Terra Natus

V

"Consumers they were called, and consumers they were; devouring everything in their path.

They cared not for the earth, not for each other, not even for the baby in the womb.

But the more they consumed, the more they were consumed; their souls becoming empty black pits that nothing could fill.

Not all Terra has to give, nor all her children upon it, can fill the endless void that is left by an absent soul, my child.

The world was in chaos.

In their desperation, the Consumers were destroying each other, and taking the rest of terra down with them.

So complete was their ruination, that they were eventually forced to stop killing each other as there weren't enough of them left to fight; nothing left to fight with, nowhere left to live, nothing left to eat or drink...nothing left at all.

This, my child, is what we call the Destruction.

The Consumers roamed in ragged packs from place to place, devouring anything still left alive.

But Mother Terra...she had finally had enough. She could no longer allow her one children to destroy all her others.

It was then she called forth Terra Natus.

They came from the trees. They came from the water, from the rocks, from the plants. Mother Terra called her other children out from centuries of standing idle, martyrs of a dying world, to fight back.

She made them her warriors.

Some saw them, it is said, saw them walk right up out of the water, saw a boulder unfold itself and stand, just as you or I might. One second a mighty tree, the next? A being, arms stretched up to the glorious sun.

Fully grown she brought them, and clothed they were, simple robes the colors of their previous terra form...and armed. No sooner did we see them than they were shooting us down.

We were finally paying for our sins, and for the sins of our parents, and their parents before them.

It was a heavy debt to pay.

The Protectors worked for many, many years tearing down that which the Consumers had built: great walls blocking the rivers, great bridges stretching over them, great buildings within their borders. They carefully nurtured and protected the mountains, the forests, the rivers; growing them and returning Mother Terra slowly to her former glory.

The Consumers, and their children, were not allowed anywhere near such areas again.

Cast off from anything they knew, they almost became extinct.

But they didn't.

Somehow, in losing all else...they found something, my child.

Their souls."

*

Dark shapes.

Dark shapes interrupted by sparkling light.

Light that hurt her eyes.

She closed them to blink away the pain, then forgot to open them again for some time.

When she did, the scene was much the same, though this time the dark shapes were moving.

It looked familiar somehow, and she was lost from the present again, this time in a memory.