Chapter 1 - Flashbacks
The first chapter of Astralis' story.
General Sarnaci... That name struck fear into so many people. He wasn't known for his uncanny deftness or his masterful swordsmanship. He was known for being one of the best tacticians the annorot empire has ever had. He was rarely deployed, not because he didn't want to, but because he wasn't allowed to. The general craved to fight with his men, instead of staying back and ordering them around.
Almost a year had passed since the last time he went on a campaign with his men. Until one day, he and a small team of the kingdom's greatest guards were sent to investigate what went wrong in a battle between the humans and the annorots in a small plateau where once a village seemed to stand.
General Sarnaci was heading to the armory to gather his things and get ready for the long road. A friend of his, Sergeant Jax Highhill, encountered the general on his way to the armory and stuck up a conversation.
"Well, General? finally managed to leave that desk of yours?" - Jax said with a giggle at the end of his sentence.
"Very funny, Jax. Very funny. Not exactly what I wanted but it will suffice for now. I was tasked with investigating a recently lost battle. I don't know what the king wants to achieve with that but orders are orders" - The general said, his voice divided between sounding excited and indifferent. - "It's better than nothing though, I will give you that." - Sarnaci said as he shot a calm look back at his friend. - "What about you, Jax? Something new happening?"
"Not really, job's as boring as it was before" - Jax chuckled - "Training the newcomers can be a pain sometimes. But hey, someone's got to do it" - The sergeant shrugged
"Yeah, you are the reason our army is getting better and better with every new warrior. Because you are teaching them" - Sarnaci softly smirked and pat him on the back as they were walking to the armory.
After a few minutes they finally reached the armory and Astralis put on his usual hide armor with steel plates covering his vitals. His trusty sword, Kansat, has been with him since the start. He hanged the sword's sheath around his chest and sheathed his sword after admiring its sharpness, light from torches flickering in its reflection.
He was done with suiting himself with his attire, he went and mounted his armored horse.
- "Well, Jax, thank you for keeping me company while getting ready. Hope the rest of your day goes smoothly, sergeant" - Sarnaci said contently as he reigned in his horse and started trotting slowly towards the exit of the armory with his horse and his men riding alongside him.
They set off on their journey and after 2 uneventful days, they reached their destination. It was charred and destroyed by war. It was actually quite a beautiful place when you didn't look at all the bodies that littered the ground and red pools of blood. A small trail led up a hill, too steep to see whats ahead. Sarnaci and his men dismounted their horses and headed up the trail, carefully looking around for anything suspicious. They could easily identify which bodies were fighting for who, since the battle was between two whole different races: the annorots and the humans. The only furred bodies were those annorots, pilling on top of each other with few human corpses around. It seemed like they were greatly outnumbered and overwhelmed by the human army. The general hadn't wished to see such a massacre here. He sighed sadly and continued walking up the bloody trail.
After he reached the top of the small steep hill, a bigger field showed itself to him, full of old ruins, overgrown with grass and trees. Sarnaci had an odd feeling about this place. He couldn't put his finger on whether it was new to him or he had been here before, a very long time ago. As the general and his men were walking to the middle of the huge elevated field, surrounded by small hills, he felt an odd pull towards the highest highest hill, which ended with a sharp cutoff. While the rest of his men where look around forwards, the general started heading to the right, to the edge. He felt the pull get stronger the closer he went to the cliff. Thoughts that weren't quite his intruded his mind. As he got closer, he felt a little lightheaded but he couldn't stop walking that way, the draw was only getting stronger. When he got there, there was an old tree stump, one side worn from people resting their backs on it for countless hours.
He suddenly collapsed to his knees and he felt weaker than a moment ago, on four limbs. The rest of his unit rushed over to tend to him but it was too late, he was unconscious and didn't seem like he was going to wake up soon.
Sarnaci woke up by himself. It seemed to be midnight as the moon was right above him. He could hear a children's laughter right beside him. He turned his head and saw a pure white annorot, resting against the tree with her knees up to her chest. She was looking out towards the cliff, giggling at something. The general would turn his head towards the direction the white annorot was looking at and saw... himself. He looked at that in disbelief. How could there be a second him? He was much younger than the general but had the same fur markings as him. It seemed like he was entertaining the while annorot. Then he suddenly went invisible, he gasped in surprise, the white annorot doing the same.
His head started to hurt. Flashes of what seemed to be memories flashed before his eyes, grasping his head from pain, seeing people he has long forgotten about. A lot of emotions flooded him at once: pain, anger, grief. Then, everything cleared up. The flashback he was seeing was when he found out about his invisibility. He was with his sister, Silvereye, entertaining her with jokes and tricks after a very rough day for her. He never really remembered his first name, but now, fragments of it were in his mind "As-Azzy? Astralis... Astralis!" he exclaimed to himself in his mind as he remembered his name. He remembered his parents, sister, old friends. "How could I've forgotten about everyone?" he wondered, holding his head, confused by all that was happening. Then everything went black around him. He was standing, alone in pure darkness. Then, three graves appeared at his feet. "Flannagan Sarnaci, 62 years", "Kitea Sarnaci, 59 years", "Silvereye Sarnaci, 17 years". It was his family. "South... south... south" his mind rambled.
Everything disappeared again, but this time he felt like he was suffocating, then he opened his eyes and gasped for breath as knights were surrounding him, one of them bent down to check his vitals. He immediately got up to his legs and went back to the trail they got up and started running south, ignoring all his men yelling for him to come back. They tried chasing after him but it was of no use, he was way faster. Three kilometers south from the hill he found the graves he saw while he was unconscious. His eyes filling with tears as he sat down onto the ground, memories from his childhood flooding his mind more and more. How could he forget about his family and past. He sat down in front of the graves as tears were running down his cheeks, legs crossed and face in hands, sobbing quietly.
His past started rolling like a film, starting from a very grim place, the day he found out about his ability to go invisible.