The End of Eternity

Emerald Dusk

            In a ruin of the building, which had been the Magisterium's headquarters, a hideous statue stood. A statue of a deformed elf enveloped in scales. That alone would not have been anything unusual, but the statue consisted of a glowing green rock. Even looking at the substance could cause a man or elf alike to go mad in an instant, the substance represented pure change, like chaos itself solidified into a solid form. It looked like someone had carved the whole statue from that strange material, exept of one small piece on its hand, where one of the scales looked broken, a wide crack running across its surface. .

Its power of change had been completely used up in the high magister's moment of insanity, wasted in order to turn one whole region of the empire into ash, transforming the one who had channelled the tremendous power into the most toxic substance ever created. The few survivors who had not been killed, or lethally mutated by looking at it had named it devil's stone, because it surely had to be the work of a devil.

In a course of weeks, the empire which stood for millenia had crumbled into pieces. The provinces, which were still able to function closed their borders to prevent contamination spreading from the central part. The provinces, which had been artificially held together by the military or heavily sponsored to sustain prosperity simply fell into disorder. Without the central command, Emerald Dawn's army fell apart, forming various bands strugling to control the largest possible piece of the poisoned land.

* * * *

"This messy stuff again!" Davena inspected the water emitting a greenish glow. "Lately, this glowing water is everywhere, what is it?"

Davena was angry, after many weeks of their frantic search, they were in a decent kingdom, with a decent king and reasonably corrupted nobles. There was no better kingdom, in which they could settle down and now? Some sort of liquid drug was slowly ruining the idyll.

"Meh, this again." Claw took the glass bottle with the liquid and sniffed to it.

Displaying a bit of their combat skills, they had been hired as a border patrol. The payment was not good, but the environment was beautiful and the people friendly.

"Get away with that thing, I do not want to get infected!" Laela scolded Claw.

With Mei's absence, her attitude towards Davena and Claw was slightly improving, but she was not entirely happy here. Hearing about all that had happened in the Emerald Dawn, she was worried about her family. Although she was a realist and she knew how little she could do facing the great disaster, which had happened in the empire. If she were to go there, she would probably just die changing nothing about the situation. She had to simply trust in her father's wits until she was influential enough to actually help him, which would probably never come to pass. "Have you heard me?! Put it away"

"Fine, fine, I am already moving it away from you."

"Green monsters may not be affected by that glowing green water, but I am an elf!" As Claw was backing away with the bottle containing the liquid, Laela was complaining over his carelessness. "Where is the dealer anyway? Have you seen him?"

"Nope." Davena shook her head. "He ran away as soon as we knocked on the door."

"Why are we knocking anyway? We are no postmen!"

"They have run out of space in the prison anyway." Claw blurted out.

"Oh my. .. a true law-enforcement officer has spoken."

"Chill out, they are happy someone is doing this job for the sorry sum they pay to us."

"I will check on the other one." Laela said scornfully and left the dealer's house.