The Fallen Warlord.

Obsidious had regained his consciousness. He was shackled, dragged to Hyperium's flagship that had docked at his own warship, The Dark Hammer. He felt no will to fight back. He was miserable, broken. He had lost it all, everything he had worked and slaughtered for, upon a cocky whim. Decades upon decades of onslaught for naught.

He was suddenly blinded by a bright light, snapping out of his angsty, internal monologue. He was in Hyperium's throne room, hot magma coursing through tubes in the wall to light the already bright room of white marble and gold.

"Who's the inexperienced one now, Obsidious?" Hyperium queried in a mocking tone. His helmet was still on, but Obsidious could not only hear, but feel the sneer of the imperialist. His heart dropped yet again, feeling another wave of humility.

Hyperium slowly paced down the steps, walking towards the former warlord in his battered and broken armor.

"Who is your ruler?" He asked mockingly. When Obsidious said nothing, he nudged his chained nemesis with a boot, crouching down to speak to him.

"Answer me, idiot."

Obsidious mustered every ounce of dignity left in him, spitting in Hyperium's face. Hyperium rose. He wiped it off, looked away momentarily, then swung around, backhanding him several metres across the room.

"Insolent," he said, his voice full of quiet rage. "Insolent, desperate, unruly. I was to allow you to serve me. Now though...you can get fucked."

Obsidious said nothing.

"I feel like exiling you to Arkanos. That should teach you a lesson. Who knows? Maybe you cam get a job in the underground rings as a bruiser or a fighter, or maybe you can work as a fucking cashier for the rest of your life. What's it to me?"

Arkanos. The word despaired Obsidious. Arkanos was a hole of dishonor, dirty organised criminal activity, abuse, fighting. Brother against brother, father against son, it was a rat hole. Every man, woman and child for themselves. That was the reason neither he nor Hyperium had bothered invading. Nothing to steal, nobody to rule. The reward reaped would be infinitesimal compared to the resources managing that shithole would take.

"Yes, Arkanos sounds good to me. Take your armor and take this fucking spare helmet I found in your chambers." Hyperium kicked down a replica of the helmet he had broken in the duel. Obsidious screamed, ruining his throat and vocal cords as he lunged toward Hyperium, infuriated that his privacy had been invaded.

"Shiver me timbers. Guards, take him away."

A while later, Obsidious sat in the brig of a shuttle. He had resigned himself to his fate once he had been bundled out of the throne room. He sat there in his scratched armor and helmet, chained up, waiting to be deposited on the single most chaotic planet that even the Trinity had not tried to bring peace to. There was no longer any hope for him. He hoped the Obsidian Ultimatum would be treated righteously, as good, loyal warriors. He prayed they wouldn't be subject to abuse. He hadn't just failed himself, but them too.

The engines of the shuttle choked to life, the thrusters squealing like a tortured pig as they departed from what used to be his prime flagship, now just a spoil of war for Hyperium. He gazed out of the tiny slit of a window as they jetted away, mentally releasing a goodbye to his soldiers. They had served well, served loyally. He, on the other hand, was a failure. Arkanos, of all places. Fuck.

He'd heard things about Arkanos from his scouts, never having bothered to visit. The cities were crumbling, skyscrapers raising the monthly death toll by the hour as they collapsed onto people, crushing them mercilessly like pillars of titanium from the hands of some ravenous God. The crime - men, women, children all abused by the infinite numbers of mobs and thugs that resided in the underground, which made the surface look like a day at the park. The underground - a cesspool of crime, slums and shanty towns. No sanitation, waste festering on the streets, stalactites spiralling down onto mob bosses every week, leaving them in a constant state of chaos.

His best hope was to establish himself with the most prestigious of the mobs, the ones who ran it all - The Arkanium. Nobody had dared question them since they arrived three centuries ago, passing leadership from father to son, from son to sister. The current leader was rumored to be a woman - though if she was, she wore such armor that nobody could tell. Regardless, he decided it was to be his first main goal - acquire a position high in their rankings.

After all, you need friends to defeat some warlords.

The shuttle shuddered as it began entry into Arkanos's atmosphere. Obsidious gazed out of the visor of the ship with his hawklike vision, and what he saw did not scare him - but it did worry him.

The clouds were an unhealthy shade of green, the oceans below a milky, fluorescent purple; though you could see they had once been a beautiful blue far off in the distance. Thick, angry smoke rose from every major district below, fires everywhere and the anguished screams of the people audible even through the tough metals of the little vessel. He steeled himself. He'd been through worse. He'd fought on plains of lava, in deserts of subzero ice.

He could manage this. Or so he thought.

The shuttle was not landing where he expected it to - which was in the city. Rather, the pilot touched down with a horrific jolt, causing Obsidious to whack his head against a nearby railing. As the door hissed open with a screech of tortured metal, he winced.

For even through the tint of his visor, the light was blinding, and the heat scorching. Not only had they dropped him in the single most inhospitable planet of the Trinity, but they'd dropped him in the most unruly and unpredictable location there.

The Adamant Desert. A scorching plain thousands of kilometres wide and long, the heat so aggressive that the sand had melted into glass that had hardened and cracked into millions of shards, each holding thousands of Joules in thermal energy. Obsidious had not felt such heat in his eternity of travel and fighting - hell, even on the volcano planet of Sirasia, his suit had kept him reasonably cool. But here? No. He was feeling the true wrath of the two suns that bore their glare of death onto his back.

He stepped outside, the door slamming shut behind him and the shuttle blasting away with its horrific whine and screech. He looked far into the distance, where he caught a shimmering image of smoke and towering buildings. Well, good a place as any to start.

And so, the Fallen Warlord began his first trek of many to come.