Even at this distance, you can feel their breath, and the firey heat of their bite makes the wound in your leg still throb. Something large flaps by overhead, and a barbed spear strikes the ground just ahead of you. Claws dig into your back, and you are carried aloft...
In the distance, roads cobbled with skulls lead north, while watchtowers built of the same maintain a vigil over all. Devils and worse walk freely, while men and demihumans are led in chains, defeat and terror writ large on their features.
Yet somehow, the vista changes.
Now, instead of skulls, the streets are shod in iron, and tiger-drawn chariots of bronze clatter and spark over them. Instead of towers, twisted stone statues now line the roads, statues that scream and gibber with torment. A small cadre of men, their faces hidden behind masks of silk command a young olven woman to take her place among them, and as you watch, she stiffens and contorts until she is just another statue, and a fresh scream pierces the air...
And again, the scene changes.
Darkness shrouds the land. Though the sun clearly stands high in the heavens, it sheds little light. Through the smoking ruins of a hobniz village, a young hobniz girl-child flits from shadow to shadow, trying to escape the notice of the adults, most of whom sport greivous wounds that instead of bleeding are festering and covered with flies. Just as she emerges from the ruins of a burrow with a jar of food in her arms, the adults rise as one and set off after her, brandishing clubs or revealing bony claws where once they had hands...
And finally...
Though unchanged, the world is somehow different. It is as if a web of black strands had been placed over everything, changing nothing in an obvious way, but draining the world of color and vibrancy as you watch. Tiny vibrations flow along the black strands, which seem to congregate somewhere near the hills south of Veluna and Furyondy. Perspective changes until the world seems like a child's ball; familiar hands can be seen reaching out to caress the strands, occasionally plucking this one or that...
As the mists encroach upon this final scene, the Sword of Nogre can be seen to strike the center of the web, causing it to unravel...