A Fallen Hero
Rohiko was riding out onto the plains north of the Jupiter Capitol. She was racing to meet Kinshou. She rode until her steed refused to ride anymore. She was nearly an eighth of the way to the Mars Capitol already and it hadn't been more than a day. She was making great progress but she had no idea how far Kinshou was, he could already be past her for all she knew, she realized then just how irrational she had been. "Dammit... That was stupid!" As if that was obvious enough. She decided to set up camp for the sun was falling quickly and she was losing daylight fast. She pitched a tent and started a fire. "I wonder why I actually convinced myself to ride out here... Was the site of my armies training so important? Why...?"
She sat by the fire and kept herself warm for a few hours until she had fallen asleep right where she sat. She was tired from thinking so much and had no idea that she had fallen asleep. The night had grown very cold, but she hadn't noticed, she was an adept of wind after all. She had acute hearing for she had trained herself to hear voices in the wind, but she had missed the footsteps of death.
She was dreaming of life it self. The struggles she had faced growing up and the ones she faced even now. She literally analyzed her life in a matter of minutes, but while she slept, it seemed like a millennia. Her dreams stopped... Everything was motionless in her world... Then she saw her mother... Her father... They had both died long ago. They had died in a village that was attacked by one man. He wore black. He was called the messenger of Death. He had killed her parents without any reason and many more after that. But she was looking right at her parents! They were standing right in front of her... Nothing around her was moving, everything stood motionless. She just stared at her parents... Her mother looked right at her, "Don't be afraid." Rohiko couldn't speak, she opened her mouth but nothing came out. She leapt forward, trying to scream the entire way. She threw out her arm and then her voice was heard, "Mother!" Everything went so slow, she couldn't wait; she was finally re-united with her parents! A tear flowed down her cheek and floated off into the darkness behind her. She was smiling. She was smiling, a real smile, for the first time since she could remember. Her mother and father were smiling back at her. Her mother reached her hand out to meet her daughter. Rohiko was crying, smiling, and laughing... She couldn't believe what she was about to do! She pushed her arm out as far as she could. Her hand was only a few inches away. "Mother! Fathe-" Her mother's arm was disappearing. "Mother!" Her mother was still smiling at her, "Don't be afraid." Her mother was leaving her again. She looked to her father, he was disappearing too. She had not thought of what might happen when she awoke, but as she dreamt, her dreams shifted... She was falling, further and further from her loved ones. Her face was filled with shock and emptiness. Her dreams turned into nightmares. She went from living her life in a dream to not living at all... She was seeing images of chaos and darkness, life turning to death. Then she didn't see anything for a few moments... Emptiness... She realized that her dreams weren't of her own doing!
"AAAAHH!" She awoke screaming... Sweating...
"What was that?" She looked around. She was visibly shaking and she couldn't stop it no matter how hard she tried. Rohiko looked at her hands, tried to move them, and noticed that they were completely numb.
"What is this? It isn't even that could out." She knew something was amiss. Rohiko tried to stand, but her legs were numb too, which caused her to fall right back down.
She looked at the fire embers and focused her energies. The embers burst into flames instantly (Rohiko pulled all of the nitrogen from the air around the embers). The sudden burst of light revealed demons of the night, dozens of them, surrounding Rohiko. The demons stumbled backwards from the quickly revealed light.
Rohiko forced herself to stand, she was shaky, but the hot air was warming her fast. "Dammit! Go back to Hell, where you belong!" She pulled out her long sword with her still numb fingers and put it in the fire, she pulled it out and it was in flames. Her hands were un-numbing even faster and she could actually hold the sword. She swung at the nearest visible Demon and struck it square in the shoulder, but the monstrosity didn't even flinch. "What!" She kicked it in the chest and ripped her sword out of its flesh. She expected some sort of grotesque fluids to fly out with it, but all that came out was darkness. Her dream was becoming a reality! She stumbled backwards and tried to catch her breath, but it had been stolen by the sheer horror she was facing. She was facing Death it self...
The creatures moved in, closing off her chances to escape. They had grown in numbers; they were spawning right in front of her. They were the source of the cold she had felt. They had no feeling, they had no hearts...
Her sword was losing its flame. The fear was consuming her...
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" The air began to swirl and it turned to ice. She lowered her head and her sword... She knew that this was it...
Why... What is the purpose for this... the ice turned into swirling spikes. This can't be it... Can it? the light around her was closing in. The ground was shaking, getting ripped apart around her and she hadn't paid it any attention. I can't feel my limbs any more... the swirling spikes turned into a tornado of ice. The winds hummed as they spun around her, creating a supernatural Orchestra playing its song of despair. A tear streaked down her face and floated off into the darkness. She watched as it fell... I'm not afraid anymore... Mother... the ice tornado was spinning faster than any other force of wind ever seen, even that of the lighthouse. The winds hummed loud enough to bring a person to their knees. Rohiko stood there. She looked up. "I'm not afraid anymore..." The Demons walked right into the tornado and were ripped to shreds. More came. "I'm not afraid anymore." She raised her hands out to her sides and cried out to the skies, "I'm not afraid, Mother!" Her sword blinked out and fell to the ground.
A man was walking home from a trip to a nearby stream back to the Jupiter Lighthouse. He looked up and watched in the distance as he heard thunder rising from the earth, "What? What is that?" He saw the tornado from miles and miles away and gazed upon it as it swirled and ripped apart the earth with enough force to destroy the Jupiter capitol even if the adepts had tried to stop it. He fell to his knees in shock and horror as he heard a booming voice erupt from the Hellish vortex. He tried to tear his eyes away from the sight, but he couldn't... He dropped his pale of water... "Oh my God..." The tornado of ice imploded for a moment and all seemed as if it had settled down, then after the man watched for a few moments, he saw as the earth itself burst into an explosion that could be seen across the entire plain. Ice was cast in all directions and the ground was thrown into the air in giant mounds. The man watching this supernatural event was gasping, heaving really, his eyes grew large and he had lost his breath. Such force would have wiped out an entire clan... He fell face first into the ground and gasped for air. After he caught his breath, he did not stand, he just lay there... Motionless and crying... He knew, in the back of his mind, what had happened and yet he was clueless. He lifted his head and looked at the stars in the sky, he had no idea why he did, but he just stared. The man noticed a bright star, it seemed... new? He couldn't quite figure it out, but he continued to stare like a mindless child. Then something flashed in his eyes. It was Rohiko.
The crater was larger than the one that Kinshou had made a few weeks previously. It was the largest explosion ever seen. Around the crater were bits and pieces of the Demons that had spawned for whatever reason to kill Rohiko.
The sun was rising now and the pieces of the Demons were disappearing. They turned to dust in little "poufs."
The sun revealed the size of the crater, slowly. At the bottom of the crater was a hilt, the hilt to a long sword, half lodged into the ground...