Prologue
#2 of The seven Days of Fire
Prologue:
In an almost completely destroyed city, a young man rushes through the streets laden with rubble and ash. Again and again he looks around in fear. They are no longer there. His pursuers have lost him. But he still doesn't slow down. He runs past the old church bearing the bodies of the priests and their servants nailed to the walls. He pauses briefly, not to witness the horrific sight, but to catch his breath. His side stitches almost take his breath away as he continues on his way.
His pursuers, the soldiers of the Imperial Guard of Torekmetia, have surrounded the entire city. They are looking for survivors, refugees and deserters like him who survived the first massacre. His opponents are cruel, they know no mercy. Women, children, the old and the weak, all are killed in the name of the holy emperor who has ordered the cleansing of the border territories.
The young man continues to rush through the streets. A moment ago, he felt as if he had heard the footsteps of the heavily armored soldiers of the Imperial Guard. He turns a corner and runs into the arms of a guard patrol. He collides with one of the soldiers and is thrown back into the street. Desperate, he crawls backwards and tries to escape. But before he can even get off the ground, he feels a piercing pain in his chest and looks up at the guardsman, whose weapon is still smoking.
...
Ephtal, a large and very beautiful country in the middle of the continent. An empire of science, trade and art. Civilization has reached its absolute peak here. Man has succeeded, shaping nature according to his wishes and not thinking about the consequences of his actions. Torekmetia, one of Ephtal's neighboring states, is also highly cultured. Here, too, science prevails over the clergy. But for some time now, the signs have been pointing to a storm between the two dominant states of the time. The scientists of Ephtal have managed to construct a huge fighting machine, the Titan. In fear Ephtal coul use the near unstoppable warmachine against them, Torukmetia threatened Ephtal. Not willing to give in to the threats of their neighbors, Ephtal refused to budge. Now that diplomacy has failed, Torekmetia is using its weapons to either destroy the Titan or bring it under its control. Since Torekmetia has a much larger army and is also in a better strategic position, almost all of Ephtal is soon invaded. The government of Ephtal is forced to use the Titan, not yet fully completed, against the enemy. The Titan is a huge, almost 70-meter-high, genetically engineered fighting machine that combines the latest technological achievements with the most advanced genetic formulas. Equipped with bio-chemical and nuclear weapons and virtually indestructible, it is Ephtal's last hope of escaping the invasion by Torekmetia at the last moment. At first everything goes well, the armies of Torekmetia are crushed. With no chance of victory against this war machine, they finally retreat. Overjoyed at their victory against the invaders, the Ephtalians call their Titan back, but it can no longer be controlled and, following its programming, begins to destroy all the forces it encounters. In just 6 days, the Titan manages to destroy almost all the armed forces of the entire continent.
Only at the end of the 6th day does the Titan collapse, its internal power reserves exhausted. Sensing a ray of hope, the Torekmetian army attempts a final assault on the Titan to destroy it once and for all. However, the Titan sees its end coming and destroys itself in a massive explosion. Only when the dust settles and the consequences of this conflict slowly become visible do the people on the continent realize what they have done. The Titan's attacks and its final destruction have completely and irrevocably destroyed the continent's earth, its flora and fauna. Huge areas that were contaminated with nuclear and bio-chemical pollution are no longer habitable. Only a few fractions of the once large continent are still habitable, as the contamination is not too severe there. A new war is unleashed. This will later be called the 7 Days of Fire. However, the war does not actually rage for 7 days, but lasts for several decades. Ceasefires are agreed and broken again and again. People fight each other to secure the few habitable patches of land, while others feverishly search for a solution to this misery. But it's not easy, much of the advanced technology has been lost in the 6 days of Titan.
This is the story of a soldier of Ephtal who survived the 6 Days of Titan and now faces an even greater challenge.