Veni, Vidi, Vici

Latorus

Across the vast dunes of frost and ice the arctic dust tumbled into small balls of snow rolling into each other with a surprising amount of force. The stabbing of the cold was almost like the piercing of an ironically red hot dagger. By this stage Latorus couldn’t even tell the difference. His only goal was to reach the beacon. The light. Hope.

It was not in any way blinding, nor was hope shatteringly faint. It just simply existed, lying amidst a field of white death. Latorus took an unsteady step forward in pursuit of the unknown being. At this point, anything that resembled warmth or shelter appealed greatly to him. Although the warm fields of the Ignissian countryside was a more ideal solution, this light was his catalyst. He would have died long ago if it weren’t for this alien being.

Latorus flicked the snow out of his heavy bushy eye. He was a large, gruff man with a scraggly beard, somewhat typical of what you would expect a native Ignissian to be like. The drab rags that hung around his body like the water to a sponge barely kept in enough heat to live in. The various cuts and bruises burned in pain as he stumbled on through the biting winds, constantly thinking about what went wrong back on the Yoquas road.

His eye was infected to such a degree that he knew that there was nothing for it; it would have to be cut out, probably painfully. The damned Orcus spiders made sure of that. His whole convoy was ambushed by a great horde of the spindly yet horrific beasts from the South, violently charging with reckless abandon for their own life, simply looking for the fresh meat. It could have been an Iacetian ambush, it could have just been just horribly bad luck. Either way he couldn’t go back into the devil spawns jaws. He had to press on towards the Dead Zone.

The frozen dunes of the Dead Zone seemed to resonate the coldness of the Vendexian Wanderers that resided throughout the frozen wasteland. Latorus simply stepping into the Dead Zone was a near suicidal act, the Vendexian Wanderers don’t tend to take lightly to the ramblers and adventurers that are stupid enough to trespass into their territory. It is an unwritten law in the Three Kingdoms that if you are stupid enough to walk into their domain, your punishment of death is what can only be expected from your foolishness. But Latorus didn’t really have much of a choice.

The numbness seemed to pulse throughout his body and his assault rifle had long since frozen over and broken, meaning he had no form of self-defence. His UI piece was malfunctioning constantly meaning he was more often than not, heading in the wrong direction. The feeling of fragility was in his various limbs crackled throughout his body. The Morbissiats would know what to do in a situation like this. It was a shame then that Latorus was simply a lowly born Titan.

More than once Latorus stumbled and fell, taking every ounce of his rapidly draining strength to clamber back to his feet and keep persevering towards the welcoming beacon. But when he reached its general proximity the dense fog began to clear up and a simple camp with a tent and fire lay ahead. There were people living there.

He nearly broke into a sprint, disregarding his rapidly declining strength, eager to get to the warmth of the fire. He nearly began to enjoy the sound of his boots crunching against the soft, beautiful snow, already revelling in the heat that would envelop him in the not to distant future. He called out to the camp with a hoarse and gruff shout, praying one of the inhabitants could hear his pleas, to all the Gods, the Ignissian Gods, the Orbission Gods, the Iacetian Gods, he didn’t care.

Yet his prayers would dutifully answered, and no less by a child who seemed to be around the age of 7. The boy crawled cautiously out of his dank and damp tent to observe the oncoming presence. And when the boy’s eyes rested upon Latorus they lit up brighter than any brazier or burning fire throughout the Three Kingdoms. A great smile appeared on his face as he jumped about and shouted in glee. It wasn’t the reaction Latorus was expecting.

And then another kind benefactor appeared out of the opposite tent. A woman of Ignissia, her tanned skin contrasting the chill and cold of the snow stunningly. She dropped the basket full of meats and delicacies she was carrying and stared at Latorus at disbelief. Latorus only ran faster.
When he finally reached the camp he leaned over to catch his breath and breathlessly muttered his dilemma to the woman, “Convoy…Orcus spiders…heat… please”. It was almost pitiful. Then the boy’s face came into full view. He had auburn hair shortly cut and magnetising brown eyes of the woodlands of Racart. But it was not the eyes that stunned Latorus. It was that he recognised the boy. No, more than recognised. He loved the boy that stood before him. It was Dayus, his son.

Latorus fell back into the snow entranced sending up clouds of mist and cold. But he barely noticed. He simply fell into a stunned and deathly silence, unable to move his eyes from Dayus. Then the woman came into view behind Dayus, her hands gently resting upon his shoulders. It was Vermilda. His wife.

There was a deathly silence. Both of the people in front of Latorus should be dead and buried in the gardens of the Great One, yet here they are looking young and sprightful as always. Dayus wriggled free of his mother’s grasp and crawled towards Latorus on the snowy dune. Latorus only looked at him with wide eyes not daring to utter a whisper as to the events that were unfolding. Dayus crawled up close to him and simply pointed at his calf. Latorus cautiously looked downwards and examined his leg. And there protruding from the back of his leg like a spike out of a cactus was a small dart, small enough to breeze over if you didn’t look carefully.

Dayus walked back to his mother, like a child who had recently been scolded and they together, gently, wiped away from existence in the bitter winds of the Dead Zone. Latorus latched onto every wisp of their existence until there was truly nothing there in front of him. The basket, the fire, the camp. It had all disappeared. The disappointment and sadness hit Latorus like a tonne of bricks. But the fist that came flying out of the swirling mists that surrounded him hit much harder, gently easing him in the gentle grace of the abyss of his mind.