WarTorn

I.

In a place such as a Jungle, you'd expect to find an abundance of life. All around, you could hear an assortment of all kinds of creatures. The bugs and the birds, the rats and deer. All together, they create a symphonic ambiance for a luscious, perfect landscape. The hills rise and fall like waves in the sea. Vibrant, green leaves create a canopy over the ground. Even now, at night time you can tell just how bright green the foliage is. And the stars above only infinitely add to the endless beauty of life. It's as if the night sky is a fabric with holes poked in it, and a little bit of heaven shines through from the other side.

A half full moon radiates grey light down upon the slumbering earth. Times like these could make anyone appreciate just how lucky they were to be alive, and also how unlucky they were.

In under a second, all life ceases, a predator is near by. Silence. Terrible, awful, gnawing silence. It's cold and lifeless like the vacuum of space. Too long of exposure could make any man go off the deep end. 

Now a new noise replaces the old. It's odd... maybe wind? No... thunder? It's not easily noticeable at first, but slowly, it becomes impossible to deny. It couldn't have been anything of nature's... something about it sounds so off, so artificial. 

The cacophony only grows louder, angrier. It sounds as if the sky itself is being ripped open by some monster of unknowable strength and ferocity. Without mercy, it leaves nothing but devastation behind it. 

Finally, the noise can grow no louder as the source flashes past at an incomprehensible speed. For the slightest second, you could maybe make out an outline of something. A... bird? A grey, giant metal bird. Two of them.

Then as fast as they had appeared, they had gone. The noise had disappeared with them, and everything returns to silence. But the silence was the prelude for a much worse event than the metal birds flying over head.

Lightning. Or maybe, what only made sense to be lightning. A flash sets the world on fire for the briefest, yet longest second of anyone's life. A cloud of fire rises into the air, then another flash of lightning. The air around the cloud distorts as a wave travels outward at immeasurable speeds. The leaves dance around like they were touched by a breeze, and then comes the thunder.

Boom!

You couldn't even imagine the force of the wave as it would slam into you. The thunderous boom was so loud it could make your ears bleed. Then the next wave hits.

Boom!

Another fireball rises into the air not too far from its siblings, then another, and another. A chain of disaster forms on the horizon. The number of blazing balls of fire becomes uncountable. The terrible noises seem to come from the earth's core as it rattles from the storm above.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

More fireballs, more destruction. Eventually, the clouds join together and from a wall of flame and smoke. 

A witness, a young man, his eyes hollow and glassy, stares onward at the sight. The wall rises higher and the earth trembles in fear from the hell that is unleashed upon its surface.

No man should possess such power, only the gods could handle such responsibility. And they had made the mistake of gifting it to us.

The man jams his eyes shut as voices forever burned in his head scream out in pain. They beg for mercy, for forgiveness, for help. Faces that he once knew, faces he'd never known, and faces he could've know haunt every slumbering second of his visions.

"Dane." 

The bangs grow louder and even more frequent as terrible, animalistic voices beg and plead.