Coldsnap: Storm's Call

Prologue, Part 4: Banished To Limbo

This is Part 4 of the Prologue for Coldsnap: Storm's Call. In Part 3, we bore witness to Alpin, Flamestar, Hydraxus, Sledge, and Galeforce's ill-fated attempts to reach out to the people of Atlantis and try to turn them back to the light. However, their plans end up going wrong when Galeforce, once again overcome by cynicism and anger towards the Atlanteans' vices, drowns the civilization completely, thus putting all five of the Sect Leaders in the crosshairs of The Ascendant himself. This time, we meet the quintet as they are summoned to The Ascendant's Sanctuary, awaiting their punishment for such a failure.....

***********************************************************************************************

At The Ascendant's Sanctuary, The Ascendant immediately began railing against the five Sect Leaders the moment they showed up, angrily pacing back and forth in front of their line formation the whole time.

"The callousness.....the tactlessness......the sheer loss of life!" the deity exclaimed as everyone except for Galeforce looked down shamefully. "I explicitly order you to try and redeem the city.....and you all sink it?! Who is responsible for this?!"

"I am," Galeforce revealed, stepping forward.

The Ascendant was practically seething. "Why?"

"Had you been on that island city today, you might also have known the things that we saw. The ruin which they have invoked on themselves. The hole which they have dug......for themselves. And now, the ruins that dot their once-majestic city; again, which they have brought upon themselves. But you weren't there, now, were you?"

"Silence," The Ascendant ordered. "You know nothing of how much power I had to exert in order to create you, the other Sect Leaders, and the rest of the Mage Aspects. And now I think I may have wasted some of it. I required time to rest, and I thought I could leave things up to you.....but I suppose I was wrong."

"Ascendant, you are too soft!" Galeforce yelled. "You allow your clouds of optimism to block the lights of true reality! You refuse to know when someone is beyond redemption! Believe me.....one of these days, that pacifism will become your weakness." He then stopped for a bit. "Ask the other Sect Leaders. They, too, were caught up in the Atlanteans' hostility. They will tell you what they saw."

The Ascendant then looked to his other creations. "Well? What say all of you?"

"I seem to recall running into a rather interesting drunkard during our trip," Frost King Alpin recalled with a chuckle. Galeforce believed the Ice Sect leader was talking about the inebriated Atlantean, but much to his sadness, the Frost King's speech took a different turn.

"Yes.....dare I say he was too drunk to even make proper decisions. When he summoned a gigantic tidal wave to wipe out all of Atlantis, I thought for sure he had lost it."

Galeforce gulped. "A.....Alpin.....?"

"I mean, even I couldn't freeze the thing, and I'm the Ice Sect Leader," Alpin continued to point out. "There was literally no talking with him; just immediate extermination."

Galeforce looked like he was on the verge of tears after hearing how the Frost King had insulted and condemned him so. But this "trial" wasn't over just yet.

The Ascendant nodded understandably at Alpin's testimony, then turned his head to Flamestar. "And you?" he inquired. "What do you know about this?"

"I regret to inform you that I got into quite the spat with some of King Atlas's workers. I have to say.....it sometimes seemed as though their passion for laziness burned even brighter than all of my flames combined," Flamestar snarked. "A part of me appreciates him for getting rid of those slackers.....but I think he went too far."