Dusk of the Realm

3

The visions plagued Serena relentlessly. She was caught in a current of nightmares, drowning, and there was nobody to save her but herself.

Her mother, standing in front of her throne as a group of dark soldiers rushed into the room with weapons bared. Triana lifted her hands, not needing forged weapons to fight them off. They ran at her, and she blasted them with magic, threw them into walls, burned them alive, turned them to stone before cracking them into thousands of pieces. She was hurling her powers left and right, channeling them to so many different uses that it would make any Fae's head spin.

But as soon as she had defeated the first group, another rushed in. Then another. Then another.

They did not stop coming, and it took a long time to happen, but eventually, Triana's store of magic depleted, or perhaps she had simply lost the will to keep fighting. Regardless of how it happened, Triana collapsed on the dais, and Serena was forced to watch as one of the soldier's arms sliced down, blade in hand, until her mother was no more than a bleeding corpse.

She could not tell if it was reality or a dream, if she was really sinking into the black depths of a sea she had never seen, or if her sleeping mind was speaking to her. Speaking to her in a language of death and despair that she had never known until now.

Azure, burning. Burning with black fire that swept through any material like it was paper. People writhing in the streets as the flame consumed them, as they breathed it in and could no longer scream as the fire literally burned their lungs. Serena saw her people turn into skeletons in moments, and piles of ash in minutes. She saw her castle burning even from the wall, a great beacon of black replacing the white stone towers. She could feel the heat of the fire on her face, and when she looked down, she realized that she, too, was about to be consumed, and she was glad of it.

She surfaced for just a second and tried to suck in a large breath of fresh air, but something hot traveled down her throat instead, something that scorched her down to her very core. Then she was sinking again, and no matter how much she flapped her arms, she could not lift herself up again, could not even tell where the surface was.

He was the only one left standing. The queen was dead, the city was burning, the castle, a great stronghold, conquered by this enemy. He stood and faced it now: the dark army. He had skills, oh, so many skills, so many weapons, and so much yearning. Yearning to kill each and every creature that opposed him. Each and every creature that had taken the things he loved from him, leaving him nothing but this husk. This loathsome, deadly husk.

He twirled one of his knives between his fingers and whistled a happy tune, as if he had not a worry in the world. And he didn't, anymore. He was about to leave this world, and he had never been happier to embrace that end. But he had every intention of taking as many of these soldiers down with him as he could.

And so he started forward, shouting out a war cry that he knew would go unanswered, slashing through the soldiers in front of him like they were nothing. And they were. They were nothing to him; not human, not immortal, not even any sort of living creature. They were monsters, beasts of darkness, with no souls, no hearts, nothing to feel with, nothing to give them morals or emotions or anything that mattered.

He chopped through their bodies with tears streaming down his face. He hated them. He hated them. He had never hated anything more than he hated these things that had destroyed his entire world, everything that his life had stood for, everything that made his heart sing with meaning and purpose and love.

He was in the very midst of the dark army when he met Serena's gaze. His shock in that moment was immense, so immense that it caused Serena's feet to move towards him, her arms extended in front of her to try to stop what was about to happen. She had just watched her mother die, she could not see this, could not watch Tarin...