Never-Were Heroes
Prologue: Devastation
The rain had come at last and that meant there was no longer any reason to delay their visit.
A deluge, an endless rainfall beat against the earth, it churned the soil to mud, uprooted trees and left the landscape awash. The camp had already made preparations to move when it became obvious that the cold and the damp had no intentions of letting up, they were currently on their way southward towards Eilsher Pike, a large hill which seemed to jut out of the surrounding countryside a place heavy with superstition, mystery and word of witches. But that wasn't their destination, no, they were heading somewhere else, somewhere far more daunting, waiting in the distance unseen, shrouded in the rain; a place where fires still burnt with their fury returning human endeavour to ash.
"How much further is it?" Scillia groaned, her dress pulled up about her waist and secured with Margan's belt, the old soldier shooting her a scalding look his torch fizzing and cracking with each droplet of rain which fell upon the magical barrier which kept the flame from going out.
"It's not much further, it should just be over this hill; we'll be taking a detour in that direction; the slopes here are too unstable after the Moonfall." He gestured forwards with his left hand, his pear held firmly in his grasp pointing forwards towards the sky drowning in blue smoke. Scillia grunted the young woman marching forwards past the soldier tramping her way over the scree slopes, her feet struggling to find purchase on the scree slopes, the ground littered with shards of slate and stone, fragments of mortar and brickery, shards of wood and glass ground into a crystalline sand. She should probably have listened to Margan; heels were not suitable for footwear for hiking especially in the rain, as it was she was probably coming down with a cold, of course that was why she'd brought the horses and her carriage. How was she supposed to know the horses wouldn't even go near the place?
"Please Miss the path is unstable here we should go around" the young woman snorted continuing her advance upwards cresting the top of the hill and looking out over the plains beyond. "You’ll get hurt!" The rain fell hard drowning out the near palpable silence that infused the air in those few moments. She'd heard the stories yes, she'd read the reports and the accounts, the bards had already started to sing their songs, about that night; about the moon and about the mage. But seeing for herself was... unbearable.
The grass remained; it grew amid the rubble, a dark pulsating green, which shivered with each raindrop, a silver veil covering the ground; shards and pillars and monoliths of stone jutting about the now empty field. Streets lay enveloped in flame, a colour that rested somewhere between blue and green; a fire which had not died instead burning atop the stone and the ash and the water, a fire which did not burnt, neither hot nor cold; a fire which consumed everything, flames which spread further and further and further, bathing the world in a blue smoke, a haze which rose from the ruins of Helbos. No houses remained intact, holes gaped in wall and roofs, timbers lay scattered and scorched about now empty plots of land, alongside the bright green grass, and the blooming wildflowers. Of course if it was just that, no one would have left. The city of Helbos was known throughout the kingdom for it’s' adventurer's individuals capable and willing to face death on a near daily basis, venturing into the distant mountains which they had dubbed the unknown. No the destruction of the city was not their houses and their homes had not been the reason they had fled; it was when the great stone wall, which they had erected about their home by means of tireless effort, splintered, and burnt that they felt it, they understood for the first time in a very long time what it meant to fear. A blue moon appeared in the sky and consumed the cities light, out went candles and lanterns even magic could not create so much as a spark in the presence of that light and then the city burnt. The moon shot forth a ball of fire, deep red which consumed the ancient fortress sitting at the cities centre its foundation, and it consumed the adjacent land. The fires spread and burnt and died in time, over the course of hours the moon just hanging their like a luminescent eye watching the destruction it had wrought. That was when he appeared, as the people tended to their wounded and their dying, a figure on some warehouse roof which had survived the inferno brandishing a staff his face aglow in the clear blue light of the moon, not just inhuman, but like nothing from nature. She'd seen sketches of it, each one different from the next, more hideous, more monstrous. What followed next was true devastation. The city was struck by a second blast, this time by blue bolts which shattered and broke as they hit the city, the flames cast far and wide consuming stone and iron as if they were paper, a fire which left nothing in its' wake, not even ash remained. So the people fled and behind them they left this; streets of broken houses, abandoned homes and a city so filled with memories of dread that not one of them could ever wish to return.
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Scillia swallowed hard, Margan grunting as he ascended the final steps of the hill to join her looking out over the ruins alongside her, his finger pointing forwards towards the far edge of the city, were a few fragments of its' wall remained just two, two rough hewn pillars which stood against the backdrop of the unknown, those mountains rising high behind them steeped in mist. "That's where the Moonfall first appeared, reports indicate it moved at great speed during the day down through the mountains when no one would have noticed the light, maybe cloaked or disguised by some other means." The soldier explained planting his spear down into the slope.
"That was also where the mage was first sighted right." Scillia questioned Margan nodding the affirmative; "then we're going to go down and check." She took a broad step forwards, the slope giving out beneath her, Scillia falling hard against the earth, the rubble tumbling down in a wave dragging her along with it, a series of aching pains breaking out across her fragile little body.
"I told you we should have gone around!" Margan grumbled plodding down the slopes with ease, Scillia letting out a low groan glaring upwards at the old man from where she lay at the bottom of the hill in a great heap. There was no way she wasn't going to bruise now; her mother was going to lecture her when she got back to the capital. "And the shoes; I told you not to wear high heels, but do you ever listen to me? No!"
Great it didn't seem like he was going to shut up for the rest of the day. Margan planted his spear in the earth before reaching out his hand Scillia letting out a sigh and reaching up to take it.