Leonidas walked through nightmares.

His sleep was uninterrupted, though that was not for lack of his subconscious doing its best to act counter to that desire. His dreams consisted of remembered conflicts, nightmares, and the horrors of a five year campaign fighting against hell for the right to exist. He recalled the massacres, the lost lives, the companions who’d fallen, and the screams of the dying when he cut through them like a hot knife through soft butter.

Leonidas had been more than simply powerful on Elatra, he’d been a force of nature. Where he’d stepped he had brought the fury of an invaded world upon the edge of his sword, and had strode amidst the calamitous remnants of a tarnished land to deliver justice upon the invaders that had sought its destruction. When in his waking mind, he could distract himself from those memories—and on Elatra, Lyara had asked Caricus to create special mixtures that allowed him to have dreamless sleep.

On Earth, which was now Terra, there was no such escape from the nightmares.

The one that occupied him in the early morning light was calmer than most.

Leonidas walked through a barren field, its crops blackened and soil tarnished by the demonic blight extending out from the distant Abyssal Spire. His eyes swept the once-green fields and long-dead plants with a mixture of sadness and disgust. It had been two months since he’d completed his training with Miranda and been sporadically deployed against Azrageth’s forces, and every day seemed to bring some new horrific revelation.

The brutal training regime that Miranda had put him through had seemed excessive to Leonidas prior to his true experience to the war against the Demon Lord, and while he now understood its necessity, the simple truth was that he was yet to face anything that properly challenged his power—power that was, by all accounts, historically incomprehensible even at its nascent level of acquisition.

“These leagues of farmland once fed an entire city,” Caricus said sadly from his side, and Leonidas turned to regard the sorrowful Archmage when he spoke. “Twelve thousand people lived on and worked the endless plains of fertile earth that once covered this desolate place.”

“{Their deaths would not have come easy,}” Lyara commented quietly in Haelfennyr from Leonidas’ other side, and he glanced at the Princess to his left when she spoke. “{Many would have tried to resist, and the Demons would likely have made brutal sport out of the slaughter.}”

The language of the Haelfenn—High Elves—was one he was still learning, but the Princess’ at first begrudging and gradually more enthusiastic tuition, combined with what appeared to be an arcane gift for language he’d received upon transmigration, made learning the language very easy.

Leonidas’ eyes turned back to the despoiled earth under his alabaster sabatons, and he peered at the blackened and rotted soil grimly. In some strange way, he could feel the death energy suffusing the land and robbing the fertility and life from the otherwise ideal farmland underfoot. The Abyssal Spires spread a malediction in the form of the Demonic Blight, one which was anathema to any growth or sustenance within their radius.

It didn’t matter what manner of wards, spells, or protective measures were taken by the local populace either. When the Abyssal Spires were raised, through profane rituals and brutal sacrifice; the world withered in their proximity. Reality itself grew weak, and while some magicks also grew more powerful; anything aspected to life or nature became noticeably weaker.

Light Magic, despite all these factors, grew stronger. It had been hypothesized by Caricus that the divine force reacted to the blighted air like an opposing force, but Leonidas’ eyes had glazed over when he’d gone into a lengthy lecture about arcane theory and the laws of divine polarity.

Dead grass and brittle dirt crunched underfoot as Leonidas advanced, and a sense of filth pervaded his senses as he strode among the remnants of the farmland.

He opened his mouth to make mention of how eerie the area was, and then paused when a different sensation pinged his senses. His time under Miranda had focused on many different disciplines to best harness the power of his Radiance Core, but one of the most important was his capacity for sensing the nature and by extension the presence of demons.

That same sense was now ramping up rapidly within him.

“Guys?” he called warily. “I don’t think we’re alo—”

A cry of alarm from Lyara drew his attention, and Leonidas spun to see the blonde ranger staggering backward with her shortswords drawn, and her blue eyes transfixed on the ground beneath her. When he matched the direction of her gaze, Leonidas understood the reason for her alarm immediately.

Grasping, clawed hands were emerging from the soil—and a sudden and blood-curdling shriek from the nearby stretches of decayed fields assaulted their ears a second later. His ‘demonic radar’ roared to full alert, and Leonidas felt a tidal wave of instinctive Light mana flood his channels in what he mentally envisioned as rivers of thick liquid gold.

“Contact!” Caricus roared while raising his staff, and unleashing a red ball of light high into the sky to signal the stretched out Lance of Haelfenn heavy infantry that had accompanied their scouting mission. Miranda had sent them so that Leonidas could gain some experience with the essence of the Blight, but all reports had given a status of abandonment to the fields following the nascent Grand Alliance’s victories in the area.

They had expected the demons to have pulled back to defend the Spire itself.

Clearly, the reports had been wrong—or worse, doctored to give false intelligence.

Winged abominations hung with flayed flesh and marked by immense bat-like wings flew toward their location in a cloud of darkness, identified by the whine of the bone-like spikes on their bodies cutting the air, and the horrifying screams they emitted from their circular, lamprey mouths.

Meanwhile the earth around them continued to erupt with pale-white hands as possessed dead farmers and Tainted—corrupted mortal followers of the Demon Lord—tore themselves from the blackened soil in ever-increasing numbers that seemed intent on surrounding the trio.

“Shriekers Spireward!” Caricus warned loudly as the creatures approached, “and Walkers buried around us, at least five Lances from my pulse-check!”

“{We need to retreat!}” Lyara shouted while cutting down two of the possessed that attempted to attack her.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“We can’t!” Caricus retorted while firing off a blast of lightning, “they’re massing behind us as well!”

“{A trap?!}”

“It seems so,” Caricus confirmed grimly, “but what could have—”

Both the Archmage and the Princess turned to Leonidas at the same time, and his stomach dropped when they did. Of course it was him that had triggered the waiting Demonic forces. The Summoning of the Hero had hardly been a secret on Elatra, and it was only a matter of time before Azrageth learned about it. Why wouldn’t the Demon Lord attempt to test him, or worse, kill him before he could become a real threat? He hadn’t even truly been part of a proper assault, yet.

His mouth turned dry as he drew his Aethersteel Longsword and assumed the ready stance Miranda had drilled into him.

“We need to get Leonidas to safety!”

“{How the hells are we going to do that?}”

“I can telep—”

“NO!” Leonidas cut in abruptly, and layered Lumenkill Swordforce over his blade with a sweep of his right hand, “I can’t keep running away at the first sign of danger. I’m the Hero, right? I have to make a stand!”

He had no idea where the courage came from, nor why he had the need to make the statement, but he also understood that there was an inescapable truth to the sentiment: he had been summoned to Elatra to end Azrageth, not flee every time there was even moderate risk to his continued survival. He understood the ‘get down mr president’ mentality, but damned if he was going to keep playing into it.

His racing heart and sweaty palms notwithstanding, Leonidas had to make a stand.

A sudden eruption of dirt momentarily startled him, and then Leonidas was face to face with three of the possessed, against whom he raised his Swordforce-illuminate blade—and then froze. The perfectly preserved, albeit pale faces of three young children stared up at him and Leonidas felt his resolve turn to water in his mind. Lyara screamed something at him, Caricus called out in warning, and Leonidas’ eyes widened when all three of the possessed launched themselves at him.

Icy fingers, with blackened nails sharpened to razor points, scraped against his white warplate and pulled him to the ground, and Leonidas stared up in horror at the doll-like face of the little girl atop him—her features so disturbingly reminiscent of Kairi when she’d been young.

“You… let… them… kill… us…” her voice rasped in accusation.

Leonidas opened his mouth to cry out a denial.

Black-clawed fingers reached for his eyes.

The world flashed red with a wave of blood…

…and Leonidas snapped awake with a heaving gasp, and snarl of desperate rage. His [Archon’s Psiblade] was gripped in his right hand, shimmering with then haze of [Psionic Swordforce] along its length, and a stranger stood back from him against the wall—with another standing frozen at the door to… where was he?

A wild sense of self-preservation filled Leonidas’ mind, and he felt his [Cataclysm Core] snarling within his solar plexus as he looked rapidly between the two women. The room flashed rapidly, between a place he’d known in Melredor and a place he didn’t. Were they assassins? Had Azrageth sent them? His eyes narrowed in fury, and Leonidas felt himself approaching the verge of unleashing his Cataclysm Mana to run wild and give him the power to punish the fools that dared to try to slay the Hero of Elatra.

The two women seemed to meld and shift in front of his eyes; one moment a pair of Haelfenn maids, the next a pair of sneering demons. An illusion, perhaps? Magic wrought to mess with his vulnerable mind?

“Who sent you?” he demanded furiously, blinking through the flashes of the room while his left hand pooled with psionic power in the form of an awaiting [Psikinetic Blade]. “What is Belithar? Are you his creatures?”

Leonidas’ Core roared more furiously in his solar plexus, and he pointed the sword at the would-be assassins wildly while the room continued to flicker between what was and what is. “Perhaps this is a ploy of Asterithrix? Is this the work of the Succubus Queen? Tell me!”

He threw off the blankets and scrambled to his feet as the closest of the two women beat a hasty retreat toward the door, and blinked rapidly against the bleeding colors occluding his sight. He was the Hero of Elatra! He had survived countless assassins! He had weathered the hunts of the greatest of the Demon Lord’s minions! He had killed the Succubus Queen with his own two hands, and burned the life out of the depraved bitch with Lumenkill Hyperlance at point-blank range!

He had… He was…

The… Hero of… Elatra?

Leonidas’ eyes snapped to the first of the women again, and he realized that she looked vaguely familiar. The bleed effect distorted slowly, and the grip on his sword weakened somewhat. A servant? One of the… one of the maids? A maid from… Ceruviel’s mansion. Yes, he was in Ceruviel’s mansion in the city of Dawnhaven. He was… he had been asleep, he remembered. He’d been sent to bed by the Dusk-Lord, his mentor, after arriving in the… He had fought in the arena, and it… He was in the mansion where she lived. He was safe.

They were maids, he realized, and he was safe.

Leonidas unsteadily lowered his sword-wielding hand, and blinked rapidly against a surge of shock—and a surge of memory. He was safe in the seat of power of his mentor, after returning to Earth, or rather Terra, from Elatra following his final battle with Azrageth. He no longer had a Radiance Core, but a [Cataclysm Core] in its place instead. He was Ceruviel’s squire, and a Copper-ranked Adventurer.

He was safe.

I’m safe, he repeated mentally. I’m safe. I’m safe.

He wasn’t on the battlefield anymore.

“{Where…}” Leonidas swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth, and struggled to breathe through a growing case of tachycardia, “{where is the Princess? I need the… get me the Princess!}”

The maids remained utterly silent at his question, even looking confused by it, and Leonidas in turn felt himself growing somewhat dizzy, and staggered back to stumble down and sit on the edge of the bed. “{I need… I need water, and a…}” he shook his head to clear a sudden ringing his ears, and swallowed back against a shortness of breath. “{Please… I just… get me Lyara. I need the Princess, she has to… I need the… My head is grey. It’s all grey.}”

His voice was slurred to his own ears, and he dropped his [Archon’s Psiblade] with a clatter. “{Go fetch her! Quickly! I need—I have to speak with the Princess, curse you!}”

The maids said nothing, but Leonidas distantly noticed them leaving, and his hands came together over his solar plexus. He squeezed it, and his biceps strained while he dug his nails into his abdominal muscles hard enough that he thought his nails might have pierced the flesh—a distant, and easily ignored feeling when compared to the pounding in his ears. He could hear his own blood. He could hear ringing.

And through it all, his [Cataclysm Core] sang to him.

It sang for the release of armageddon. It sang for the end of all confusion. It offered him the purity of a mind unhampered by weakness or pain, only the sweet clarity of absolute obliteration—of everything, and everyone.

Most importantly, it offered peace; and the final obliteration of him.

And slowly, second by second, Leonidas started to listen.