Elias had been following a group of adventurers he had found roaming in the forest. His doubts about the world were cleared when he saw the ensign of the kingdom on the shoulder pad of the warrior. A diamond shape with the top of a snake head in its center. He wasn’t on a different world. He would recognize the ensign of the kingdom of Studel anywhere.

He was hoping that they would lead him towards a town. They were carrying the remains of a chimera, so they weren’t weak, and most probably they were heading towards a city or at least a small town. He couldn’t protect a civilization if he didn’t find it, after all.

Two hours passed by as he kept on following them. The girl of the group seemed nervous for some reason, and when she whispered something to the warrior, the group stopped talking. Since then it was a silent walk.

Elias didn’t understand what was happening, why did they became so serious suddenly? He dismissed it. He was too bored to care.

The group walked for another hour until at they arrived to a grassland. At the distance, a medium sized town could be seen. It had neatly arranged stone walls and the shadows of the guards could be seen walking on them. Four tall towers, each on a corner of the wall, oversaw the surrounding grassland. It was both a way to attract visitors and a tactical advantage. Any army would have to go through the grassland, and they would be vulnerable to the archers and wizards on the tower.

Of course, Elias didn’t get this and just thought that they were there to look cool.

The group walked into the city after a short inspection by the guards. Elias saw banners of the Studel kingdom on several places.

The city was large. People was everywhere, walking to their homes or works, playing with their children or shopping. The merchants were attempting to sell to the passing people, saying out their ‘cheap’ prices out loud, and showing their merchandise.

Most of the houses were simple, made of stone and wood. They were mostly white and brown, and every single of them was different. There were stalls lining the streets, were the aforementioned merchants tried to sell.

Elias had seen this sight many times when he was human, but seeing it from an aerial perspective was a whole different experience. He even saw as some men did business of debatable legality in an alley, but he decided not to interfere.

The Studel kingdom was a medium sized country. They had several mines on their territory, making them very rich, but they depended on importing for most other things. It had several allies, but also some enemies that were seeking the many mines on their territory.

This caused frequent skirmishes in their borders, but since most of the attacking soldiers would suicide when captured, the Studel kingdom didn’t know who was it’s enemy. This made it distrust every other kingdom, even its allies, and that made it harder to import.

Nonetheless the kingdom was still thriving, and that showed how competent their king was.

TheNonetheless group of adventurers then began to head to the local Hunter’s Guild. Elias separated from them, he was going to… Elias then realized that he didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t think of anything. They had just told him to ‘keep the mortal races alive’. But from what? Themselves?

Who knows how long it had been since his death. Hundreds of years? One hour? He didn’t know about a major threat to mankind, elves or dwarves.

Elias was at a loss here. He had to find out what was the threat to the ‘mortal races’ that he had to stop. For now, he just guessed that he had to keep them from destroying themselves, but ‘War is inevitable, it is the human nature’. That was something he had read in a book some time ago, and having nothing to do, or more specifically, not knowing what to do, he decided to investigate to see what was wrong.

And so, Elias began his research on the major threats the world was facing.

…

Alysa and her group walked through the city heading for the Hunter’s Guild. The strange presence following them, seemingly vanished when they entered the city. What was watching them exactly? She couldn’t tell.

Alysa only knew one thing, it was powerful, very powerful. And that scared her. There was the possibility that they had lead an evil and very powerful being to the city and that thought made her shiver. What were they thinking? They should have gone somewhere else, not a highly populated city while being chased by whatever that thing was.

It was dangerous and they had led it into the city.

How stupid they were for doing that.

Alysa felt a hand on her shoulder while she was submerged on her thoughts. She snapped out of it and looked around to see who it was. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

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“It is gone?” Clement asked her with a serious look on his eyes. She smiled lightly.

“Another advantage of arcane magic over divine. Yes, it is gone.” She replied to him. Her smiled didn’t last long, though.

“What was that thing?” Grath asked her, but she couldn’t answer that question. It was far too strong to know even where it truly was, much less what it was.

“I-I don’t know, but it was very strong, far too strong for us to deal with.” She said. It could have killed them right away but it didn’t, it wanted something from them. She then realized what it was chasing them for. It wanted to get to the city.

Alysa opened her eyes wide in surprise, or maybe panic.

“What did it wa-” Grath was interrupted mid-sentence by a hysteric Alysa. “The city! It was chasing us to get to the city!” She nearly shouted, most people in the street looked at them as if they were crazy but they didn’t care.

She then began to run at top speed towards the town hall, where the city lord resided. Grath and Clement looked confused to one another, and the people at the street were even more confused, but passed it as something of adventurers.

Alysa ran with all her might, she had to warn them, before it was too late. She rounded a street and increased her speed.

Behind her, Grath and Clement were catching up, still not fully understanding the situation. “Alysa! Wait!” Clement shouted while running behind her. Alysa crashed with a man. She fell to the ground with the man, but she swiftly stood up and continued her race, leaving behind an angry man.

“Explain why-” Once again Grath was interrupted by something. This time it wasn’t a hysteric girl but a loud boom. The ground shacked and on the distance a thick pillar of black smoke could be seen rising. It was the town hall.

Alysa halted on her feet and stared at the smoke. ‘Too late’. Clement and Grath stopped beside her, looking at the same thing.

“What happened?” Clement murmured. Alysa said nothing, and neither did Grath.

When they arrived, they saw as the big structure was missing a large chunk. There was chaos around it, a large crowd was formed around the destroyed town hall. Alysa couldn’t understand why they did this, instead of running away from the obvious danger.

“What happened here?” Grath said. A formation of soldiers appeared heading towards the ruined building. Some of them separated from the main group to keep the crowd controlled. They were the city guards.

Then, from inside the town hall, a scream was heard. A man came running out of the building. He had blood splattered on his face. Several guards attempted to go and apprehend the fugitive suspect, but before any of them got close, something penetrated his chest and he fell on the ground, dead.

The guards then realized that the man wasn’t trying to escape the scene. He was trying to escape from something. From the town hall something extremely fast came out. It was so fast that it had only been a blur and in the blink of an eye, the two nearest guards had bone-like spikes coming from their foreheads. Blood began to come out of their mouths and foreheads as they fell to the ground.

The creature then stopped, and Alysa could see what it was. It was tall, around eight feet, it wore a black, tattered robe with several holes on it. It held with it’s skeleton-like hand an old, but intimidating scythe. Its wicked blade was black and had many dents, but Alysa knew that it could cut better than the sword wielded by the guards.

The creature looked around itself, its gaze briefly met with Alysa’s and in that instant, she could see it’s face.

It was a skull, a putrid skull with rotten meat around it. Most of its hair had rotten out, but there was the occasional long, white hair that fell to its side. It had two blue, glowing spheres floating on its eye sockets. It seemed like if it could see into your soul and rip out even the most hidden of your sins.

Alysa knew what it was.

A Reaper.

The reaper gave out a stunning and terrifying scream. So loud that Alysa had to cover her ears, and so loud that it could raise the dead. Literally.

The three formerly dead men stood up, shaking. Their eyes shining the same fiery deep blue of the Reaper’s.

The undead abomination then charged at the crowd, and began claiming the souls of those unfortunate enough to be near it.

Alysa watched helpless as it took the lives of many men and women with a single slash of it’s scythe, then another, and another.

It had been her fault. She should have known.

The last thing she saw was a bone spike flying at her, before falling into the ground.