The Ancient Hero's real appearance and identity are mostly unknown or are not common knowledge, and these illustrations were originally meant to be sort of like epic paintings that could be found in Deszer. In a way they are like those of ancient times or battles, that sort of romanticized the struggle of one man's struggle against overwhelming odds.
I didn't spend much time designing the Ancient Hero as he isn't a character we are supposed to know much about. All we do know is that he had access to powerful magic capable of banishing the crystal.
The fight takes place inside a volcano, where the Terror temporarily retreated, having decimated most of the land already, feeding off the fear of those who had survived before it would strike at the rest of the world. The hero arrives and challenges him.
The reason he is depicted as defending himself against the attack, rather than being the one who attacks, is again because of the sort of epic-painting feeling I was going for. The Hero is the shield of humanity and he is the only one who can withstand the Terror's onslaught, and from the destruction we see before, I wanted to suggest that it was humanity's resistance to the Terror that was it's true victory aside from banishing it - that it didn't give into despair. This is why the shield has a very light colour and aesthetic as light is often linked to hope.
This picture is important because it shows one of the, if not the most important historic battle in the world the story is set in, between an unknown hero and an evil that folks ought not to forget.
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