Journal of Fire Entry 1 (Atrein Diablon)
Year 0 A.D., The Last Night Of Autumn - Krotrean, Ertore
The dream was surreal. From my pedestal high atop a fortified tower, I saw lightning arc across the skies, and the great chains of lightning created thousands of bright flashes, illuminating a sprawling battleground. Crumbling buildings, scorched arches, obliterated fountains, and shattered statues wearily attempted to hold on for dear life in the large, war-torn city. The town was sliced thoroughly with wide, open streets that made for easy travel, so I knew right away I was somewhere in western Rania. Carts and stores had morphed into black husks, and a raging fire was racing through much of the urban arena, creating massive plumes of smoke and piles of ash. The clouds wavered as they split from bursts of air from vicious fighting far below. When I sought the cause of the extreme turbulence, I spotted two figures locked in a duel to the death.
A man cloaked in a suit of reflective, pitch-black armor. He wielded a longsword from which wild, purple soul oozed. The blade was a versatile weapon, and he used it to attack the other figure in endless combinations. Despite the sword being eight feet long, he swung it with no effort. It had several handholds running along its widened and blunted backside. As he engaged his opponent, the metal shifted its shape upon his whim, morphing into an arsenal of weapons.
With every swing of his blade, his purple soul flared through the gaps in his armor, creating a spherical, hazy aura around the man. His atmosphere was erratic and unstable like a raging fire. His surroundings melted and waned from the daunting heat which encompassed him. I was sure that contact with his armor would leave his victims with traumatic burn wounds. He gained a foothold on the top of a five-story building, but then the second figure sent him pummeling to the ground with a kick to the side of the helmet. He crashed through the thatched roof of a wooden building farther below, and it burst into flames as he emerged through the doorway, shaking his head. He craned his neck towards the sky to glare at the figure who opposed him.
I followed his gaze upwards to view his opponent, a beautiful woman wearing chainmail and a white outer coat with detailed symbols of various gods stitched upon it. She glowed with the light of a white star in the night's sky, for small, glittering particles of her soul sprinkled out from her fair skin with her every movement. I realized the particles were part of some spell she was using as a buffer to counter the daunting heat of the man. Her hair was blonde and white, and it flowed equally to both sides of her smooth, faultless face. When the two warriors met again with a flurry of blows, I noted that she fought in many styles and arts, but she primarily met his attacks with a flick of her ornate golden wand. She also possessed a collection of daggers holstered in golden and silver sheaths slung across her outer coat. Quicker than the eye could blink, she flung the daggers outwards to meet the man's sword before launching another spell from her wand. As the duel raged on, I watched her shift from defense to offense countless times. Her tactics caused a near breakdown of the man's fighting style, so he resorted to charging head forward, meeting her with outright power and bloodlust.
From only a few seconds of watching, I knew she was skilled in combat and a genius tactician. As the battle dragged onwards, the pair continued to find themselves locked in mid-range proximity to one another, with the man launching a series of lunges at the woman from a few feet away. He used the length of his longsword to his advantage, but his opponent's defense was formidable. She braced two of her daggers together in perfect harmony to intercept the man's sword. Her daggers formed an X shape as they caught the backside of his blade, then she redirected the thrusting sword to one side or the other.
The next second, they were dozens of feet apart, and she launched a bolt of lightning towards the dead center of his chest. Purple radiated out of his hands, and he moved faster than human anatomy allotted as he swatted the bolt of lightning. The electric river bounced off the insulated, thick layer of flickering purple soul entombing his left hand. It was redirected towards a metal sign a few feet away instead, making a high-pitched, metallic scream upon contact.
The daggers again shot out of their sheaths, extending in length for a perfect parry or block as the woman engaged him, tactfully staying on the defense. She leaped and flipped backward as he continued with his brutal assault. Though ungraceful, any of his many swings would have cut down the sturdiest of enemies with no resistance. The duelers increased the might behind their blows as they grew increasingly frustrated.
The man heaved his sword behind his back before slinging it down with all his might. She rushed to his left during the short time eclipsed as the giant sword began its arc downwards. His eyes followed and widened as he realized he couldn't stop her blow. She launched a glancing cut that sliced a thin laceration into his temple. The man braced for another strike, but the woman retreated several yards away. He looked up in time to see her drawing that dreaded wand.
His sword screamed down to the ground the next second, breaking the stone easily. As dust and shards of stone littered the surrounding air, he looked up in confusion as he drew his sword into a guard. While he scanned his surroundings, blood poured over his left eye, obscuring his vision. He nervously figured out that she had done this on purpose. He had provided her with the perfect smokescreen.
A moment later, he managed to spot her at the top of a nearby residential building. Her face and the tip of her wand narrowly crept around one of the letters that spelled out The Fairview. She grinned and sent a massive cannon-like blast of ice-cold water barreling towards him. Before impact, he quickly threw his hands into a reversed V shape, its vertex pointing towards the sky. Then, he slammed his fists into the cracked cobbled road beneath him.
The Ranian rock around him let out a mighty, deep roar; cracks and fault lines formed with the chaotic intricateness of a drunken spider's web. The ground ascended, creating a jagged cliff and massive depression under it a hundred feet deep. Before she could strike again, he touched the center of his chest before sliding his left hand around the perimeter of his rocky platform. A ghastly purple glow illuminated the grey rock. I realized that the man connected himself with the small mountain he had created moments before. He looked at her, his eyes glaring hatefully. Though he was wearing a helmet, I saw a hint of a smirk spread through the slits in the dark metal. Suddenly, he swung a fist in her direction. She looked at him in confusion, nearly laughing at the idiotic taunt. She missed the limb of the mountain lumbering towards her from outside her peripheral vision.
The mountain's fist smashed into her nearly unshielded side as she stood there dumbfounded, flinging her like an insect. Her body began flipping wildly through the air until it smacked the side of the adjacent building, where her head breached the wall. Her body stopped abruptly, then her legs fell and hit the side of the sturdy structure, leaving half of her body dangling above the street far below. Rubble from the impact plopped to the ground as I watched. She pushed against the side of the building as she let a few curses slip, and after an infuriating struggle, her head plopped out. With a cartoonish look of peril, she realized she was several stories above the ground. As she began to descend, she managed to steady herself. With several acrobatic flips, she gracefully landed on her feet as she let her knees bend. The instant her feet were on the ground, she began weaving in between the alleyways of the buildings.
Stolen novel; please report.
He lost sight of her, so he demolished buildings randomly, raining down upon them the frustrated fists of his mountain. She crept around a corner, several blocks away, and focused all her arcane energy on the man, a scowl on her face. The ground rumbled under his furious assault, adding to the difficulty of casting such a magnificent spell. The dust and smoke polluted the air around her. Regardless, she took a deep breath before beginning her incantation, and as she aimed at him, her eyes watered.
A full minute later, she unleashed the spell used historically by the royals of East Raikel, known as the reaper's lightning. The top of the mountain became covered in a thick, snow-white mist that simultaneously descended from nowhere and everywhere. The man began looking frantically around. He started swinging his arms wildly in desperation, leveling the city blocks around him. A few seconds later, the mist was so thick that I could no longer spot the outline of the man.
The magic pulled all wind in the city towards the man, and suddenly thousands of dark clouds congregated above his position. All eyes in the city watched, petrified. Many war-weary and traumatized citizens took whatever shelter they could find. The clouds released hundreds of lightning bolts directly upon the man, and he briefly became visible through the mist due to his armor which glowed white-hot from the electricity. Then a round of thunder shook the city, causing the collapse of many of the weakened structures below. As the ground shook beneath them, the city citizens covered their ears. Still, many no longer could perceive sound. The white mist which covered the man rushed outwards, forming a perfect halo, with the building upon which he stood at the center.
The woman breathed rapidly and sweated as she recovered from the draining attack. It was the most potent spell she possessed without going into what she called 'the state.' She was reaching it and knew that all around her would perish if she went there. She knew the man was hurt, but his stamina and defense were far beyond any opponent she had ever faced. It struck her as impossible that he did not yet lie dead or dying on the street.
She peered around the corner, and he was no longer on the building. She glanced around quickly, mirroring her opponent's look from mere minutes before. Again, the power balance fell from her favor as she nervously attempted to find her adversary. She heard an object hurtling towards her right flank, and she hardly had time to turn and raise her arms to brace for the impact as he slammed into her shoulder first. His shoulder guard had several brutal, short, and stubby spikes jutting out, and two of these pierced the flesh of her right arm. She screamed bloody murder as they collided roughly and knocked a large hole through the side of the building beside her.
With a loud crash, they made an exit wound on the other side of the building, and the fighting pair emerged from the hole they knocked through the stone wall back onto the streets. The man stumbled over some debris lying in the road, and she took advantage of the blunder. While his chest was closer to the ground, she grabbed him by the throat with her uninjured arm and dug her feet into the ground, bringing his charge to a halt. Her forearm, which looked slender before, swelled disproportionately to a massive warrior's size. Then she lifted the man above her head before slamming his body into the heavy cobbled street. Then, she turned and ran. It was not long until he stood up and tried to dispel the dizziness from his head.
"We both know you can't keep this up forever!" He yelled after her.
He traced her not by smell or common vision but by her lingering gold and silver soul. His eyes were that of a predator tracking persistent prey. I glanced around the city while she sought a hideout to recover her stamina. I turned my head away from the duo, and I realized that several pockets of fighting were going down in the city. Ten figures cloaked in purple, who must have been the man's followers, squared off against dozens of fighters loyal to the woman. The ten followers of the man were human for the most part. All wore unique armor, but they had a purple cloth draped across different body parts to signify their allegiance. They operated in teams of two or three, taking orders from a figure with scalelike skin and a magnificent pair of horns.
He was the commander of the ten, and he took on the toughest of the fighters of the woman's side by himself. Their epic fight was dazzling, and it was second in scope only to the man and the woman's quarrel. Crushed buildings lingered in their wake, and three of the woman's fighters struggled to keep the hellish fighter from aiding the man.
I soon noticed that all eyes in the broken city were upon the man, and a crescendo of terror was building in every heart. Their hope lay solely in the woman. Though he was outclassed and beaten down initially, he evolved his strategies as the battle raged. He took in much more damage than the woman, but she lost her strength rapidly. He began to use his sword and soul more effectively, and her legs buckled every time she guarded against the volatile swings of his sword.
For the entirety of the fight, she had been praying to her gods for help. Due to her wardrobe and soul, I knew she had a close connection to them. As she struggled to hold off the man, something from above answered her call. Lights emitted from the heavens, and vile green energy began to vortex from a high altitude, swirling like a tornado. Then the power exploded outward, and a bright flash descended upon the city and surrounding countryside. An upside-down vertical tear in the sky was visible when the light subsided. The tear looked like a puncture wound made by the sky's fabric being punched outwards from the center of a narrow tunnel. Through the tunnel, a more harsh green aura leaked.
The force of the instant opening caused the clouds to wave outwards, like a ripple in a pond. The scene was majestic and horrifying, for the scope of this battle was immense, and the streets lay full of the dead. The city was morphed and mutilated, and there were spectacles in the skies that no human had seen in living memory.
An angel descended from the tunnel, screaming towards the ground with smoke belching off his armor. He came down like a meteor with his weapon eagerly outstretched from the tunnel, which forcefully closed behind him. The sound of the tunnel's closing was between the 'bloop' of an object entering the water and the rumbling of thunder. The angel dove with his white wings folded. He dropped towards one of the figures in purple, and his spear pierced the figure cleanly through the stomach before hitting the ground. The impact was severe enough to cause a one-story cloud of dust to shoot into the air around the two. A small crater formed on the spot, and the spear was embedded deep into the ground.
As his blood washed onto the ground around him, the purple-cloaked victim looked in the man's direction. His mouth was agape, and his eyes were stretched open to their capacity. He was attempting to form words; however, I heard nothing. The angel twisted the spear and withdrew it, leaving a gaping hole and certain death for the quickly dying supporter. I saw a malicious green spread from the wound throughout the man's body. It slowly ate away at his flesh, and the supporter writhed in agony.
The angel, a tall and flawless being, gave his victim a look of absolute disgust before spitting on him. He then turned to look at the man and the woman. Their fight had concluded, for the woman was dangling from his left hand. His left hand possessed an iron grip as it clutched tightly around her throat, and she began to struggle to breathe. She kicked at him in vain as dark spots entered her blurred vision. The man's eyes locked onto the gaze of the angel. He trembled, and his skin began to take on a purple hue. His fiery soul writhed within his veins and arteries as it welled to the surface. I felt a wave of pressure emanate from the man, and it descended onto the battlefield below. It was a heart-pounding moment, and those upon the ground looked at him, some dropping their weapons and running for the hills.
The winds picked up, and the buildings near him crumbled and collapsed. He threw the woman to his left, but I couldn't see if she was still breathing. The angel and the man faced each other. The man pounced down upon the angel from the top of the city's great temple, swinging his sword. The angel intercepted him with a guard, and as their legendary weapons met, destructive winds and tendrils of shattered soul shot in all directions. A shockwave spread, flinging rubble, corpses, and helpless warriors. Right as it was about to hit me, I awoke.