Tales of Harmonin

Prologue

Prologue

Eons ago, God created the ever expanding universe from an empty dark void. As the bright stars began to fill the heavens, shining magnificently through the abyss, life began to take its shape. In order to develop the young life forms that began to appear, God sprung life into his children, Minor Gods. His children assisted in supervision of the young universe, making sure that life thrived wherever possible; sometimes intervening in the events of history to ensure the survival of the planets and its inhabitants. One of these gods was the Gate Keeper. His job was to ferry the dead to the fiery shores of Hell or the magnificent gates of Heaven. Eventually, as the eons went by, the Gate Keeper grew tired of his tasks and began to secretly hate the other gods. In his hatred, the Gate Keeper began to conspire against them. He devised a grand scheme in which he gathered lost souls, who were afraid to face their unknown judgment to join his army; A horde of endless demons, trolls, ogres, and fallen angels.

The Gate Keeper’s malicious horde swept throughout the universe, like locust, bringing armageddon with them. All seemed to fade away into the abyss as the lights in the night sky faded one by one. The dreams of hope and peace within the people, lost to the powers of fear and despair until one planet stood up. Their advanced technology allowed them to fly into the dark void of space and build weapons able to launch pure energy, powerful enough to take down the small fleet that invaded their planet. The name of this planet, found its way to the ears of the Gate Keeper, and as if a whisper had become a furious gust of wind, the name Volupta, would soon become the shining symbol the universe needed. Volupta stood strong in their small victories as they routed their assailants over and over, fighting with guerilla tactics, capturing ships in their victories and growing in strength and experience. The Gate Keeper had no choice but to back away, for now, but like a hungry pack of ravenous wolves, they would be back with larger numbers and ships far more powerful than the ones they had destroyed and captured....

Cataclysm

The noon breeze sweeps through the eden fields of Volupta. The tranquility and warmth of the luminous afternoon rays of the sun radiate the small city. The townsfolk, simple but fair merchants and farmers, tend to their work, tooling in the gleam of a peaceful day. The guards, tend to their posts, yawning among the sounds of bellowing cattle, and other farm animals. A lone guard watches the far wall alone as his belly rumbles with hunger. He watches the soft skies along with the reticent horizon. The overhead sun shines off of his glistening armor, covering his body head to toe. The sound of faint foot steps on the wall surprise him and he turns around reaching for his sword. He pauses for a brief moment, only to see that it is his wife who approaches him. He smiles at her beaming beauty and embraces her in his arms. They share a moment in what seems like an era of prosperity.

Yet nothing seems right. The lone soldier looks to green fields seeing the song birds begin to fly away. An eerie silence pervades the farm animals, the sounds of a low rumble echoes through the anxious breeze. Out of the oblivion two sleek fighters fly through the clouds above them. Volupta’s skies screech with the sound of the air shredding against a hail of missile and gun fire. The light begins to fade as the leviathan sized starships ascend from the clouds and blot out the sun. The air boils as the sizzle of the energy cannons rain death upon the defenseless people on the ground. Without a moments notice the city’s walls erupts in a violent explosion. The lone soldier and his wife are thrown into the spongy long grass below. Chunks of the stone walls fall around them and all goes dark.

The shriek of the innocent and weak engross the air. The once green fields now burn red as the intensity of the flames of invasion ravage the land. The blue skies are dyed with the black smoke of burning bodies and falling debris from the immense starships skirmishing above the clouds. The lone soldier slowly groggles awake, his lower body pinned to the ground by the enormous rocks from the wall. He feels his battered body scream in intense pain, feeling the shattered bones in arms and chest. His neck pinned by his dented helmet, forces him to look at the reality of what has come to Volupta. War is finally here.

The once beautiful paradise, transformed into a hellish nightmare. Bodies laid strewn across them as the demons poured out of the fire. The entrails of both the people and farm animals alike seeped into the dark rich soil. The lone soldier manages to muster the strength to turn his neck to the other side away from the gore filled image in his mind. Yet he quickly comes to regret this decision. No longer having the energy he can no longer turn his gaze away from the dark nightmare laid before his eyes.

His wife, torn in two lays over the fallen boulders. He meets her cold, glazed stare as blood seeps down her face. Her body moves back and forth as a red, muscular, reptilian demon tears into her chest, ripping out her heart and slowly bringing it to its mouth, razor sharp teeth slowly enclose and tear into the flesh. Another demon resembling a minotaur holds the lower half of her body, ravaging her once precious womb. Tears come to eyes, as the salty water runs down his face stinging the wounds around his neck. He lets out a scream of agony and anger as the only thing that ever mattered to him is desecrated before him. The demons, now aware of his presence quickly turn to their new alive, yet wounded prey. They pounce in a flash of lightning towards him as he closes his eyes waiting for death’s cold embrace, feeling the darkness around him engulf his life force. Suddenly the soldier wakes up with sweat and blood running down his armored body. It was that dream again, no not a dream, but a memory of the life he once led and lost to pointless war. How many lives and dreams have been destroyed because of monsters drunk with power.

“Battlefield after battlefield has been ravaged by this long bloody war... My planet is being annihilated right before my very eyes. Fires fall from the sky, disease and poison run through the land and for what? Volupta is gonna fall and there’s nothing I can do. I can only rely on that Dark General that joined us half way through this god forsaken war. To think that he was once the greatest of our enemies. Second only to the Gate Keeper himself. His forces had ravaged worlds and galaxies for thousands of years, and even my own planet, is under the diabolical command of the Gate Keeper. And yet now that same general fights for us in an ironic twist of fate.”

A lone soldier, lost among the bloody corpses, holds onto the last of his life; collapsed on a rock, bleeding profusely from his side, manages to stand up and push himself away. He wanders into the red soaked battlefield, seeing the mutilated bodies of his former comrades and enemies alike strewn across. The strong odor of death and blood fill his nose as the sounds of war begin to fill his ear. The horrific sounds of men and demons alike screaming in pain and agony echo deep into the reaches of his mind. He falls to one knee as his stomach empties the blood that has filled his hollow body. Looking up he scans the land looking for survivors of any kind, but sees only the aftermath of a beautiful green luscious world reduced to ashes and blood soaked muck. The skies rain with fire, burning what’s left of the radiant eden blow. Smoke, darker than night, blots out the setting sun, casting a low hollow glow across a grotesque land of sorrow and mallace.

Then the sound of metal clashing penetrates his lost consciousness. The soldier looks for the direction of the source and sees two great warriors in the midst of battle. They’re blades colliding and sending sparks around them as they move through the blood soaked land with god like speed. “It seems that The Gate Keeper and The Dark General are having the battle of fates before me.” The lone soldier gets up trying to get away from the battle, he searches for the body of a medic in order to scavenge anything that could treat his wounds. As he stumbled through the muck, his wound flared up, the excruciating pain shot through his body causing him to fall to his knees. He takes a moment to catch his breath and looks back, to see both warriors pierce each other through their chests. One of them collapses to his knees with a smile on his face as his enemy’s blade stays logged into his chest.

The lone soldier could only look on in horror as the remaining warrior floated into the sky surrounding himself in a bright aura. He gatheres an enormous amount of energy around his body focusing it into a single sphere of energy the size of a moon. The lone soldier could only stare in horror as the sphere broke apart into countless small beams destroying the planet’s atmosphere, eviscerating the planet anew and killing millions in an instant. The lone soldier fell to his weakening knees as one of the beams headed in his direction sealing his fate with a blinding light. “To think that armageddon could be so beautiful...” The knight had spoken his final words.