In The Light Of The Full Moon

Chapter 3: The Shifter War

This chapter is about the war between the Monsters and the Shifter Empire.

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Thousands of years ago a species of monsters revealed themselves to the rest of the multiverse, they were called the Shifters.

They were shapeshifters who were born human but at the age of 10, they are recognized as adults and must undergo a ceremony where they would bond with a spirit creature known as a Xo (pronounced z-o). The Xo would consume their soul and become only visible to the person. They would also leave for 1 year to study their magic. But the ceremony also made them forget how to return to their world, and it was the Xo's job to remember how to return, and teach the Shifter how to create something that would let them go, whether that be a spell, potion, or device. It was to test both the Xo and the person's ability to work together. Any Shifters who didn't return were seen as dead.

Depending on what kind of Xo the person bonds with determines what they can shift into. Dragons are the rarest. They can shapeshift into that creature, human, or something in between the two. The Xo also grants them magical abilities.

The Xo rely on their 'host' to survive. In order to stay alive, the Shifter must kill things to consume their souls to keep their Xo fed. The souls of animals are sufficient, but the more the powerful soul they consume is, the stronger the two become.

If a Xo leaves them for any reason the 'host' will either die or become a Behemoth. A Behemoth is a huge malevolent creature that absorbs anything that it touches. Gaining its powers and appearance.

More recently the Shifter empire became unhappy with the size of their territory and decided to expand and conquer the multiverse. The first few AU's they seized, took the multiverse by surprise. The empire had developed into a very large threat, consuming monster and human souls was granting them power to completely decimate AU's. They had even seized the attention of the council and the Bad Sanses, they had teamed up to take them down.

The council had called a peace meeting to end the chaos. But the Shifter emperor refused to stand down, and the multiverse declared war on the Shifters. They had weapons and magic of great strength, destroying the opposing enemies.

When defeat was evident, Sci and other scientists developed a disease that would win the war.

The disease drained their magic and crystals would grow on the victim's bodies that would pierce their flesh and destroy their organs and kill them. It would also kill the Xo, preventing it from leaving the body making it starve to death. It was transmuted through little water droplets that would hover around their body and plant itself onto anything around it, resulting in whole towns being encased in multicoloured crystals. The infected AU's are now avoided at all costs or destroyed.

The monsters had won the war, believing they had wiped the Shifters out of existence. But occasionally when there was one found it would be captured and executed. Years later monsters had found a group of Shifters living in an infected AU which hadn't been destroyed. They burned down the village leaving no survivors.