original

VAGRANT

Author: Lua_Kai

The Passing of Pain (Prologue)

Spread across this world of sand are twenty swords of unimaginable power. Each sword is embedded with a unique ability. But no one knows how or where these swords came from, except for the fact that their creator, the Blacksmith Feun, was a mortal of historic feats.

Monsters, Ancient Deities, Spirits, Gods. For all of existence, these beings have overshadowed humans, but one mortal man stood out from the shadows of fate. Feun created twenty swords powerful enough to harm these unimaginable creatures and was able to bring humans back into the spotlight as beings able to contest with Gods.

However after hundreds of thousands of years that legend has become as mythological as the swords themselves. But every once in a while there is a human born with the power to wield not just a Sword of Feun but the ultimate weapon combined from the twenty Swords of Feun...

The Sword of Fate...

Fate...

---

In the Kingdom of Stofentall.

A cloaked man stood at the end of an empty sand abyss. Cities and towns turned to ash, buildings crumbled to rubble, death all around him. He bathed in the blood of fallen soldiers, as the sky rained down in flaming arrows.

Burning sticks of iron and wood, their feathers flapping in the steaming mist, all as the cloaked man stood still, his katana of black and gold pointed out to the sky.

[Sword 1: Sword of Thunder]

He pulled its black curved blade from its bloody scratch sheath and said in a grumbled tone, "thunderstrike."

A wave of lighting extended out from the tip of his sword, shocking all the blazing arrows across the dark sky, and turning them to harsh fine dust.

The cloaked man stood in the falling collage of orange ash as soldiers ran at him, their mix-matched armor, of blood, silver, sand, and flesh. He extended out the tip of his sword and cast another spell from his magical metal weapon.

"Thunderblade!"

In a chain reaction, a single bolt of lighting, like a needle and string, threaded itself from one soldier to the next. Each one dead in an instant, falling one after the other, lifeless and limp, like corpses... Like corpses... So many corpses...

He stood on a mountain of corpses.

Minutes later another man appeared behind the cloaked man. But instead of an enemy, he was a college.

He was clad in white silver armor, his golden hair and blue-sky eyes sparkling in contrast of the death around him. He smiled and held out his hand.

"You did well, Tusk, now let's head back..."

But the cloaked man turned away.

"We're done. We're over. This was for her, not for you," he said in a tired grit.

The cloaked man was named Tusk. He stood with a blood-stained black ripped cloak, and dark thick armor underneath. He was a tough black-haired man, with constant bloodshot eyes and a constant look of deep sorrow on his face.

He looked at all the destruction, the death, the pain, and he didn't care about any of it, all he cared about was... Her...

He walked away in the raining blood as the man in silver armor turned to his seven other colleges behind him, their faces sad as he glared at them with a simple but not so simple smile. It was a smile that turned from grief, to pain, to misery, to sadness.

He watched as his friend disappeared into the night. He watched as the darkness fell upon him, leaving only the smell of blood, the bright full moon, and the echoes of monsters in the distance.

He turned back to his colleges and said, "this will not be the end of our crusade... I will kill God."

---

Three months earlier, in a bar near the edge of the Kingdom of Stofentall's Outerlands. The cloaked man named Tusk was drinking with a beautiful woman, who sat across from him in silvery-white robes. She had soft yellow eyes and bright white hair. She was a beautiful and stunning slender woman who had many hidden natures, and many hidden memories.

"Go on without me..." she said to the dark-haired man with blood-red eyes sitting across from her.

"I can't..." he replied back solemnly while sipping on his alcohol.

She pointed out the window of the bar. The whole world was sand, nothing across the entire planet, only dunes of death, bone, monsters, and war.

"You know I can't survive out there. I will die... There are monsters, demons, ghosts..."

Tusk looked at her with angered disbelief, "we've made it this far. So quit complaining and-"

She grabbed him by the hand and stared straight into his red eyes.

"Listen to me! I am going to die either way, but... Tell Sariel when you meet him in Stofentall that... That this isn't his fault."

"But it is..."

"It was... But I've forgiven him. I've forgiven him..."

Tusk looked at her as if she had gone mad.

"I can't forgive him," he blurted out scared of his own willpower.

"You can... And you will... Maybe not now... But eventually, you will... Eventually, even if you grow to hate him, and hate the Shorebringers, and the world around you, it will happen. You will forgive him."

Hate... Fate... Destiny... Where does it all lead? Who does it follow? And how can you break its passing of pain?