Apple Seed

Humanities Mistake

Man-Kind was a fast growing race. Built to survive, they could communicate, craft, build, and fight. The only problems they faced were monsters, so they set up four kingdoms to keep their people safe. The four major kingdoms of humanity— Anubis, Vale, Vance, & Irkella. Irkella was the prime example of humanities accomplishments bustling with people, merchants and nobles living their best lives. In the center, a colossal castle, from afar it looked celestial. Not a single monster stepped foot in the kingdom for a century. The same could not be said for the smaller kingdoms, Anubis and Vale had the most guards out of the four great kingdoms but it was due to the large amount of monster activity. In the north where Vale located itself lay one of humanities greatest threats, skeletons at night they would come out and it would be a night long battle between them and the soldiers. In Anubis in the south they were overrun with zombie hordes, and a great sickness plagued their people. The king of Irkella wanted to end all of the suffering. His wife had recently become pregnant and he wanted a safe place for his heir to grow up.

For a year they attempted to fortify the kingdoms and through it proved to work well the monsters still made there way in. One day the kings mangus' came to him, not because they had found a solution. But for something else. The mangus' took their king to their work room, when they opened the door there lay a giant portal surrounded by strange ender eyes. In the center held a strange black void substance.
"What is this." The king asked.
"We believe it's a second portal, somewhere else than the Nether." The female mangus replied.
The king looked down into the portal, they had made a portal to Hell, maybe this one lead to Heaven?
"Get my men ready, I want to venture down there as soon as possible." He said.
"Yes sir!" They said running off.

The next night the king and his four warriors Gabriel, Elijah, Jacob, and Lucas all ventured down into the portal.
What they found was not Heaven— it was an even greater Hell.
The men heard an ear splitting scream when they entered and were faced with a colossal beast.
"Spread out, fast!" The king shouted.
The men separated, Gabriel and Jacob to the right the king, then Elijah and Lucas on the left.
Looking into it's fiery purple eyes, it looked on guard. The men were not welcomed here. Lucas and Elijah shot arrows at it and stuck it underneath it's left wing. It took flight to the air and the men fled into a cave.
"That was a fucking dragon!" Jacob shouted breathless.
"It appears they were not myths after all.." Gabriel replied.
The king looked to the entrance of the cave and sighed.
"Has anyone see a portal to go back, we need reinforcements." He asked.
No one said anything.
"When we were first attacked he dragon was guarding something it looked like an altar, perhaps that was it."
"Sir did you see those pillars?" Lucas asked.
"Yes."
"The mangus' mentioned something that looked like them when I was assisting them one day, they are used to heal. It appears they are connected to the creature."
"So what? Whatever we do we can't kill it?" Gabriel asked.
"Not unless we destroy them.." Lucas replied.
The king looked out once again then stood up from his kneeling position.
"Alright then men, Gabriel, Jacob, you two will guard Elijah and Lucas while they attempt to destroy the healing machines with their arrows.
"Yes sir!" Gabriel and Jacob replied.

The five men head out and once again heard an ear splitting scream. The dragon flew powerful strides through the lightless sky with its wings. Elijah and Lucas started on opposite ends slowly taking them down, on the sixth one the dragon charged Lucas.
"Look out!" Jacob shouted blocking Lucas with his shield.
Rather than attacking the shield the dragon picked it up dragging Jacob with it. Jacob tried getting his arm out of the handle but could not until he was already too high it the air. He held on for dear life as he got higher and higher into the air.
"We have to help him!" Shouted Lucas sitting on the ground.
"Get back to destroying the pillars." Yelled Gabriel.
"What? No we have to—"
"There's no point, if he falls he'll die! We can't do anything to save him!" Gabriel replied.
Elijah went back to destroying the pillars and finished the rest off while Lucas watched in despair. It had Jacob's arm in its mouth now and was flailing him in the sky.

When the final pillar was destroyed the dragon landed on the ground, the men ran over to it. Jacob was hanging out of its mouth. He was dead.
"You bastard!" Lucas yelled pulling back his bow and shooting it in the eye.

The creature screeching, blew out purple flames from it's mouth, Gabriel and the king put up their shields in attempt to block them, it helped but both Gabriel and the king were severely wounded. Elijah and Lucas continued firing at the beast. Gabriel charged it and stabbed it in the jaw, when the king got back up he ran over and sliced through its head.

The men stood over it's dead body panting until they heard a noise coming from the alter, they looked through and saw the same void like substance and from the other side heard the same scream from the creature. But this time it sounded like hundreds.
"What is this?" Lucas asked. "Shouldn't this lead back home?"
"Yeah, it should. Maybe it's an illusion." The king replied.
The men decide to go through, Lucas picked up Jacob's body and carried him through. On the other side the men were met by the mangus'. They looked frightened.
"M-my lord! Whilst you were gone Vale was attacked by what they described as dragons. The town is nearly destroyed! The men were shocked in fear, why had this happened? If they needed to go through a portal to get to that dragon where had these come from?
"Get my horse." The king ordered.

In the next four generations 70% of humanity was destroyed. Vale was in shambles and Anubis was left to ruins. The humans were able to lessen the dragons numbers but just two dragons could kill thousands. A war broke out that has gone on for 10 generations now, we just want it to end. That day— we were sent to end the war. That day,