Ossmat.
The memories of the attack became a dark blur in his mind. Twice his Survivors of Ossmat bravely attacked the horrors of the Daimons, both times bloody defeats. After the battle was definitively lost he looked to rally the survivors of his Survivors, but couldn't find them. He remembered vaguely stumbling around the charred and blackened battlefield that had once been a proud city with outlaying estates, calling out half-remembered names, his voice falling flat as if he was trapped in a prison cell.
Black clouds blotted out the sun. The screams of the damned filled the world. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils. It smelled like roasting pork. He retched several times over himself, head pounding in pain and confusion. He hadn't been wounded, not like the Emperor had (two days ago? four? he couldn't tell anymore), but he felt plagued and weakened all the same. He felt as though he were drowning and his armor was dragging him down further from the sun. Was it day or night?
The triumphant noises of the Daimons drove him to make haste away from this blighted place. When last he received reports, the capital had been moved to Vozzessdor. He knew that was to the southeast. But there were no stars to guide him, no scouts to help him, and even the roads were nearly obliterated with rubble and corpses. Everywhere there was darkness; he could barely see. He tried to follow his ears, to stay away from the beastly Daimons and their helpless victims, but sound played tricks on him. Once he thought he was well away from them when suddenly a loud, inhuman howl pierced the air and he saw dim, shadowy shapes and flickering flames ahead. He stumbled and turned around yet again, now trying to go where the rubble and destruction was least.
But destruction was everywhere. He wondered when he might wake from this terrible dream, this nightmare worse than anything he had ever experienced before.
At one point he thought he came upon his old estate. The peasant huts had been torn down, the walls broken, the manor burned, the crops dead in a black field, but it looked familiar somehow. The stacks of skulls and the corpses spit on pikes surrounding the old manor house like a palisade was a new addition.
He thought he knew now which way was southeast, though.
Thirst and hunger and exhaustion set in deep, but he kept walking, praying to gods he no longer could believe in to give him strength. He felt dirtier than he ever had been before. Around him was death, ahead of him was death, and death was in him, too. Each step was harder than the last.
I have to keep moving, was all he could think.
