The peaceful kingdom of Valrathia was invaded by the anger-lead Explorers from across the ocean. They took rule over their land and exploited their pacifist nature.
Seeking shelter from that terror, Valrathians turned to their legends, specifically...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Thorne let go of Althea as he felt all the emotions again. The anger flowed like a river. A river of fire and pure heat. In his hand formed a sword of this cold light. As he stood up, he forcefully swung through all the guards surrounding him. I wasn't swift. The blade ripped through their dismembering bodies unevenly. Three of them collapsed, dying on the spot. The rest were left bleeding. He wasn't satisfied yet. There were more guards around the arena. They were trying to capture the remaining children, as most of the wolves were already dead. He blinked around them, zapping through the long distances in a flash. He appeared in front of the lavender archer ripping the sword through his legs, making him collapse to the ground. Then there was a swordsman whose face split into two parts. With every subsequent blink, Thorne swung his sword and left another guard on the ground, bleeding to death or dead already.
Thorne heard the surrounding noise. People from the audience were shouting. In fear, or in disgust. They despised him. They feared him. From their fear, he fed. But their disgust felt like a mystery to him. Why did the explorers come here? It wasn't any of their business to do this. To kill, to conquest. How egotistical, and how self-centered you have to be to want to own that much of other people's free will. That thought of them. It disgusted him as well. Right now he felt towards them just like they felt towards him. It was the same sort of emotion they lived on, but Thorin was different. He didn't want to own them like they wanted to own him and his people.
-I want them all dead. - he thought, lifting into the air as the cold force of energy bursted out of his eyes in the form of a sharp destructive beam. It moved through the audience, tearing their bodies apart, moving alongside the running crowd like an uneven knife through a cold, meaty carcass. People split in twos, disemboweled, left to die in pain. Thorne couldn't see any of it, for his eyes were blinded by the tool that caused that destruction by itself. That cold glow. He could only hear the screams. It felt good, just for that second - killing hundreds to thousands of people, who just thought of his whole kind as worms. He levitated above the arena as people were fleeing the scene. The King and Queen were trying to run from their platform, but he got to them before they had the chance. They died just like anyone who stood there. The beam soon disappeared, and so did Thore's life force. He lost his consciousness, leaving his body falling to the ground. In that fall, Thorne felt satisfied. For that short second, he felt good. Panning over the crowds, most of the people were dead as the Colosseum's audience swept in blood. Those who survived were just running for their lives, following the orders of their instincts. Thorne dropped to the ground. He was still in his body, he just didn't have the power to lift his eyelids. The screams, the footsteps, the horror. Suddenly, he felt he wasn't alone. Another person lifted him up and ran with his body in his arms. After some time, he opened his eyes. He saw the face of his brother.
-I'm gonna get us out of here. - Elowen said, as he noticed Thorne's weak gaze. He ran through the arena, closing the distance to the tunnels they were kept in. He ran and ran, trying to do nothing more than escape, when the lavender archer was lying on the ground bleeding out from his wounds where his legs used to be. He gathered all his strength to not let them flee the Colosseum. The archer took his bow and, with all his remaining life force, shot an arrow in their direction. It was one swift blow. Like it was always meant to be. The arrow pierced Elowen's kneecap from behind, immobilizing him and destroying the artery in his left leg. He tumbled to the ground, letting go of Thorne's recovering body. Elowen's head hit the ground, almost losing consciousness. Struggling, Thorne tried to walk up to him. Only then he heard the surrounding silence. Everyone who remained in the Colosseum was dead. The blood from the audience was flowing down the arena's pit walls. He tried to pick up his brother, but he couldn't. He was too weak.
-Go. - he said, lifting his head. It was covered in blood and sand. He hit the ground pretty hard.
-I cannot leave you. I've let too many people down already. - Throne said in desperation. Only then noticing the pool of blood his brother laid on. - Now, come on! - he tried to lift his brother up, again, but he still couldn't. His muscles hurt profusely. They gave off a feeling as if they were about to tear.
-You didn't. - Elowen said, focusing his gaze on the tunnels - Look. - there were more Valrathians there. They were fighting with the guards who were running from the arena. When Elowen managed to get out, he helped others as well. They picked up swords and attacked right back at the oppressors for the first time in months since the invasion began. It wasn't a fair fight - Valrathians were never trained to fight, but it wasn't hard to adapt to the feral ways of The Kingdom. Thorne looked at his brother, but he was gone, too. In his dead eyes, he saw something else than sorrow for the first time. After gaining Han'thun's power, he started to understand more. Death gained a different meaning to him, it was just a subconscious feeling. It wasn't clear, yet.
Thorne escaped the colosseum and disappeared into the rural outskirts of the Valrathian Capital. After these events, a revolution began on their continent. Many Valrathians started rebelling against their captors. Violence they caused has risen to a horrible amount. Murder, kidnapping, theft, arson. These crimes went both ways. Amongst all of them, Thorne still felt he was different. Valrathians were no killers. They weren't like the explorers before that. Even if he was the one who started this revolution, he had the power to end this as well. He could free Valrathians at any moment, but with all the violence that they started causing, what would the world look like after they were finally free?
He felt so many powerful emotions. Hatred, anger, sadness... but in them there was power. He wanted to slaughter any living creature that came to Valrathia with The Kingdom's expedition. Slaughter their leaders, slaughter their mindless civilians. All of them are puppets. They didn't deserve to live. They didn't understand how to live properly and they decided to project their idiocracy onto a land mentally advanced on a significantly higher level. They don't understand their flaws. They don't understand their mistakes, and they probably never will.
-They destroyed everything so they don't deserve to live! - a voice surfaced in his head. Was it his voice?
He saw a memory of how he told the Han'thun legend to Althea. Her sweet smile, her never-ending joy and optimism. She was like that till the bitter end. What if on the other side there is such Althea. A child born in the Kingdom. A sweet innocent child, not cursed with barbaric ideology. At least not yet. Does he really want to spread hatred among their children, just like the Kingdom spread hatred among them? The same hatred that occupied the souls of so many Valrahians right now. Is it worth losing yourself like that? Lose your identity. Become the same as the enemy, to accomplish what you know is right.
Walking through the crowd of moving people in Rathdar's city center, looking at their faces, he knew that he could decide to start his purge at this exact moment. Right here. Right now. He held that power in his hands. The power to cleanse the world.
He drifted off into his mind, wondering.
Blood, tears, and mindless human flesh.
-This world is disgusting. - he thought... but was it his thought?
