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To be born again.
Tangled in my cluttered mind was evidence of countless different lives all converging on this moment and this time, but as I stumbled out into the sunlight I was reborn anew. My eyes slowly adjusted, despite my memories of it the sun's harsh glare was a foreign thing to them. Slowly a beautiful cityscape came into focus from the brightened haze.
I had memories of this place, although sorting through them was difficult at best. First Ward, the first new city of Praetoria and the gem of Emperor Cole.
How did I know that?
Flashes of familiar faces, people I had worked with, friends, family. They were all jumbled in with a million other memories from other lives, and my mind seemed to spin its wheels impotently in any attempt to sort them.
The ground trembled slightly, a decidedly foreign sensation in a sea of what was otherwise deja vu. I adjusted my body as best I could to keep my balance, but stumbled as horror gripped my chest. The center of the city bulged up like an overripe fruit before bursting, tentacles that dwarfed the buildings around them sprang forth to wreak destruction on all they could reach.
My legs carried me forward rather than away, down the slope and into the city with each stride out distancing the last. As I willed myself towards the destruction, not even entirely sure why I was doing so, I felt each cell in my body respond to my intent, and the focus of my goal seemed to pull my entire body towards its destination. Soon my feet had left the ground in an unending leap, I soared towards the screams and panic, my limbs no longer moving and yet every shred of muscle, sinew and bone still carrying each other forward.
In retrospect I must have looked quite comical. Flying stark naked towards the disaster with my face set in grim resolve, but it didn't matter, I was there to fight and I cared little for appearances.
The first blow shattered nearly every bone in my body as the massive tentacle swatted me like a meaningless fly. I crashed limply through buildings and debris, the fragility of my new form being brutally reaffirmed with each impact. When I finally came to a stop, it took a moment to realize I wasn't dead, or at least not truly. Every memory that surfaced then told me I should be a lifeless corpse ready for burial, and indeed I felt entirely removed from my shattered form. There was no death though, I had not left, I refocused myself and rebuilt this time reinforcing and enhancing each cell, preparing myself to rejoin the battle I had so quickly lost. I arose slowly, the pain still very real even as the flesh and bone had shrugged their destruction off.
The battle raged for hours, and although I was far from alone in my attempts to fight the Devouring Earth, as I somehow knew the plantlike monstrosities were called, we were barely holding the line. The despair the others around me were feeling seemed distant though, I was still caught up in the wonder of what I was experiencing. None of my memories hinted at the strength I now felt, my own force of will magnifying itself into each blow as my strikes splattered the bodies of the horrors we fought like they were overripe fruit.
Hamidon's army was endless though, and I was surrounded on all sides being knocked down, gored or impaled on what seemed like a regular basis, but always returning to the fight. Having no communicator or even clothes, I did not see as Praetor White called away his troops in retreat.
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