The Darkened Sanctum
"One Tale Lead to Another…"
I remember when the world was beautiful…
"All things lived under a vast canopy that was dotted with points of lights and colors that changed to nature's whim. There were bright colors, living green, robust red, bright yellow… but most of all the inviting sky blue. This shade was a constant, overlooked by those under its reign, and they had no idea what would happen were they to loose it…
Humans were the oddest of creatures living in this world, more powerful than most beasts, developing colonies that could reach the heavens. The things they gathered or made were never enough and they strove to have more. They began trying the task that was only to be held in the hands of the gods… separated sides began toying with life itself and began creating creatures that followed the human's will.
I was this way, too.
They created the rest of my kind and soon they broke into war, as if proving to their own race they could destroy anything. Our powers clashed, scorching the earth into a barren wasteland. Humans killed other humans, their own species blood splashed across their hands and blades. I did not find this was in error, for I simply fought for the humans who brought me into being. In the height of this war, at a large colony of these creatures, I was unleashed to bring ruin to those living there… my eyes flooded with rage were blind, as my fangs tore through human flesh and their buildings with nothing held back. Their weapons would sing in the air as they rose to slay me, but my power would cut them asunder and leave nothing but their shadows burnt onto the ground. It was that image that brought me back from that blind rage, the silhouettes of those once standing left there for eternity. My own destructive power led me to my right mind, and as my creators called for me to fight… I fled.
With wings to the air I fled a great distance into a field uninhabited by war. Landing among the torched green, I could see across the horizons my brothers and sisters among the humans, destroying everything in their path. The sky had waned and turned a dull green, and the air was becoming thick with death…
I became afraid.
So with my powers, the last time I ever decided to use them, I blasted a tunnel into the earth and fled into its dark bosom. Afraid of the humans controlling us, afraid of them destroying the beautiful world, I continued to dig as deeply as I could, taking refuge in a cavern deep within the soil.
I waited.
The humans above watched, while fighting, the world starting to waste away as a great poison seemed to flood the sky blue. The last remaining sides finally came to senses and called off their fighting, but only after my brothers and sisters had fallen on the battlefield. They soon saw what I feared as the fields and forests roasted themselves to crisps. To my dismay, they found the deep, open tunnel I had left behind and fled down, sealing the outside world, destroying all of what they had come to know.
They had destroyed their own haven but now had found a new one- afraid, like me, they went as deep as they could down my pathway, finally coming across my caverns. Afraid of us now, forgetting that we had only did what we did from their own meddling, the humans rose to attack me- using more of my powers I fled even deeper, but they continued like a wave. They attacked as a group, gnashing at my flesh with their weapons. They drove me back up, intending to lead me past the seal, but I backed into a cavern.
I had met my match, it seems, in the hands of my creators.
I dreamt that they had created four more for their needs, the last, they swore, only needed to create the underground landscapes. Starting from the bottom of the hole I had uncovered, rather than from the top, they carved out their futures in the body of the planet, inching closer, but never reaching the surface. This new dream lacks the colors my eyes had once seen, and those mimicking my brothers are foreign to me. Myself, forgotten, starves away in this chill, the chains resting heavily across my torn wings and neck. I sleep endlessly, now dreaming of a vision that allows me to hope for renewal of the Sky.
The vision I see lies within the humans, but perhaps not of their will, but the tides somewhat turned. Could those mocking my brothers have found a way to control those who controlled them, free wills given to them through creation… or death? Through meddling of one, another was to link with an unsuspecting, lowly human…
…The one, perhaps, who will make the world beautiful again."