Too confused to be frightened just yet, Everson struggled to raise his head, blinking until his eyes could filter the glare and see detail. The figure before him walked erect, making it, hopefully, a sentient being and not a beast. A dark hood hid what appeared to be a massive head atop sloped shoulders that led to long powerful arms. The creature was a good torso and head higher than Everson, making the possibility of attacking it ludicrous.

He craned his neck, and fear quickly unseated confusion. Countless corpses of his comrades were strewn in the near distance. Many were being dragged like him by the mysterious behemoths, bent and lumbering in the same direction, their ghoulish cargos in tow. To where? Everson turned his head and squinted into the still-blinding light. He instantly wished he really were blind.

Bodies were heaped haphazardly at the brink of the Grand Schism like rotting produce. More giants were silently, stoically, but steadily plucking them up and tossing them like trash over the precipice and into the abyss. Everson watched in horror as lifeless limbs flailed in the still air before falling into oblivion.

His countrymen. His friends.

This would also be his fate. An involuntary scream erupted from his throat. His ankles hit the dust. The massive creature carting him had spun, startled, to stare at his definitely-not-dead load. The face was like nothing Everson had ever encountered, and he cringed in revulsion.

It was certainly human, only more so. As in, more of everything. Albino features were swollen to bursting around a shapeless nose and a mouth that looked more like a crevice in stone. Impossibly black eyes that showed no white bubbled out from folds of flesh. Suddenly, its slash of a mouth began to scream.

If Everson hadn’t been staring straight at it and scared senseless, he might have scanned his surroundings to find the little girl who must certainly be responsible for this silly squeal. But, no, this high-pitched, childish shriek was most definitely emanating from the mouth of the behemoth.

Repulsed, Everson rolled away, scrambling over the hardscrabble ground to the still form of his nearest fallen comrade. He snatched up the dead soldier’s broadsword, sprang to his feet, and spun to face the monsters. He slashed the air with the sword, bellowing a battle cry at the top of his lungs. It seemed it was all for show. The behemoths were not advancing. They stood, staring and swaying in place as if unable to process how a corpse could become so highly reanimated.

Everson didn’t pause to ponder providence. He turned and fled in the only direction he could. Into the desert, with only a pouch full of hydreeds for water, toward whatever fresh horrors this pitiless planet had to offer.

TWO

The surface of the Ocean of Manorain was calm and unruffled, giving no clue to the turbulent undercurrents found in its depths.

Much like the azure eyes that gazed upon the water now.

Princess Allegra stood at the rail of her lofty balcony overlooking the ocean, staring without really seeing. Those chosen few allowed to encounter the princess were always unsettled by the unflinching faraway focus of her eyes. It was as if she were looking through them to a better place beyond.