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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mr. Draco" data-source="post: 186949" data-attributes="member: 521">The golden, blinding light surrounded Kas, embraced Kas.  Then it began to fade.  As the light began to allow normal sight, Kas saw something incredible.  His home.He blinked his eyes to be sure it was real.  The scene didn't change.  There still stood the ancient, yet familiar, cottage that he knew from another life, thousands of years ago.  The two hills on the far side were exactly as he remembered them, from times when he would play there with his sister.  Nearer to the house, he could make out a garden, with a myriad of plants, carefully tended.  He could hear his family's horses from inside of the small barn.  He could smell the aroma of freshly baked bread wafting through the windows.  It was exactly as he remembered it.  Exactly as it was when he went out hunting that day.  Thousands upon untold thousands of years ago, Kas, the boy, left to gather nuts from the grove of trees.  He had heard loud shouting, and a loud explosion.  When he returned, he found the remains of the house, shattered and smoldering, with similar smoke rising up from the horizon where the rest of the villagers had homes.  Kas saw the corpse of his sister, burnt almost beyond recognition, lying, as if tossed haphazardly against the broken remians of the fence.  He saw the body of his mother, by then only a burnt skeleton with carrion birds fighting each other for the last remanants.  He saw a crowd of soldiers, and a robed man, standing in a circle, watching something, and laughing.  Kas ran forward, not heeding for his own safety, to find out what it was.  He reached the circle in time to find that it was his father in the center, forced into combat with a demon-beast and obviously loosing.  Kas, still unnoticed, tried to push through, only to watch in vain as the demon-beast tired of playing with its victim, and tore Kas' father's throat out.  And began to feed.Kas screamed in terror and emotional pain.  Finally the soldiers took notice.  The one nearest him shoved him back and down.  Kas landed in the mud and ashes that used to be his home.  And cried.Meanwhile, as the soldiers made camp, one walked up and placed the point of his sword at Kas' back, he could feel the wicked blade piercing his skin and drawing blood."Vecna, what should we do with the runt here?"  the soldier called out, pressing down on his blade slightly more, eliciting a gasp of pain from Kas."Leave him to starve," came the reply from the robed man.Kas felt the blade lift up, it had only left a slight wound.  Then, he felt the warrior's grip on his collar.  As the soldier lifted the still weeping Kas from the ground, his hands felt something in the mud.  He recognized the feel of his father's hunting dagger, and cluthed it with thoughts of revenge running through his mind.  As he found himself back on his feet after the soldier let him go, he spun around, driving the dagger towards the man's knee with both hands.  The dagger hit the metal armor, then slid through.The soldier let out a scream as he bent down and clutched his knee in agony.  Kas pulled the dagger out, and stabbed the man in the neck.  His spinal colum severed, the soldier dropped, instantly dead.  Kas turned around towards the rest of the group in time to see a crossbow quarrel fired straight at him.  With no time to dodge, he closed his eyes and made mental apologies to his mother, father, and sister for failing them.  One second passed.  Two seconds passed.  Three seconds passed and still he lived.  Kas opened his eyes to see the quarrel, hanging in the air, inches from his face, and the robed man slowly walking towards him."Such anger and violence, amazing in one so little.  Boy, you shall have a grand future at my side."With that, the robed figure, the maniac known as Vecna, raised his hands, and Kas felt an unnatural sleep fall over him.It looked just like this that day, the day he took me in.His eyes searched the horizon, looking for any sign of the raiding party that had struck down his childhood and innocence that day.  And found nothing.Suddenely, Kas realized that this was what could have been.  An image of a time gone right.Kas, warrior from the arcane age, murderer of countless millions, leader of the Union of Worlds, God to billions, and father of the Cydian race dropped to his knees, and cried.It seemed like an eternity had passed, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.Looking back, he saw the sweet face and long brown hair that would have been his sister's, had she lived."Anabel, is it you?  Is it truly you?""Yes, you sily, who else would it be?  Now come, mother and father are waiting."And so Kas experienced one of the many miracles that the Domain of Hope had wrought that day.  It had restored his family to him, and brough compassion back to his heart.From that point onward, Kas spent a month out of every year with his true family, spending time stolen from them in another lifetime and another world.  His rule over the Union of Worlds continued with the God-Emperor, and they brought peace to their people, the word of faith in their pantheon to those who chose it throughout the multiverse, and the compassion of true mercy with Kas' judgements.</blockquote>

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