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(Page 2 of 11) Restoration of the deathless (part III) by Martin Sjöstrand
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"I'll do anything you ask. Just don't do this, please!"
"Ah, now we are getting results," he said. "Not so sure of ourselves anymore, are we? Your pleas are noted. However, whatever little desire to show you any clemency I might have had died when you called me ‘despicable'. Not that it mattered. Even if you'd come to me on your knees, begging for mercy, as would have been appropriate given what irreparable harm your nation did to my people, it wouldn't have changed anything. I would not put any number of Latakian souls ahead of my people's restoration."
She grew desperate. "Don't do this! I'll do anything that you ask."
"Well, that is a promise that would be quickly forgotten if I were to abandon my plan," he said.
"No, it won't," she replied.
"Listen to me, little girl!" he said. "This conversation was getting interesting, with your pretended humility and will to do anything to try to get me to overlook past wrongs. However, to put things in a way that even your feeble human intellect should understand, I miss my wife and queen. She has been dead for well over a century and a half now, a significant time even by my standards, and you'll have to forgive me for speaking bluntly, but I consider her to be company far better than you. The sooner I get this over with, the sooner I get to be with her again."
"Yirdmaäl would never want you to do this, master!" Nelanor broke in.
"Well, I will show the two of you what she definitely did NOT want," the Immortal King retorted.
He raised his hand in the direction of her and Nelanor. Then her vision faded to blackness and her hearing to silence. The view and sounds of the presidential meeting hall was replaced with those of an entirely different place, at a different time...
- - - - -
There was a large grassy field with a few hills. In the distance, the barely discernible shapes of trees made up a forest. The field was a battlefield that was strewn with the dead. There were men and women in equal numbers with fair and youthful faces wearing white robes and carrying swords or staffs. Around them lay a far greater number of men in the old, dark grey, Latakian uniform, carrying rifles and wearing leather boots. They were all of them dead, victims of a hideous battle.
The battle was not entirely over, though. In one corner of the battlefield, there was a small cluster of maybe thirty youthful figures making a stand against an army of Latakian soldiers, rushing towards them in the thousands and rolling forth mounted cannons on the hills to fire at them from a distance. The view shifted instantly to show the survivors at a much closer range.
Into view came the Immortal King. In this vision, he was wearing bright white robes and wielded a silvery mace that looked much like a scepter. He was furiously sending blasts of fire into the ranks of the Latakian soldiers, scattering them and tossing the men about. Nelanor stood by his master, waving his sword back and forth at oncoming Latakians with his right hand while using his left hand to toss various blasts of magic at the Latakian ranks a short distance away.
A short distance from the Immortal King and Nelanor was a woman of majestic appearance.
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