. . . you're standing in the middle of what was once a battlefield, a broad plain covered in the armor and weapons and bodies of soldiers, all of them half-buried in the pale earth. What protrudes is charred black or melted. The standards, and any identifying features, are largely lost under the damage. The smell – burned meat and ozone – is thick in your throat.

Somewhat in the distance are two trees. They're huge, dwarfing the landscape, and so close their canopies touch and intertwine. The one on the left is black-barked, its leaves brilliant green; the one on the right is silvery and ghostlike. They're perfect mirror images. Even from here, you can see vast jagged rips down both their trunks.

Above you the sky's filled with dark clouds; there are continual flashes of lightning within them, and rolling thunder. No rain. You can see hints of a bright, deeply oversaturated shade of blue behind the storm. The whole sky has an unnatural sheen laid over it, almost like you're looking through a polished pane of glass.

There's no solid road, but someone has walked ahead of you here: there are clear bootprints in the earth, picking a relatively straight path through the dead and towards the trees.