These great, primordial creatures, too old even for simple comprehension, screamed in their final, fading moments, the ululation of their death-throes oscillating across the ears of all those who ran, like the young Denis Ardeyevich. Hauntingly, they creaked and heaved, as they, one-by-one, succumbed to the raging fires.*

It is a world gone mad.

A boy sits upon the imperial throne of Aravarnia, juggling to the fiddle of an immortal sorcerer. In his vision, the Continent convulses; Civil war rages in Khorat, as brother kills brother across the snowy steppes. Armies clash and shatter. Hamlets and cities burn. Pallid children starve within their charred, skeletal wrecks. 

Khorat bleeds.

The Aravarnians march forward, fuelled by Imperial ambition. Banners held aloft, their well-trained armies cross the Ekaterin, into the war-torn fray. The Rebelling Duke, Prestor Volunoff, relents, and retaliates. His forces counter Aravarnia before the city of Dor Nassia.

They lose. In a legendary fit of embers and smoke. 

It is a spectacular victory. Yet great moments are as dull as they get: boring, annoyingly heroic. Unabashedly exaggerated, and filled to its corpulent brim with hyperboles galore. 

This is not the story of that great victory. 

This, is the story of what came after.