The blanket of night spread overhead and the twin moons Skruf and Gmar danced across the nights sea, casting their pale light down upon a scared land as they continued their nocturnal cycle. Undi Hachibambo exhaled a feint puff of mist leaving his mouth as he trudged forward through a familiar but now very foreign environment
Old craters marred the ground as far as his eyes could see, mountains loomed jagged and broken their once proud peaks reduced to reuined monuments of war, in other areas shimmered large patches of earth that had been transformed to solid glass in those days of war. Sparse patches of weeds struggled to hold to this land which had been reduced to a wasteland by men's hands.
He remembered what this land had been like thirty years ago. Rolling fields of savannah grass had spread out across it and great fortresses crowned the mountains, now it was like that world had never existed.
Undi's eyes swept across the devastation almost feeling a piece of his old self beaming with pride at the effect that his armies had left on the land. This budding pride was smothered by a bitter more vivid memory of dead men and women littering these lands in the thousands. The young man who had earned the nickname of the Conquering Sun on this land those years ago did not care, but the man he had become did and he could barely stomach his old self.
"I am the Mwami, I should not..." he began to think with clenched fists until a small hand came down upon his shoulder, rousing him from his thoughts.
Undi met the golden gaze of Natasha, his wife. Etched upon her face was a mixture of barely contained fear mixed with fatigue.
"Are you alright?" she asked softly.
He cleared his throat and shook his head, "My mind simply wandered. There must be a trickster Mizihimo at work, accursed spirits."
Natasha nodded her head in resigned agreement and without anymore words she continued their silent march and Undi followed. behind them followed Justinian, their silent sentinel.
The older man, a towering Vortiguard carried himself with a stoic composure which many assumed for simplicity, but Undi knew better. Justinian only spoke when he needed too and when he did it was the truth, insightful and scathing, regardless of if he was speaking to the Mwami himself. Undi had long learned that he needed men and women like Justinian around.
They walked in total silence for an hour until they reached a place where the tapestry of the world felt wrong. Undi had clashed with this power long ago and yet he was not used to the sensation that churned his stomach.
Justinian's stoicism cracked first. His face was suddenly slik with sweat and his face pale. Even Natasha faltered with laboured breaths as she stumbled almost following over had Undi not caught her into his embrace.
"Are you alright?" He asked, concern in his voice.
"I am fine." Natasha responded though her laboured breathing betrayed her."Its just... that I haven't felt it this powerful in years.... to be so close to it again...."
"I know..." he responded as he looked at the Loom Gates ahead of them, ten meters of smooth black stone gates embedded into the base of a mountain. A power pulsed off of them like a heartbeat which washed over them. "Are you certain that you..."
"Don't." Natasha's grip of him tightened and in her golden eyes he saw raw desperation. "Do not try and talk me out of this. Not now, not when we are this close."
Undi looked deeper into that face which he had learned to read after so long and he saw in it a desperation no better than that a man trapped in a desert would have for a simple drop of water. Undi frowned as he thought about his own motivation to do this. He had come around to this idea through Natasha's pleading and yet he did not have as much motivation as her, try as he might to deny it, the Conquering Sun was afraid.
"When have I become so weak." he thought bitterly.
A crackle of lightning split the air and between the gates and them a figure of a man materialised in a burst of blinding electrons. The man stepped forward in a set of scarlet armour so polished it gleamed even in the moonlight, Jrod had not witnessed this majesty since the day this land had been wounded first by a war between mortals first and then against Terrors of Night.
"I knew..." the figure said with a scowl as he made an accusatory gesture at Undi. "That you would not listen to sound advice and would choose to follow through with this madness."
"Roland," Undi began "Please, I need you to understand..."
"Understand!?" Roland roared with indignation. "What is there to understand other than the facts here. You are willing to risk all the worlds of creation in some half assed selfish plan to fix a problem you created in the first place."
"I never wanted for that to happen, my enemies..." once more Undi was cut off by Roland.
"Only did that because you butchered their sons and daughters fittingly enough here. Did you not expect them to do the same to you, did you think that your children were exempt?" the words cut to Undi's core. "I have no care for your world, Undi. But your actions threaten my universe and I shall not allow it."
Natasha dropped down to her knees before him, desperation dripping from her words. "The council has heard us and agreed. They added their wisdom to the threads for this. This will work, Roland, please let us try. As a fellow father I plead with you."
All this seemed to inspire a measure of disguste upon the man's face. "I am no fool, the others are too focused on their worlds to see you and this folly for what it is, but not me. I remember vividly what is in there and I won't see it gain any opportunity to potentially walk this or any other world again."
"We fought it alongside you." Undi said stepping forward with open arms to make clear he wasnt a threat. "The last thing that we want is for it to be free."
Roland sneered loudly and now bursts of electricity danced across his body. "We fought to protect worlds beyond our homes, you fought it through an accident of the incursion emerging whilst you were fighting your own little petty wars. Do not pretend to be a good man, Undi. Good men don't kill their own fathers for thrones."
The words flew like an arrow into his skin and Undi knew the truth, there was no convincing Roland of anything and they all knew it. The two alies locked eyes, their intent almost pulsating off of eachother, the Mwami looked to his wife and the same cold determination that had filled graves lay bare.
"I never wanted it to come to this." Undi breathed in as he drew his sword, its presence felt across the very fabric of the land as nearby mountains erupted into torrents of flame that melted stone and turned dirt to glass. From the heavens came a firestorm that lit up the world and sent down a hail of blazing embers.
"Yes you did." Roland responded as an axe materialised in his hand and with it came a storm of ten thousand lightning bolts dancing in the skies and banishing away the full extent of the fire storm to be replaced with an eternal barrage of lightning and thunder which shook the earth with each eruption.
Their two weapons hummed a familiar tune, that of the few last siblings from that cosmic war millions of years ago that many now called the Storm Of Heaven. Undi had never thought that he would use this weapon of legend against one of the last surviving of its kin in the hands of an old friend.
Natasha rose back to her feet and with a cutting edge in her voice. "This is no hill to die upon, Roland."
The air trembled as her power manifested, tendrils of water stretching for a hundred meters materialised behind her whilst jets of water punched their way out of the earth, sending thousands of tons of dirt flying through the air.
In contrast Justinian simply drew an od battle beaten shield, simple looking and yet Undi had seen him crack mountain ranges with his blows. The three of them met Roland and the earth screamed, cracked and roared. Kilometers away, the nearest military outpost was assaulted by a mixture of storms that burned and blinded as the earth was torn into a hundred deep maws from the earthquakes.
And as it was before it would be again, a Hachibambo would do battle on this land against men and the things before men.