Hellas

Prologue

The dimly lit figure observed the vast journey behind her. Badlands and wastelands with dead and broken trees and people strewn haphazardly. Well. there were no dead people. She stood atop a barren hill, black muddy combat boots crushing what little foliage desperately held on to life. The dry almost scalding breeze rustled her raggedy black clothes and her black shawl, gently whistling around the brittle rusted guardless short sword she clutched strongly in one hand. She pulled off her shawl to scowl disappointedly at the landscape, revealing her rich crimson hair which glistened in the red setting sun. No one event caused this. 'This is just what happens when you believe so deeply to the point of ignorance that human nature is somehow peaceful,' she thought. 'We fucking killed the gods.'

It was not a fair fight. The gods were essentially massacred. Immortal all-powerful beings vanquished by barbaric but unpredictable mortals wielding dangerous weapons. Weapons capable of killing gods. Weapons capable of killing death. Weapons capable of turning the kindest of people into feral power-hungry savages. She pulled her look of disgust away from the horrors behind her, but one jealous thought slipped through, 'they were able to die.' She cast her gaze ahead. To the reason she devoted two years of her life to find and travel to. The only thing keeping her alive- apart from the fact the gods were fucking dead.

Her eye was set upon a dilapidated crumbling temple. She took the final few steps across the dead sacred earth and entered the marble structure. She walked down the chiseled steps to the pristine statue of Apollyon displayed in the center. Of all the True-speakers to be the last one to live, of course it had to be the True-speaker of Apollyon. She placed a badly scarred hand at the foot of the 'statue' and for the first time in years she was able to smile. This was the moment she was waiting for. The machination slowly rose from its kneeling stance and whirred as a guttural but very mechanical noise emanated from it and echoed throughout the temple, shattering the marble walls and caving the structure in on itself as the crude replica of Apollyon rose, it's brass head smashing through the collapsing ceiling. She held up her other arm, a crude but functional metal approximation of an arm, to shield her eyes as the marble roof fell around them, leaving them undisturbed.

She looked up at the machine after the dust settled, broken pieces of the desecrated temple strewn everywhere. She asked the request she was begging for her entire life. The machine cranked its jointed neck down and cracked open its jaw piece as if to respond but said nothing, its immense gold eye sparking. It slowly raised the car-sized hand on its gigantic arm and held it out open in front of her. Something inside the body of it started clanking and a constant mechanical groaning surrounded them. The outstretched segmented hand started to produce a black glowing sphere, channeling the energy of the ironically dead Apollyon.

Just as the black sphere was about to finish, the whirring stopped. The True-speaker of Apollyon dropped as its arm separated, breaking into 13 separate pieces. It had a massive hole carved out of its head. The machine fell over and shattered into its separate components, burying the broken temple in its clockwork innards. She fell in despair. She was at the feet of the last thing that could save her, that would stop everything. But her last hope was destroyed. Hellas's last hope was broken. Broken like the gods, broken like the world, broken like she wants so badly to be. But now Hellas can never die. And she wishes with every morsel of life she has that she could. Hellas has always wanted one thing, to die.