It was a few hours after the sun had already risen, and the agonizing screams of the war's victims echoed in the dense, silent forest air. The battlefield seemed to be violently expanding. Just five days prior, the bloody battlefield only reached the areas near the riverside's opposite bank, but now it had crossed the river and started to consume the forest with its unrelenting destruction.
A pale commoner's corpse seemed to be moving forward, pushed by someone crawling underneath it to avoid being seen by the soldiers' eyes. The person underneath was Norvin, a frail boy who didn't even understand why the wars were senselessly waged between kingdoms. He knew nothing of honour and had no proper formal training to fight in wars, let alone hold a weapon. He was desperately trying to find a helpless opponent in the midst of the chaotic war.
It wasn't that no one noticed the peculiar corpse moving forward, but those who did simply ignored it because they understood how scared a small, desperate child forced to fight in a war must be feeling. The one baffling thing they didn't understand was why the boy was going in the direction of the deadly battlefield.
The idea of hiding under a corpse came to his mind that morning when he was trying to collect weapons with the rest of the weary soldiers in the tent. One of the soldiers, about 16 years old, with a gentle but tired face and vivid blue hair, wore a gleaming knight's armour without any dirt or scratches did notice him. He saw Norvin holding a heavy, unwieldy sword about the same length and weight as the small boy, who was barely able to stand up while holding it.
"The battlefield is no place for a child, boy. Leave these weapons and wait in the corner like you always do." He said to Norvin as he gently took the sword and put it back in its place before going out for the war.
Norvin lingered in the tents for hours, unable to choose a suitable weapon for himself. Most were a lot heavier than he could handle, and some were just not to his liking. The inability to find a weapon was just a cowardly excuse he made for himself because he didn't want to accept the fact that he was paralyzingly scared to join the war and stand by his decision.
"Who am I trying to convince that I'm not a cowardly fool?" he thought. "I've already made up my mind to either die today on the battlefield or finally gain access to the simple pleasure of filling my stomach."
He glanced out to the other side of the tent. A suitable weapon caught his attention, giving him desperate courage and a sense of false hope that he would survive today. He held it high and strapped it to his small body, taking shaky deep breaths and summoning all his faltering strength, praying to his late father to lend him courage.
Norvin found himself on the battlefield, surrounded by a cacophony of clashing metal and breaking bones. Dragons roared high in the sky, witnessing only the devastating aftereffects of their attack he quickly changed his direction.
A shadow, ominous and dark, fell over the ground where Norvin was hiding. The grey shade quickly began to grow darker, and Norvin, reacting on instinct, quickly jumped sideways, leaving the pale carcass behind. A mage landed right above the corpse, a forceful thud echoing as the dead body's insides were flattened. If Norvin hadn't jumped in time, his fate would have been the same.
The mage, a tall, ancient man with a few wispy, white hairs on his head and a long, matching beard, wore a faded purple robe of the Broken Crown. He commanded the child with a mixture of fury and concern, "Get Out!" before either of them had even properly found their footing.
Before Norvin could answer, they both heard a loud voice filled with bloodlust yell,
"Alto Colun!" The old man, knowing what kind of spell that was, put his hand down to lower his center of gravity. Before he could warn Norvin to do the same, the ground below them began to rise to a great height, throwing Norvin even higher. "Shit," he muttered as he started to fall back, but the old man remained firm on the surface, preparing for the next attack. As Norvin landed badly beside him, still high on the pillar, the old man asked, "Why are you here, child?"
"To fight," Norvin replied with a trembling voice.
"No, you're not," the old man declared, his tone as firm as stone*. "Run to the camp as soon as we reach the ground. I will help you leave the battlefield. I don't even sense an ounce of numen in you."
Numen? The word was entirely foreign to Norvin. He had never heard it before, and his mind raced to make sense of it. Was it a weapon, some kind of glowing, enchanted blade? Was it an attribute, a secret a privileged few had access to, something that only those born into noble houses could possess? Or was it something else entirely, a core of being he simply lacked? He had no way to know. Lost in his confusion, but unwavering in his purpose, he responded.
"No. I want to fight. I have no option."
"Did you hit your head somewhere? A war is not your playground. The enemy is a Core Nexus. Leave the field now; this is an order."
"I don't take orders from you, old man. I will stay—" Before Norvin could finish, a gigantic slash of force broke down the pillar, sending both the old man and Norvin plummeting.
"Hielo Ionramháil," the old man chanted, and a smooth, glistening slide of ice formed out of thin air for their safe landing. Norvin couldn't believe his eyes, seeing the power of the old man this close. The enemy in the gleaming golden armour joined them not a second after they hit the ground.
"So now I have to go up against an old man and a small kid," the muscular, long-haired man said with a maddened grin. "Looks like I'll enjoy killing you two." He began swinging his sword with brutal force while approaching closer. "Hielo Ionramháil," the old man chanted again, desperately forming barricades of ice in an all-around direction to block the enemy's slashes.
"I will distract him; you hide as soon as possible," the old man said firmly.
Norvin didn't want to back down, but seeing the immense strength of those two, he was sure he could never help the old man and would only be a dead weight. He grunted in reluctant agreement, still wondering why he referred to the enemy as 'Nexus' and what did he mean by the word 'numen'.
The old man and the maddened enemy Nexus began fighting in an insane and fearsome manner, with spells and blows thrown in the blink of an eye. Norvin, gritting his teeth, was successful in leaving the battlefield, finding a hiding spot under the shattered remnants of the huge pillar that lay smashed on the ground.
"Hielo Sleanna!" The old man formed hundreds of icy spears directly aimed at the knight whose golden armour was now covered by in dirt and icy frost.
"You're foolishly defending a child," the enemy sneered, blocking many jets of ice spears with a barrier of stone. "Why would you waste your life for a boy who has no business being here?"
The old man, his face etched with fatigue, countered with a shard of ice. "He is a boy, who doesn't deserve to be senselessly squandered in a war like this. He has a right to his future, one not stained with blood."
"Future? He chose to come here!" the enemy laughed, his voice filled with contempt. "And I'll make sure he dies just like the rest of them. No matter what you do, I will find him and kill him. His fate is to be a corpse, just like all the others!"
"I'll get killed if I just sit here," Norvin thought, a storm of fear and confusion raging inside him as he hid beneath the massive, shattered rubble*. "But what can I do? How can I help the old man? Should I even help him? Will I even survive? I'll die anyway, if not from the war, then from starvation."* He could clearly see the old man's desperate efforts to save him and hear the fierce conversation between them.
The old man's breath soon grew ragged. With a triumphant grin, the yellow-haired knight sent a huge, log-shaped chunk of earth flying toward him. It hit the old man with a force he couldn't handle, sending him tumbling backward in a violent roll. He lifted his head, took a moment to grumble in pain, then, with one knee on the ground, shouted, "Hielo Sleanna!" A continuous barrage of razor-sharp ice spears formed and shot toward the enemy.
The very next moment, a voice too close for comfort echoed right behind him, "I have seen that attack enough, old man."
The old man's heart skipped a beat as he desperately tried to comprehend how the enemy had evaded his attacks and appeared behind him.
The old man saw death staring at him in the face as he felt the cold, sharp edge of the enemy's sword inching towards his nape with great intensity to blow his head off. The last words he heard were, "Die old-timer! The boy is next".