A crimson trail followed in his wake, the fresh snowfall stained with his rapidly dwindling life. Pieces of armor fell away bit by bit as his pained staggering jostled the tattered parts loose. He didn't notice. It didn't matter. The wound was fatal. If the enemy had sent out any forces to finish off survivors, no amount of armor was going to save him. If he was lucky, he might land one more hit on an attacker before they finished him. The sword was broken, the jagged metal shard on the handle barely larger than a pocket knife, but maybe he could jab an arrogant soldier in the neck right before his own head was lopped off.
Assuming said attacker actually came up to strike, and didn't just shoot him with an arrow. Assuming they even bothered sending their men, and didn't let that wizard's loathsome creatures go hunting for them. Could he do more than give a papercut to those winged demons? Would he even chip a scale on those spined leviathans? Would those shaggy behemoths even notice he was there before they stepped on him?
He let out a choked laugh, tasting blood on his tongue. What had even been the point? The world was different now. Humans had no place on a battlefield where the monsters of legend were unleashed with a wave of a sorcerer's hand. A man with a sword and a bow was a gnat on the battlefield. As this fight had proven, even those with enchanted weapons and armor had little chance in direct combat with a dragon or a demon or the endless variations of chimera.
The alternative, if one really wished to stand a chance, was to let the Alchemeters work their magic directly on your body. But he had seen the results, and that was no way to live. Nor even, in his humble opinion, a proper way to die.
He staggered and fell against a tree, clutching his side. A hideous sense of wrong filled him, to feel how large the wound was. He was astonished he had managed to walk this far. He was astonished the pain hadn't become crippling yet. Surely adrenalin alone couldn't be keeping him going with this heavy a wound, one even a regeneration potion hadn't been able to fix. Some of the armor's booster spells must still be in effect. Or maybe the cold was working deeper than he thought. He briefly wished he'd thought to scavenge more potions from his fallen comrades, but in chaos of the fight, he'd barely had time to slip away as the enemy rolled over his squadron. Besides, drink too many of the potions at once, and you'd risk mutation.
He caught his breath, pushing himself off the tree. He grit his teeth as he gasped, his breath fogging the air. The pain was dulled, but not gone. Even without it, feeling the unnatural way his body tugged and pulled around the wound, that gut feeling of wrong made him shudder. Or was the cold making him shiver? Even if what was left of the armor was fending off the worst of the pain, it couldn't protect him from the deep chill.
Where was he even going? It's not like he was going to make it. His choices were to bleed to death or freeze to death. Which was worse? In either case, he'd probably pass out before he died. That would be nice. Maybe he'd have a nice dream before he went. Although he doubted it, given what he'd just been through.
Gods, what had the battle even been for? He didn't remember, hadn't really questioned it. Probably another land dispute. The growing number of sorcerers and wizards and warlocks staking claims to lands that they believed held precious magical treasures and fuel. The lives of the people, of soldiers like him, of the natural beasts of the Earth, all were expendable to secure the strength of their magical warlords. It hadn't been this bad before the Magic arrived, had it? He'd been a boy back then, working the farm with his family. He knew they'd worked for a noble who did what he could to keep his lands safe from his rivals. Back then, if their lord had gotten abusive enough, he and his family and their fellow peasants could have stormed his castle and put his head on a pike if things got bad enough. And thus, the noble had treated them well. Even if he had a small army of guards, the risk of an uprising kept him in line.
Not so with the wizards who had claimed the nobles' lands. Their magic made them untouchable, except against one another. They sat in their towers, pondering their trinkets and scrolls and consorting with their demons and angels, and shuffled their peasants around like pieces in a game.
He stumbled again, landing hard on his knees, breaking off another piece of his armor, and causing his cracked helmet to tumble into a pit of snow. The ground was uneven here, and the snowfall obscured his way forward. The helmet fell into a patch deep enough to swallow it.
And that was the last of his protections. The armor had broken in too many places. The protective spells faltered, and new pain lanced through him. He gave a ragged scream as his vision swam, the clash of fiery agony from his wounds, and the piercing cold of the air and snow clashing in his body. He tried to force himself to his feet, but he slipped and fell over instead, his open gash landing on a patch of snow that had covered a rock. He tried to scream again, but he had no breath. His vision went white, then grey, and he realized this was it.
He was going to die. Alone. Frozen. His blood coating the land to draw the beasts of the forest out to pick his body apart. He hoped he'd be gone before the first hungry thing started gnawing. He gazed at the grey sky, seeing it dimming. He'd lost track of time, and hadn't even noticed twilight was approaching. He looked at the stars. He remembered when they had just been little white points of light, numerous, but distant enough to be distinct. Now the sky was a riot of multi-colored stars and lightning and auroras, casting the night in a head-spinning clash of iridescent visions.
A final kick in the gut. Magic had even taken the sky from him. In his final moments, he couldn't even see one last, normal thing to center himself. Perhaps it was a blessing, though. It was said if one stared at the night sky for too long, they would go insane, even turn into a monster. The pain he felt was enormous now, blotting out all reasonable thought. Why not simply hasten the process? Perhaps insanity would be its own relief...
Except, as he stared, he noticed part of the sky seemed suddenly obscured. Two particularly bright stars of exceptional size seemed to stare right back at him. He blinked and squinted, and his blurring vision refocused...
Those were not stars. That was not a cloud overhead. That was...
