8 YEARS AGO

Damien moved through a city on fire.

Darkwell.

Darkwell was where he was.

His mission was….to…. save someone?

No to save everyone.

No. Not everyone. His people. Smoke filled his vision, causing his eyes to water. Were those…ghosts? Blurry shapes drifted at the edges of his vision. Had to be smoke, he thought. Vaguely human shaped smoke. His mind was hazy, but he remembered the fire. He could not escape the heat. He pulled himself to his feet and felt the heat of a nearby building across the side of his face. Standing made his head spin.

Damien stumbled, catching himself against the wall. He felt the stone growing hotter under his touch. Liquified blue Void Rock spilled from the scorched remains of a military truck still on fire nearby. A spark flared within the blue Void Rock, erupting into a fire ball that sent Damien sprawling backwards.

His vision slowly cleared, fading from a sharp white. He saw bodies sundered to pieces lining the streets. Someone stumbled out of a building ahead of him. The person was tall. Taller than your average Dwarf. Through his distorted vision Damien knew he had to be human. He crawled forward over bodies. As he got closer, he could make out the uniform the man wore. It seemed faded somehow and bore the rank of sergeant.

“Hey!” Damien managed as he coughed ash from his mouth. The person he saw stumbled several more steps and turned to the sound of Damien’s voice. The man’s face was ripped down to the bone on one side. Crimson blood dripped from the open wound. Damien pushed himself away from the man. The man reached forward and made a noise as if to say something, but instead an agonizing groan echoed out into the street.

Damien turned attempting to scramble away and placed his hands into the upper torso of a Dwarvish man. Hot blood and flesh pooled up over his hands as he forced himself away from the bodies. He regained his feet in time to see more people burned and broken moving through the streets. All strangely faded. Damien advanced to a nearby alley, rushing away from the crowds of people.

“No. No. No. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Damien croaked. This was routine. The city had already been taken back from the Dwarves. What had happened before the explosion? A riot over food? Damien’s mind raced in an effort to piece together the events of what occurred. His team had been called into the city following the battle to take Darkwell. The Dwarvish capital city. There was supposed to be barely any resistance if any at all. Food was being handed out to the refugees within the city. A Dwarvish man with a black beard had approached. Then…. haze. What had happened?

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Damien looked back to the streets behind him where the uniformed man was still kneeling amongst the dead. He could make out the others walking without direction. They were drifting, not walking. Damien tried to wipe his eyes but smeared blood across them instead. Floating people? Some sort of strange magic was at work. Damien wiped his face on the sleeve of his military jacket, smearing ash and gore onto the sleeve. One of the people out in the street turned to Damien. It was a young Dwarvish woman. Three silver rings braided into her hair told the story of her children. Seven, eight, and nine years old. Three children. Children. Damien’s mind ached. She outstretched a hand toward Damien and began floating into the alley where he leaned against a dumpster.

“Heeeeelppppp meeeeee!” The sound escaped her lips in a shriek. The woman was missing a section of her upper shoulder causing her head to flop to one side and her non-outstretched hand to drift oddly close to the ground. Damien could see that her arm was dripping blood, except it wasn’t the normal crimson. It was a light ethereal blue. Dripping from all her wounds the ethereal blood dissipated before it hit the ground. Damien noticed not only the blood, but that he could see through the woman to the buildings across the street.

“I…I…I…don’t know how to help! I’m sorry!” Damien pulled his eyes from the blood and began to run farther down the alley staggering into piles of trash. He curved to the left around the corner of this building. The woman, however, floated through the building, chasing him. The woman caught up to Damien and glided through his back. His body went cold. He gasped clutching his chest. His heart felt like it stopped, launching pain through his body. Smoke billowed from an open nearby window. Still clutching his chest, Damien continued around the corner of the building exiting the alley for the street of corpses. He looked at the bodies on the ground. Some wore the same black uniform as him. The military uniform of the Fenwrathian army.

His friends.

One of the deceased lay with its face toward him. The eyes were open and staring unfocused. The face was a young Dwarvish woman with three silver rings braided into her hair. Three children.

Damien broke out into a dead sprint deeper into the city away from the bodies. He ran toward nothing. Just away. No matter where he ran the dead seemed to follow.

A familiar voice called out to him. Seductive and feminine. The words dripped with promise.

“That’s right my little monster. Come to me … Run to me.”

The gleeful staccato of her laughter filled his mind.