Anavasii, so beautiful you were in all your glory, so free even with the chains that held you in place. A home you were, a haven for us all; beneath the eyes of our god, you made it worth submitting before him. You made our enslavement a gentle occurrence. Because of you, we did not know that we were not free.
Anavasii, your towers of white, your clean streets, your temples and castles, your bars and your brothels, your arenas and your theaters, your homes and your estates. Lavish and white, orderly and neat. Accents of color, of orange, red, and gold, that made us feel more royal than we truly were.
Peace and prosperity; mercy and tyranny.
Order and chaos.
You were there, right before, all around me. Then I closed my eyes, only for a moment, only to open them and realize that nothing was ever how it ought to be, how it was meant to be.
Anavasii... Now, nothing remains.
- - - - -
The greatest city to have ever existed spanned across his view before it was fields harvested by estates outside the city. Together, they were like the ocean of fields and the horizon, formed by the city itself. Anavasii, the beginning and the end of our suffering.
Ignar hovered before it, the other Magi right behind him. Above the ground, the wind whispered and pushed against him. It had taken so much from them to reach this point. To enact revenge, to topple down tyrants... Yet all he could feel was deafening fear, that which emerged from within, as if you were on a boat in the middle of the deepest part of the ocean, beneath you unknown darkness and forces that you could never understand; above and around you, the sky and the clouds that gather, the wind that picks up. A storm that will crush you. And then... There was the fear of others; the voices, no, the yells that he could hear from within the city.
The earth rumbled, the world shook, the storm was here, and it was brought here by a god who cared not for the lives of his herd. The white walls of the city cracked, and out from them pushed Sharan after Sharan, crawling and running from the way that had been made for them. They ran with horror as the only thing that they could feel, that they could understand. They ran to the fields; they ran to the estates. They ran, yet one cannot run away from the storm... not from him.
From within the city, where his grand temple stood, emerged a creature whose scales glistened in the evening sun, the horizon set aflame, the city now in flames. Hellfire, burning all that there ever was... Anavasii... there would be nothing left.
The creature spread its wings, a dragon, a god who blessed the world with his judgment.
Where there were buildings and homes of those who had run away, now there was just waste. The fires that burned. Where there were the fields, where the Sharan had run to, now were cracks, as the earth swallowed those who tried to run away. A gleeful red glow showed itself from beneath the ground, as the fires from below ate away the fools from above.
From here, where all seemed so small except the city below them, it was like a million ants that ran to their death. A sight that ought to be seen as a great heartbreak was now just a collection of tiny dots that might as well never have existed in the first place. And to think that such a sight he had seen so many times now. Kalma... he had done this before, but never here. He had released his magic, slaying millions with just a leisurely gesture; nothing showcasing any emotion, no anger or regret, no fear or shame, just... boredom. They enacted judgment without a care, without emotion, without... reveling in it.
Kalma was like the ocean that brought death to yet another fisherman. The ocean does not care if it causes the death of someone or even tens of thousands in a tsunami. It feels no hatred, it feels no regret; it feels nothing.
The Nine Magi could only look from far away as Kalma spread his hands, allowing the death of millions as the earth continued to shake. It cracks and it melts, buildings crashing in, forming piles of rubble and waste. The fields burned, and dark smoke formed clouds above their heads; gray and black, this ash that colored all else, where there once was white and green, where there were buildings and forests, fields and manors, many colors... now it all was gray, it all was blackened.
Kalma raised his hands, like lifting something heavy, and below him, his temple began to rise. The very earth beneath it rose with it, a mountain formed from where there once was a city, and the earth rumbled in sounds even greater; the very world around them shook, and it bled as more fire pushed itself from below the ground. And he only stopped when his temple was at his feet, nearly a kilometer in height; a new mountain had risen in the middle of a city. Beneath its shadow, only ruins and mangled memories of greatness lay.
Anavasii was no more.