-Murky Glimpses-

Eyeing the deadlyone as it eyed her, Sareth removed her knives in one swift motion and removed the creature’s head from the rest of its body.

The red eyes continued to stare at her, unblinking, from the marshy floor.

Cleaning her blades on a nearby tree trunk, she sheathed them at her side and stalked through the tangled undergrowth, eager to get out of the suffocating landscape.

As she struggled to keep her footing on the damp, slick ground, she was brought to her knees by a searing pain in her head, accompanied by a strange vision, similar to the glimpses she’d seen on her way down into this humid, oppressive place.

She was flying above a group of people so massive it defied understanding. Each of them was clad in strange armor and brandished the strange sword she’d seen earlier. The land around them was a wasteland, nothing but brown—brown dirt greeted by the brown haze of poisoned air.

Without warning, the people started to organize into three or four groups, each with a mighty warrior at the head that stood several feet taller than their comrades.

Gasping, the world solidified around Sareth once more and she found herself sinking in the mud, her hands and knees caked in the wet dirt. Shuddering, she wiped herself off as best as she could before starting to climb upward, leaving the boiling pond and the decapitated deadlyone behind, hoping the land would be more forgiving from a higher vantage point.

She was reaching for another thin tree trunk to hoist herself up through the dense wilderness surrounding her when her vision darkened once more.

The blackness slowly cleared, replaced by a strange blue glint, like the sun had been painted another color. Hovering in the distance was a strange set of alien script she couldn’t read. She quickly gave up trying to decipher it as someone clad in the strange armor descended on top of her, roaring something incoherent and waving a weapon at her. Recoiling, she lashed out with something in her hands. It looked like the attacker’s weapon, long and thin, metal…

Sparks flung up into the air, and in a flash the armored figure was striking again, rushing her with a violent passion that frightened her—

She was on her knees again, panting as though she’d been sprinting. Her palms were bloody from falling partially back down the slope, toward that horrible, bubbling pond.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Growling and shoving hair out of her face, Sareth dug her heels into the mud and sprinted, forcing herself to get as far up the incline as possible, desperate to reach flat ground before she was bombarded with visions of death again.

Was this her test? To witness the constant brutality of humankind? She already knew people could be cruel. She’d gone hungry enough nights watching people eat their food protectively to know. She’d gotten enough scars to know people only cared about their own skin.

A pain began to build in her head once more, and Sareth quickly wrapped her arms around a thin trunk before she was carried away once more.

There were those big warriors again, towering over their followers, each pointing at the other groups and shouting something Sareth couldn’t understand. The smaller warriors seemed to waver for a moment before suddenly turning on their leaders, ripping them into black dust that settled over the warriors, darkening their already dim armor.

When the dust settled, the warriors began eyeing each other in a silent, invisible moment of uncertainty before they turned on each other, viciously attacking people they had been united with a moment before while destroying the hulking leaders.

Sareth tried to close her eyes but was unable to, unable to look away as figure after figure turned into little more than powder, trod underfoot as the masses writhed, locked in an endless cycle of bloodshed, death—

Tears streaked down her cheeks, cutting through the mud and grime.

“Please. Don’t take me back there. Not again. I can’t go back,” she panted. Maybe if she left this twisted maw of vines and nature. She ran, disregarding the various branches and sticks that tore at her clothing, her exposed arms. Anything to get out of the pit. Anything to stay out of her mind and the dark things that prowled there.

She was almost out, could see a simple grassy meadow in the distance, brightly colored flowers littering the sea of green.

Sareth felt the next vision before she saw it and flung herself toward the meadow, landing on her hands and starting to claw her way to the meadow, only feet away, when—

Someone, standing on a precipice, looking down on the twisted masses below. No matter how many people fell to the strange, glittering weapons, another rose up to take their place, screaming defiantly as they charged to senseless death—either theirs or their opponent’s, it didn’t seem to matter to the terrible warriors below. The figure stared down at the destruction for a moment longer before turning and disappearing. Sareth’s vision temporarily darkened, and when she could make out anything again she was in an unlit room with two glowing objects sitting in the center of the space. Her eyes, unused to the bright light after the total darkness, squinted, straining to see, to understand the light. She could see the figure, their back to her, gazing at the lights, and she longed to see them too…

Sareth took in a long, ragged breath and gagged on mud and grass. Hacking, she rose up from the ground to her hands and knees and weakly dragged her body onto the meadow. The grass felt like silk, and Sareth gladly welcomed the warm hand of oblivion as she lost consciousness.