It took the edge of death for me, to realise Edwin was just like me, someone different, someone new, someone deserted. He was the beginning, he was the change, and he just wanted to save the home he found, just like me who wanted to find one. He was just selfish, just like I was. It was insane how I judged people very quickly, I never knew everything, there would always be blanks and I filled them with what I was and what I believed. It was not them, but me with what I knew about them.
"Wrong way, soldier," the Knight Commander's faint voice rang in the stillness. I stood still, tongue-tied, trying to understand what happened.
"Found the leader's hideout," the announcement echoed. "Surrounding, surrounding…"
"What happened to your armour," he said.
I looked down to find it was wretched and stained by men's blood. I looked at him, it was similar armour to what I and all other knights wore, except he didn't wear a helmet. A long cape was hung on his shoulders, the collars were silver fur and the cape itself was rich velvet that contrasted the armour. He frowned, the knights started to swarm around me, all holding heavy weapons and blades and glanced at one another.
"Why don't you take off that helmet of yours?"
There were a dozen knights surrounding me, and with the commander's glance, every single weapon turned towards me like the boults snapping into their gaps. I unintentionally hit the ground when a knight hit my knee. The Commander had his hand on my helmet, a large grin emerged through his face from ear to ear as the helmet went off my head.
It hit the ground. A sudden blast. Everyone's focus turned away from me. A chain reaction continued, unevenly slitting the floor and passing invisible thrusts towards us. I swung away the element bag before I flew away from the Commander's hands. We all hit the floor at the same time, a metal pier fell from the distance and stuck through the floor. I lifted myself before the others could and started to run to the storey's centre as the bridge bent to collapse, one by one all the piers fell pulling the bridge along with them.
As I ran I saw two element cylinders rapidly outstripping me. It blew up like a giant soap bubble, again throwing me back. I tried to get to my feet but suddenly the floor started to rise, the spider statue drowned before and I was pulled towards it. The floor diverged itself behind me cracking and snapping. I slipped my balance and fell into the centre, through a wide trench made by the blows.
I fell straight until my eyes started to burn and saw the boiling lava in a giant stone furnace. I pushed myself into the void and fell away from it. Before I could get up and catch my breath I saw a series of glowing elements falling through the split above.
The magic broke. I fled before they fell into the furnace, creating an eruption and blasting it like an egg from inside. The floor rose again and the whole storey started to spin.
This time I almost reached the wall to hold but when I saw the stack of metal bars sliding down from the edge, I turned towards the eye and dived through it. The metal bars landed before me on the machines, slicing through them like an arrow between fruits. I thought I would land there, but the furnace had made another hole through the floor. I was blown back with a rain of arms as they splashed on the ground.
I was under a heavy heap of arms, struggling to breathe, with no air nor light. I felt the floor under me, I heard the cracking and the chains breaking. I closed my eyes tight and took a deep breath under the suffocation and counted for the moment.
We dropped down like the rain accumulated, tearing through the floor like tearing through the tent. The first thing I hit was a triple track, supported by a bridge. I was glad for a moment but only my head landed there, my body pulled down and finally smashed on another track. I was disabled from head to toe, only my eyes were open, and I could see two trams dancing blur away from me. I felt the track declining, I held tight and clung to the unknown part of the track under my hands. The noise of metal scratching got louder, and the trams before me got bigger, I was immediately turned when the first tram hit me, a series of trams smashed on me and bounced down the track smashing one another.
I hung on the edge of the track like a dead man with my wrists burning in pain and my palms crying to let go. The fine sand of the testing ground shined below me through the steep. I left the hold and the only thing I felt was the sand catching my back and covering me.