Blood flickered in the air, the small orbs of scarlet red combining into vaguely human figures. The heavy reverberation of a warhammer striking armor separated the weak structure back into smaller flowing rivulets. They flapped smoothly like banners held in gentle wind, waiting for their chance to reform. Viscera became man, man struck man, and viscera became nothing once more.

The stone surrounding him was cold and tight, unyielding to the macabre display outside and just as much so to his senses. What little he could make out were echoes of incomprehensible shouts and vague, if not imperceptible scents that settled on the ground.

His mind flashed between his surroundings and snippets of vague memories real and imagined. Slowly, he drifted down until the steel of his helmet met ruined stone below. Thoughts flashed white hot, then faded, then melded together in an ever-flowing sea of jumbled emotions until the world went completely dark.

A jolt of energy sent his body back into awareness. Horrific shapes made of stone surrounded him, appearing in the corner of his feverishly searching eyes until they became too heavy to move. His arms feebly swatted at the air, whimpering and groaning until the movements slowed to stopping. He curled sluggishly into a ball, pareidolia following his closed eyelids from the shattered stone and settling into his vision. Armored steel clattered from the tremors ripping through his body, eyes squeezed shut against the outside world.

The sun’s rise and the fall of its soothing rays blessed his face, warming his cold and blood drained body deep in the shadows as he was. He blinked slowly and gazed hesitantly around his enclosure. The figures of the night prior were gone, only vacant dim space greeting his vision.

He swallowed, throat painfully contracting and rubbing against the dry swollen flesh of its own interior. His face contorted unconsciously settling on an expression of pain. The movement of his leg explained why; he stretched it slowly, groaning as the numbness left it and pins flooded in. The cloth crackled harshly, hardened substances pulling apart because of the new movement. Small hairs on his leg pulled away with the substance until the cloth was finally unglued from his leg. He groaned and settled back down into a limp sprawled out position on his side, panting heavily. It wouldn’t do any good to look back at the wound.

A small movement brought him to his stomach, and another to his hands and knees. There he stayed for long moments until his breathing slowed. Shimmying over to the opening in the rubble revealed nothing but a body blocking the entrance. He sunk lower in dismay. Enemy or ally didn’t matter; a rotting armored carcass was a rotting armored carcass.

Bootsteps caused him to lock up and freeze in place. Whoever it belonged to said something akin to his native tongue but too muffled to carry its original meaning. He waited stock still listening to the noises that leaked in from the outside.

The object in front of him was wrenched upward with a grunt and a clattering of metal. He skittered deeper into the darkness and waited for the heavy footsteps to recede trembling softly all the while. Time crept on, sweat soaking into his arming cap, until the shadows changed their direction and form.

Slow, deep breaths reassured him that he was still alive and reinforced his nerve. He ran through the possibilities in his mind. Being captured or outright killed were the most likely, and the alternatives remained equally as dire. What would he do if he escaped from the safe confines of his shelter? Starve when all the land around him had already been picked clean? Go into feverish delirium and hope the animals did not pick him off while he slept? Even if he found a village by some miracle he’d never muster enough strength to directly oppose those who wronged his people. He grimaced and set his forehead down against the ground. Good or bad, any decision made required him to leave his makeshift rubble cave.

He wriggled forward slowly, forced to make himself smaller by the narrowing passage of rock. The light graced his hand, welcoming him with warm rays, and he pushed himself forward out into the sun.

A piece of his armor stuck to an outcropping stopping his advance. He wriggled gently at first, then violently, trying to flee from the shelter that held him captive. The passage seemed to constrict tighter around him locking his arm in place and forcing the other one to stay extended. His breathing picked up in pace, racing along with his heart and mind. He kicked at the ground behind him bucking his legs with all the force he could muster, gouging the stone beneath him with steel sabatons, but failing to make any meaningful progress. So close to the light, so close to the promise of freedom, but caught in in a net that previously saved him. His fighting slowed. Perhaps it was simply his fate to die there.

Something came lose. He tumbled painfully onto the ground, the brightness of day stunning him and burning his eyes with painfully radiant light. On his back, staring up at the sun unmoving, the lava-like panic slowly receded out of his fingers and toes. He waited there limbs spread out in a star waiting for his eyes to adjust to the change. When it became apparent that they would not he slowly rolled over to his stomach and groaned. He was not meant to die cold and alone trapped in a stone coffin, and that was a relief, but was the alternatives that much better?

He pressed on with eyes closed tightly shut, groping the soaked and sticky dirt around him in blind search until his hand hit something. He swallowed, throat still dry and utterly painful, and gently caressed its form. Even through the thick leather of his fingers the object felt cold, and as he continued to explore its form, he found it taking a familiar shape. From the sharp metal of its blade to the spiked handguards near its base, and further the crossguard and heavily engraved pommel, the name of the item became apparent. His eyes adjusted to the light achingly slow, but when he opened them, he was greeted by one of his greatest friends and allies. The sight of his blade in all of its glory put a minute smile on his face. It was not all lost to him, then.

He took deep rapid breaths before attempting to stand, grabbing a nearby outcropping to steady himself as he rose. Despite his preparation his vision blurred and blackened until the world was less light and more darkness. Panting, he stopped mid rise. The journey would have to be taken inchmeal.

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He settled instead for a stooping walk, dragging his sword along the ground beside him. His pride demanded that he stand tall; it was his own home and land he walked in, but the sheer weight on him dragged him down into a low slump.

Clarity brought a deeper level of perception even in the depths of exhaustion and injury. He looked up to truly intake the world around him. The sun shone in fractal patterns of random colors, fading to pitch black in large void-like areas as it filtered down from the heavens. In some spots the patches of darkness reached the ground and made contact with the mortal world below; just three feet in front of him someone lay dead, seemingly absorbed into the inky nothingness and forever intertwined with the breach in reality. The stonework of the walls that kept the small fortress safe before fared no better. Sections of the protective barrier simply vanished. There were no shattered bricks on the ground or signs of the winking runes that adorned the proud bulwark. The walls, for all their magically enhanced protectiveness and regal nobility, disappeared from existence in large broad strokes of absolute void.

The air he breathed felt contaminated, perverted by scents long since forgotten by mankind. His body, unaccustomed to the foul air, rejected what kept it alive. He doubled over and retched. Bile raced up from his stomach into his mouth in a vile flood of digestive juices. Panicked he put a hand to his helmet and nearly tore it from his head. His hand stopped just below the helmet’s visor. Shakily he removed it. It would do him no good to remove the very thing protecting him from the outside world. Slowly, he swallowed the acidic burning flood, slowly, he took his hand from his knee. Slowly, he trudged forward.

A rune on his helmet blinked out. The air stopped flowing into and out of his enclosed visor. He slapped against the faceplate, the rune refusing to come back to life despite his panicked fumbling. He leaned on his sword, hands clenching on its handle hard enough to drive the blood from his extremities. Each breath presented a challenge, one his already weakened body was unable to complete. Light slowly faded from his eyes and he stumbled to the side, dropping his sword with a clang and slamming into a hard wall. Black spots grew in his eyes and diminished the worlds visibility until he was left completely blind. He scrabbled against the rune he needed, uncoordinated fingers failing to trace its complete length and awaken the slumbering power held within. He slid down the wall, eyes fluttering open and shut, until unconsciousness took him.

Bricks, dirt, blood. Where was he again? He weakly pushed himself to his hands and knees. The world around him was out of focus. His thoughts were a jumbled mess of sounds, images, and concepts stringed together in nonsensical fashion he could not consciously interpret. A coughing laugh emerged from his bone-dry lips, and his body threw itself into a fit of shivering. Unable to hold himself together any longer he curled himself into a ball and cried out loudly. Vulnerable, alone, afraid. Where the sensation of exposure and overwhelming emotion of terror ended, confusion began.

A desperate gamble from his brain sent his hand up to his helmet, searching shakily for the word of power on his visor. He traced through the individual patterns and eventually came across the one he searched for, tapping it with trembling and unsure fingers. A light shone dully from his face as it activated.

He gasped greedily at the influx of air. Spots cleared from his eyes and the vague animalistic thoughts suddenly took solid comprehensible form. He rose from the floor to his knees panting heavily. He looked up from the ground, one hand on his sword and the other firmly on the rubble beside, and locked eyes with something in front of him.

Something was still alive. Its chest moved up and down gently in slow agonized breaths as it lay slumped against one of the only portions of the wall that still remained. Momentarily he deliberated if this was his end. Man stared at beast unmoving as dictated by his instincts. Beast remained still and nearly lifeless.

He stumbled closer and paused to catch his breath, then continued his long trek. He stopped just in from of it and collapsed to his knees.

The things helmet was almost too heavy for the injured man to lift. Much to his surprise, the being inside the armor was truly bestial in nature, covered in dull swamp green scales and brown puffed up feathers. The closest he knew of were dragons and smaller drakes that populated the mountains near his homeland. Things that they were very much at war with. He reached towards his belt and grabbed his dagger. Better to be done with the thing here and now than let it escape to kill another day.

He clicked his tongue and removed the gunk that held his flask closed. When he put a hand to the thing’s jaw open it he noticed the sheer difference in size between him and the creature; its maw was more than large enough to hold a human skull without much trouble. He shook his head and brought up his flask to its lips, tilting the bottle lightly. The contents poured out into its throat and the runes etched on the bottle grew hot. Magic discharged energy into the mixed water and alcohol in a reaction that produced a dull glow from the liquid ambrosia. Its survival now depended on its own ability to use and heal with the vitality it received. He unclasped his own visor and opened it to the side, tilting the bottle and dribbling it into his own mouth. He grimaced and rescrewed the cap, then redid his own visor and waited.

The beast slowly came to consciousness and blinked unsurely, unaware if the man in front of it was salvation or oblivion. He held a finger up to his helmet and scanned the area around them. When nothing appeared out of the corrupt morning air he turned back to the creature before him.

“We're leaving. You have until I run out of patience. If you aren’t up and able to walk by then I am going by myself. Do you understand?” It nodded and groaned weakly, clutching at its stomach with weak hands. As if forced by invisible strings, the arms wrapped around its belly quickly moved back to its side.

It spoke. The voice came not from its mouth, but from somewhere deep inside its stomach, an androgynous echoing thing that lacked key characteristics of human speech; flat and lacking in the warmth and resonance that even a dying man had. “Thank you. Give me a moment…” its eyes widened. “And, come closer please, I need to…” it paused to suck in deep rasping breaths and continued. “To tell you something.” He glared at it suspiciously. Despite his misgivings he leaned forward positioning his ear next to the thing’s mouth.

A light sweet scent almost too faint to be noticeable tickled the very edges of his senses. He felt dizzy. “Helmet,” It whispered, “take off your helmet.” Its speech sounded manipulated and difficult, not matching the movement of its mouth. A mouth which spoke something else entirely with its lips.

He declined to oblige and stared hard at the creature. The aroma intensified and he unconsciously moved his head further away. The smell emanating from it was on the surface inviting and pleasurable but held an undercurrent of something detestable, an aftertaste in his mind that made him want to reject the odor altogether.

He waited for it to continue, not noticing at first that his mind was becoming more addled the longer he stayed. By the time he noticed, it was far too late. Something shifted through his wandering thoughts grotesquely shoveling his thoughts to the side like wet clay. The coherent never ending voice in his head became stuttered and malformed, words taken from their logical flow and displaced in time and the now almost physical space of his consciousness.

Something wet touched his chin.