K L C S
EXTRACT: THE FAINT STENCH OF TOBACCO WANES
He closed his eyes once more, his mind fading as he was crushed and battered, murdered before the Knight and crumbling onto ash. The Nephilim expected to awaken once more, yet he was not granted that boon. He, for his deeds, would not be granted that blessing.
Amidst an inferno was conjured in. He heard it before he could even gaze upon his surroundings - the countless beating of drums, quaking and tearing at his tears like sharpened daggers. Plumes of smoke and ash cradled the distant land as it stood ruptured and broken. The golden eyes peered across in the far-away spines left in this turmoil; to his right laid countless corpses and bodies, tangled bones left and decaying, no response of life within them; the sanity forwent from their ruinous cadavers, unanchored from life and death only to come husks of what once was. Sigils and ruined flags laid broken and tarnished at the volatile battlefield. Alas, in this infinite expanse of wroth was little seen - the thick smoke and fog limiting his eyes, the only illumination being that of brazen flames in their beauty flickering within the skies.
A haggard breath was taken from his voice, a scream that held no sound. Idly, his broken and writhing hands met a broken piece of oak alongside the tatters of a flag; that of his sigil, the Three-Headed Drake. He'd lift it upon the sky, the ruined mark of his kin arisen with vest and intrepidity as he lumbered forth, almost limping and crawling in this painful state. His feet met the faces of the corpses, all containing the same guise that he did; that of the Nephilim, Alistair. His gaze met the sky, countless inscriptions and scriptures adrift in this orange sea of interpretation, gnawed on by wrath and hate. The same fumes of smoke trailed from his lips as he crawled onward without direction or purpose, merely the need to suffer and wait to be freed onto the material world once more.
The pain was unlike what he had felt, the heat burned and seared his flesh. The burning and broken bodies rendered his limbs onto charcoal and stone. And yet, he would not be granted the bliss of death nor the freedom of mind. The same flames that he conjured gnawing at his flesh like eels. In this hell, Alistair was trapped until the drake shrine allowed him freedom once more. The same thoughts resurfaced; would he remember, what of his comrades and what of his Heralds? - what would become of them as he was slain, awaiting to reform once more. No answer was granted, merely the embers and the crackling flames.
All the while, a crimson eye peered from above. Unblinking, unwavering as it was forced to relive this moment of pain and punishment for eternity, waiting for the next time that the Nephilim perished; for what felt like weeks was merely just a day.