Writing Challenges

2021/06/19 - Word Sprint 1: Aliens and Magick, Humanity's Downfall

587 words in 15 minutes

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PROMPT: Humans once wielded formidable magical power but with over 7 billion of us on the planet now Mana has spread far too thinly to have any effect. When hostile aliens reduce humanity to a mere fraction the survivors discover an old power has begun to reawaken once again.

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There used to be legends of ancient magicks, old relics, grand powers that humanity once held. These days, no one believes them. At least, they didn't. After the alien fiasco though, apparently things changed.

We were normal, peaceful, finally on our way to being without war when it happened, our tech aimed for bettering the world. We wouldn't have been prepared to fight them anyway. But they apparently gave us our best weapon back - magick.

Like most, I thought it was a myth. I never imagined it could actually exist, how, after all, could it better our kind? We were already doing so well without it, so we thought.

Most people became deathly ill after the second wave, soon dying, their deaths more painful than the first wave, which had completely obliterated essentially all life that was in all but the coldest regions. People began to migrate towards the poles, hoping to survive another day, many then dying before reaching them. The few that survived, moved on to discover what the ancients were right about the whole time. The shamans, the 'crazy elders', the 'conspiracy theorists', they were all right. Aliens existed, and so did magick. It didn't make much sense, not at first, but the few living scientists seemed to agree on one thing - it must have been spread far too thin before for it to be usable.

First came the small powers, a bit of extra warmth here or there, an extra gust of wind, a slight moving of objects with the mind but as humanity, who resorted to hiding in glacial caves, began to grow again, though hardly fast enough to keep up with the deaths, the further generations began to show signs of more powers.

I suppose I got the most powerful, though also the most cursed. My entire family died, both in the first and second wave. At age 5, I was taken in by another traveller, though he too died, but thankfully not until we had been safe for a while, at least he got some peace again. At age 9, I found myself with a man who had lost his wife and unborn children in the second wave. At age 17, he died, wave two finally consuming him. And when I reached my early thirties, I realized I hadn't aged past my later teenage years. Immortality. Not invulnerability - injuries still happened and they hurt like a bitch - but I couldn't die. Nothing the aliens threw at us ever kept me down for long. I ended up on the front lines more times than I could count, more years than I should have had, decades that were impossible.

I saw the rising and falling of magick, the centuries of humanities rising, the times of its falling.

Eventually, after what seemed like a millenia, the aliens left us alone, for a time.

It wasn't as nice as one would think.

Humanity had sunk back into its deep pits of rotten war and it seemed nothing could help it now.

Cults rose and fell, monsters turned to cannibalism in hopes to strengthen their own powers, wars waged between mages, watched like wrestling was back in the old 20th century, eons ago. And, after an event like that, it was hard to think peace would ever return. If aliens came back, any aliens, we felt we needed to be prepared. The fear of what was now known drove us to insanity and destruction yet again and it seemed there was no hope for recovery.