Meridian II

As Meridian II begins, a small child peers into the windows of a broken and decrepit home. She sees a man there, only a shadow that moves behind the backlit curtains and stirs beyond the crumbling walls. Our protagonist, disgraced and thrown from power, now sits in silence. He ponders how it is that his dreams of bringing peace and tranquility to the world could be dashed by the very people he wished to save. Do they not understand what he is trying to do for them? His thoughts swirl around him in the darkness of his solitude, much like the colors of his dreams. He realizes his only chance to make his dream a reality lies in an ancient and powerful force. Only by summoning and commanding this great and powerful entity will he retake power and be able to bring his dream of peace and tranquility to fruition.

He sees humanity's propensity towards violence and anger as a sickness covering the land. With the mysterious force at his command the man plans to cure the world of this disease through an unearthly medication. The bright colors of the elixir flow over the land like shimmering rivers. As the crowds of people are caught in the tides their twisted faces turn from fear and hatred to frozen, open eyed smiles.

Our hero is seemingly on the cusp of realizing his dream but what he does not realize is the true power of the force he has summoned, and that it has its own designs for the fate of humanity.

As the rivers of medicine subside a brief but beautiful calm falls over the land. It is the calm before the last storm the Earth will ever see. Slowly, the sky turns sickly shades of purple and green. Huge clouds grow on the horizon, and those who were not swept away by the shimmering floods now gather to view the storm growing in the distance. Out of the gathering darkness, the demon, Asteroth, appears. The thick, black clouds of the storm form his cloak and crown. Our hero summoned him to cleanse the woes of humankind and so he creates a burning rain that will cleanse all the land. Fiery, boiling rain falls from the sky and prayers of all different faiths and creeds mix together in a hopeless cacophony of human suffering. Once it is all over, the oceans run thick with blood. No trace of humanity remains. Our hero is gone, cleansed by the burning rain along with the rest of the world. The Demon has cleansed away all of the woes of man, and now blood falls where water once ran pure...