Chapter 2: First death.

Mars looked at the Orb of Elentir, which was present in the center of the ritual chamber. The artifact had been an emblematic symbol of the Order of Elentir when it still existed, and it radiated sets of symbols charged with magical energies in absolutely crazy amounts.

Its power was so strong that just being next to it hurt. Rumors from taverns told of a fragment of the power of the Gods being sealed inside, and that he could fulfill all wishes. But the rumors were obviously false and exaggerated, or the power of the Gods was simply useless. Well, it was supposed to be the kind of thing you could put in the hands of a child, and come back 5 minutes later to find that he had destroyed the house and the whole neighborhood with it. Any child would have wanted one. Well, maybe.

"I would have liked to have one when I was a kid."

Thinking back to his childhood, he missed those faraway, peaceful days.

When he was a child, he had so enjoyed the many stories of adventure and horror told to him by his grandfather before he fell asleep, lulled into imaginary worlds by the sound of his deep and powerful voice. Those rainy evenings by the fire to explore in his imagination a thousand stories of horror and adventures where the hero ended up triumphing at the price of terrible sacrifices, often death, had strangely always remained in his heart.

Ironically, the stories he had loved so much as a child had become real when his life itself became a tale of horror and terror, filled with nightmares and abominations that went far beyond any story that grandfather had told him, or even anything he had ever imagined himself.

As a teenager, he had many times hoped that his favorite games could become a reality and that he can live in this kind of fantasy world with apocalyptic parameters. Of course he had never really thought about the implications of such a situation, after all it was impossible that something like this could happen to him. But the truth is that the day it happened and he was summoned here, all the hardcore horror games he had played had been nothing more than entertainment that he had enjoyed sitting comfortably in his chair.

Living in a setting similar to one of those games he liked so much, was in fact something absolutely horrible and cruel.

Mars chanted a spell, focusing on the image of the magic seal of one of the Servant Spirits with whom he had made a pact. Immediately, the servant manifested himself in the material world, appearing before him, tapping into his reserves of magical energy as space itself seemed to be distorting.

The spirit that had materialized resembled a strange inflated leather bag, he may not have been the most powerful, the most impressive or the most beautiful of them all, but his powers to contain and carry within him an almost infinite amount of objects were certainly practical.

Mars communicated what he wanted to the servant, and the magic bag opened wide and made the objects demanded to appear in the material world by spitting them out. Once his task was accomplished, Mars whispered a few words in the sacred language, caressing some of the stitches in the bag, which made the bag whirr with contentment, before suddenly disappearing by distorting the space around it.

The booty of one of his last expeditions was some shoddy alcohol and cheap home-made cigarettes made from tobacco leaves from Jorias, one of the most prosperous trading nations south of the continent of Enoa, or so it was before the war started. In the first few years after their arrival, the call of many of Earth's inhabitants to this world made the tobacco trade flourish as never before, and the merchant guilds, already indecently rich, had become even richer.

Tobacco, which had become a rare and precious commodity after the fall of the kingdom of Joras, had become a real treasure when all the nations and merchant kingdoms responsible for its production were ravaged by monstrous armies. When he found it, he decided to ration it and use it only for special occasions.

"Hell, the end of the world seems to rank at least in the top 5 of my list of special occasions."

Taking the bottle in his right hand, he brought it to his mouth and bit the cork to rip it off, opening the bottle with a sharp gesture with his head. He could have opened it with his powerful telekinetic powers, but the feeling would have been different. Respect for tradition was one of the few things he had left at the moment. He took five large sips of this brandy, each one warming his throat more than the previous one, before spitting the sixth, then levitated the cigarette to his mouth and set the tobacco on fire with a single thought before taking a large puff.

The alcohol had a bitter taste and the tobacco was so dry and strong that it seemed centuries old. Disgusting, but enough to satisfy his old habits for one last time.

Spitting the smoke out and manipulating it with his magic, he made the shape of an angel of luscious proportions appear, and he sighed "Seriously, why haven't I been summoned to one of those worlds described in cheap and stupid stories instead of this apocalyptic world??"

On the day he was invoked, he had jubilated. He had thought that it was finally his lucky day, that he would be able to get away from the boring and meaningless life he had led until then, and that he could become a hero! The magicians had even said something like, "You're going to become supermen and half-magicians", well, maybe it wasn't exactly what they said, but it was what he understood from their explanations. He had expected that the blessing of the gods would give him the power to immediately launch trucks and run faster than a rifle bullet.

But the truth is that reality has not been as sweet as his fantasies, when he entered the Tower of Dreams to begin his military training to learn how to fight and survive all kinds of hellish situations, the only thing waiting for him was hell. He had been called here to serve as a front-line soldier in a war against an invasion of nightmarish creatures.

When he realized his situation, he knew right away that he was going to shit his breakfast in his pants.

He was just an anonymous and unimportant face lost among the legions of soldiers, used as mere cannon fodder and condemned to fight on the front lines of this impossible war far beyond what reason should have allowed, constrained by the influence of mind-control spells as much as by the call of the curse that weighed down on him.

"At least I was a beautiful anonymous face."

Since the barrier that protected the material world from outside influences had weakened, certain dark forces had awakened from their long sleep and had seized the opportunity to come out of the abyss. Fallen or forgotten gods had returned to dominate a world that had forsaken them, while giant servants or degenerate troops of those gods marched again upon this world. In some parts of the world, death itself was no longer a source of deliverance but a scourge, as the dead began to awaken from their eternal sleep to attack the living.

And in the midst of all these events, as if the situation was not bad enough, the Kingdom of Nightmares, the place where the immemorial fears, dreads and terrors of mortals lived, had begun to mix with the material world itself. Overnight, the nightmares that haunted the imagination of mortals had infiltrated the material realm, distorting the texture of reality.

Their nightmares had become real.

"Tsk. This world was seriously fucked up, even a small child would have been able to understand that! So what was the point of calling us?"

But after coming out of the Tower of Dreams, his mind had been indoctrinated and manipulated, they had filled his mind with stories of legendary rescues, heroic fighters, glory, and medals. Well.. even though in his case they didn't have to make a lot of effort for that, because he was pretty stupid and it was the kind of thing he had always wanted to do.

In any case, the war had never seemed so generous and full of promise. They, the Earthlings, were here, and they were going to save this world from destruction!

After all, weren't they born exactly for this kind of destiny? Who could protect the world better than them? And they might even become one of its many lords in thanksgiving for saving it! They were the Chosen Ones! So what did he have to fear? With his stronger physique, telepathic and telekinetic powers, it was going to be a walk in the park.

For the glory of mankind, he was going to be a fucking hero!

But fighting monstrosities wasn't exactly a distinguished career like he had been told. The casualty rate on the first day of battle was catastrophic. There was nothing glorious about seeing men, and more often than not boys, being torn to pieces and dismembered and devoured by horrible monsters, their cries being muffled only by the blood that gushed from their mouths to fill the helmets of their armor.

The promises of glory that had long been described to him had consisted mainly in crawling on the ground made muddy by blood and piss and then swimming in the entrails of the broken bodies, trying to remain as silent as possible, hiding under the bodies of unknown soldiers and desperately praying to the Gods that no monster would notice his presence. He had discovered the painful truth: his goal was not as great as saving the world, but it was to survive at all cost.

This war was nothing more than a stupid war of attrition in which no one could see an end. The Alliance of Kingdoms had sent the Earthlings as if their number were infinite to reclaim the lost territories, defend their territories, or explore territories immersed in the cursed mist and nightmare realms.

But their defeats outnumbered their victories, and no matter how many lands were regained or how many places were defended, each victory was only temporary, and at the cost of countless lives - irreplaceable lives - unlike the monsters that fell upon them in almost infinite numbers. Containing the threat was finally all they could hope for, despite the presence and the continuous call of billions of recruits on Earth.

And then one kingdom after another fell.

And them the Earthlings, despite their seemingly infinite numbers had finally ceased to be summoned when old, sick and children were the only humans to appear for invocations. It was clear to everyone that to continue would be a waste of the magical energy reserves of the gods and sorcerers. The reserve of cheap and tame cannon fodder had disappeared.

At the end of the war, the only peaceful places that existed were the ancient cities in the far east of the continent, protected as they were by powerful psychic concealment spells and located in places almost impossible to find. But even these had eventually disappeared one by one.

The last years he spent in the underground city was the most peaceful since his arrival here in Yvelmore. He had relearned to appreciate the pleasures of food and drink, even though the former was often rustic and the latter rare. Contact with other reasoned beings had been a source of pleasure once again. He had even had the opportunity to repeatedly savor the affection and warmth of women's embraces and had managed to spend a few rare nights without his nightmares haunting him.

This peace had almost succeeded in making him forget his painful memories, as well as the threats outside the walls: enemies in infinite numbers, and the dark mists that devour all the lands and oceans of this world.

They had not had any contact for 6 months had with another base or city, all their attempts to make communication through the weak telepathic networks woven by their sorcerers had remained silent, and their rare expeditions to explore territories that had not yet been engulfed by the dark mists had brought only sad news.

Any fool could understand this situation and what it meant: they were the last group of survivors on what was left of this doomed and torn planet…

In the end, all his efforts to try to protect the others had been in vain. Until his last moments, he had been unable to save those who had meant something to him.

As he looked around him again, he could not help but think of the wonderful treasure that this world would have been without all these horrors. He emptied the remaining alcohol before letting the empty bottle fall to the ground at the same time as the last cigarette fell from his lips. As more and more enemies climbed the fortress walls, it was only a matter of time before they crossed the labyrinthine corridors and reached him.

Mars looked again at the orb in the center of the ritual room

"I've always wanted to use one of these things."

Hey, what would happen if he tried to do that?

As the demons' cries began to grow louder and louder in the hallways, his mind was filled with ideas worthy of placing him on the dark side of the force.

Mars walked to the center of the room and grasped the Orb in his right hand. When he touched it, he felt an incredible power radiate from it. The artifact catalyzed the magical energies so intensely that simply breathing became difficult. Yet, for what he wanted to try, it might not be enough.

Since he was a child, he had always loved explosions and fireworks on the annual national holiday, and even today that love had not changed. And no matter what Aleria tried to do, she had failed, so this magical energy accumulated in the circle could well be used so he could try something irresponsible. This world was ruined, right? Apart from the enemies there was nothing left, so if something went wrong no one would blame him anyway.

"It'd be a shame if it all went to waste, wouldn't it?"

Blowing the air out of his lungs and expelling all thoughts not related to his intention, he concentrated on his task. Gathering his will and focusing it to cut himself off from the outside world and his physical senses, he concentrated solely on his magical senses.

Retreating inside his mind, he descended within himself to the depths of his consciousness, where his most primitive emotions existed, marked and twisted by their continuous proximity with the dimension of the immaterial. They palpitated with life, and so much hunger for destruction and desire to oppress and trample on any other form of life that he himself was thwarted. This devouring and endless greed mixed with an irresistible desire for conquest accompanied him as he let fragments of his soul slide to the other side of the veil of the material realm.

The pain lacerated his mind as much as his soul, while on contact with the abyss, his spirit was consumed and twisted as the immaterial planes opened up to him and its dark inhabitants sought to penetrate his soul and make their way into it. Remembering the odious prayers of invocations used by the sorcerers of the nightmarish gods, he called upon the most powerful existences of the immaterial to come and devour the tantalizing bait his soul now represented, like a shining beacon on the horizon on a night without stars or moon.

Suddenly, an obnoxiously powerful existence, probably a nightmare lord, swept away the other presences with a single blow and clung to Mars”s existence with such force that he almost felt as if his dying soul would be ripped to shreds and destroyed in the next instant.

He felt his whole body stiffened by the nauseating pain as magical power flooded his soul and mind like a cataclysm, combining with the energies present in the orb and reshaping the space around Mars under the pressure of the energies. He could barely contain the flow of raw and corrupted power, and the explosive flow of energy created by the energies of the Orb made it even worse.

Electrified flames gushed from his orbits as he projected his spirit into the sky, while the surrounding cloudy areas reacted immediately to the absurd amounts of power he deployed.

Gleams of light shone down as far as the eye could see, rivaling the dawn, while immense multicolored lightning bolts passed through the clouds and struck everywhere, creating a maelstrom that rumbled and grew larger every moment for miles before engulfing the entire horizon.

He narrowly avoided being swallowed up by the oozing existence of madness and terror, restricting it with all the strength of his will, sharing his concentration on the link with the Orb. The almost Divine protection maintained the last barrier around his soul to prevent vicious existence from nesting there, and also protected him from the aura of madness that seeped into his consciousness. Mars kept just enough clarity of mind to direct his fury to what he was seeking up there, beyond the sky, beyond the heavens.

Deploying all the strength he had slowly and painfully accumulated during his life, he stole and consumed the demon's powers within him at a staggering speed, and used them to draw focus to his powers.

In a demonstration of inhuman willpower and a totally absurd mixture of magical energies, he applied his telekinetic magic to one of the asteroids orbiting the planet.

Half-conscious, and as madness gnawed at him more and more, he felt the powerful existence that wished to seize him roar with anger and frustration at its inability to grasp the meal in front of it, shouting and whispering in a thousand different voices, hitting him even harder with all his rage, trying to seize Mars”s mortal envelope, blinded by his desire for the material body that was offered to him.

Mars looked up at the sky. Flamboyant and luminous, a dazzling light illuminated the horizon like celestial rain as the asteroid passed through the planet's thick atmosphere. Even the thick cloud cover could not extinguish the light of this dazzling promise of destruction and death.

A carnivorous smile appeared on his face, while the electric arcs burned his flesh and transformed it into powder under the influence of the powerful corrupted magical influences that licked the surface of his body.

After so many horrible years, his heart was for the first time inhabited by a strange feeling of peacefulness as he contemplated the sky shimmering with light. He also felt as if a familiar presence was thanking him for what he had done. It must have been his imagination, but leaving with this feeling suited him very well, because there would be nothing to expect after his death, except nothingness if no existence managed to seize his soul in time.

Breathing in one last time, he closed his eyes, laid his fist on his heart, addressing the last prayer to this world. Then, finally, when he opened them, the world turned into a silent light when the meteor struck him.

Farewell, old friend.