on his right hand side. Though Devryn was scared out of his mind, the endangered soldiers seemed totally undisturbed.

One of the armored men at their frontline looked up at the incoming missile and raised a clenched fist. Through the slits in the man’s helm, Devryn could see that his eyes glowed a bright white.

The girl soldier kept his fist raised for a few seconds. At the very last moment, he brought his arm down in a forceful arc.

The fireball was immediately redirected by a gust of wind. It soared over the heads of the soldiers of Pyrria and landed in the field behind their ranks, setting the grass on fire.

Devryn was dumbstruck. “Champions of Aetheria, God of Air and Wind,” he whispered.

Even before Devryn finished speaking, the other fireballs began dropping out of the sky.

The Champions of the Wind god immediately raised their fists as one. Like the first Champion had done, they brought their arms down forcefully.

Devryn heard the sound of whooshing air as a strong wind blew through the field. The wind was so strong that it not only dispersed the fiery missiles, but also threw a few of the opposition’s horses into the air.

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“This shouldn’t be possible,” Devryn muttered. “The gods and their Champions are a myth, nothing more.”

A deafening thunderclap rocked the field.

That was when Devryn noticed that the rain had stopped. He found it strange because he could still hear the sound of falling water droplets. He looked above once more and froze. Despite what he’d seen so far, he found the new sight to be even more disturbing.

There was a massive pool of water gathering directly over where they all stood. The rain was still pouring from the sky in sheets but it wasn’t reaching the ground anymore. Instead, it joined the floating pool that hovered over the entire field.

Devryn was utterly mind blown, but his lips still managed to move of their own accord. “Champions of Hydra, God of Water,” he said to himself.

The group on his left began muttering something rapidly. It took a few seconds for Devryn to make out the words they were saying.

“May the souls of the infidels be purified in Hydra’s pure essence,” the blue-flagged Champions repeated quietly amongst themselves.

“This had better not be what I’m thinking,” Devryn muttered as he looked at the gathering water above his head. “This is suicide, we’re all going to die.”

His jaw dropped and his heart almost jumped out of his chest as the water that had been gathering above the field came crashing down.

****

Devryn closed his eyes and waited for the water to crush him against the ground. He stood there for a couple of seconds before realizing that the field had gone silent. He couldn’t hear the muttering of Hydra’s Champions anymore; he couldn’t hear the sound of the falling rain as well. Even the rumbling thunder had stopped.

Devryn opened his eyes slowly and looked around. Somehow, he wasn’t in the field anymore. He wasn’t surrounded by the magical Champions of the Pantheon.

Rather, he was in some sort of hall. The hall was brightly lit by a number of wooden torches that hung from the walls. Apart from four statues—three males and one female—that stood close to one of the room’s edges with their backs turned, the place was totally empty.

Devryn chuckled loudly. “Oh, I get it now,” he said amidst laughter. “This is a dream. It just has to be.”

Although everything felt so real, Devryn was quite sure that his deduction was accurate. He waited, but his sudden realization didn’t make the dream world fade away. Absolutely nothing happened; everything remained exactly as it was.

Devryn didn’t budge. He remained where he stood, still hoping that he would suddenly wake up and find himself back inside his cozy tent.

“Oh, man. I’m so screwed,” he said aloud after a couple more minutes of pointless waiting. He looked around the hall once more and then decided to do a little exploring.

His first stop was the statues. Devryn walked closer to them so he could get a better look. From their impressive heights, he guessed that each of them stood at over nine feet. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the statues were sculpted out of some strange rock; one that seemed nearly transparent.

Devryn reached out and placed his hand on one of them. Surprisingly, the statue felt quite warm to the touch. As if on cue, the stone sculpture turned around immediately, nearly knocking Devryn out of its way.

Devryn watched in awe as the statue slowly shrank to normal human size, its texture changing from colorless stone to rosy human skin. The other three statues followed suit. They all turned human right before Devryn’s eyes.

“Um, I’m so sorry,” Devryn stuttered as he took a few steps backwards. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

His fearful apologies were ignored by the four. In fact, they seemed not to notice him at all. Their eyes glazed over him like he wasn’t there.

One of them, a man, addressed the others. “Can you see what’s happened?!” he thundered. “The people have gone insane! The gifts have gone to their heads. They hide their thirst for more power behind wars waged in our names.”

“Stop the tantrum, Terra,” the only female among the group said. “None of us could have guessed it would end this way.”

“I knew it would!” Terra shot back. “I knew it would, but you three would’ve never listened if I’d voiced my concerns.”

Devryn kept his eyes on the four as they bickered amongst themselves. “This surely has to be a dream,” he muttered. “I’m in the same room as the Pantheon.”

He kept taking backward steps until he felt his back brush against the wall. His eyes wandered as he searched for an exit, but he soon realized that the hall had no doors or windows. There were no sorts of openings anywhere. His attention was taken away from his search when one of the four gods slammed his fist against the wall.

 “Enough!” the god yelled. “There’s no need to blame ourselves. I can feel The Cycle approaching us, can’t you?”

“Aetheria is right,” the female—Pyrria—said again. “The Cycle is about to begin, and the people will lose touch with the gifts we’ve bestowed on them. There’s no need for us to worry about them destroying one another entirely.”

“The Cycle doesn’t necessarily mean that the violence will come to a stop,” the third man said. Devryn already knew what the man’s name would be even without the other three speaking it. The others had already been named, so the last god had to be Hydra, the god of Water.

Hydra continued, “We made a mistake by letting the humans have access to our gifts. The power has corrupted them, and made them evil. Now, I fear that evil may live on, even after The Cycle puts us to sleep and takes the gifts away from them.”

Pyrria sighed. “Our hands are tied right now. We’ll only be able to remedy the situation when we wake up.”

Terra scoffed. “We’ll wake up in a thousand years or so. Who’s to say that the world will still be standing by then?”

“Have faith, brother,” Aetheria said, “Have faith.”

Terra said something in response but Devryn didn’t hear what it was. The gods of the Pantheon suddenly began to fade out of his sights. He tried to move closer to them but found that he couldn’t. He looked down at himself and saw that his body was slowly dissipating, turning into mist.

“What’s happening to me?!” Devryn wanted to scream, but the sounds refused to come.