The Oracle's Prophecy

5

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What had come first, the great plague or the wars? Those who still cared to discuss it, thought the Dark Storm started it all – the name given to the plague – but no one could really know for certain; writings from that time no longer existed.

What they did know was that in the year 2025, now over a quarter-millennia ago, the unthinkable happened. One day it was said there were as many humans on the earth as grains of sand on a beach. Then within the blink of an eye the shoreline was swept clean.

The Dark Storm took ninety souls for every hundred and the wars took almost all the rest. What remained after that was lawlessness and chaos.

In the first few months after the outbreak, scientists believed a cure could be found. Only humans seemed susceptible to the plague so they believed humanity's survival lay in blending the genetic code of man with animals.

That's how the mutants were born, though in this world they were simply known as 'blends' and in-turn they called the non-mutants, 'basics'. There were many different kinds but the most well-known were the felisians, ursinians, houndsmen, scalies, ratties and serviles. And though their existence was the result of a series of desperate scientific experiments, the blends had over the centuries developed their own way of life, some even their own language.

The felisians, like the cats they took after, were reclusive types and kept to themselves. If rumor were to be believed, they lived in a secret city that no one outside of their kind was allowed to enter.

The ursinians were like Acadia: grouchy, bad-mannered and aggressive. They'd been the guardsman to the Elders of the Torchbearers and during the attack on Sancisco many had fought to the death to protect them. Now their kind lived as fugitives and it was the noose for many if they were ever captured.

Loyal, happy, playful and persistently hungry, the houndsmen were as much dog as they were human and exhibited such traits. With their near limitless energy they were excellent trappers, cattlemen and farmers. Yet, if there was mischief to be had you could be sure they'd be at the center of it.

Scalies, ratties and serviles – part-lizard, part-rat and part-toad, respectively – exhibited all the worst qualities of the human personality. They were scheming, sly and devious and given the opportunity, they'd stab you in the back for little more than the money in your pocket. They were Directory men through-and-through.

* * *

The scientists created another group of mutants during the Dark Storm. Not basics or blends, they were something different altogether: the anomalies.

No one called them that of course. If you were to refer to a person who had the ability to teleport, or create a lightening bolt in the palm of their hand, you'd call them a 'crink'.

They could speak to one another over great distances and use their abilities to make themselves stronger and faster. With just a thought they could move heavy objects or push themselves through the air like a bird. Some of the gifted ones, the truly special crinks, could even see far into the future.

* * *

As the wars persisted and the devastation increased, the scientists became more and more desperate and reached ever deeper into their bag of tricks to see what else they could create. Unbound by laws that no longer existed, they continued to manipulate and mix creatures. Not just with man but with each other and not just with the ones that had existed in their own time but with ancient beasts from civilizations long extinct. This was how the colossals came to be.

The deadly raptors that lived in the southern swamps, the mammoths that roamed the Great Unknown to the north and the mythological dragons that attacked from the air. All these beasts and more now walked the earth.

Yet, it was all in vain. The world of men continued to disappear. Governments, gone. Armies, gone. Police, gone. Order, gone. Soon the scientists themselves were gone and when they died they took their great knowledge with them.

Gone went their technology, their medicines, their history, their culture, their art. The Dark Storm and the wars took everything man had once come to rely upon as quickly and decisively as the light on a candle being snuffed out. Lost to the darkness, like the lost civilization they'd come to be known as.

Within a decade the world had changed and all that was left for those who remained was the rising and setting of the sun and the fight to survive.