He was oblivious of how long he had been running, but he immediately knew when he had stopped from the immediate and extreme fatigue he felt the moment he did.
His breathing was akin to a dying man catching for what little fleeting breaths remained.
He could only just limp forward slowly as of current, as the exhaustion and the intense fatigue that affected every nook and cranny of his body had made him shaking periodically at every step he walked.
His eyes lazily glanced only a little bit around him to see endless green trees of varying sizes and heights, and even of a different variety of colors.
The grassy green bushes swayed gently to the sides and some dead trees laid static,near their more
colorful and ever growing brothers.
The shapes of the fallen trees were contorted into bizarre shapes, with a pliant and hard texture. And it was easy to mistake the dead trees for corpses.
But the man did not see it peaceful nor unnerving , or had any much opinion as he was just awfully thirsty and burnt out. He had never felt even close to this way since his own college days, where he had once been overworked for an assignment that he had. And it still wasn't on par on the tiring feeling he felt now
He could not really take much of the physical exertion of this intensity.He was not really used to it either. And he slowly realized that those daily jogs did not do much of a favor to him.
He could feel the lowering sunset against his skin and the unfamiliar clothes, combined with a darkness of shadows materialized by the thick groves of trees which still weren't able to cover out the mostly red sun completely.
He took one exasperated sigh. He wanted all to stop. But most importantly of all, he wanted a drink so he could actually mull and think about wanting all the events that occurred to just cease.
Within the natural sounds and smells of the forest with the near marshes, he could also hear the faint sound of flowing water.
He stretched an arm out weakly, and like an undead man he started to walked towards the source coupled with a few groans he felt coming from his throat. But he could not really control the urge not to.
He walked through the few green bushes uncaring, even almost tripping over a few misplaced branches as he dragged his body in a mindless bee line towards a probable source of drinking water.
As he walked he found a little clearing through trees, and then leaned on a particularly large tree as he finally made it. He took a few breaths as he leaned against the thick stem of the tree to his left he could not even be bothered to look at.
He could even feel some little insects crawling along, but he still couldn't bring himself to mind it as he still kept on catching his breath .
He could even hear some rustling, but he was just still dead set on having something to drink than even minding his own surroundings carefully.
He could heard the water flowing closely now, through the both sides of his ear. It was gentle and calm, and he felt a little peace as he listened.
And listened he did, but only for a few seconds. He quickly leaned himself up and check to witness everything in front of him, as carefully and as clearly he could manage.
A stream. A clear flowing stream. One that he had been continuously hearing a few moments ago. There were no sign of a dirtiness or filth in it. Little and littler rocks of different but smaller sizes he could see rooted into the waters.
He uttered out a faint and coarse sound of realization. Then he felt himself hanging his mouth open all the way through, as he rushed forward with all his strength and immediately plopped down on his knees to gulp down the flowing water from the stream.
He took the water up with his palms, and shakily let it pour into his mouth as he hastily and desperately drank it.
It tasted heavenly to him, despite it being a bit too lukewarm. But he knew that he did not have the luxury to complain about it.
He drank as much as he could to stave off the fatigue and restore his energy. As he finally finished, he splashed the water on his face, soaking his face and his clothing.
His strange clothing stuck to him fiercely, but there was no discomfort or contempt etched on his face indicating that he even cared about it.
He let out a satisfactory sigh as he felt more rejuvenated. Before he finally finished up, he noticed an irregularity that was made apparent, reflecting itself pristinely clear in the stream.
His own reflection, or what he thought his reflection is. What he looked upon on the stream was not the face of his. It was a vastly different one, not even one bit similar.
A young face, which looked to be in the late twenties, stared back at him. He slowly clutched his face in a slow and uncertain fashion, as he ran his fingers over his cheeks, lips and chin.
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The reflection on the stream all performed the same movements as he did. He felt a slight shiver, as he realized that it was not just some hallucination of some sort.
Short black wavy hair. Black hooded eyes with thin eyebrows. Thin lips. Vastly sunken cheeks seeming almost as if two little fist-sized craters had formed on the sides of his face. Then it was completed with a pale complexion and a normal triangular jaw.
And the wound of the arrow had still remained on his other cheek. Not even a single trace of facial hair were to be seen. A face that was not his.
"Oh God..."He felt himself muttering, even his despairing tone sounding different from what was before. Even the accent that rolled off his tongue was not his, but of a more eastern european origin.
He felt every second of all the unpleasant sensations on his supposedly new tongue as he muttered those few words.
He then put his right hand up to his face with his fingers stretched wide, just inches away from his face.
He felt an sudden urge to claw his new face off, with a delusional hope of finding his own face again if he clawed it all the way. But he only lightly scratched it, realizing he was not very fond of pain.
"This...My face..."He blurted out. "The hell...is this?" His voice was continually morphing into a plead. A perplexment of magnitudes unknown had bored into his mind.
It appeared to him that he was not even permitted to keep his face. He stared at the palm of his right hand. It was not the palm of an university student just about to graduate.
He rubbed his thumb over the upper area of his right palm. It was rough, almost like sandpaper. Calluses on his hands, likely from some continuous form of manual labor. Hands he'd usually see on an underpaid construction worker.
He did not have his face, and he did not have his body either. It all belonged to someone else.
He felt a stinging dismay at the awful but frequent realizations at his situation at present.
A wave of anxiety and dread wracked his current state of mind. A dull and numbing feeling were synthesizing together to form cold sweats all over his chest.
The only thing he could feel the slight bit of another emotion other than despair was the minuscule triumph of still remembering his own name.
And his name, which had been granted to him by birth, he still remembered clear as day.
"Andreij...."He muttered out, slowly as if savoring every single letter,"Andreij Norwick..."He spoke on slowly as if he was afraid those words would slip away from his mind. As if he would be stricken with late stage Alzheimer's immediately.
"No one...."He kept on muttering in a mantra,"No one...can take that away from me. No one!"he had started to grit his teeth in result of an emotion brewed from anger, despair and anxiety.
But the anger seemed to just seep away from Andreij, leaving only the anxiety and despair for him bare in full force.
But a loud thud of something dropping on the ground then resounded in his ears, knocking him out of his thoughts.
He turn his eyes forward inhumanly fast towards the source, and he widened his eyes at what he saw.
It was two people. Living. No weapons or armor on their body. No hostile intent could be seen written on their features. One looked like a black haired teenage boy, who adorned a light brown sleeveless tunic and rolled up trousers with the same color.
He also held a large wooden hoe in his hands.His expression was that of shock as he stared at Andreij.
The other one was a brown haired girl, who wore a large grey and blue dress with a brown apron hugging her body.And on the ground just right next to her was a wooden bucket, just rolling down along into the stream.
Andreij slowly stood up and reared his back up into a proper position, trying his hardest to look as non-threatening as he could.He did not take his eyes of the two people in front of him either, still staring at them.
He then noticed an expression of recognition in the teenage boy's eyes, which quickly turned to wariness and fear.
"Ar-Argotilian! It's an Argotilian!"The boy blurted out in a frightened voice. He then pulled the girl back and stepped forwards towards Andreij, his hoe pointed towards him in an amateurish stance.
"A what?" He felt himself abruptly mutter out in some form of a rushed reply.But he did not have a chance to explain himself as he saw the boy quickly come forward and stretch his hoe forwards in a threatening manner.
He put his arms and quickly backed up. His steps were quick and hurried, and in the next moment, he felt his right leg step on something uneven.
And then he felt his right foot suddenly rear up swiftly . He felt his whole body catching air for one split second, before feeling the back of his noggin slam hardly against something on the ground.
He had slipped.But before he could be aware, his vision went black, and was pushed to a sudden transportation into a null black void.
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Mauritane. The golden city of the mountainous and green grassy lands of the Retunt, and the capital of the kingdom of Argotila.
It would have been golden, and swarming with all types of people, if not for the thick, towering fog over the city coming from the large Tean river in which the city resides by.
The wide main streets were filled mostly with citizens and carts closing shop.Most of the buildings were made of brick produced by the back breaking work of the stonecutters.
And although fine architecture could only be seen on the more wealthier homes and the so called "prayer" domes, a familiar sense of integrity could be felt on all the buildings in the city. All of which looked laid out better with a firm foundation..
The day had reached to the evening, making the sun an amalgamation of red and orange before it goes down to circle towards the other half of the world.
A large crackle had been heard a week ago from all over the continents. No one knew what it was. And the more fanatical folk had seen it as an omen for something, its implications unknown.
And most could say it came true with the descending grey fog over the city.
It was a morbid looking fog, and it did not go along nicely with the clouds at any angle or shape. There was a lifeless sensation that was felt all over the city, and it was demoralizing. But the city went along as usual.
And along the crowded main streets, a brown hooded man ran, intent on getting towards the royal palace near the center of the bustling city.
He ran forward with extreme haste and urgency. He was a messenger for the Kingdom of Argotila, and he was rushing to deliver the news of what might possibly be the kingdom's greatest blunder in battle.
And he had finally made it to the gates of the palace, just after a minute of an intense sprint.
The armored guards at the gate ushered the messenger in without question, and he ran forwards to the long steps towards where the king and his family resided, and where all the planning and plotting took place.
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An old King Sorentid Medri laid static on his throne, his head slumped to the right with his right hand covering his face.
His strong clean cut face was in silent grief as he sat down mulling over the news he had the tragedy of receiving. His crown was still on his head, but it did not look the slight bit majestic as of this current moment.
"My son...…where doth his body lie now?"He asked indifferently, not wanting to convey any sort of emotion to the messenger in front of him.
They were conversing in a wide throne room in which where there were only 4 people present The people being 2 guards of the crown itself, the king and the messenger in question.
"It is…..unknown my king, first hand reports from the survivors tell that his cadaver was dragged along with his steed into the forests at some time during the battle." He explained, not holding back on every word as was his duty as a messenger.
He was laid kneeling on the ground in front of the throne.
The king then put his head up slowly and stared out through the wide windows of his throneroom, not uttering a single word.
He could see the fog had already descended on the city and was here to stay quite a while. And his throneroom had gotten darker with each passing minute.
His own family aside from his second son was still well, but the loss of his son and the consequences of the defeat, would leave some sort of scar on his own mind.
The throneroom had gotten even darker now, and the king noticed that he could no longer see outside due to the thick fog that has shielded his view.
And it looked like the whole city had been covered in this fog. But the king did not think much of it, and brought himself back inside the world of his own thoughts again.
What he did not know, was the millions of small particles of volcanic ash also had accompanied the grey fog, and had also released itself onto the streets for all the citizens to incidentally breathe in.
And Mauritane was not the only city in the world that would begin suffering a disaster. And the catastrophic rate and intensity of those disasters, none in this time could ever hope to predict.