He stood over the wreckage of the fallen city, ravenous flames licking its remains. Once looming trees had been crushed by the falling debris, now snapped and splintered as dry burning timber.

“Conrad, we have to leave.” A woman’s voice was heard, quiet and forlorn amidst the crackling of the fire. “You know there is no one left.” She entered his vision from the corner of his eye, wearing the same grey uniform; three black chevrons stitched to each shoulder. Her pale blonde hair was cropped with short bangs in front of a short ponytail. A hawkish nose and piercing grey eyes were the prominent features of her face. Her hands were presently still, stained with fresh blood.

“The Neo Virus will soon be dispersed. We have to reach the bunker before then. Conrad. We have to go now.”

“No.” The man’s voice was hoarse and unyielding. “I’ll stay topside, with the Farms.”

The woman laughed bitterly. “Is that what you’re going to do to honor their memory? Disobey a direct Order to save our race?”

“There’s more than enough Soldiers to secure our future. I’m going to see my family again, Jane. Not spend the rest of my life in stasis just to kill when needed.”

The woman turned and said softly, “Goodbye, Conrad.”

She rose from the ground and shot upwards, leaving him to stare at the ruins of the city, pitch black seeming to absorb all light.

The vision faded, and Hector reopened his eyes.

“With every question answered three more replace it. Where does this all end?” Hector asked in annoyance.

“To understand how to right the wrongs of millennia you must know where it all began. Mankind did not start warring with the natives of Orr. It was the Forma who rebelled from the Laws and sought to claim this world, seeking to terraform Orr into the holy land. Do you wonder why we are worshipped as descendants of Gods?”

Hector stared blankly at the old man. “Because we are. It is our birthright, blessed by the Mythic to lead our people and protect them. Why else would they grant us their power?”

Celdan shook his head sadly. “Our powers are not Gifts, but genetic mutations randomly resurfacing. It is in our DNA.”

“I do not understand.”

“DNA. Deoxyribonucleic acid, or so the Ancestor speaks of. I myself do not fully comprehend its nature, even after several hundred years.”

Hector slowly stood up. “You are mad.”

The old man laughed, a hearty sound that echoed past the soothing burble of the waterfall.

“It’s understandable that you would think so, my boy. True understanding has always terrified the ignorant. How about we strike a deal, would that suit your goal? I am of the natives now, an Elder seer amongst them. I promise with my life that I will convince them to aid, and perhaps even fight for your cause. The only thing you have to do is learn of the knowledge I arm you with to bring mankind back to their enlightenment. You must listen, and above all question everything that you know of. Can you agree to these terms?”

“Do I have a choice? In any of this?”

Celdan answered, “Not really, no. The other option is to live among the natives should they let you, and that is a stagnant and inevitable death when this Queen Lyssa will raze everything to the ground once she conquers the Empire. I know a thing or two of tyrants like her.” His grey eyes grew distant, then brightened back to attention. “That, or trek unaided back to your Kingdom, of which you will last less than a day once you cross the Green Pass. Though I am sure you wish to return to the Empire, do you not?” His lighthearted tone was curt with his jaded words.

“The Queen may try to burn the forests,” Shael interrupted. “And we will stop her, just as we always have.”

Celdan turned his head to the sylvan. “Yes, I was wondering when you would speak. You must be frustrated that you cannot fight for your homeland, if for the time being. What are your thoughts on this one? Do you believe he can bring peace between our peoples?”

“It is not my place to judge. I follow my chieftain. I am merely here to observe and carry out my Tribe’s will.”

“Ah yes. The oaths of a Spearhand. Do you believe in honor, Hector?”

“I believe in what is right, and fighting for it if I must. I consider that honorable.”

“The sylven are a fascinating race. One of the reasons being is that they are truly an honorable people. Do you know that they do not even have a word for lie? I have lived several mortal lifetimes amongst mankind. When you live that long you realize that honor is a privilege bestowed upon the powerful, not the just. I had spent those lifetimes uniting the Realm of the West, ending entire bloodlines of those who would not kneel and sacking countless kingdoms. I believed that was honorable. I’ve killed men, women, children. Vanni, sylfs, and younglings. All for the ‘greater good of mankind,’ in my belief that we would need to be united to end the other races if we were to live in this world. That is the lie of honor, nothing more than an excuse to follow our whims. We are a cruel race, Hector. Without guidance and discipline our cruelty knows no bounds. Yet I see the better parts of us in the sylven, and can only hope that we may all live up to a fraction of their selflessness.”

“If you’ve done such deeds, why would the sylven willingly harbor you?” Hector questioned.

Celdan stood up from his stoned seat. “I live because I serve a greater purpose now. You must see for yourself. I will ferry us skyward, if you will allow it.”

Shael and Hector nodded in agreement. With his arms raised Celdan rose from the ground, as did Shael and Hector. Though Hector felt no sensation he could not move his legs if he tried. They floated upwards, weaving around the dense shrubbery of the branches to the open sky. Smaller sized birds called out and flew past in flocks. The suns were still high in the sky, filling the world with their light.

They thankfully flew close to the forest canopy, traveling towards Serendrial’s Arbor. They were so close they reached the shadow that circled its great trunk, the suns’ rays drowned out by the sheer expansive density of its foliage. The Arbor’s trunk was a gargantuan hulk of furrowed wood with mossy growths large enough to be seen in the distance.

They descended underneath the shade of the Arbor, landing on a perimeter of trees so tightly packed together it could only be called a wall. A wall that curved in the distance as a barrier surrounding the giant Arbor. The trees melded with each other; quarter the height (roughly fifty feet high) of the Elder forest and absent of branches, topped flat as a long connecting platform.

“Why is there a wall?” Hector asked.

“Look below,” Celdan said in reply. Hector gazed down, squinting at the dim luminescence brought by the glow capped mushrooms on the forest floor. A sea of statues gathered, ceremoniously standing round the tree. Upon further focus Hector noticed they wore armor similar to the past ancient armor sets he had seen in Raul, though even more dilapidated; covered in verdant moss and browned lichen. Some held swords to their sides, others propped by orange rusted polearms.

“They are your army,” Hector stated, looking upon them with horrid fascination. “What fate befell them?”

Celdan stared at the frozen figures, hands clasped behind him, deep in thought.

“The Orrkin, the first born of this world, did what they have always done: protect their home, Serendrial’s Arbor. It is better if I showed you.”

He held out his hand once more, palm face up in offering.

They stalked past, an endless tide of men; their hollowed eyes shadowed in their furrowed brows. Swords cut through the thick underbrush, sharp thin thwicks and thwacks that cleared the path beyond.

“We should camp,” Celdan’s Steward, Markus, murmured. “We’ve journeyed too far in. The natives keep harassing our supply lines. At this rate the army will die from thirst first before battle.”

Markus was a man of conviction, a loyal soldier compared to a ruthless tactician; always thinking of his men first before the war. It was why he would never be King, knowing that should he die Markus would let Celdan’s son rule before him.

“We press onwards,” Celdan said, waving his hand out in a claw and raking a fanning shrubbery apart with the force of his Gift. “We will find a stream in time, and rest there for respite.”

The First King and his Circle forged on ahead, the host of men alongside sweeping past the forest floor that yielded as crops withering before merciless locusts. They were the combined might of the now united Empire, tens of thousands strong making up a dozen legions. It had all come to this, the culmination of Celdan’s conquests that would be spoken of a new era. An age of man triumphant against the natives, finally ending the eternal war.

Everything he had sacrificed, all the lives lost to preserve countless more for mankind. The war was at a tipping point, the natives’ last remnants of resistance being flushed out from existence.

“The sylven ambush from our flanks,” Markus reported. “They disappear into the woods before we can muster a counter offensive. The men grow weary, my King.”

“We press onwards,” Celdan repeated. “Their desperation means we are close.”

Cowardly guerilla tactics would not slow their advance. By sword and shield mankind would reap this land and cleanse it of their races. He had come too far to falter now.

The vision blurred as Celdan cut down the undergrowth to view the great shade cast by the prodigiously sized tree beyond. The men broke into the vast clearing, shuffling in a wary shield wall behind their King and his Circle. They stared at the towering behemoth of wood and leaf. It was seen that the tree opened at its base, revealing inhumanly shaped figures that moved atop vined bridges inside the tree, obscured in shadow.

“We should wait for the entirety of the host to regroup,” Markus said as if reading his thoughts, which would have been foolish for him to do so.

“We have thousands of men behind us,” Celdan said. “We attack now. Let us put an end to this.”

He turned to the host, raising his fist skyward.

“Hear me, men! You’ve bled, killed and seen your comrades die for the promise of prosperity for mankind! Now, let us make history and be forever immortalized by our actions, as we cleanse these savages from the land! Our land! With me!” He bellowed, drawing his sword and pointing it at the native’s last refuge. “With me! Cleanse this land!”

“Cleanse this land!” The men roared after him, and Celdan charged forward, joined alongside the stampeding host of soldiers still gathering behind him. They were now inside the tree’s base, revealing a vast space filled with bridging branches and steps that spiraled skyward where shafts of sunlight poured down.

Celdan looked upwards to see the gargantuan silhouettes above still as statues, their forms dissipating into dust. A faint haze of yellowed green dust permeated the air, spreading and growing thicker; wafting down to reach them. The cloud became a dense fog, and the cries of the men broke into a cacophony of coughing.

Celdan and his Circle seemed unaffected, but the men around him continued to cough violently, and in moments turned to death rattles as if they were being strangled. The men nearest Celdan were visible in the virulent haze on the ground shaking uncontrollably in frenzied fits, the whites of their eyes showing until they lay still.

“We must retreat,” Markus urged Celdan. “Before the casualties grow too inumerable-” He was cut off as a spear longer than a man’s height impaled his side, fragmenting the iron armor. Its boned tip leaked dark red blood, dripping down Celdan’s hands as he held his dying friend.

More spears arced down towards them, and his Circle raised their hands to suspend their assault. The figures fell from the towering heights of the tree, clouds of the yellow green dust swirling from their landing. Celdan saw them then past the amber haze.

They were mottled green and darker green. Their roughly shaped faces were browless and hairless. Powerfully built, hulking limbs that did not taper normally but thickened bluntly to their three appendaged hands and thrice toed feet. They stood twice the height of a tall man, towering over them as they simply regarded Celdan and the other mages; their beady amber eyes showing a cunning intelligence beneath their brutish exterior.

They each held bone spears thick as a man’s arm; bare of any clothing that revealed their absence of any characteristics of sex. They kept a wide berth around them, still as trees; their spears planted onto the ground as if in judgement.

“Orrkin,” Celdan snarled and lashed out with an arm, seeking to rend and tear apart each one with his Gift. There was no effect and instead he drew his sword and donned the shield at his back. His Circle looked at eachother hesitantly. They were mages hardened from several bloody campaigns, having stormed countless kingdoms alongside Celdan in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

Now however, his Circle surrounded by the looming green skinned giants, doubt and fear spread with the clouded air.

“With me,” growled Celdan, his eyes dilating with amber magelight beneath his T shaped opened helm. “With me! Fight for your right to live!”

He dashed forward and closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye and slashed at one of the Orrkin’s legs. The cold iron shattered as if it were brittle glass. The Orrkin let go of its spear, still planted to the earth, and with surprising speed gripped Celdan’s shield and hurled him with one arm.

He landed on the bare ground by his back. The shoulder of his shield arm was dislocated, so he cut off its leather strappings with a knife and grunted as he forced his ruptured shoulder back into its socket.

All of this was done in an instant, as well as his Circle falling to disarray. The Orrkin pummeled them down to the ground, some grabbing them in the same manner as Celdan and smashing them as ragdolls. A few of the mages survived, dodging and ducking away from their grip. Some flew upwards, for the entrance was blocked by more of the monsters. They fell as well, spiked by several spears that jutted out from their bodies.

Their attacks though blunt were lacking of rage, hitting precisely with their clearly superior strength and not a blow more. Celdan’s Circle, the most powerful that the Empire had to offer, now lay battered and broken.

In desperation Celdan bade to attack the tree itself. If he were to die he would take them with him to the next Realm beyond. His Gift, for all its power, could not seize the tree. Instead he sensed a consciousness in the Voice, at first a whisper in the back of his mind. It grew clearer and more lucid, into something collective; fragmented yet whole.

The sentience resounded in his mind, growing to impossible reaches and depths. Celdan cried out, for it was all too much to take in, the vastness of it all overwhelming him. The power in which the very earth threatened to tear apart his every being in more ways than physical.

Then it came to pass and the world faded to blackness.

Hector heard Shael, muffled in the darkness. He was covered in it, cocooned by it. Yet he felt no fear, no pain. He was not fully awakened and not fully aslumber.

“What dark magic of your kind has been done to him?”

He heard Celdan’s husky voice, “I have given him that which I could not, a true grasp of the understanding of your world and ours before this one. The process will take some time. By then, I can only hope to give him more knowledge that time has granted me.”

Hector felt a sharp bright flash and was gone.