Drakon awoke in haze. Sitting up he grabbed his head with his right hand, something was off but he couldn't tell what it was. He knew that his physical form was real but not completely his own. Taking a moment, Drakon finally stood up and took in his surroundings.

The landscape seemed to be slowly undulating. Like it was a mass of smoke that consisted of hills and mountains. But they changed as he watched. Like millions and millions of winters happening in a couple blinks of the eye. The trees that made sense to be there seemed to grow and vanish in a incomprehensible instant. But seeming to stay just long enough to swiftly become a fixture of the land scape but blur out of existence before recognition fully sunk in. As Drakon looked around he noticed the same sort of haze about the land scape. All the while mountains grew and became jagged. Then rounded off and smoothed out.

One second he was walking in a jungle of haze, the next holding his breath, floating in the pitch black of the deepest ocean, the next his foot was sinking in to dry desert sands. Looking around trying to find some sort of reference point in the infinitesimal blur of eons wizzing past his consciousness before his next foot fall. He could see no discerning pattern to the kaleidoscope of undulating masses that was his surroundings. So he decided to just walk. In no particular direcrion. Just walk. Eventually he closed his eyes as the spinning of the landscape made him weary. The constant change from walking to falling to drowning, all while the world around him transformed continually, made him conscious of every step and every breath.

Eventually when he decided to open his eyes he saw monolithic structures appear then crumble then turn to haze as it fell. Black trade routes glistened then crumbled. Black trade routes spanning as far as the eye could see, interweaving and multi layered mega structures that baffled the mind even more so than the ever changing land scape. But in a few moments time, these too crumbled and fell. To be replaced in a haze that grew and grew and began to stabilize somewhat. Presenting a definite image of titanic trees. As big if not bigger than the shining structures he had glimpsed before.

Still, he walked. Growing more and more tired with each step. Even going so far as to discard some of the heavier pieces of armour he carried. Chest piece first. Shoulder guards next. Gauntlets after that. Until he was walking unencumbered in nothing but his thin tunic and trousers. But they offered little comfort to him as he walked and walked for what seemed to him to be weeks. But what had passed by him had been an incalculable amount of time. It could very well have been weeks. But if that were the case, his mortal body would have perished long ago. Seeming to go from creation, past many civilizations, past many species, past blackness both in light and land scape.

He walked and walked, in a daze through the millennia and eons. Head bowed for he cared no more what he saw. He was moving towards nothing and away from nothing. With no destination and no pursuers. He decided that sitting would pass the time just as well. Drawing on his time in Clergy School. He sat cross legged and closed his mind to all. He no longer saw the flashing and blurring of the world around him. Sometimes he would be falling through the air then others he would be completley submerged in salted water. Still he sat, his position unchanged through out the ever changing terraforma. Still he sat, as millennia upon millennia whizzed past his closed eye lids and still the black trade routes built and built and encroached ever upon his location.

He felt calm. He felt still. He was in contol of his own perception now. He opened his eyes. Not far off in the distance he spotted a black tower that splintered up through the earth. The speed of change had slowed. But still the constant movement and warping made him take a pause, a deep breath, and again. He walked. He walked for the same amount of time as he had before. But unlike the blurring speed of eternity that passed him. The black tower stood ever still. A beacon of estranged normality that drew Drakon towards itself. He walked until his feet bled. But still he pushed onwards. Ever the soilder. The land stopped being a haze so much as sand dunes moving and undulating much like waves. Washing over parts of the great black trade routes, and seeming to eat them up as all that was left was the remnants of whatever supported the trade routes. But mostly everything was eaten by the sea of sand dunes. Millions of years passing by in seconds, gave the sensation of walking on giant waves of the ocean. He tried to use some restorative magics. But as he had suspected, no magics worked here. He encroached upon the tower that soared up and out of sight completley. Beginning to fall over more and more often and drawing in deep ragged breaths. He finally reached its base. He held a hand out to touch it. His fingers a mere hairs breadth away from contact, then he drew it back and pondered why. He felt tired and travel weary, but still his precaution beat exhaustion. Something felt off. So he skirted the structure, looking for an opening, markings, something to give him any clues as to what he was looking at. He walked for so long he lost track. He had no Idea how far around the structure he had walked, or if he had circumnavigated it multiple times, for no land features stayed in existence long enough to draw reference from. However he guessed he was about half the way around, stumbling and growing more and more tired.

Drakon forced himself to push on. "This is the afterlife?" he asked himself. If it was, he still grew hungry and thirsty, sweat still dripped off his brow and his legs still burned with over use. "Did I not do enough to enter the halls of the Devine? This is not the Utopia of lore I dedicated my life to preserving it's very sanctity!". He felt a surge of anger. A strange sensation to him, for it is not one that he had felt for decades. His holy training and devine essence completley snuffed out his feelings and emotions that didn't further his crusade or the chances of preserving 'The Light'.

In his rage he struck his fist agaisnt the giant black monolith. The instant his flesh made contact, he was teleported to the very top of the tower. Stumbling forward with the momentum and force from his strike, he tripped and hit the ground hard with his shoulder and face. It was hard to breathe here. Like the lungs couldn't draw a deep enough breath to satisfy the most simple primal need. A weight felt like it was pressing his chest and his head spun. On top of his complete exhaustion, blùd stained feet and cracked lips, he felt the end for him coming. He felt the darkness slowley closing in on his eyes, he felt his pain start to fade away with a numbing sensation, tingling finger tips first, then ne noticed he could mo lomger feel his feet and the sensation was crawling up his legs as he felt the sensation go past his knees. He felt as if he was sinking back down, through the tower. He knew this must be his true death. He welcomed it.

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"Hey, wake up. You don't die here". Drakon forced his eyes open, struggling to do just that. He defiantly heard a voice. He felt he had been laying here for moments. But he knew it must have been longer, for the world around him had stopped being a blurr, and it was night time, instead of the flashing strobe like flashing he had to deal with as he walked. He tried to focus on what was infront of him and had to squint to see clearly enough to make out what he was looking at. He saw fog drifting around the top of the jagged spire. Whisking around and morphing in to abstract shapes and densities. Drakon blinked a couple times and it seemed the fog was moving towards him. Begining to take shape. It moved around within itself for a time, moving like it couldn't make up its mind, forever changing. As it grew near he could see legs start to form as they strode towards him. Then the sound of the steps was heard as the shape of the legs begin to solidify and establish themselves. Long, slender legs coming up to beautifuly wide hips. The navel took form as the fog danced and trailed behind slow, sensual movements, as the wisp swung its hips, leaving behind soft supple skin that shone in the bright moon with the moist glow of morning due. The whisps of fog swirled around, shaping and forming the image of two perfec breasts and continued up the strong but softly curved collar bones and up to the neck line. Moving out to form the shoulders that stayed nearly perfectly still as they made their way towards Drakon. While swinging slender arms and delicate fingers.

As the swirling feminine beauty neared Drakon it started to crouch down. That's when he saw the facial features begin to stabilise and form soft, supple lips, delicate cheek bones, and big eyes that shone completley white. Glowed without iris or purple. Yet Drakon could tell they were looking right in to his. Parchment white hair fell down her face beautifully, seeming to have a life of its own. Swirling and lagging behind as whisps of fog behind a speeding horse.

"Your time is to come soon enough, and when that time comes I'll be there too. But it is not on this world or within this time line". The apparition said.

"Wh-who are you?" Drakon managed to croak out. Breaking eye contact for the first time. "I am... change. I am... constantly inconsistent. I am... perminant, I am... the oldest being there is. I am... time itself".

"What is this pl-place?". He managed before trying to wet his lips with his tounge. Finding some success due to the extra fog that surrounded him. Lending now moisture to the thin air. "This is a place and time that have nothing to do with where you come from. Other than the fact that you're from there. And now you're here".

"You brought me here?". Drakon said with more conviction than he was aware he possessed. "Yes I did". Came the reply like a drop of water from a leaf.

"For what reason do you torment me?".

"I had something to show you. Did you see it? I brought you a long way just to show you".

"Stop your games and let me die".

"I told you, you're a long way away from where you die. You needed to see the suffering. The land dying. The blackness taking over and killing the earth. Did you see?". Drakon could only nod while he thought back at what he saw while he walked the whirling and forever changing land scape. "You walked for hundreds of millions of years. You saw civilizations rise and fall, you saw growth and ruin, beginnings and ends. You saw rebirth. But rebirth can only happen so many times before the world can give no more. I showed you that end. I showed you the black sickness that grew on this land and killed it. It gave up. Had no more to give".

"Why are you showing me this? To let me know that in the end; there is nothing? You taunt me with this knowledge while I welcome the very end you warn me agaisnt? Is this some sick game to you? You must enjoy torturing souls weaker tha myself".

"I show you this to let you know there is a way to make sure this doesn't happen to your world. These people killed their planet in such a way, all I had to do was wait. Watch. Over and over again I watch. Right now there is a sickness that grows in your land. Growing, devouring, absorbing, forever encroaching. This sickness is like no other. It; becomes it's victims. Puppets them and controls them to continue it's eternal march towards complete absorption! I've seen nothing like it in all my time, and I am time. The time you witnessed in this land passes like a mere instant on the edge of non-existence to me. I watch this happen more times than you've drawn breath, more times than that heart of yours, and your grandfather's grandfather's forbarers heart's will ever beat. I grow weary of this. I grow weary of watching the blackness take over, killing planets. I wish to see light sustain in atleast one world. Your world".

"My world? For what reason?" Drakon asked, getting up to his elbow. "For your world is wonderous! You wield magics this land knew nothing of. They had wonders of their own. But they ended up killing the planet long before it's time was up. Their fate was sealed long before a worthy champion was born". The Woman of Whisp moved around him but this time made no sound. However she faded in and out at random places while she seemed to walk inches above the ground.

"Am I to be your champion? Am I the one to bring light to my world? This is the reason you have brought me here?." Drakon now on his knees grunted as he moved to put one leg under him. "No. To all. You will not be champion, nor will you defeat the darkness and bring light to your world. You will, however. Usher the chosen one who will do so. You will teach him your holy magics, forage a path through the deepest blackest nights, soar over the highest mountains, find the Amulet of Ah'thoom, sharpen your blades on the Whett mountains edges, find the source of the sickness, find a way to kill it and save your lands; and you will suffer greatly for it". Her eyes narrowing and her voice becoming less etherial and more ominous as she finished.

Drakon felt many things. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, confusion. But mostly he felt his sence of duty that had been engrained within him for decades and decades and decades. Drilled in to him during some of the hardest years a youngling can endure. The Paladins training is far beyond any other martial tuition one could receive. He managed to get to his feet after a wobble and a backwards step. Gathering up the last grain of strength he straightened his back, squared his shoulders, looked the Woman of Whisp in her dead glowing white eyes, took a deep breath and said "How do I find the chosen child?". She stared right back at him, dead in the eyes. Her's narrowed even further, almost into a frown. "You won't. He will find you".

With that, she pushed him hard in the chest. The impact took a moment, but she didn't just push him. She flew straight through him and knocked him straight off the edge of the tower in an amence gust of fog and wind. Drakon fell for what felt like near half a sand glass, his heart reaching it's maximum rate of beats before it felt like it would explode up and out of his mouth. Through clouds so dense he couldn't make anything out for minutes at a time. Just pure white, grey, wet clouds. Then the ground approached, so fast it seemed it was coming at him in a haze. He closed his eyes and focused on nothing and everything all at once. He fought to keep them closed but was unable to do so. The instant he opened them was the instant he hit the earth. The instant he hit the earth, he sat up in a shock and cold sweat. Panting for breath with dry cracked lips, his breath becoming fog as he breathed out. He went to wipe the sweat out of his eyes with his right hand but felt nothing. Looking down he saw bandages just above where the elbow would have been. The arm was gone. He looked around the cold dark room he was in. His eyes adjusting to the light, his eyes finally fell on a silhouette in an open door way, lit from behind by a torch that was placed further down the hall way. Around him was bodies covered in wet cloths, some stained red, some not covering all the gore that they were trying to cover while preserving them for proper burial in the cold dark under chambers.

The silhouette dropped his spear. A guard doing his partol route. After seeing a corpse shoot upright and draw breath again, Muay have given his brain enough of a shock to just simply turn off. The guard fainted. Drakon looked down at himself and pulled the cold wet cloth from his torso and legs. Off in the far distance, almost too faintly to hear, was the sound of a long howl. Another guard came running down the hall way carrying a torch to check on his fallen companion. When he looked in the room and he saw Drakon standing there naked, bandage on his severed arm and battle wounds so severe they discolored his naturally dark skin. After a long pause Drakon managed to spit out "The Sickness is coming". Then he too fainted in a shivering heap while the second guard dropped his torch and ran to find the Guard Master.