In a side alley off a busy street of a large city, two thugs were beating the living snot out of Ben Kelso. The two men were in their early to mid twenties wearing dirty hoodies and stained, worn jeans. Ben was a few weeks away from his seventeenth birthday, was wearing a light blue shirt and dark grey slacks that he wore for his part-time job. He had unfortunately lost his cellphone the day before which was an important detail because in this part of town, not having enough money or expensive items with you when you got mugged just wasn't conducive to a long and healthy life.

He was on the ground now, trying to protect his head with his arms and whimpering as kicks landed all over his body. His nose was already broken and streaming blood, and his left eye was already starting to swell shut. He didn't know it, but two of his ribs were also cracked and he'd have trouble walking for a long while with how the more vicious of his two assailants had kicked out his knee to the side.

Suddenly there was an intense and blinding flash of light, centered on where Ben lay terrified. The thugs shielded their eyes. One of them grunted while the other cried out in shock. Even as they blinked the spots from their eyes, they lashed out with kicks again to punish their victim for his impertinent action.

Their feet didn't connect. To anything. Actually, they no longer even connected to ankles or by extension, legs. In a split-second, the muggers had been blasted apart in an explosion of pure energy and force. Miscellaneous gore spattered the concrete walls either side of the alley and a fine red mist hung in the air.

The man that stood at the epicenter of both the light and the explosion was not Ben. Ben was simply gone, and in his place a tall man, who appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He was well built, with broad shoulders and obvious but not excessive musculature. He had crystal clear blue eyes, a strong jawline playing host to a well-maintained short-cut beard and despite his young countenance, long white hair tied back with a warriors knot. He wore strange garments, because you really couldn't call what he wore "clothes" as you understand them.

The man sported a chestplate wrought of shining orichalcum and black dragonscale. His greaves made similar, though at the joints the stronger materials gave way to black dragonleather for flexibility. He wore a circlet on his brow crafted from twining bands of orichalcum and mithril with a single pulsing ruby embedded in the center. Around his neck and flowing down his back was a cloak fashioned from the cobalt blue wing leather of an ice dragon which gave off a slight mist like breath on a frosty morning, and was lined about the neck with the fur of an arctic direfox. It connected at the shoulders with the man's pauldrons, which were impressively large and made of the same materials as his chestplate. The left pauldron was slightly larger and extended higher to the side of his neck forming a guard that ended in the tip of a dragon claw curving back away from his cheek.

Koda looked around, startled. His aura had just run wild. The pressure that naturally resisted a person's aura wasn't there. As soon as he'd noticed his aura flare away from him without his command, he'd exerted his control and pulled it back to himself. It seemed like there had been a casualty or two. Oh well, nothing can be done to repair what had happened to those unfortunates. Their very souls would have been shredded at the spiritual level.

Well, this was not supposed to happen. Did those mages mess up the ritual?

Taking a closer look at his surroundings, he decided that they had royally screwed up this time. Where in the wretched abyss am I?

The buildings on either side of him were larger than almost any he'd seen save for the palaces and fortresses of kings and emperors, and other great buildings like the Grand Library of Kalm, or even the Heavenseye in the plateaus high in the Northern Spurs. But in contrast to the grand works he knew, these buildings looked dirty and dull, and in need of repair and maintenance. There were odd objects around him, and strange refuse, for what else could it be, littered the ground. Barrels and large chests of metal, some painted, but peeling. Metal boxes, large tubes and rusting metal staircases that didn't quite reach the ground clung to the walls. Everything reeked of rot. Not to mention the coppery tang that hung in the air, and the sharp repugnant scent of offal. This is disgusting. No power exists that could make me wish to remain here.

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Koda walked towards a more open street that had better light, and hopefully less remains of recently exploded people. There were more odd metal objects along this street, but slightly raised walkways on either side seemed to delimit the distance they were placed from the buildings. There were all sorts of lines painted on the ground all over the street between the walkways. He cocked his head slightly but moved on. These glyphs must have some meaning, and they are obviously not intended for ritual or enchantment. Even a child would know that those arrangements could hold no power. Putting it from his mind, Koda could see crowds of people crossing the street further down, along what looked to be an even wider thoroughfare, though none turned aside onto the street he walked.

What odd garments. He wondered to himself as he joined the throng of foot traffic. None carry weapons, nor wear armor. Do they not care for their own safety or protection? What of bandits and thieves? Or beasts? Many of those he passed gave him odd looks, while others seemingly ignored his presence altogether. Those that disregarded their own safety and came into physical contact exclaimed and jumped away in shock. Especially since joining the bustling crowd, but in truth, ever since he had arrived, he'd had to consciously control and reduce the power of his aura due to the lack of spiritual pressure here, wherever here was. It would still cause numbness upon contact, however.

Then he saw some of the metal objects from earlier, moving and stopping intermittently on the street beyond the stream of vulnerable but seemingly indifferent people. There were more people inside these metal shells which growled at each other as they rolled forward on their wheels. Carriages? No horses to pull them, but also not propelled by magic. Koda expanded his senses and investigated the growling carriages. Powered by... a great many tiny but rapid explosions! Amazing!

Pushing with his aura, he created some space around him, knocking people out of his way. Using telekinesis, he lifted one of the carriages from the street and brought it closer to him for a better and more thorough examination. There was a woman inside, and she was screaming. In fact, a lot of people were screaming now. And running. It must be a beast attack! He let the strange carriage drop and spun to search for the beasts, calling forth a simple weapon from his spiritual armory. He would not need any of his truly powerful armaments for mere beasts after all. He couldn't see any attacking beasts, but they could be hiding from sight through base stealth or some intrinsic ability. He looked again, but with the full array of his many senses. Strange that I can sense nothing larger than a few dogs nearby. I wonder what caused the townsfolk to panic so.

"FREEZE!"

Instinctively, he flared his aura and whipped it about himself in a defensive whirl that would deflect incoming attacks of a magical or spiritual nature and dampen the force of powerful physical blows while outright halting weaker strikes altogether. It would not stop a mental assault, nor block a sensory overload. He had other means to defend attacks of those dispositions. He raised a sensory filter in a sphere about his head, preventing excessively large amounts of sensory information to pass through. Within his mindscape, he summoned the Five Pillars of Self, which had even thwarted a dying god's final desperate strike using up the last of its amassed Faith, expending even it's own existence in the attempt to destroy him. His mind was his and his alone, nothing within existence, or without, could contend with him in the mental plane. His defenses in place, he sent out a weak probing attack consisting only of a small amount of physical force in the direction of the challenge.

Nothing happened.

Looking to the source of the shout, there were two people, a man and a woman, dressed in identical clothes. Siblings with poor taste? Or perhaps the robes of some kind of office? Both wore tight-fitting dark blue outfits with small gold-coloured adornments and odd multiple-pointed hats with a small forward brim. The woman stood in a sloppy stance, if she intended to fight, and had both hands outstretched in front of her holding an odd hunk of metal. The man was already in the process of sailing backwards and coming apart at the seams, a large crater having formed where his chest had caved in with the force of Koda's probing strike. Huh. No defenses at all? Even a poorly trained warrior would only be knocked to their ass with a strike such as that.

The woman's reaction time was as pitiful as the man's defense. She began to register both the attack on her partner, and the sight of man in front of her with his armor spattered with blood, a ten foot tall, golden-hafted spear etched with runework ending with a wicked-looking curved crystalline blade that pulsed a deep blood red glow from within. He had a disdainful expression on his face, and she was engulfed by a feeling of impending doom so absolute that her bladder emptied of its own accord. She squeezed the trigger even as she flinched back and turned to flee.