Heroes of Newerth Story: A Time of Heroes (part 3/7)
About them spread a vast paradise such as they had never seen. A golden sun shone upon them, not the crimson orb that hung like an omen over Newerth. They stood in a verdant field still damp with dew; all about them life could be seen and smelled and heard and touched. Butterflies and songbirds and the scent of a thousand wildflowers moved through the warm air. Woodland creatures, not so much tame as unafraid of man, stared at them with gentle curiosity. A stream rolled over worn stones and flashed silver with fish. It was a place that knew neither war nor death.
But it was the great tree that rose before them that demanded the greatest share of their reverence, that compelled their silent awe. Ancient, massive, and holy, it seemed to encompass within its boughs time itself. Upon its trunk was the sunspot of Sol, God of Man, yet its majesty was that of the Earth Goddess, to whom the Beast paid homage, and upon its branches were the long and slender seedpods that were the Horde's most sacred relics.
Proceeding as the dream directed them, Jeraziah and Ophelia turned from the tree. Their vision stretched far and they saw that at the edges of their paradise was a land blighted by hellfire and disease and despair. And they knew, as one knows in a dream, that it was the tree that held these things at bay.
A sound and smell pulled their eyes back to the tree. Standing at its base, the ground beneath him scorched and withered, was their father, Maliken Grimm. Gone was the withered form that age had left to him, gone the madness, the weakness, the doubt. This was the King who had conquered the world, grown huge and mighty. But his eyes were dead and burned with hellfire, and when he spoke his voice was like the grave. For his children he had but a single word. "Fools."
And then they woke, upon the day decreed to be the end of all things.
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 1
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 2
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 3
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 4
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 5
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 6
HoN Story: A Time of Heroes Part 7
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