"As I died, I saw a great white light. It radiated incredible warmth, unalloyed purity and unconditional love. If God exists surely this was that existence."

- Sage of Eridu, 1900 AMC

Peek, pik, peek … 

Malik awoke to multiple ear-splitting squawks with a raging headache, tinnitus and sweltering heat. 

He felt disoriented and could sense his head was propped up on something soft, wet, and cold. 

His eyes felt as heavy as lead but with great difficulty, he managed to open them to survey his surroundings.

The first thing he saw was a giant bird-like creature the size of a baby elephant eating out the innards of what seemed to be a dead man about 300 feet from him.

Its feathers were scarlet red with a straight silvery beak and claws dripping with blood. 

Horrified, he yelped, trying to back away and attempted to stand up only to be assailed by horrendous pain from all over his body. 

It dawned on him that his body was severely wounded in several places. 

His right foot was twisted to an impossible angle and his right forearm appeared to be fractured in many places. 

In addition, there was a superficial laceration across his chest with moderate amounts of blood soaking up the armor he had on.

There were dead bodies everywhere he looked; torsos with missing heads, bloodied arms without bodies, eyes frozen in shock, some with regret and fear permanently preserved on the faces of men. 

The wet and cold sensation he’d felt earlier was blood from a corpse and the softness, its body.

There were tens of the large birds everywhere he looked fighting over some of the corpses while they squawked and pecked at the flesh of the deceased. 

Malik realized he was on some sort of recent battlefield. Afraid, confused, and in pain, he tried to look around a bit more; a part of him wondered if perhaps this was some kind of lucid nightmare.

But the smell of blood and decaying flesh heavily permeated the air announcing to him that all of this was real. 

The more he looked around, the more physically ill and nauseous he felt. He was frightened and visibly shaking. 

Unable to bear the sights and smell of blood and decaying corpses anymore, he once attempted to get up and keeled over, falling on his back. 

The horrible pain returned.

He looked up at the clear sky and gasped in astonishment at the sight of 3 suns. 

2 smaller suns appeared to be right next to each other with a third brighter sun further apart. 

Also, conspicuously visible was a dark metallic-looking structure extending as far as the eye could see. 

“Where the hell am I,” he quietly whispered to himself. His throat felt parched.

By all accounts, he knew he should be dead. 

He could still very vividly recall the final moments of his life. 

“That damned truck … is this hell?”

He shared the Western European scientific rationalist view of the world that death was the end.

Your heart stopped beating, you lost coordination of the senses, and then nothing. 

Things like heaven and hell were fairy tales for the masses.  

As he continued to ponder, unfamiliar memories, like water breaking through a dam, suddenly assaulted his mind. 

The mental pain from this was so excruciating that he passed out within minutes.

About 30 kilometers from where Malik passed out, a troop of 3,000 heavily armored soldiers made their way through a bloody field looking dispiritedly at the bodies lying on the ground. 

“We were too late. Many good men might lose their heads for this,” said General Kafui as he lamented. 

He had left the third prince with two of his trusted aides briefly to deal with some issues of his troops and the impulsive boy had disappeared. 

As he continued to ponder the maelstrom that would follow, a soldier ran frantically toward him with information that would preserve his life and mark a significant turning point in Saorian history.

“Sir, we found a survivor on the battlefield wearing a ring that bears the sigil of the crown of Eridu. 

We think he may be the missing prince.” 

With alacrity, general Kafui quickly jumped onto a nearby faolo [1]. “Take me to him at once and get the best healers we have immediately!”

[1] faolo - a creature similar to a horse. Unlike horses, faolo have six legs in total. Four fore-legs and two hind legs. Both singular and plural forms are spelt faolo