The hands rise from the sea of flesh and blood. The dead turn into the undead. And in the center of this mess of mass and flesh, is a man, clad in bright silver armor, eyes like the sky, and hair blonde and flowing, he stood alone. In his hand was but a simple white katana, its edges finely defined in the confines of black space, with its image feeling almost aetherial, like a weapon from myth in the hands of a man on a destined path. The smell of the eagles picking at the dead bodies bloody and flesh as he walked across this battlefield. His eight patrons following in his wake, watching his every move as he raised his sword to the sky.
[Sword 4: Sword of Souls]
"Seeking souls!" he called out, as the sky shifted into a sudden storm of white clouds.
The faces of the dead, the bodies of the condemned, hundreds of thousands of souls rained down from the heavens, fast into the flesh of the dead, turning their unliving corpses into puppets of their past lives.
---
I awoke in my bed with that dream pulsating through my head. I don't know why I have that dream, or why it replays that same way over and over again every night, but all I know is that it has to do with my savor. The man on that hill, that had to be him, the blonde man who saved me that day five years ago. I sat up on my small thatched bed and looked across my wall of brick and clay. The sunlight shining through the small slits in the ceiling.
"Todays the day," I mumbled to myself as I got up from my bed and walked over to my large leather bag in the corner of the room, which was packed with my things.
Today was the day. The day after so long of working and gathering enough money to be set and sturdy. Today was the day of my journey out of Elisese and into the big unknown world. But I wasn't leaving out of pure incompetence and unknowity. I knew where I was going and what I was going to do once I was free. I was going to find him. The man who saved me five years ago. The man of blue sky eyes and golden sun hair. The leader of the Shorebringers. My liberator of enslavement. I know he's out there and I need to find him, even if it's the last thing I do on this forgotten earth.
For the past five years, I have been working toward this very day. All the training and working as a porter across the slums. I carried all types of things, all types of people, to all types of places around the Kingdom. But I never left the Kingdom of Elisese once, not once. I reserved that moment for my journey. For the day of my awakening into the outside world.
So after spending five years training and building up my body and legs, I became strong enough to fight on my own and make my own decisions. I walked across the cobblestoned streets and straw houses, the stares of onlookers as they watched me pass by. My suited-up outfit in the shadows of the morning sun, with my grey cloak glistening a clean white shine and my leathered strapped under armor that fit snug above my cloth clothes.
After an hour of walking through the slums and small towns confined within this walled of Kingdom. I finally reached the gate to the outside world. Its wall of great magnitude, almost on par with the mountains surrounding its entrapped slums. But this wall to me looked more like a bridge. A bridge to the outside world, to my new destined journey of far-off adventure. So as I stepped past its lumbering tall metal gates and long spiring stone walls, I saw the sands of time past its gaze. Its orange waves, its flat distances, of towering hills and cracked surfaces. It was like a dream I had seen only from upon those cliffs. A hurdle of heat and death that I would have to cross.
But obviously, I wasn't going to travel across the sand on my own. Why do you think I saved up so much money for this trip? Do you think I wouldn't come unprepared? I had set up an appointment with a merchant's wagon to cross the sand roads all the way to another Kingdom. The Trading Kingdom of Forr.
---
I got on the wagon early in the morning with my leathered bag hung around my neck. Then before doing anything I first checked my things just to make sure I wasn't missing a single item.
Brush. Check. Match kit. Check. Cooking set. Check. Sewing kit. Check. My trusty old notebook from back in the day. Check. Pack of chewable jerky. Check. Extra clothes. Check. And finally my most prized possession, my dagger. Check.
I pulled out my dagger to bask in its glorious golden shine. It was a golden dagger, with a design of flowers pecked and picked from the deepest gardens of heaven. This dagger was special to me. It wasn't really a gift or something that someone gave me. It was more of a memoriam of that day five years ago.
I stole it from the vines of that stressful night five years ago. When the electric essence of the air floated along the corridors and the silent mausoleum of death echoed from the kitchen. All I saw while trying to escape the noble's manor was but a shining dagger hung on the wall, right between the mantle of the doorway and the door leading out into the open outside night. But this dagger wasn't some last-minute pick, it was something that I saw every day while cleaning the halls. I dreamed of wielding it, using it, but that dream never came true, until that night when the golden-haired man and the man in black freed me.
And even now, after all these years, I haven't been able to let go of its shining blade. Though it may be dull after the hundred years on that shelf I still revel in its marvelous beauty. I always kept it by my side, just in case I meet that man again and I could give it to him, just as he gave it to me.
I fell asleep in the wagon as it rode across the empty duned desert. The distance echoing into a thunderous shake as its wheels traveled across the pathed path between Kingdoms. The wagon was wide in length, with a cloth tent-like roof that curved in an arch, and four wooden wheels that spun perfectly in sync. at the front of the cart, four horses hurdled across the sand as cracked rocks splashed against the wooden underbelly of the cart, giving it a constant pitter-patter below.
Along with me on this ride were two other strangers, each in brown cloaks much like mine. One was a woman and the other was a man. They were both about the same age as me. The woman had thick brown hair and was kinda cute, while the other was a thin more nervous man, who would always awake in the middle of the night angry. On the front of the wagon sat a stuffed-up old man in a heavy burly jacket and tall black boots. On his head, he wore a sharp metal helmet and a long feather that flapped in the wind. He controlled the four horses that carried us, three passengers, into the sandy dunes ahead.
So as the night darkness flung overhead, and the chilling cold began to seep in through the open hole on the backside of the wagon, we three fell asleep to the chilling songs of the wonderous wind.