The survivor ran. His instructor once told him: “There’s a time for fighting and a time for survival.” The military was reluctant to teach their young to run, yet there was no point fighting to free a beaten army.

He’d seen the reserve force, corralled by those damnable insects. For a moment he’d thought the desert had followed them into the North. That was before he’d seen the thumb-sized insects that made up the storm. Before he saw the devil serpent walking the world in human-flesh.

The survivor ran, the days bleeding together. At night the ice bit at him, yet these were rich lands. Water flowed across their cold plains aplenty. He came across an isolated farmstead, saw the old family who lived on it.

Having been forced to abandon his armor, he only had his sword. The bronze sheen had seemed sharp in the noon sky. Not as sharp as its edge, however.

Further South he fled. Across wilting grasses and through domineering forest. As the weeks wound on, his skin began lightening and his beard grew wilder. He finally felt the first touch of relief.

Lying in the lee of a fallen tree, the night pressing in from every side. Shadows and darkness overwhelming him from all angles. Within the desert, it was never like this. Ankiria was a space of open planes and light. Within even the deepest and most shadowed depths, night still held a sun blight on the horizon, lightening the sky.

The sun blights, deadly as they were, offered a sense of direction and purpose. They spat out light second only to the very thing they were named after. Yet in Elusria’s creeping cold, shadows, and volatile sounds ruled. The animals never rested and so neither did the survivor.

Except this night, there was no chill in the air. He did not freeze. Nor the next night. Another week and he saw a light on the horizon. Not the blight itself, but its cast off. The survivor laughed until he had tears in his eyes. He was escaping. On the cusp of freedom.

Forested hills and grass plains grew arid, increasingly sandy. The heat rose by the hour until the survivor had to stop during the midday. Water grew scarce, yet his training allowed him to find what few sources there were.

Nearly seven weeks after the attack on that damnable school in the middle of Elusria, the survivor finally found what he’d been searching for. Desert turned to wasteland, sprayed with obsidian dust and shards. Through the dry rock, a crack had been driven. A crevice, a man’s height in width and nearly twenty times as deep.

In his weakened and tired state, the climb down was a perilous journey. Hands and feet were cut up, leaving swiftly drying bloodstains on the sun seared stone. Eventually, he stood in the bottom, shadows engulfing him once more.

The crevice ended in a vast boulder, having fallen into the ravine many years ago. Or so it appeared. Searching with half-mad senseless fingers, he found the knocker. A shaped rock the length of his arm.

Please, he thought, swaying on his feet. Do not abandon me. Sisters, I plead with you. Then he knocked against the boulder. The rhythmic noise of the pattern echoing into the crevice with each slam of stone on stone.

Dry eyes locked on the rock as the survivor stood before the boulder. The knocker slipped from his injured grip to clatter against the rock floor, knocking up a puff of desert dust. The time passed in silent agony.

Sisters… the survivor could not find the strength to continue. With a dry cough to replace the tears he would’ve shed, he slumped to the ground. Exhaustion dragged him, uncaring, into the depths of his unconscious mind.

The terrified screams of the elderly couple mixed with the cries of anguish from his fellow soldiers. The old woman ran into a storm of insects, a pestilence of creatures and she was torn apart, leaving naught but sand sheared bones to clatter on hardened dead soil.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The survivor jerked awake to the sensation of cool wetness slipping past dry lips. Water spilled across parched lips as he jerked upright. Cool darkness enveloped him. The kid holding the water flask yelped and jerked away, pulling the jug upright.

A wizened hand pushed on his chest, forcing the survivor’s deprived body back down. “There, there, my boy. How did you know where to find us?”

One of the King’s own advisors stood before the survivor. Gentle gaze imploring him to spill forth his experiences. And the survivor did.

“Sir,” his voice was raw from dehydration and clumsy from lack of use. “The devil. World Eater himself. He has joined the Elusrians. He bore the wings of a bird and the arm of a monster. His eyes lit with violet fire.” The survivor seized the advisor’s hand. “Sir, he tore Dhaakir apart, ripped him in half. Believe me.”

“Calm, my boy,” the advisor said, looking off to the side. “You’re the first who has returned from the fighting. How did you escape?”

“Sir, I was,” the survivor tailed off, coughing to cover his embarrassment. The effort only sent him into a true fit, the world darkening around him. “I was part of the reinforcements, sir. I was relieving myself when his pestilence struck us.”

The advisor continued his interrogation of the survivor for another few minutes, before summoning to him another messenger. “Code yellow,” he whispered to the young woman and handed her a letter. “Tell them all to stand ready. In case of an emergency, they are to leave immediately.”

The survivor kept his gaze on the advisor, taking sips of revitalizing water. “Can I help, sir?”

The advisor paused, eyes narrowing as he looked the man over. “I think your duty’s over.”

The survivor hesitated. His friends had been among the reinforcements, yet only those who had attempted escape had faced the World Eater’s minions. He shook his head. “I can still fight for the cause.”

The advisor peered into his eyes, then slowly nodded. Fishing in his robes, the old man gave him an envelope. Thick paper had been bleached, an eye searing white. The pale ivory unnatural in the grimy cave. The survivor hesitated before accepting the letter. His fingers leaving smudges.

“Instructions, should the worst occur. Now let’s get you bathed and into some fresh clothes.”

The survivor nodded and rose, his body protesting only slightly. He was young still and recovered quickly.

“That on your hip. Is it your blood?”

Teeth gritted, the survivor hardened his eyes. “No, sir.”

“Very good,” the advisor waved someone over. A long-limbed woman in her mid-twenties, nearly a decade older than the survivor. “Show him the emergency paths, then take him to get cleaned up.”

“Sir,” she saluted and strode off, expecting the survivor to follow.

Before they managed more than a handful of meters, another messenger arrived. Pale-faced and sweating. “Sir, there are two masters outside the entrance.”

----------------------------------------

“How am I supposed to get through this?” Grevor asked, pale eyes narrowed as he examined the enormous boulder.

Amalia shrugged. “I don’t know. Why didn’t you bring someone to push it aside or something?”

“I guess I could melt it.”

“That would take forever. It’s huge.”

“Maybe I could slip around.”

“And fight everyone on the other side yourself.”

“You don’t think I could do it?”

“No.”

Grev sighed and scratched at his jaw. “You’re sure he went this way?”

Amalia rolled her eyes. “I tracked the kid for way too long to not see where they brought him.”

“Dammit, guess we’ll have to wait for reinforcement. Shit.”

“Why are you so upset?”

“I wanted to be the one who handled it.”

“Well,” Amalia said, knuckling her back and stretching. “My part is officially done. I want no more to do with your stupid war.”

“You think Ranvir would come out here to finish it?”

She just rolled her eyes at his words. “They should consider themselves lucky if he grants them a ride.”

Grevor sighed and nodded, then began drawing power to him. His eyes burned bright white until they sparked a light to match any dozen of the torches the soldiers were bringing down.

With blurring speed, he struck the boulder. Arm-length chunks of rock splintered and broke off, pelting the nearby walls. The echoes hadn’t faded by the time he struck again. For a minute, he hammered the stone, leaving only a pile of rubble.

“Why didn’t you do that immediately?” Amalia asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Men! Double column, weapons free. I want torches on every fourth row!” Grevor yelled and rubbed his knuckles. He turned to Amalia. “I’m a noble. It’s not fashionable for us to engage in brute effort.”

“It hurt your little fingies.”

“A lot.” He sniffed and pouted.

She rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”

“Please,” then he vanished in a blur of light, traveling above the heads of his men. Already, the sounds of battle could be heard.