Bang!
Daniel started to fall. The small hole right between his eyes could only mean one thing.
And right the back of his head struck the floor of the vault, his consciousness fell as well.
All the sights smell and other sensory experiences disappeared from Daniel's words, replaced with nothing but endless and impenetrable darkness.
And into this darkness, Daniel's mind fell.
A flash.
"We can't hold this village!" a voice of a man long deceased filled Daniel's mind. "We only have four hundred men! They might be our finest but even they cannot face an enemy a hundred times more numerous!"
The argument was sound.
Daniel lowered his head, taking a look at the drawing his assistant carved into the ground.
A small village called Hodow. Not even a road stop on the path of an over forty-thousand-strong force of the Tatar khan. And yet, with only four hundred men in total, they ended up here, by the order of his majesty the king, to hold back the onslaught of the Tatar hordes.
"We won't be able to hold this place for long if we just wait for the enemy," Daniel said, raising his eyes and looking at his companion.
Sir Nicholas Tys, the commander of the three hundred-strong unit of the armored, the medium-weight cavalry of the commonwealth. Coupled with Daniel's, or rather, Constanty as his body was currently called, a hundred-strong unit of hussars, they had a total force of four hundred between them.
And just like sir Nicholas pointed out, against the Tatar force, they were outnumbered a hundred to one.
"If we can't hold them by defending, then there is only one thing we can do!" Daniel said, raising his foot and kicking it down at the makeshift map sir Nicholas drew on the ground. "We attack!"
The vision suddenly turned blurry, leaving Daniel with nothing more but the general feeling those past events invoked in him.
The desperate charge against the mere front guard of the advancing Tatar force, who on their own had fifty percent more men than their total force.
The victory in the initial skirmish allowed the commonwealth forces to raise their morale, allowing for a successful hold over the Hodow village. An eight-hour-long struggle that despite heavy losses, allowed Daniel and his noble companions to push the Tatar horde back and force them to retreat to their fortress down south.
Soon, even the feeling of those memories vanished, returning Daniel's consciousness to the complete darkness filled with nothing but the sense of falling down.
"They've broken through!" a desperate call reached Daniel's thoughts when yet another vision started. "The Janissaries are in the city!"
Daniel's body jerked up. He then looked towards the massive walls that he defended for so long against the seemingly endless surge of the ottoman troops.
"To the walls!" Daniel shouted, this time bearing the name of Genueese mercenary, Giovanni. "Hold them!"
What followed was a brutal mess of desperate fighting.
Daniel's men fell left and right, succumbing to the onslaught of seemingly endless waves of invaders.
'As long as we hold the walls,' Daniel thought, desperation filling his thoughts.
"They've broken through to the left!" A soldier rushed to Daniel's side to report, only to be cut down by a slash of a random Janissary. A second later, a stray arrow struck the poor man through his throat, making him gargle on his own blood before slipping down on the blood and falling down the last set of walls.
'We can still hold!' Daniel thought, using his sword to point his men toward the hole that appeared in their defenses. 'In just a few more days, help will surely come!'
Daniel managed to prompt up the desperate defense of the wall for several hours. He didn't falter even when the last wave of the ottoman troops, this time consisting solely of their elite janissaries, struck the walls.
"DON'T FALTER!" he screamed from the bottom of his lungs before slashing down with his sword and cutting a fellow Christian from the army of one of Mehmed's vassals.
They were nearly overrun. But this state of things wasn't anything new. In fact, by some miracles, Daniel's men managed to hold strong, keeping the ottomans at bay for hours upon hours already!
'As long as we push them back today….'
Daniel failed to finish forming his thought.
A cannonball tore through the air… only to strike his body, tearing his entire right arm and a huge chunk of his shoulder away.
'Fuck…' Daniel's thoughts turned messy as his brain was assaulted by the wave of unbearable pain.
His consciousness wavered as his body directed all of its energy to salvage the lethal injury.
Then, the vision turned blurry.
Daniel could only see how some of his men dragged him away from the walls, only for the troops remaining there to fall into a state of panic and start giving up on the walls that they had all fought so hard to protect.
By the time Daniel's lifeless body was dragged to the ship, it was already all over, with the ottoman troops pouring uncontested into the city, bringing an end to the last remnant of the once glorious roman empire.
Daniel's vision turned blurry, replaced by nothing but darkness once more.
Then, another vision came. It ended a mere moment later, forcing the ancient one back into the abyss of nothingness.
'Is this what death is?' Daniel thought in one of the few moments when he would remain sober, free from having his consciousness replaced by his state of mind sourced directly from his memories. 'To endlessly spectate my past exploits until my real self will dissolve into this darkness?'
Daniel fell from vision to vision, racing through the ages.
From the fall of Constantinople to the battle of Agincourt that would settle the long years of the Anglo-French war.
With each jump from one memory to another, Daniel's consciousness would leap over more and more of time at once, quickly reaching the times of the roman expansion. Then, Daniel witnessed the glory of the great conquest by recalling the time he acted as the legendary king of the Macedonian empire.
The high ages of the Egyptian golden era. The raise of Babylon. The fall of Mesopotamia…
The historic events that the scholars of modern times would geek over all played out before Daniel's eyes.
Then, the light of civilization vanished, not to appear for the next few thousand years as Daniel did everything in his power to unite the few tribes that remained after the fall of Atlanti, refusing to let the flame of civilization fully die out.
And then, the memory of the last day of the Atlanti appeared.
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