“Do you remember what it used to be like?” the old man asked. “Do you remember what it was like before the Searing?”
Roamin looked round and swore. “Do you really think that this is the time?”
The old man ignored him and carried on talking. “I remember what it was like. Sometimes it’s all I can think about.”
Roamin swore again and turned back to his men. The remnants of his squad hadn't paid any attention to the man. They were all busy barricading the doors to this shrine in the vain hope of keeping the beasts out for a little while longer.
It had all begun as just a routine patrolling mission. All they'd had to do was forage into Charr lands. Just check on the Charr's troop placement, make sure they weren't about to attack and maybe grab some supplies if possible. Then they’d seen this Charr camp and the old man who was being held prisoner. They had all known that they had to act. They all knew what Charr did to prisoners. And it had been a small camp after all. There weren’t that many people there.
Of course they didn’t know at that point that most were out on patrol.
They’d just freed the old man when the rest on the Charr had returned to camp. They’d had no idea that they were coming and the first they knew of them was when they’d crashed into their flank. They’d been out manoeuvred and outnumbered. All they could do was retreat back to this shrine. Now they were trapped here and the old man wouldn’t shut up.
“I remember it all. All of it. Do you?”
Roamin had just turned round to tell the old man to shut it when he stopped. The man was waving his hands about and a picture was forming. Roamin knew magic when he saw it.
“The fields were emerald green, and when the wind blew they would ripple like a pond. Children used to run and play in them. I used to run and play in them.”
The picture showed just that. Green grass with laughing children running everywhere. The look in their eyes was that of pure joy. Roamin, for whom this was just a distant memory, was quiet.
The old man continued, “The rivers used to lie like dropped ribbons and were a deep dark blue. In the evenings after work we’d all go down there and fish.” The picture changed again. This time it showed late afternoon, just after nightfall. There were small groups of people all along the bank, laughing and talking together. As the light began to fade they lit paper lanterns and floated them on the river.
“In the east the snow-capped mountains rose to challenge the sky. It was a peaceful place. That was where I went to learn.”
Again the picture changed. A snowy landscape stretched away into the distance. A tower rose in front of them, like a beached ship, green with age. A group of people were gathered around it, young students in billowing cloaks. One stood out from the rest, a pretty girl with blond hair, bright green eyes and a smiling face.
“That was where I fell in love.”
The scene changed again. This time it showed a city made out of white stone and behind it a great wall that stretched right across the picture. The sun was rising over the top of it and seemed to make everything glow with an almost holy brilliance. “Then there was the great city of Ascalon. A bastion of strength and hope. There was where I lived for years, where I married my sweet Valia.” The picture showed a shrine and the girl with green eyes in a white wedding gown, still smiling. The big wall was still visible in the background. “I had children there. I was happy. “The Great Northern Wall behind Ascalon stretched from the Blazeridge Mountains in the east to the Shiverpeaks in the west, cutting off our kingdom from the North. It was thought to be impregnable.
“Then the Charr came.”
The picture clearly showed a massed army of Charr, the large hairy beasts that looked more cat then man. It showed them launching attacks but always being repulsed. Apparently the old man had been in the front line.
“The Wall held strong. The first appearance of the Charr had shocked us but now we grew confident again. They couldn’t get pasted the Wall. They couldn’t hurt us.
“That was our mistake.”
The picture changed, showing a great gathering of Charr arranged in circles around some sort of bonfire.
“They prepared a great weapon, I don’t know how. That was when this once fair kingdom burned.”
The pictures changed from peaceful ones to horrific ones. Great crystals falling from the sky and smashing buildings to rubble. Fire consuming everything. People running for their lives. “It was chaos. Everyone was running. None of us in the Guards stayed. We all had loved ones. We all ran.
“I hurried through the streets bumping into people. Our house had been on a hill close to the Wall. It took me ages to get there, fighting against the flow of people while over head the crystals and fire still flew. I finally got there. I was too late.”
Another picture formed, a house with a jagged crystal smashed through the roof.
“I knew that I was already too late but still I searched. I searched and all across the kingdom the fields burned, the rivers boiled, the mountains were smashed to rubble. People were crying and dying and still I searched.
“The bloody red sun had set on the landscape when I found them. They were all dead.”
The images still formed, though they were now blurred, as though the old man was looking through water. It showed the girl, now a woman, her hair matted with blood that had flowed through a hole in the back of her head. She was clutching the bodies of two small children in her arms. A third lay a distance away. The first two were dead but the third one stirred slightly.
“One of my sons still lived. That brought brief light into my life. But that light was soon extinguished. He’d inhaled too much smoke. He died shortly before dawn.”
The image changed again. This time it showed four freshly filled graves.
“My life was now filled with blackness. I didn’t have anything left to live for. But I climbed to the top of the hill to see what was left of the kingdom that I’d loved.”
The picture changed for the final time. Now it showed the landscape that Roamin was familiar with. Black, scorched ground. Hills where there hadn’t been before. Deep furrows gouged into the earth.
“My kingdom, my home had burned. My family were all dead, consumed by the same fire that had taken everything from me.”
The image faded away and left the men in stunned silence. Many were crying. But underneath them all was the sound of death. The Charr were breaking in.
Roamin swore and turned to face them, tears running down his face, his sword drawn, determined to sell his life, to kill the monsters who’d done this. Behind him the old man still spoke.
“They took everything from me. And all they left behind them was death. I hate them. I hate them!”
The door fell and Roamin saw them looking through, their furry lips held back in a snarl. Then the old man pushed in front of him. There was a mad fury in his eyes. “By fire they burned! And by fire they will burn.”
The old man thrust out his hands in front of him and fire gushed from them, burning everything before it, making flesh bubble and melt. The Charr tried to run but none escaped the terrible wrath of the fire wizard. The pyromancer took them all.
Roamin stepped carefully through the door and looked around. The Charr were all gone. All that was left was piles of ashes, showing the occasional sickening glisten of bone.
Roamin turned round to thank the old man, to say something, anything, about his home, his family and about what they both had lost.
But he was too late. The old man was already dead.
