Accursed Wars of Immortalis

Chapter 3: The Realm of Chaos

Flann awoke feeling nauseous. She could not move or sense anything, as her body was still recovering from a comatose state. As her perception slowly returned to her, she could smell the acrid, arid air, and hear screams, some panicked, others, agonizing. Her vision returned slowly, revealing a sky, dark  and thick-clouded. She lifted her head. Flann was lying flat on a rough rocky hill, and before her stretched an endless expanse of lava, an agitated pool of fiery orange and yellow. It was the Sea of Flames. 

Near the shore where countless human figures, immobile and shoulder-deep in the molten rock. A few Maledicti were chasing down a few victims of the curse, as an older brother chases his younger, turbulent relative. None had noticed Flann had awoken. She watched someone be lifted off his feet by a Maledicti and be taken into the lava, where the demon cast a spell upon him. From that moment forth, the cursed human thrashed around in the lava, unable to move more than his torso. 

She looked at her own body, which had been altered by the curse. She, like the blacksmith, was now composed of the partly solidified lava. Somehow, her bones felt cold, even if she knew her flesh was hotter than any human's. She still wore the bloodied and damaged armour that she had been cursed in.

"Flann, is that you?" asked a voice to her right.

Flann lay among several victims of the Maledicti. The voice belonged to one of them, to a figure whose face Flann found quite handsome despite being altered by the curse. The figure had a spiky mass of metallic black hair, wore a mail shirt torn above the heart, and the rings were coated in glistening blood. She recognized his voice, although it was also slightly raspier.

"Is that you, Walgen?" she inquired, careful not to raise her voice.

"Yes."

Another voice sounded from behind Flann, that of the High Priest Caron. 

"Listen, you two, we must hide from those demons before they root us in the lava. On my signal, I want you to follow me. Try to wake up those around you, but do not wait tarry."

As he finished that sentence, one of the Maledicti glanced over. It growled, throwing the human it had grabbed into the lava at the feet of one of his kin before marching towards those it had seen speaking. 

"No time. Run." hissed Caron.

The three of them, plus a half-dozen who had woken nearby, ran. Caron led them away from the shore, into a strange forest of ashbone trees. The ground was uneven and cover in fragments of ashbone from the imitation-vegetation. The trees were several dozen meters high, and instead of branches and leaves, had ashbone spikes. Flann gasped as they passed by a cursed victim impaled on a low branch. It looked up as they passed by, reaching out and gurgling at them.

Behind them, one of those who had followed was caught; the Maledicti was faster than them and moved swiftly among the trees. It caught a second by the neck and dragged them back to the shore.

Caron continued running for several minutes, but soon all were exhausted. They stopped beneath a particularly large ashbone tree, one whose lower branches were large, fan-like and were weaved with long fallen tree fragments to form a dome – rudimentary tent, two meters high and four in diametre. The branches were bent, so that the tent was formed with the trunk near the wall, and the opening at the opposite side.