“Make sure that it is very clear that Count Garnier unleash destruction upon all of the tribal villages, wherever they are found. Give them no mercy. Accept no surrender. No submission. Have Garnier break the chains on the army massed on the border of the tribal lands. Unleash those forces, and commence with the ground invasion. It is no longer there to influence any thoughts that the primitives might have had at submission. The sun has set upon their land and people. A new sun rises. Begin the invasion. Now go!”
The messenger bowed his head low in deference, and then placed his helm back on his head. His fingers were shaking as he adjusted the leather chinstrap, and it took him another moment to secure it. He rose to his feet, though he kept his gaze fixed to the ground as he turned and hustled back to his Harrak.
Mounting the winged steed swiftly, the guardsman wasted no time in his departure. He spurred the Harrak to lope forward and leap upward, snapping its wings down as it left the ground and began its climb back up into the skies.
The Unifier watched the messenger pass on over the outer walls of the terrace, streaking out towards the horizon as he continued to ascend higher. There was no question that the soldier would gladly hasten to his delegated task, even if predominantly motivated by the desire to flee the presence of the Unifier.
Though the day was bright and the sun unfettered, His face darkened, as if a cloud bank had swept in and cast Avanor’s great Lord into a deep shade.
The Five Realms.
Saxany.
Midragard.
One would be destroyed soon. One was facing its final test. One would be dealt with in the near future. Very little remained to stand in His way, and perhaps all three of the last significant obstacles would find their fate to be total destruction before His work was fulfilled.
The new age was coming to the world. An old order would be overthrown, even as a new one ascended, one that would give rise to a new god taking dominion over all creation. The Great War would be finally brought to its end, and Another would come to bathe the world in fire, and recreate it in His image.
The Unifier was that Power’s herald and greatest prophet, preparing His Father’s coming and unlocking the timeless gates between dimensions. He would be first before all within the new Kingdom, placed even over the greatest of the antediluvian, immensely powerful brethren that had long served that Power. With the fall of the old order would also come the fall of His Father’s great Adversary, as well as the Unifier’s hated Counterpart.
The scent of the coming victory was exhilarating to every ounce of His being, the culmination of vast ages, meticulous patience, and tremendous sacrifices and suffering. It was all within sight and grasp, a reality both tantalizing and torturous.
His eyes had now become windows upon a raging furnace, glowing hotly with an inner fire of a substance not of Ave. It was an inferno that was borne of His vision of the world to come; a world that would be immersed in oceans of fire before rising anew.
In coming days and months, the Great Prophecies would be crafted to the Unifier’s will, brought to fulfillment, and then He would be crowned as the new Son of Man. The thought made Him smile, though there was no benevolence whatsoever in His cold expression.
JANUS
The deep sleep transformed into a rare and special kind of dream, of the sort where Janus was unaware that he was even in the midst of a dream to begin with.
Everything had the essence of stark reality, utterly lucid and full of conscious awareness. All that he sensed was incredibly vivid, his eyes taking in the richest of colors, his ears attuned to every nuance of sound, and his other perceptions similarly enhanced.
Fear gripped him tightly at first, as he wondered whether another transition had taken place like the mist that had taken him unwittingly out of his own world. He took a long, slow look around him, cautiously eyeing his new surroundings.
He found himself entirely alone, somewhere deep among the shadows of an old forest. He recognized immediately that it was a forest far unlike the rolling woodlands around the tribal village. Gigantic trees soared far towards the sky above him, majestic sentinels breathtaking in their lofty reach. The great circumferences of their trunks were a spectacle to behold, a vision of strength and enduring vitality.
Even so, there was a heavy, foreboding stillness to the air. It was an unsettling disquiet that permeated the area, and the only noticeable movements were the rapid beatings of Janus’ own heart. His breath tightened within his chest, constricting the coils around his rattled nerves.
Hurried motion off to the right edge of his peripheral vision suddenly grabbed his attention. His eyes widened as he beheld grotesque, shadowy forms that floated through the midst of the air. They moved in and out among the enormous trees, at one moment formless, and at another vaguely humanoid. They were gliding far off the ground, wending their way gradually towards the area where Janus stood.
Looking back to the left, and upward, he saw a couple more of the sable, flowing apparitions converging inward. It seemed as if the shadowy multitude was drifting closer and closer around him, with quite purposeful intent.
At the faint edges of his awareness, Janus began to sense a malevolence effusing from them. His blood chilled as he stared up at the sentient swathes of darkness.
Suddenly, the forms began drifting downwards, drawing closer. An icy chill crept along the tingling surface of his skin. He was riveted in place, as if his very willpower had been chained to a course of unalterable inaction.
To his growing dismay, he saw that the shadow-beings were not alone. With a sinking feeling taking hold in his gut, he realized that the murky entities were actually being hurried and herded along, driven forth by four huge shadows that came into view just a moment later. The larger shadows were gathered lower towards the leaf-strewn ground, but were clearly affecting the movements of the other shifting entities.
The forest area around him then began to darken, as if time was moving so rapidly that he could actually perceive the dimming of dusk into the fullness of night.
The shadowy creatures, both the ones above and those near the ground, pressed in even closer, as the chill saturated deeper into his being. His heartbeat accelerated with the rising fear, driving the panic to a nearly insufferable degree. He could not move a limb, finding himself trapped inside of his own body.
Then, without warning, a new and different creature thrust itself into the midst of the malevolent gathering. Its long, low body shape was supported on four, shadowy legs. It was particularly massive, substantially larger than any dog or wolf. The creature’s presence was like a blade of light cutting through dark mists.
It had not come alone either, as a second creature, very similar in form to the first, then manifested into view, just to Janus’ left.
A third creature bounded in from just ahead, though this one was notably different in form than the other two. It moved with a feline grace, and had the size of a great tiger. Janus could make out the triangular ears atop its broad head. Its forward-set eyes shined with a pure, radiant white light, as it leaped aggressively into the midst of the shadow-entities.