Year A.I 1018
It was night.
A small yet well kept dirt road stretched through an icy expanse of forest that shimmered under the full moon.
Dim mana-fuelled headlights shined through a shroud of fog as it swirled gently around the wheels of a luxurious carriage, pulled by large draconic horses, with their knife-like teeth, serrated talons and scaled body covered by an intricate armour of silver dulled by the cold mist.
The coach rolled through the darkness, the only sounds being the heavy breathing of the draconic horses and the crunching of the frost beneath the heavy carriage.
Holding the reins of the carriage, Neyvar Keydithas shivered under his thick cloak as he stared at the dark road in front of him.
He was a second ranked coachman who had been charged with returning the injured seventh ranked war heroine, Lady Evangeline Villarias back to her home in Exelsyon, within the kingdom of spring, Galadhiel, after her victory over the corrupt Diseased, sickening creatures that prowled the land, seeking chaos and destruction.
The allied military commanders of Yetland and Galadhiel had decided there was no point in appointing a convoy to Lady Villarias’s carriage, which she had wearily accepted out of the kindness of her heart, leaving the soldiers and mercenaries to their revelry in the former frontline.
Bump.
Neyvar was jolted back from his pondering by a sudden impact that shook the underside of the carriage.
He heard a deep feminine voice slowly ask,
“What was that..?”
“Forgive me my Lady but I’ll need to stop the carriage to check the axles of the wheels”, Neyvar quickly replied.
“Tell me what you find.”
“Of course, my Lady.”
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Neyvar gently pulled on the reins and stopped the draconic horses. As the carriage halted, he jumped off the coach and circulated mana to his flashlight.
A green-tinged light shone from the end as Neyvar ducked and looked under the carriage.
The illuminated underside of the carriage revealed many things.
A hunched form.
White fur.
And as the malformed beast turned its head around, red eyes.
The arctic mongrel leaped at him, claws out and salivating jaws wide open. Neyvar desperately sprung back, throwing himself out of the underside of the carriage.
“My Lady! Diseased!” Neyvar desperately yelled, before a white blur also flashed out of the undercarriage and passed through him, making him suddenly fall onto the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
---Lady Evangeline Villarias---
As soon as Evangeline heard the word “Diseased!” come out of her coachman’s mouth, she jumped up from her fur covered seat and tried to leap out, before a stabbing pain from her midriff caused her to see stars and temporarily black out.
She caught herself just as she was collapsing and opened the door quickly, hands out in front of her, already glowing with the powerful current of mana barely contained by her focused and strained mind.
A cold gust of wind entered the carriage as she froze, not comprehending the sight in front of her.
Diseased.
The ones she had thought she had utterly defeated at the battleground of Halrandir.
There. Staring at her. Thousands of them. Their red eyes piercing into her very soul.
FIGHT BACK!
FIGHT BACK!
FIGHT BACK!
Evangeline struggled against her unresponsive body before finally unleashing her pent up mana in the form of her strongest sixth tiered spell.
“Anger of Gaia.”
BOOM!
Roots burst out of the ground at incomprehensible speeds under her command, taking out a huge swathe of hundreds of Diseased and trees before rising up diagonally into the night sky.
Evangeline started running, unsheathing her mythril sword as she charged towards her hated enemies.
She hit the horde like a storm. Limbs flew away as she elegantly cut, slashed and stabbed everything around her, the blood splashing out into the air like multiple small fireworks of crimson.
Red. Red. Red.
Evangeline’s nightgown clad figure slowly turned scarlet as she massacred her way through hundreds of Diseased, circulating her mana in order to build up to another spell.
Suddenly, a streak of grey flickered from within the horde and with a sound like hundreds of cannons being fired at once, appeared in front of her, grabbing her throat and discharging corrupt mana into her body.
Evangeline slowly focused on the monster in front of her.
A cloud of pulsating grey veined corrupt mana barely contained within a humanoid shape with a mouth that stretched around half of its face and two bright spots of red positioned one over the other slowly illuminated.
Its sickeningly empty carmine eyes seemed to stab right into her soul as its mouth tore open to reveal an unnaturally large smile filled with oversized dagger like teeth.
Its demented chuckle echoed through the icy forest as the silent Diseased stopped moving.
The chuckle brought Evangeline back to her senses, allowing her to gain back control of her mana that she then reined in, while circulating mana to rapidly increase the building pressure within her body.
She just knew that she couldn’t let the monster loose in the world.
She knew her duty.
She knew what she had to do.
Evangeline Villarias, Elven Empress of War, wife of Nardual, mother of Annathiel, released everything in a blinding flash of green.