[KILL HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

Those words filled my mind and shook my soul.

I opened my eyes to find myself in a rather familiar forest.

I was in upper Coh except none of the buildings or paved paths were present.

It was also suffocatingly dark with the only light coming from a tartarean red sky from which blood fell as rain.

I stood up to find that I was in my larger, Kenos form, but something else drew my focus.

It was a deep thumping noise that came from deep within forest.

I walked south towards it, weaving through the trees in the otherwise eerie silence of Coh.

I eventually arrived at the heart to find that it was no longer walled off by a short fence.

I stepped into it and fell to my knees as the thumping grew louder.

Accompanying the soft, almost weak thump was a pain so intense, I painfully choked on my own spit as tears fell from my eyes.

I squeezed my fists and crawled further forward even as my mind screamed in pain.

My eyes then grew wider as I gazed upon a scene that made my face twist in agony.

Sitting where the heart once did was a crater within which sat a gigantic pregnant woman who rested her arms and head on an equally gigantic black egg.

I forced my teary eyes down to find that all the blood that fell drained into the crater.

I then glanced at the woman’s faceless, black head as the red sky brightened.

I wanted to go to her.

I wanted to hold her.

But I knew very well that doing so would cause me great pain and so, as the bloody rainstorm raged and my mind ached, I crawled away.

I eventually got far enough that the pain no longer hurt quite as much so I stood up and walked north.

I reached the edge of the forest and stopped at a sheer cliff that overlooked an endless sea of flesh, fire and mud.

Standing proudly above it all, beyond the horizon, was a pillar golden light.

One that blared out disgustingly into the dark world.

I looked at myself to find that I was now covered in dark armor.

I also held in my right hand a golden sword.

I took a single breath before walking off the edge of the cliff but before I could fall very far, my surroundings changed and I now stood in the center of a small, dingy town.

I stood atop a small mound of human corpses.

Their blood was washed off my armor by the pouring rain.

I looked out into the windows and slightly open doors to find the handful of people I hadn’t slaughtered staring at me, but I ignored them while slowly making my way up the road which led out of town.

My hooves dug deep into mud.

I couldn’t focus on anything for too long due to my pounding headache and so simply walked, ever northward.

.

..

I wiped the snot that had fallen from my wet nose.

It hadn’t stopped raining and my body had grown cold, but I couldn’t stop.

I kept walking for what seemed like an eternity up the path that cut across what was the Centora planes. The central region of Aurenia.

I took deep, shaking breaths in an attempt to find some semblance of focus and the distant thunder helped out a lot.

It tickled the itching, aching recesses of my mind and for that I was grateful.

I made the mistake of glancing at her golden sword and like clockwork, my innards boiled.

I looked forward at the muddy path I walked.

My steps and breaths were lost in the white lullaby of the rain.

It begged me to stop as my hooves dug deep into the mud, but I couldn’t.

And so I walked.

.

..

My eyes narrowed as I spotted a town in the distance.

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I looked around to find that the area surrounding it was mostly farmland, but all the farms looked dead and were unmanned.

I wasn’t even gonna bother entering the town and so I stepped onto a nearby field of dead crops and made my way north, via the farms to the east.

Several moments passed as I walked and I spotted several men standing in a rickety barn in the middle of the field.

I ignored them and continued forward.

Several more moments passed and I sighed as the men from before all ran up to me.

They wore old, dirty clothes and had even dirtier faces.

Their weapons were dull and their eyes ravenous.

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?”

One of them asked as I came to a stop.

They all casually approached while eyeing me over.

“Some kind of demon?”

“Come on. You know demons aren’t real. It’s probably just an illusion- ah! We’re getting distracted! Oi, goatman! Hand over that there sword and we might just let you go-“

I raised the Golden sword and swung it downward forcing its weight down onto the man’s torso and splitting it in two heaps of flesh that fell messily to the floor.

“AHHHH!”

“What in the-?”

The other men all exclaimed.

I turned my half open eyes towards them as they ran away while filling the evening air with their ugly screams.

“Towel, please.” I said and an armour clad hand suddenly appeared next to me with a cloth.

I used it to wipe the blood off the sword before tossing it over the pile of meat.

I then continued north while thinking about the sub space wherein Ower and Ncil hid.

From what we had learnt, all of existence was divided into three planes.

The physical realm, the realm of aspects and a place which we dubbed “The Realm of the Gods”.

The physical realm is where everything we knew and interacted with existed. The Aspectual Realm was a set of separate spaces which were a manifestation of their respective aspects. My dark realm was an example. It was a separate space that I had access to and although it was separate in the sense that one couldn’t normally access it even though it was an integral part of the cosmos.

And as for the Realm of the Gods… we assumed that is where all the inner workings of the universe were.

Whenever space magicians like Ower disappeared, they were simply stepping the realm that represented all of space. From there, they could observe all of space from without.

Actually, it’s also how teleportation worked.

Since shrinking space too extremely would crush all involved, teleporting from one place to another was simply getting a birds eye view over space and move yourself from one part of an infinite grid to another.

That being said, it had its limits.

The further away something was, the weaker a space magicians hold on it would be with the hold being at its strongest in an area of one square meter around the magician and the farthest a person could teleport themselves was one hundred kilometres at a time. This required an extreme amount of skill and intelligence otherwise you’d just teleport yourself in between a wall and be split in two.

I returned my focus to the immediate and noticed that countless men were leaving the town to the west and they were all coming my way.

I could have just asked Ower to teleport me to my destination, Middlen, but I wanted this.

I wanted them to charge at me with sword and spear and I wanted to teach them despair.

All of them.

The time when jagged death would fall on his kingdom would come and so I turned to the horde of about one hundred men and they all stood before me baring their malice.

One of them walked up to me.

His eyes had a pale white glow and he held in his hands a silver sword, although it looked worn and dirty, much like his clothes. He had a head full of dirty white hair and so I concluded that he was a silver knight or was one at some point.

“What in the world are you?” The man asked but I didn’t respond.

I simply looked at him while thinking of the best possible chance to attack.

I couldn’t be too hasty since he probably had a few magicians with him.

“What? Can’t speak?” The man asked and I could tell he was genuinely curious about me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t plan on answering any of his questions and so I raised my right hand, gathering a ton of darkness beneath the ground on top of which the hundred men stood.

“Watch out! It’s doing something!

One of them yelled but just as the words left his mouth, a bed of ten meter long spies shot out of the ground, impaling almost all one hundred men. Limbs were torn, heads were split open and of course, blood sprayed out as the spikes rose high into the air.

“Bastard!” The silver knight yelled before swinging his hand and sending forth a wave of distorted space.

I sunk into the dark world and re-emerged behind him.

He tried tuning around to face me but I kicked him in the back, sending him crashing forward.

He tumbled for a bit before standing to face me with his sword raised.

“What the fuck are you and what do you want?” He yelled while twisting the space around my neck, but I simply sunk into the dark realm again but instead of simply reappearing, I turned my left hand into its darker, claw bearing self and placed it right where his knee was.

I then re-emerged and I watched as my hand tore through his leg.

“AHHH!” The knight cried as he fell.

He then teleported ten meters away before doing the same thing again, getting further and further away.

This meant he wasn’t a very good space magician.

Well… he wasn’t as good as everyone I’d met so far.

I dashed up to his bleeding self and grabbed his ankle only for the idiot to teleport both of us towards town.

I felt like vomiting, but I kept what little my stomach held before stabbing the man in the chest and like the idiot he was, he tried teleporting again.

I watched as his body shifted through space, but since he couldn’t take the grounded sword, it tore through his body, splitting him in two.

I looked down at the heap of flesh before scoffing.

I made my way to the sword, picked it up and resumed my journey northward.

I walked past the bed of spikes to find that some people hadn’t been killed instantly.

Instead, their wounded bodies hung from countless spikes and they let out various screams and moans of pain.

They were subconsciously stored in my mind. An old habit but…

I didn’t enjoy it.

Not anymore.

I didn’t want to hear them anymore and yet in the darkness of the night, they were all I could hear.

.

..

Hours passed and the morning rose gently over a cloudy, but rainless sky.

The air was cool thanks to the encroaching winter and I knew it would only get worse.

My stomach growled but I ignored it as we walked.

I walked for several more minutes before clutching my stomach as hunger gnawed at it.

Ower and Ncil appeared next go me and Ower offered me a biscuit.

Ower, clad in dark armour which was covered in a cloak and Ncil, clad in her UEF uniform.

I ignored the Kommáti, but he placed his hand in front of me, stopping us in the process.

“Move or I kill you.” I hissed but the Kommáti didn’t budge.

I sighed before grabbing the biscuit and shoving it in my mouth but as I chewed the mildly sweet pastry, Ower offered me another one.

“Just give me all of them for fuck’s sake!” I yelled prompting the useless pile of daggers to hand over the pouch of biscuits.

I then munched on them as we walked but even though this temporarily sated my hunger, it did nothing about the ache in my head.

Ncil, being a life magician, must have noticed and so she raised her hands to heal away my pain but I slapped her hands down and walked further ahead.

She walked to me and raised her hands again but I slapped them away again.

“But sir-“

“No!” I yelled while glaring at the small Rendaro woman.

I didn’t want that particular ache to go away.

I didn’t want to forget how it felt.

How he felt.