Song of Destruction

I

   A pale white moon hung in the sky, surrounded by countless shimmering dots of gold and white light, the darkness of the night turning into faint lilac on the horizon. The ground was cracked and rocky, rising and falling in uneven terrain, the blacks, browns and greys contrasted heavily by bright yellows, oranges and reds of smoldering lava.

   High, inside a dark cave near the crest of a volcano, a man, sitting on a ledge of rock, casually ate a piece of meat from a stick, like a makeshift fork, the burning heat that permeated the immolating land seemed unable to harm him. The man was draped in a large, heavy looking, cloak-like coat, the hood behind him covered by a waterfall of dark hair. The unlikely attire seemed to be made of unnaturally dark scales, like a shroud made of pure darkness. A faceless white mask with two horns sprouting upward from it's front lay on the ledge at his side, a massive and imposing scythe leaning on the wall next to him.

   The man grumbled between bites, irises glowing like a scarlet sun, he had just returned from a wild night, as it always was, there never was a 'calm night'. Left forever alone his mood quickly turned contemplative and solemn. How again had it turned out like this? How much time had even passed? He didn't know, or at least he didn't know the answer to the second one. He of all people knew well how it all had started... how everything had come to an end. Or a new beginning? Who knew. When he closed his eyes he still remembered it vividly, change after change, like riffling through a book. Like countless times before, he decided to take another little trip through memory lane.

   He thought back to all those years ago. At that point humanity was going as well as it had ever been, suburban places practically didn't exist anymore, most land was covered completely by a forest of concrete and glass, roads and pathways everywhere due to the presence of the largest population the world had ever seen, many inner workings perfected, the total educational competence of the world at an all time high, many new scientific breakthroughs that lead to extraterrestrial colonization- where the concentration of civilization was far lower-, but wherever light shines, shadows loom after. There was always mundane crime of course, now upped many degrees in scale due to the proportionally larger population, but then there was other trouble which carried more weight. Humans had always found reasons to pick a fight with each other, be it important and justifiable ones, or simply because they wanted to, but regardless even that age of prosperity was no exception. Some people were unhappy, people with political power. But they couldn't just up and declare war. It would break world wide political balance and just cause chaos without yield. But then it all changed one otherwise completely ordinary day.

   Perhaps it was because of the massively increased population, perhaps it was Divine intervention, perhaps it was merely one of fate's whims, but one day a new variable emerged, a variable with limitless possibilities and an unignorable impact. Some rare people around the world, through mostly heavy and harsh emotional moments, exhibited unnatural powers, of all kinds. Although incredibly varied, the nature of most of these powers lied in affecting the physical dimension. People did as people do and hence named these people who wielded powers The Pathbound. As interesting as all of that was, it was here where things started to go south. Rotten humans who, before couldn't do much, had now gotten convenient pawns, pawns who themselves did not have the limitations that shackled regular mortals. By then it was easy to see where everything was going to go, and, sure enough, chaos ensued. But everything didn't just fall down overnight, a new balance of sorts had formed, albeit a balance where everyone steadily wore each other down. Be it as it may though, humans were humans, and eventually things settled down more or less. And again, humans did as humans do, and named the grand period of strife and suffering, the "Great World War".

   Alas it didn't end there, not in the least, or else it would be too easy, too simple. Before the human race could even recover from the Great World War, soon fallowed one more war, this time however with a more... beastial foe. Many speculations were made but nobody ever really came to a conclusion on how they came to being, but all over worlds both human occupied and not, monsters formed purely from the elements emerged, first from the darkest and harshest regions of Earth, before spreading outward over to all other worlds. This war truly was grand as much as it was grim, humans and monsters alike together fell like flies, however the tide of elemental beasts were unseizing, born again almost continuously out of regions suffused most with elemental power. The war was grand, bloody, harsh, and deadly. Under its unrelenting crucible many Legends arose, many died and few survived, those very Legends were called the Archlords.

   Though hard-fought, the human colonies of most worlds succeeded in achieving a balance of reliably keeping the monsters at bay while sustaining bastions of civilization, mostly due to the Archlords. Some however, weren't so lucky, including the very world he lived on even now, Earth. Really it was expected, although having the greatest population out of all the other worlds, the humans of Earth had been hit the hardest by the Great World War, the monsters also first originated from the planet itself, which also had the most monsters out of any other of the worlds. Then, from the grand war of epic proportions, the world that once was essentially one really big city, was now entirely composed of desolate wilds of harsh elemental nature, signs of battle as well as fallen and destroyed structures were common to see anywhere and everywhere.

   And now here he was, one of the few remaining of the Archlords, Aurelius. Still surviving and growing, though alone, he grumbled, very much alone, but there wasn't much he could do about that at the moment. He sighed, throwing away the stick, now cleaned of the meat it once held. He got of the ledge walked to the center of the cave, plopping down in the ground and sitting across legged, the dawn had arrived. Closing his eyes he focused, a searing haze filling the cave along with flickers of black and blue. It was time for him to cultivate, after all there was still much surviving and growing for him to do the next night.

Words: 1124