Brekkr began the arduous sprint back to his village. He glanced back at the hostility briefly, and very nearly lost all of his gradually spent breath. A majestic, argentine, incandescent column had ascended and began ballooning down into a dome. As the dome touched down on the edges of the antagonism, the dimension of those participating became increasingly more vague and indistinguishable, becoming insubstantial wisps of white. They scintillated rhythmically, each wisp keeping its flashes in perfect harmony with the rest. The rhythm grew steadily more rapid and frantic, like a heartbeat addled by an adrenaline shot. As the flashing became more regular, and the divides between them closed, the wisps escalated, the pulsating reaching fever pitch, then they arced off, comet trails cleaving the sky. The dome began to dissipate, and the small, youthful figure, limbs extended as it levitated in the air, descended, fading into the earth.
Brekkr paused, and his composure dwindled, knees quivering erratically.
With a raucous whining, several of the wisps soared downward to the very village where Brekkr was headed, and this was his first substantial gander at his town since leaving it.
And what he found did not rouse any joviality.
Carnage, desolation, mass death. Limbs of women and children (Brekkr felt disgusted he could tell) strewn over the walls, and buildings reduced to charred remnants of support beams. Heads slid onto barbed posts, the calling card of the goddess Thäkra, stood erected as grotesque testaments to the tragic happenings that had surely occurred.
The figure that had been in the dome materialised behind Brekkr, laying a gnarled hand on his shoulder. He pivoted and paled at the state of Harmonyd.
Her face was ragged, lined with stress. Her hair had whitened into a milky, unhealthy sheen. Her pallor had been replaced by a light, sickly grey. It was as though her youth had been forcibly removed from her via her mouth, that lay contorted in horror. Her eyes were pure achromatic light, as though the very power she had utilised in preventing the battle had now consumed her, rimmed with deep ridges and folds. She clutched her chest. "W-what...is th-this?"
A tenebrous murk crept across her chest, and she gasped and wheezed.
She collapsed.
Peace had died.