Out of Character:
Prologue
My name is Algran.
For now, just Algran.
Who am I? Well, that’s a question I honestly don’t know the answer to today, but I knew what I used to be and I know what I did. Four years ago I served under the tyrant Shinsou Vaan Osiris in a campaign of terror that almost wiped out my country. My service was an unwilling subjugation; I followed my orders without a choice. We all did, even Shinsou. We were all turned by the Jal Shey and forced to commit genocide on our planet of the likes of which have never been seen before.
Our country, Telgradia, burned. Women, children…entire families decimated. Over a billion people dead and another billion wounded. Fifty percent of our population obliterated just like that.
When the Jal Shey’s grip on our souls was broken, there was no time to explain or beg for mercy. The people that were left wanted justice and the Council of Five duly delivered. I was one of the lucky ones; imprisoned in the sixth level of Kokushi prison as an accessory to millions of murders. Shinsou, however, was taken down to the seventh and final level to have his soul erased.
That was supposed to be an absolute death.
Three years later, the vessel that was once Shinsou was accosted from the seventh level to obtain an artefact that had been stolen from the Council’s secure headquarters, an item of such importance that they sent a whole squadron down to the planet called Althanas to retrieve it. It was Shinsou Vaan Osiris’s soul; stored in a crystal.
Three weeks went by and no-one had heard a thing from the planetside team. Whisperings reached the prison about the return of Shinsou Vaan Osiris. A lot of people were scared that he’d come back as the evil tyrant the Jal Shey forced him to be. The memories of the terrible campaign he led against Telgradia were still too fresh in the minds of the citizens and those amongst us who had served.
None of the people that were sent to Althanas ever returned and the Council assumed the worst. Our leader, Dxun Ra, sent the entire Council of Five to Althanas to kill Shinsou, including his own father Telos Soltair. They haven’t come back yet.
As for me, last week I had a vision. I saw Shinsou, but it wasn’t the tyrant of the Jal Shey Lords that stood before me. It was a man trying to forge an identity, a lost sheep trying to adapt to life away from the herd. He had rejected his past, crafted a new identity entirely and adopted a new life. You know what? In that vision, he called out to me and he was asking for my help.
I weighed it up. What was the reason for this vision? Before we were both turned, I had served under him in the Telgradian military. We were both close. But since then, so much time has passed and too many terrible things had happened.
I decided to escape. I had an overwhelming desire to meet Shinsou again, a burning curiosity to explore my vision further. I couldn't explain it. Something tugged at the recesses of my mind, willing me to go to him. It took a while and cost the lives of friends and prison guards alike, but bloodied and battered I made it to the portal. Once I arrived on Althanas it was just a matter of finding Shinsou.
It didn’t take me long, because I arrived in a city called Radasanth.
A city whose streets had been thrown into turmoil.
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