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He dreamt of his home and his church.
He dreamt of prayers to the resplendent Idrila, to the mother of all that was beautiful.
He dreamt that They were there, holding his hand. Reminding him that all was well, that all would be alright.
The beautiful world was still out there. Somewhere, beyond the horizon of his broken home. He would seek it. Many great creatures of the world migrate when conditions no longer suit, and so too could he.
They told him that the pain would be worth it, and so too would the suffering. They told him that to walk along the shores of agony was to be born anew at the end of the road. There was Beauty in agony.
Maybe that was his destiny; to be a martyr. To leave his home and seek that which can rekindle the fires of the once beautiful place.
He saw stained glass windows with vague visages of Idrila, Their stunning form radiating all that was good in the world. Marble statues with candles at their feet. The bells that rang through the air like a gentle song.
In his dream, he remembered dignity. He remembered his father, reverent and intelligent, and his mother, nurturing and wise.
When he awoke, the dignity had faded away to his reality.
There was a lingering smell of ash in the air. Something smokey and dirty. He turned to the side to see the dying campfire in which he cooked a dead bird the night before.
His companion lay on the other side, a poor excuse of a threadbare blanket draped over his aging form. The sky, barely awake with the light of the sun, was the colour of silver. The trees were bare, bones of bodies that used to bear life.
He laid on the ground like a corpse, slowly looking around at his dying world. There was a long way to go before the horizon. A long way to go before a chance of salvation.
He sat. He brought his knees to his chest. He brushed his dirty hair away from his face and sighed, already tired though the morning had lasted mere moments.
Argenti looked through the skeleton trees towards the leaf-littered ground. The grey stretched on forever.
Regardless, he would walk to the horizon. He would brave the shores of agony and reemerge on the other side, triumphant, in the name of Idrila.
In the name of this awful, dying, beautiful world.