This is a secret santa for csatlzy over on tumblr!
The Rings of Oblivia
The oblivian rings had seen many things since they'd been in the desert. They hadn't always been there, of course; they'd once been machines of war. Machines created for mass destruction and for ending the lives of the peoples of Mira. People who had rebelled against their unfair ruler and rallied under a family ready to bring them to freedom and equality.
The rings had been built not only as magic enhancers, but also as concentrators, so that any magic shot at them would be concentrated, amplified and shot back in the form of a deadly beam.
There had been a great battle. The builders of the great rings were sure to win; most rebels were magic users, since the rebellion couldn't afford weapons.
The rebels had learnt of the construction and functioning of the rings; they were ready. They'd assigned people to create powerful shields. From behind them, the mages would shoot he rings, who, in turn, would shoot the shields and who would reflect the shots and the loyals beyond the shields and at the rings themselves.
The expected outcome was that the rings would become so damaged that the loyals would have no choice but to remove them from the battlefield. What no one had expected, not even the engineers that had built them, was that the rings would be so overloaded with magical energy that they would implode.
The light from the explosion was said to have been seen from the then proud city of Orhh'sin.
While the shields were powerful, they weren't powerful enough. Countless people went blind by looking at not the explosion, but at the light that was created when the shields shattered..
The rings also came crashing down, falling apart or staying complete. Those that stayed complete got stuck in the ground while those that didn't fell to the ground in pieces, the debris killing many.
Once the dust had settled, the survivors began pulling people from the rubble, the insignia on the armour not mattering. The rebels quickly organised a rescue and within hours too many bodies to count had been lined up. Some of them were so mangled the only way to know who it was was the dog tags, and even then, some tags had been melted by the heat of the implosion.
Most of the survivors didn't leave the battlefield with everything what they'd come in with. They lost friends, they lost parents, siblings, mates, lovers, their sight, their hearing, their wings, their arms, their legs.
That battle was what caused the massive advancements in cybernetic limbs and the development of bionic eyesight.
The implosion of the rings also changed the geography of Oblivia. It had once been a lush prairie, quite similar to Primordia. In fact, the both had been considered the same region.
The once lush and fertile lands of eastern Primordia became an unforgiving desert. No crops would grow anymore, nothing would grow at all. It was believed that nothing would ever grow again.
The land was renamed Oblivia, for the oblivion it had become.
The people who had lived there moved their city underground, making it so Orhh'Sin was now the only city that was still above ground.
However, over time, animals managed to thrive where the peoples of Mira could not. Species adapted; their camouflage, their way of life, their food, to their new habitat. Animals who couldn't adapt either died out or migrated to Primordia.
Oblivia could have become an empty wasteland, but despite all odds, it thrived. It survived, showing off the determination and will to survive not only of nature, but also of Mira itself.
Nearly a thousand years after the battle, a single man stood in the shadow of the biggest of the rings.
He remembered everything that had happened that night as if it had happened the night before. His brother had pulled him from the rubble, his arm mangled beyond repair and his ears ringing. Despite the pain in his arm and his inability to hear anything, he'd pulled people, ally or not, from the rubble as well. He'd had to have been forcefully dragged away by medics for him to stop saving people.
Those were his men suffering, his men dying.
He'd been rushed to the nearest hospital and the doctors there had managed to somehow save his ruined arm, but not his hearing. The sound of the explosion had not only ruptured his eardrums, but completely destroyed them. The doctors doubted that even with implants, he would likely never be able to hear again.
Despite his situation, he couldn't let his men down. He'd quickly learnt to read lips and to talk even without being able to hear what he was saying.
It was like that, unable to hear what he was saying, that he ended up delivering a speech that went down in history and led the rebels to victory.
He'd eventually received implants and been able to hear again.
He sighed as he sat down. A thousand years had passed since that dreaded day. His arm ached just thinking about it.
His brother, the one who'd pulled him out of the rubble, joined him in the ring's shadow.
"Still thinking about you could have done?" the brother asked.
"You know me too well," he replied.
"L, look, I've said before and I'll say it again: if you'd put up your own shield when the rings went down, you would have died and the war would have dragged on for much longer than necessary."
"I know Al, I know," L sighed. "It's not just the lives I'm thinking about right now though. You remember what this place used to look like. You remember how we'd run around these fields when we were children, how we'd run and play in the fields and around the waterfalls."
"We were younger," Al muttered.
"We were younger," L agreed.
They were silent after that, watching the slowly decaying rings and the sky.
L noticed a growing red circle in the north-eastern and brought his brother's attention it.
"What is that?" he asked as he stood up.
"I have no idea," Al muttered. "But it's coming this way, that's for sure."
A few moments later, the thing became bigger and they could clearly see what it was.
It was a ship, one that was falling apart at that. Pieces from it flew off, likely landing all over Mira. A large piece broke off, seeming to be floating. It flew over them, heading toward Primordia.
"This feels familiar," Al said blankly.
"The ship didn't fall apart last time," L added.
"What should we do?" Al asked as he saw a pretty big piece fall not too far from where they were.
"I'll take care of it this time; you took care of the Manon when they landed."
Al sighed. "Alright, though do tell me if anything interesting happens."
"I will, I will," L said, patting his brother on the back.
"Here's hoping you'll have more fun than I did with the Manon."
"You know, I have a feeling this is going to be very fun," L smiled.
Sera sat on top of one of the largest rings on Oblivia, watching the view. She'd flown in on her skell, and now sat just barely a the edge, almost falling off but not quite.
Since the first time she'd seen the rings, she'd always wondered what they were or what they'd been used for. She knew that almost everyone who'd seen or heard of them were also curious, but no one had any idea what they could've been. She'd asked L once, but he'd changed the subject, clearly uncomfortable about it. She'd dropped it.
Sera wondered if she'd know one day, or if it would forever remain a mystery.