《Journey of the Cursed》Prologue
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Prologue
A Harengon, a rabbit man, in leather armor is waking up on a clifftop, laying on a pile of sharp rocks and his face in the dirt. He slowly lifts his head up and opens his eyes, the darkness and fog slowly fading from his sight. The surrounding environment is ravaged, trees are felled, splintered, ripped right out of the earth, burnt, burning and withered. As he looks around some more, there are clear signs of battle around him, but he cannot remember what he is doing here.
Upon closer inspection, he isn't alone, he can see 2 others laying on the ground, waking as well. They are both humans and looking about as good as he is, which means that they look like shit. As if they all just got into a boxing match with a Giant monk while absolutely shit-faced.
One of them is a dark-skinned man in heavy armor that screams, “I’m a devout believer of some damned god.” The man is laying over a tree trunk on his far right. The trunk he’s laying on looks like he was launched into and broke on impact. On closer look, it looks like this man went through multiple trees on a lateral line towards a misty mess of shadows.
The second man in front of him looks to be a druid, and he's sitting in what seems to be a small pit of dirt preceded by a lot of smaller patches of ripped out dirt as if he just went water skipping but on the ground. The pit, he is in, is just deep enough for his entire body to be able to lay in, although his right leg is resting on the outside of it. He cannot tell anything more about him and his looks. But Drazdan for some reason doesn't feel like the man can be trusted, it's just a feeling about him.
Ah, here it comes, he’s starting to remember bit and pieces, like his name, Drazdan Fleetfoot. Born to Dolmal Fleetfoot and Enzana Fleetfoot in Simus, a small village on the island of Kerevor. He also remembers that he was on a mission to stop an insane mage… He cannot however recall the name of this mage or that of the members of his party…
Drazdan, slowly lifts himself up into a kneeling position, looks far, far off into the mess of mist and moving shadows in front of him… He starts being able to recognize the shape of a man, the man slowly starts turning toward him. With a flick of his wrist, the mist suddenly dissipates and Drazdan can see a mage in a shiny cloak. He can see that the man is magically moving rocks and stacking them to form into a tower behind him nest to 2nd tower, the rocks used are weird for both of these towers. Each of these rocks was glowing and had elemental effects.
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One looking like it's burning hot, the next shaking the surrounding grass with a breeze, the third seemingly excreting a small amount of water and the last one… Well, the last one actually just looks like a normal rock.
He then hears the Magician speak up. "You're too late. The end of Kerevor is near, and this land shall return to its bare elements. Give up now. And return to nature."
After hearing this, Drazdan looks around him and sees the paladin now standing over the tree trunk he was napping on, pulling out a flaming Greatsword from the ground next to him.
The Druid is also standing, but resting almost all his weight on his staff.
Seeing as he is still the only one not standing, he gets up on his feet, pulling out a saber from the right scabbard on his hip. The one on the left is empty, and he immediately starts looking for his 2nd saber, which is actually in between the rocks behind him.
As Drazdan goes to pick up his saber, the Magician opens a gigantic portal in between the stone towers. He only notices it after hearing the Paladin scream out and turning around.
As he looks at the massive portal, his thoughts are, ‘I do not know what could be big enough to warrant a portal that big… But I certainly don't wanna find out.’
Drazdan determined to not allow the portal to fulfill its purposes gets into a sprinting pose, clicks his boots of speed and takes a nice long breath. Then he starts running as fast as he can upon reaching the 60-foot marker he makes the biggest hop he can make pulling out his 2 sabers midair and starting to spin in a counterclockwise direction, in seconds, he managed to make up the 80-foot distance between him and the magician and smoothly slashing at his neck using his spin to land both hits and hopefully decapitating his prey.
Btu, all he manages to do is rip up the neck of the cloak before being knocked back by a magical barrier, landing on his ass.
The magician stumbles back in shock and yells, "MY CLOAK!! YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR FUTILE ATTEMPT!! THE END IS COMING AND YOU CANNOT STOP IT!!"
And he summons an earth elemental from the portal which proceeds to punch Drazdan in the face twice knocking him back a few more feet taking a knee to stop himself from falling over
"He’s got a bloody magic shield!" Drazdan screams out to inform his teammates
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Both of them become alert and start moving up to support Drazdan, but before they could make it halfway to the mage, a cloud elemental passes through the portal and charges the druid and slapping him with an arm made of air.
The druid attempts to retaliate by swinging his staff at the elemental, but it swiftly dodges the attack, readying itself to attack again.
The paladin, his flaming Greatsword in hand, cusses before running to help his closer ally.
However, he stops once he hears Drazdan and then turns his head to see a gigantic elder earth elemental come through the portal holding a similarly gigantic boulder over its head and its lifeless eyes staring down at the paladin…
It was aiming at him… A boulder the size of the previous earth elemental was being aimed at him… Stunned by this development, the paladin said a silent prayer to his deity and readied himself to run in the opposite direction of the now flying boulder.
Lucky for him, either the elder earth elemental is either blind or bad at throwing, since his projectile had missed by about 10 feet.
Still, the impact sent enough shrapnel out to hit the paladin and leave a few scratches, it also put him on his ass since he couldn't keep his balance on the shaking ground beneath him.
Then a sudden flash of light blue caught everybody's attention and a thunderous clap was heard.
The magician, who still couldn’t believe that a mere mortal had attempted to touch his body, let alone rip up his expensive cloak. Proceeded, to thunderclap Drazdan with great prejudice while he was recovering from the earth elementals uppercut. Sending him a few feet back once again.
Satisfied, the magician proceeded to leave through the portal, announcing that the end of the continent has come. Before phasing through the closing portal.
Thankfully for Drazdan who was now significantly hurt gets up and readies himself, the shock had not been much of a stun as he was for some reason used to being electrocuted.
He immediately activates his Hill Rune followed by the Storm Rune he hides in his right eye socket and follows it up with 2 slashes at the earth elemental, dealing a non-insignificant amount of damage to the 8-foot tall walking pile of dirt.
He then receives a left hook to the face followed by a jab in the guts. Thanks to his Hill rune, Drazdan doesn't even flinch at the hits, and he grins at the elemental.
The fights were intensifying for all of our heroes and none of them were paying any attention to the other or making any attempts to help as they were all busy with their own fight.
That is, until the druid turned into a gigantic octopus… While on land… And attempted to shoot ink onto the air elemental, spraying the ink everywhere…
While it was making aggressive octopus sounds and flailing its limbs everywhere to try and hit his opponent.
This caught the attention of both the paladin and Drazdan catching the paladin off guard to a ground stomp by the elder earth elemental. Thankfully, Drazdan managed to give him a hand by using Runic Shield and saving the paladin some much-needed health. Dodging a few hits from his own earth elemental.
The paladin then proceeded to heal himself and swing his Flaming Greatsword into a crack in the elder's leg, causing a significant amount of damage and angering it.
In its anger, the elder Elemental decided to cause a strong earthquake with a powerful ground slam. With the help of the leftover Runic Shields, neither of them got hit by the earth and rock flying everywhere, but the earthquake still managed to stun the giant octopus and the paladin was knocked out after falling over and hitting his head. Blood was flowing… A lot of blood… Just puddling under his head, he will need help and quick, but they’ll need to take care of the elementals first.
That's when Drazdans vision started to crack and get foggy. His eyes were still wide open, he couldn’t tell why, even with the help of the Storm Rune, which allows him to see the future for a limited amount of time. That Rune was the only reason why he could allow himself to divide his focus between his fight and assisting his partners. But not even his Rune couldn’t tell him what was going on, as his sight slowly but surely fade to black.
The End of the Prologue
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