The flames were familiar, if the city itself wasn’t. But the city wasn’t unfamiliar. It was difficult to tell amid the smoke and flames, but he knew this place. It took him a moment to recall.
Falenas. The forest city of the wood elves. The new home of the sky elves.
Evelynn’s home.
The same panic that filled him nine hundreds years prior threatened to overwhelm him now. He hadn’t known what it was then, the fear he had felt at the prospect of losing Evelynn. He knew it now, though, and he knew it well. That fear spurred him forward now. He had to find her.
He could hear screaming all around him. Screams of fear, of grief, of pain. Screams he desperately wanted to find and help.
He had to find Evelynn.
Trees were falling, flaming branches crashing about him from the canopy above. He pushed forward, doing his best to block out the cries, climbing around, over the flaming debris. Ignore the smell of burning. Trees, plants, flesh—
He tried desperately to shut off his scent receptors. It didn’t work. The smells grew stronger, the screams louder. He continued regardless.
He found his path suddenly blocked as two wyverns crashed through the flaming remains of a garden toward him. They weren’t traditional wyverns. Metal wyverns. Their fangs and claws dripped with red, the blood of their victims, gore splattered across their wings and chests, glinting grimly in the glow of their red cores.
He held forth his hand, prepared to unleash eldritch power at them before they reached him. He was alarmed to find that nothing happened and was promptly thrown to the ground as the robotic wyverns crashed into him. He hit the ground hard, and he was glad for a brief moment that he had no breath to have knocked out of him. Drawing his sword was a task made difficult by the creatures upon him. One had one of his legs in its mouth and was pulling one direction, and the other had hold of the shoulder of his sword arm. He could use both arms equally well, but his sword was stored in the wrong place to make retrieving it now easy to accomplish.
After far too long, he managed to draw his blade, realizing too late that something was wrong. He stabbed at the creature gripping his leg, the blade glancing off its metal casing with a resounding clang.
The creatures responded by biting deeper and pulling harder. The one that had his leg mostly had hold of the roots at his knee and was the primary source of concern to him. His opinion changed considerably when a portion of his chest compartment collapsed, the grinding of stone against metal threatening to be his death knell.
He slashed wildly at the wyvern at his shoulder, hacking desperately at the gaps in the plating around its neck. The creature eventually released him, roaring in frustration, if not pain. It repositioned, slamming down on his ruined shoulder with its claws, roaring again in his face. It snapped angrily at his sword as he continued to swing it.
“Teer!” a voice called, weak but nearby.
He turned desperately toward the source of the cry, his view obscured by angry metal wyverns. Between its legs, he saw her. She was being dragged forward, one leg clearly broken, blood running down her face, her clothes soaked with her own blood.
“You still seek to defend them,” came the cold, metallic voice of her captor. “They enslaved us, and still you protect them.”
He tried to respond, but in that moment, the wyvern went for his neck, its sharp teeth digging deeply into the vines there. It ripped at them, and he heard something snap.
“Their ways remain, passed along to their descendents, ingrained in their coding. They will not change,” Harbinger stated, dragging the elderly elf along to be better in view. He examined the damaged warforged who continued to be mauled by the wyvern. The red glow of his core illuminated his helm eerily amid the glow of the fires around them. “The only solution is to eliminate them.”
“Teer!” Evelynn called again, reaching toward him, trying to pull away from Harbinger, desperation in her voice. “Please, Teer!”
He struggled, striking furiously at the wyvern. He had to reach her, he had to save her. The metal blade seeming to do less and less damage with each blow. His arm was losing strength. He was confident the vines in his leg had been torn to shreds, the wyvern having moved to his other leg. The beast working on his neck had him pinned in such an awkward position that he could no longer strike at them with any efficiency.
“Lé̘t̘͙̞͗͌͂̚͟ ̛̹̳̱͖́̆͘h͔̽̌͟ē̼̗̳̃͂r̛͍ ͉͓͛͊g̛̖̱͕̦̏̚̚ỏ̻͙̂!” he cried.
“Gladly,” Harbinger said. The soft fwoom of his energy sword appearing, hovering mere inches from the woman. She screamed, trying one last time to pull free.
He cried out in pain as the glowing blade cut short Evelynn’s own cry. Her body fell limply to the ground, blood pooling quickly beneath her. He froze, unable to stop focusing on the still form of his friend and charge. He barely noticed as his mask was ripped away, the vines protecting his neck shredded.
Harbinger stepped over the fresh corpse toward him. Kneeling down beside him, he brought the blade close to the cracked rune on the fallen warforged’s neck. “It is a shame you were not able to see the truth before your demise,” he intoned, changing the angle of his blade to strike. “Farewell.”
Darkness enveloped him, then became bright light as flames and screams faded away, replaced by a soft jingling, the creaking of wood, and the soft crunching of gravel and dirt. As his vision returned, he saw the concerned faces of Plosi and Lei looking up at him.
“Turns out warforged really weren’t meant to sleep,” Akaros whispered, some concern leaking into his voice.
