He had only been a soldier for a year, but he turned 15 last Yuletide. He had only been a child for two years, but even then he knew what War of the North was. There was nobody ignorant of that rampant force.
Now, he saw that creature, that man separating a dozen of his fellow soldiers into neat halves. The upper bodies didn’t remain, the faces didn’t remain, and their souls had left the moment they heard who their opponent was. Few things in this world was a death sentence, but War was one of them. He had consumed and destroyed countless armies. Slaughtered thousands. His armour was red, and his mind was surely no different.
Gerald slung his too-light body behind a broken boulder, hearing only barely how a misfired arrow whizzed past his dirty face. It had been fired by an ally, but right now, he was alone.
The smell of blood and flesh and iron forced its way into his nostrils, making him buckle over again, clutching at his face with his gloved hands. All he had was his leather armour. Way back before they had gotten here, before they had come face-to-face with death, he’d carried a spear. Not that he missed it. At this moment, weapon or not, his chances of survival were equal. That being zero.
There was another flash of noise and smell. He squeezed his eyes shut. It smelled like arsenic and charcoal. It sounded like a bubbling fleshy pyre.
They had brought two wizards, hadn’t they? Just two. No, that wasn’t fair… a whole two. A few of the important soldiers and officers had been rubbed with some sort of brew, an ointment to hide their scent or give them strength. It didn’t help now. That man (after all, that was what he was - neither dragon nor God) had seen them coming. Wind on their back, he smelled them coming. Bore his fangs. Face hidden by a helmet, body welded to his armour, swinging that slab of iron as if it weighed nothing. And when people came too close for the sword, he didn’t hesitate to simply tear them apart with his bare hands.
Gerald had hidden himself not long after. Now… Now, he was sure not many remained. The crunch that rang out mere seconds ago followed by the fizzle of magic being snuffed out proved that even their wizards had been slaughtered.
A whimper escaped his sore throat. The air was so dry. It should have been wet. He could smell the blood. He could see it, too. The ground was muddy. Muddy like a hundred horses had gone through. Muddy like a dozen wars had been fought in that very spot. Gerald shifted uncomfortably, trying to control his thin, wheezing breaths, but when he pressed his hands into the mud only to find the ground just beneath it being made up completely of something hard and soft and bony…
“-Hiik!!” He really couldn’t help it.
The area beyond the boulder gave a sound. Wet splashes, the soft mud hiding the cracking and breaking of bone just beneath. Such heavy steps, covered with armour ten times heavier than what Gerald’s officer bore. Only one person on this battlefield wore such armour, and when the boy realized that, he knew it was over. He looked up, just above the small boulder hiding him only barely, and there he was, rearing up like the most hideous of titans, that red feather-crested helmet of War. The glint of an eye could only barely be seen through the single slit in the red helmet, shining like a solitary candle in a cave.
And in that moment, Gerald knew he would not survive the day.
...Until the sound of something else made him look elsewhere, beyond the looming death before him. A soft, friendly hum. It had a warm colour, too. Welcoming, like a mother’s embrace. Gerald had never had a mother, but he was sure that if he’d had one… She’d feel like that large swirling pool of mana did. It was so inviting. It smelt like homemade food and a bakery shop. Unfearing, he stood up. He didn’t even look at the physical embodiment of human war before him. War himself turned around. Looked at the portal. And started walking. As did Gerald. Soldier and death walked side-by-side towards the portal.
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Out of the corner of his eye, Gerald could see others. His fellow soldiers, people he had known for months or days or minutes. All moving towards the portal. Their eyes were hazy, smiles speckled their faces, and he was sure his facial expression was no different. He wondered, for a moment, if War was smiling, too.
For a second, they all stood around the portal. The swirling sinkhole in the ground. It was magical, he knew that.
The first man stepped into it. Another followed, and soon Gerald had followed too, War coming along.
They dropped down into was seemed to be a cave, lit throughout by dim magical torches. They all stood there, a mere two dozen soldiers and the man who had ended their allies. With the portal gone, swallowed by the ground, the only thing that kept the soldiers from attempting to avenge their fallen brothers and the only thing keeping War from continuing his rampage was gone. They turned on him and he turned them.
Gerald knew better than his brothers did. He threw himself away from the carnage before it even began. In a mere minute, they were slain, some turned to red pulp, others sliced in half. All unmistakably dead.
In a corner of the cave, the cave that felt so distant and unreal that he couldn’t possibly believe it existed anywhere in the world (after all, he couldn’t see a single mushroom lining the walls), Gerald curled up, his back against the cold, dry wall. War wasn’t in a hurry. He approached slowly, his massive broadsword scraping against the ground, the unneeded shield hanging lazily in his other hand. That candle-flicker of an eye fell on Gerald again. Something seemed to flick in Gerald's mind. He calmed down. He accepted it. This wouldn’t be too bad. An honourable death. Death in war. His father would surely gain a pretty penny. If he was to go out, this would be-,
“%&¤ /(> %=(*”?”
A voice. The language spoken was foreign, of the kind that he had never heard before. It sounded vaguely germanic, but he didn’t understand it one bit. It was faint, too. Just down the hall. Not here. Not yet. Soon.
War’s head turned, moving away from Gerald. Something in his movement seemed less robotic than before, more human. Confused. That was it. The way he turned away fully and left Gerald where he was. As if Geralt wasn’t a threat, which he wasn’t. He knew that. So why did he stand up? Why, when War moved towards the hallways, did he follow?
And when those strangely-dressed people appeared, why did he take a step back?
They were all speaking that weird language, but even more so, they were all strangely dressed. Their hairdos were strange too, unlike anything he had ever seen. The women were far too pretty, much like pixies, and the men had a strange look in their eyes. Could what they wore even be called armour? It seemed more like thick pieces of cloth, nothing metallic to be seen. Most of them held conventional weapons, but two in the back carried what seemed like deformed lightning rods.
“#¤¤ &/)#!” one shouted, raising their weapon. Another laid their eyes on the two dozen dead. They seemed horrified, beyond the usual. Most people back in the Empire of Yungland had seen at least a few dead in their life. Then again, Gerald knew exactly how they felt. This was carnage beyond the regular.
The moment the odd people charged at War they found themselves in the same position as Gerald’s now-dead brothers of the battlefield. In mere moments they were either dead or dying, and Gerald couldn’t muster any more disgust or apprehension. No more. He’d seen enough.
The only thing surprising now was to see War bend down before one of the dying. He held her dainty hand in his armoured one, staining it with the blood of thousands. She spoke words that Gerald couldn’t understand, and when she died, War stood up again and looked about, his eyes never falling on Gerald. He decapitated the few people left alive, and then, just as his shoulders started to fall, they both heard that sound again. A humming drone that had lured them the first time. War didn’t hesitate to move towards it and Gerald, who no longer had anything to lose, followed him at a moderate distance.
It wasn’t the same portal. It was vertical instead of horizontal and had a much paler colour. Not as inviting, but far more so than death. They entered it.
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It was true. He’d known it. They spoke English, his mother tongue. Not German, not Chinese, not French, not anything like that. English. A dead language.
But it wasn’t dead on Earth.
What laid before Kreig was not the desolate mudland that he had been constantly warring on for thirty years ever since he escaped his captors. That ever-warring place where he had been the winner only because he wasn’t dead. It wasn’t that forever-red sky, it wasn’t the corpse littered ground, and it wasn’t Owred anymore.
What laid before him was a sprawling cityscape. Tall buildings, taller than the tallest wizard’s tower rose towards the sky like grasping fingers. The sky was blue and clear and the faintest lines of things Kreig remembered to be aeroplanes crisscrossed through the sky. It was nostalgic. After all these years.
He was home.