Kaelen was so close.
He'd found the absolute perfect napping spot. A small, grassy hill overlooking the valley, with a single, ancient oak providing just the right amount of dappled sunlight. The breeze was perfect, carrying the faint scent of pine and wild herbs.
He'd been trying to count the veins on a specific oak leaf above his head. He'd gotten to one hundred and forty-seven... no, forty-eight?... before he lost track. He'd started over. He'd gotten to eighty-two.
Then the noise started.
First, it was a low rumble. Like distant thunder. Annoying, but ignorable.
Then the ground started to shake.
Then came the screaming.
Kaelen let out a long, slow, agonized sigh. It was the sigh of a man who had ordered his favorite meal, only to watch the server drop it on the floor. It was the sigh of a man who'd just gotten comfortable in bed, only to realize he needed to pee.
It was the sigh of utter, soul-deep exhaustion.
He didn't move. He just lay there, eyes closed, trying to will the disturbance away.
Just... just go away. Fight over there. Explode somewhere else. Please. I've been traveling for three weeks and this is the first decent nap spot.
But it just got louder. The ground was vibrating so hard now that it was making his teeth itch. It was like trying to sleep with a fly buzzing in your ear, except the fly was a tectonic plate having a seizure.
Seriously?
He'd been like this for... God, how long? A century? More? He couldn't really remember. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt… anything. Not real fear. Not real excitement. Not even real anger. Just this… this gray, heavy, nothing. This crushing, suffocating boredom.
He remembered, vaguely, a time when a "calamity-grade beast" would have been a thrill. His blood would have sung. His hands would have shaken. He'd spent his first fifty years of supremacy actively searching for something that could make him try.
He'd found arrogant sect masters. He'd found hidden demons. He'd found slumbering gods. He'd found ancient, world-ending constructs.
They all broke.
They all just broke. Like glass toys. A swing here. A tap there. And it was over. The thrill lasted a microsecond, replaced by that same, sinking disappointment.
After the five-hundredth "unbeatable" foe, the hope itself had just... died. It curdled into this permanent, dull ache behind his eyes.
Now, the world wasn't a challenge. It was just a list of inconveniences.
And this was a big one.
The smell of sulfur and ozone, thick and acrid, washed over his hill. It made his nose wrinkle. It was worse than the vibrations. He couldn't nap with that smell. It was impossible.
A new sound cut through the din. A human scream, not just of terror, but of pure, final despair. It was sharp. It was grating. It cut right through his apathy and became, somehow, even more annoying than the explosions.
"Fiiiine," Kaelen groaned to the empty sky. He rolled over, his joints popping. He pushed himself to his feet with the slow, pained groan of an old man, brushing dirt and bits of leaf off his simple, tunic.
He looked down into the valley. Oh. Wow. That was a big one. And very, very red. It was in the middle of... was that a fortress? Looked like it. Or, it was a fortress. Now it was mostly a barbecue pit. A bunch of guys in shiny blue armor were scattered around, most of them not moving. The big red thing was leaning over one of them, who was still alive.
Kaelen scratched the back of his neck.
This was going to cut into his afternoon. This was really, really going to cut into his afternoon.
He started walking down the hill, not with urgency, but with the resigned, put-upon shuffle of someone heading off to do a chore he really didn't want to do.
"This better not take long," he mumbled, kicking a pebble. "The sun's moving. That perfect spot is going to be gone by the time I get back."