Pandemonium.

Order had turned into chaos, Aurelian found no trace of the clean orderly marching column. Everything was utter pandemonium. The rippling sides of the long and narrow passageway were breaking apart. Rifts in its fabric appearing everywhere in the channel. Beyond them he saw nothingness beckoning.

Legionnaires were swept of their feet. Brutally sucked out of the channel and out through the tears. Before his horrified eyes, a few impaced the edges of the openings. Their bodies sliced apart in a spray of blood and gore on the surface of infinite sharpness.

His heart pounded. Where was his brothers? Why were they not at his side?

He scanned the nightmare.

There. Adelhamar.

The rest of his contubernium had to be with Adelmhar further ahead. The tall noble swung a banner above his head, waving with the other hand. An island of order in the sea of confused legionnaires.

With a thought his passive [Steadfast] shifted into [Steadfastness]. The familiar thrum of power sizzlling within his blood. Indestructible stone crackled underneath as he leapt into motion. Shattering like fragile glass, iridescent light within the stones spluttering and spasming. The black stone turning translucent as it crumbled.

"Damnation," he cursed. The stones were fracturing everywhere. Sparing a glance over his shoulder, his horror magnified.

Through the veil of the Gateway legionnaires unceasingly kept marching in. Shaking his head. Aurelian focused. Muttering a prayer underneath his lips as he eyed the exit with determination. Pearly light shimmering from it far ahead in the distance promising salvation to all.

All he had to do was reach it.

Aurelian's breath caught in his lungs. The air itself apparent as wispy tendrils of vapor coalescing and colliding with each other. Transforming, whirling together into vortexes that sucked the air out of the tunnel.

[Galewalk] roused itself from its passive state and the air shifted in front of him. Dancing seductively and whispering guidance to his ears. He listened attentively, yielding to their instruction and became one with the wind.

Like a leaf in the wind, he gracefully avoided the obstacles in his path. Bobbing and weaving gracefully through all the chaos as he ran. Feet splattering in the rivulets of blood that soaked the stone bridge of the passageway. [Galewalk] and [Steadfastness] worked in harmony to see him through the passageway of death.

He ducked underneath one razor-sharp strand of nothingness that stretched across the passageway from the abyss beyond like cobwebs only to nimbly jump above the next. Each motion forwards fueled the growing whirlwind of raging air that was [Tempest] within him as it rotated faster and faster.

More than once he felt himself graze one of the countless tendrils of nothingness that flickered around the tunnel despite his skills. It didn't so much cut - as his flesh and armor simply stopped existing.

A mage in the distance, exploded in cyan light as he conjured aegis after aegis. Sending them bursting forth towards the tears in the passage. Sealing them.

It wasn't even remotely enough but the men around the mage surged forward, no longer being pulled in every direction by the hunger of the void beyond the holes. Behind the mage, at full gallop, a frenzied horse came charging, eyes wide with panic.

Cursing, Aurelian shifted direction, feeling the wind flutter around him as he did. Drawing from deep within. He channeled the energy of [Tempest] into his legs. Exploding with speed, Aurelian became the tempest and slammed into the mage. Sending them crashing down onto the ground.

A hoof slammed into Aurelian's back, knocking him off the mage. The pack and armor absorbed most of the force. The supine mage glanced at him and then at the horse with a nod.

Legion protocol demanded, that he protect and escort the mage to safety. The mage however seemed to have other plans. Shaking his head and mouthing "Go,". All while continuously materializing shields from where he lay on the floor.

[Tempest] flared again. The whirlwind slowing even further as Aurelian leaped. Rocketing forward and onto his feet. Propelled by the energy of the wind itself.

The ground beneath him suddenly shuddered and then dropped. Thumbing across the shifting ground, Aurelian quickly recovered as he adjusted his steps, dancing, with bursts of [Tempest] to the rhythms of the wind. The men around him struggling to stand yet alone advance.

A grand mage ahead simply flew upwards into the air in response to the quakes of the passageway. Swirling a metal battlestaff around. Dozens of iridescent chains shot out - past the rifts and into the void as they wrapped themselves around floating and eroding legionaries.

The grand mage yanked his staff in a brutal motion.

The chains reversed their motion. Depositing the legionnaires on the ground around him as they gasped and squirmed like fish on land.

The passageway alighted in a blinding light. Through his closed eyes all Aurelian could see was white. Quick as it came it vanished. The stone bridge beneath him shuddering one last time before it stilled.

Flimsy prismatic translucent filaments stretced out like roots from the walls of the channel. Repairing all the fissures. Awe filled him at the display of might.

The passageway was repairing itself.

No. Not repairing itself, Aurelian reflected, his attention focused on the tiny holes and cuts that began reappearing.

Aurelian continued racing forward, capitalizing on the moment. Steps laced with artificial resoluteness and determination, he ignored his injured brothers on the ground as they lay in heaps with limbs missing.

A wouned legionnaire reached out to him with a bloodied hand. The act sent him lurching straight towards a tendril of nothingness that pierced the passageway from one wall to the other like a spear. In an instance, he came to a stop, killing his momentum with an extravagant burst of [Tempest].

The whirlwind within sputtering out at the expense.

The legionnaire had almost gotten him killed.

Furiously, he assessed the legionnaire. Bleeding stumps where his legs were supposed to be. Cut off beyond the knees. Anger grew within him. The man was already dead. He should know better. He was a legionnaire.

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Then he saw the green label prominently displayed on a bloodied chest and his fury died in his chest.

A greenie.

Aurelian cursed, frantically looking around for anyone wearing white. There was no apothecary in sight. Regretfully, he shook his head towards the wounded man.

Damnation. The man was young, practically a boy. He desperately searched for white again with that sobering realization.

It didn't change anything. Dammed, apothecaries were never there when you needed them the most.

"I am sorry." He whispered knowing the boy wouldn't be able to hear him. He spared a moment to salute the boy and then left him behind. Aurelian left wishing he could trade places with the boy. It wasn't the first time he had made that wish and he knew it wouldn't be the last.

Moments later he neared the grand mage that slowly floated down onto the now stable stone bridge. To Aurelian's horror, the descent left a trail of sizzling mana behind. Smoldering cyan mana poured from skin that was in the process of fracturing. As if the skin had turned into a broken mirror.

He recognized the effect. There wasn't a soul in the Dawn Empire who didn't. Aurelian helped one of the rescued legionnaires onto his feet and saluted once more. His arm felt like it was made out of lead.

The grand mage stared back at him, eyes cracked like his skin, eyeballs gradually evaporating into the air itself.

A high-pitched sound pierced his head and Aurelian groaned in agony. The pain blasting through his active skill. An overwhelming amount of information cauterized itself into his brain. Burnt into the flesh by the will of the grand mage.

The suffering was like nothing, Aurelian had ever felt. And it was only the knowledge that it paled in comparison to what the grand mage before him was experiencing that allowed him to stand upright.

In his mind, above the mountain of information that had been seared into him. Rested a shimmering sentence that unfolded in his mind like a lotus blossming.

[Bring this to the Archmage. Hurry. No. There is no tim-]

The patchwork of the passageway shattered. The interior once again exposed them to the ravenous void beyond.

The same instant Aurelian saw a tear drop from the cracked sapphire eyes that stared into his. A sad smile stretched below the determined eyes as the grand mage exhaled and then exploded.

The eruption reversed into an implosion. The body, soul and mana of the grand mage heroically condensing and combining into a primordial slurry that slowly pulsated once before it surged forward like a tidal wave in his direction.

It enveloped him and the ones nearby protectively in a cocoon like embrace. Helplessly, they were propelled forward further down the channel by the fundamental essence of the grand mage's existence. Around him, the same flood that protected him, mercilessly swept other legionnaires out of the way. Sending them careening into their deaths. Into the nothingness that waited beyond the rifts.

Aurelian and the others were juggled around in the surge, currents turning and rotating them - around the deadly tendrils with a finesse and control that awed him. And with a logical, inhuman callousness that stunned him.

The same wave was butchering the others with him as they got pushed into the lethal cobwebs of nothingness. Slicing them apart horrifically. Sacrificed as the wave did everything it could to save Aurelian.

He understood there and then. The wave wasn't protecting him as much as it was preserving the message that had been charred into his brain.

The tsunami gradually lost it luster, more and more of its turquoise essence evaporating in smoky vapor. Aurelian felt the fabric of the masterfully wrought spell, hungrily tear into him, yapping at his mana.

Aurelian closed his eyes in resignation and fed it without reservation. In an instant the spell sucked him dry. A prayer dying on his lips as he hoped that he had to be alive for the message to be retrieved as blackness claimed him.