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/ Story of Ka'an--/

/ Author: The Cowboy of Oklahoma-/

/ Pt1: Vukima (aka, Her)--/

/ word count: 1234--/

My name is Ka'an Freeman, and this is my story.

I am over 5,000 earth years old, it may sound odd but there's a good reason for this. I do not come from your dimension, or any you may have travelled to or from. As far as I am aware, I am the last of my kind. My home planet was dying, the last world in a dying dimension. Before I knew this, we were a peaceful species, sure we had some powers and a military to guard us in times of dire need, but we knew nothing of strife between neighbors. That all changed when a strange craft came down from our heavens and attempted to enslave my people.

I was young, barely old enough to understand we were in danger. I was hidden along with the rest of our young, until the invaders were removed from our world. The only thing I remember about the creatures, was they're ship, large and round with glass ports on all sides. They were unprepared for our warriors, and we're soon gone. Shortly thereafter, a large light filled the sky, the invaders had thought to rid this planet from the cosmo, if they couldn't have it, no one would. Our warriors flew up and repelled even this attempt, the invaders never returned for us again.

Some years later, a lone female creature came to us, and lived amongst us for a time. Her beauty was incomparable to our females. The time for mating came, many warriors attempted to win her hand, but she repelled everyone. Her powers were beyond even our mightiest warrior, none could match her. So it was a surprise when she choose me, the youngest, weakest warrior, to follow around. At first I gave her no special interest, she was beyond our greatest, what could I possibly offer her?

She persisted, and I kept turning my back, she would appear next to my bedding, and I would move away, until finally she followed me around, completely uncovered, baring all for all to see, and finally I had had enough. Turning on her I fought her with all my strength, I was no match for her, but she persisted even as we fought. It was my hardest battle up until that time, we fought for the entire day. I finally gave in, exhausted, beyond worn down and completely out matched. I finally let her come to me in earnest.

She told me of her travels, the wonders of her journey, all that she had seen. She told me her name, Vukima, I began to fall for her, we were to be mated soon, but then she said she needed to make one last journey before she could stay forever. She left with the promise to return quickly, and I waited for her return, but she did not, not soon enough...

While she was away, another lone creature appeared before us, but this time, kindness and beauty was not its nature. The creature was thin, black, almost skeletal and grotesque to look at, but extremely powerful, as powerful as Vukima. We did not know why it was here, and upon landing, tore through our people like rags. It seemed to feast on not our flesh, but our essence, our life force.

A light would form around the victim and soon the entire body would turn to ash and blow away in the wind. However, that was not the strangest part, soon we realized that we kept forgetting about something. Only the warriors would be allowed in battle, but the ones watching the young ones started seeing it as well. A caretaker would notice a smaller group of young than before. A young one would ask were Jatan or Betina was, their father or mother. Mates would forget they ever had one. Fathers, mothers, families. Once we realized what was happening, we would try to remove the other from the battle, because if both parents were lost, the child would vanish from existence.

After what had happened then, I learned about what this creature was doing. You see, as the creature would eliminate someone, memories would adjust, as if a sense of dejavu would wash over the entire planet all at once. Everyone would forget everything about the missing. If two that were mated, and were both eliminated, any young they had would vanish, as if they had never existed. As it would absorb an individuals life essence, everything about them, past, present, and future, anything that the individual was apart of, would disappear as well. We had no concept of spacetime continuum, altered perceptions, or consequences of altering past events. Not until then.

Soon, very few of our species were left, that is when she returned. She flew in as a shooting star, all her powers to bare on the creature. They fought for what seemed like forever, never tiring, never backing down from the other. Until I made a mistake, I stepped too close. Vukima showed for the first time as they fought, concern, and the creature saw this. It changed its target from her, to me. She fought it to keep it away, but it was even more persistent than her as it came for me. A single touch is all it needed, and we didn't see its tendrils on the ground. Suddenly I was surrounded by darkness, and it smothered my body. All I heard was her scream for a moment, then nothing.

Slowly our sight returned, but we felt strange, where the creature once stood, now was a dried husk of a body, all skin and bone. After a moment, it smiled, then fell dead to the ground. We turned my head towards her, she had a horrified look on her face. When we opened our mouth, we did not recognize our own voice. It was menacing, evil, and we weren't alone.

It had taken over our body, now we stood against her, and she refused to fight against us. We pummeled her mercilessly, all the while she had a sorrowful expression on her face. Soon she was almost out of power, and we knew it. We started to absorb her as we had all the other victims. She looked once more unto us, and she had a sad look in her eyes, then she was gone.

We liked this new body, it could last far longer than our previous host, and it also had unlimited potential for power. When we absorbed our hated enemy, we developed new abilities, we could travel from planet to planet almost instantly and even break the barriers between dimensions! We called it "Rifting." We found planets to absorb, they could not stop us now. She was forever gone and she was all that stood in our way.

Three millennia passed, we decimated world after world, countless billions of beings fell to our hunger. We eventually found another planet, it didn't have but a handful of powerful beings that we sensed, none that could have caused us harm. But we made a mistake when we landed, we took a misstep and fell off a small ledge. Hitting our head on a rock and we lost consciousness. When I woke, my head was bleeding and I did not know who I was anymore, or how I came to be on this world, a planet called Earth.