Legends tell of the day the world broke.This might seem like a truly ominous prophecy, but alas, it is our history.
In the 3050th year of the Consolidated Vaumian Calendar a great uprising was staged and lead by a man who called himself Aber. He took the continent by storm,leading a never before seen army of unheard of proportions. He quickly carved out a holding from the existing knigdoms, establishing the castle of Abersrest, which later became the capitol of his kingdom. From this foothold he quickly climbed to great prominence as he tore land and resources from the surrounding kingdoms, winning over the people with charm and charisma. As the kingdom of Aber grew, so did his soldier's acclaim. Nothing was known about them, and the army never seemd to recruit or conscript into service. They stood stalwart in the face of opposition, covered in a gleaming carapace of cold steel and oiledleather, not even theirvfaces could be seen. This mysterious force under the leadership of Aber was an army none could stand before, their unending numbers overwhelmed were their strength failed. As battle after battle was won, and more and more land was claimed in the name of Aber, rumors started to spread about the nature of his soldiers. Whenever these claims arose Aber crushed them before they become anything more, though the rumors continued nonetheless. Aber's conquest continued even as the remainging kingdoms gathered their forces in alliance to destroy him, and failed. In the end only the kingdom of Aber remained, and the kingdom became the Aberiine Empire.
As peace came, a new golden era arose within the empire. The people prospered. Technological advances swept across the land. Years passed, the only reminder of war remaining were Aber's mysterious soldiers, who still patrolled the Empire and enforced its law. In the time of peace, many wild theories surfaced regarding them, from brain-washed slaves, to mechanical constructs, even to trained apes. The minds and tongues of city-folk were filled with all manner of ideas. The anser, stranger than even the craziest of thoughts, emerged one fateful day 40 years after the establishment of the Aberiine Empire.
The day started like any other: Taa(their sun) rose in the east, the morning birds sung their song, the night predators went to rest, and the sense of eminent doom prevaded the cool morning air. That last part was not normal, by the way.
As the Great Emperor Aber awoke in his chamber that morning, a familliar figure stood over him. "The time of reckoning is upon thee," the figure intoned, "'A single favour within thy power, at an unappointed time', such was your price and so it shall be."
Hearing this, Aber remembered the events of his foolish youth and the pact he had sworn. He remembered the scroll he had found, the text within which has promised the power he now held, and of the being that granted it. Oh, how he now wished he'd burned the scroll the moment he deciphered it. But now, now it was too late. Too late for him. Too late for the world.
The deeper laws which governed the dealings with such powers now held him to the pact, and now his comupence had come. He rose labouriously, hoping to delay the inevitable for even a second longer, but the figure grabbed him. The moment of reminiscence all he was allowed. A robe apeared around Aber, its colour a deep rusty red, and his short pale blond hair fixed itself to be presentable. The figure wouldn't allow sloppiness before its Lord, even from a being as low
as him. Aber blinked an he was suddenly in a chamber lit by braziers in the four corners, within each a pale blue flame flickered, The light revealed the figure to be a tall, disproportionally thin man, with sharp features and dressed in a burgundy, tailed suit. The tall man immidiately set Aber down and knelt to the regal throne in the center of the room, or rather to the being in it. The creature in the throne looked to be made of squirming shadows, of the kind you see out of the corner of your eye in the dead of night; the shadowy being was roughly man-shaped, with eight pulsating, glowing purple eyes where its face would be. "Ah, Aber!" the Shadow spoke in a deep voice that seemed to resonate with the very fabric of the world, "So good to see you again, I do hope my servant wasn't too rough with you." The shadow exuded an almost childish glee at what was about to happen.
"No... Lord," Aber responded after some pointed encouragement from the tall servant, "He was most gracious."
"Very good, very good!" The shadow tittered, "Now on to the matter at hand, you do know why you're here, don't you?"
"I imagine it's to do with my debt..." spoke Aber heavy heartedly.
"Very astute of you, emperor. The favour I need of you is really rather simple." The shadow grinned facelesly, "I need you to simply be the conduit for little magic spell I wish to do. I'd explain the contents of the spell, but your primitive mind likely wouldn't even comprehend it."
"The spell will only take a few days of your time to complete, and afterwards I'll send you on your way!" The shadow giggled to itself slightly. "I will provide lodging for you here so you needn't worry your little mind about anything."
With that, the shadow gestured gestured behind Aber, prmopting the tall man to lead him out of the chamber through a doorway that did not previously exist, and down a corridor with only one door. Beyond the door there was what apeared to be Aber's bedchamber, though with a door leading to a large washroom beyond.
"Meals shall be provided on your desk when you experience hunger." the tall man blandly let out as he left.
Days passed without event, Aber simply waiting within his room, Contemplating what will happen to him.
"At least they'll let me go afterwards." he said to himself, a habit he'd picked up since his captivity.
As he finished the thought the chamber doors opened and the shadow's servant entered.
"The Lord is ready for you", he said and motioned for him to come.
Aber quickly stood from where he'd been lounging and followed the tall man with a brisk pace, carried by a nervous energy he'd had no outlet for he'd been feeling since the day he awoke to the figure above his bed, but hadn't had a means to use or otherwise get rid of. When they arrived at the chamber from the first day, the central throne was replaced by circular scribbles, a magic circle perhaps, upon which the shadowy being was standing. "I'm sure you've been quite impatient recently", the shadow laughed , "but rest assured the time for waiting is over. It's time to do
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your part!"
The shadow's servant manhandled Aber onto the circle and stood back with his master, who had moved off himself.
Suddenly, a dark glow began emenating from the air within the circle itself, as it started to spiral around him. Pushing him into the center, where the most complicated runes were carved into the ground. As the whirlwind increased in force, the glow began to seep into Aber's body. As suddenly as the glow began, it disapeared like water down a drain, and a great pain began to emanated from his entire body. As Aber fell to the ground, writhing in pain, the shadow started cackling in its unearthly voice. As he lay there, feeling as though the pain would tear him apart, cackling ringing in his ears, Aber began to vomit. However, instead of the expected gastric content, a pulsating purple fluid emerged from within his body. The fluid, as though acid, burned severly on its way out. The pain only got worse as the fluid started spurting out both his nose and eyes,
Through blurry eyes Aber saw the fluid roiling through the air, not subject to gravity as any mundane object would be.
Shortly after, Conciousness left him, the pain proving too much.
From the side, the shadow watched with its loyal servant as the guileless emperor convulsed on the ground, mirth reflected in those four pairs of eyes. The whole process took several hours, the strange fluid accumulating within the circle, quickly obscuring Aber behind a murky curtain. Finally, the last part of the spell activated and the fluid rushed out, first down, deep into the very center of the planet, then out in a massive wave.
The firt thing the people felt was a great rumbling that shook their very bones. Then, then the world broke.
Continents rose up off the planet in great swathes of land, smaller pieces breaking off periodically. The people panicked, many fell as cracks suddenly apeared in the very earth they stood on. The whole process took only a few hours, but within that time as much as 60% of the world's population perished as rivers surged and the earth boiled. Finally, the land stopped and hung over five kilometres over the roiling mass of purple that became the new surface of the planet.
Suddenly, a second wave emanated from the surface, this one passing through, instead of pushing, the ground. As the wave passed through them some of the people, animals, and plants started to change. The change could be as simple as someone's skin suddenly turning a different colour, to some spontaenously combuting, to transforming into monstrous visages of their former selves. Massive forests sprung up in minutes, domestic animals turned into bloodthirsty
monsters, relatives killing transformed relatives as the panic set in.
This second wave also made a mutch subtler, qualitative change within the whole planet. It unlocked a potential that existed since the very birth of the planet. Magic.
People and beasts alike panicked at the sudden changes, and even more so as unexplainable things started happening all around them, stranger even than the effects of the wave.
Within that chamber, where the originator of this event still stood, Aber lay panting on the ground. The fluid had long stopped seeping out of his body but the pain had not lessened in the slightest, though he could now bear it enough that he awoke.
"What... What did you do?" Aber managed to utter, lungs barely working from the pain.
"Oh, nothing much", the shadow jeered "simply a little experiment I've been dying to try... Though I suppose it's time to let you go now, hm?"
"Yes.. let me go. please..." Aber begged the shadow
"Servant, if you'd be so kind." The shadow said, motioning to the man at his side, who then took a long sword out of thin air and impaled Aber through the heart with it.
"I've let you free, now." The shadow laughed, "Free from this life of course!"
As the shadow laughed over his body, Aber felt only a strange numbness as it washed over his body. With a final hate-filled look at the shadow, he succumbed to his fate and let out a final breath.
In those early days after what was later referred to as "The Breaking", there was much panic due to the sudden and irreversible changes to everybody's lives. This was only compounded when only days after the event, strange and monstrous beasts began apearing out of thin air on every one of the newly floating
lands. These monsters seemed to have a goal in killing as much of the people as possible, going so far as to forsake their own lives if it meant killing more. These attacks, combined with the huge number of casualtie from the Breaking, meant that very quickly only roughly a quarter of the original population of two billion were left alive in the end, spread out over all of the different fragment and floating islands over the planet.
The only reason the number of people left was so high, was due to the fact that one day the monsters apeared to suddenly lose their singular interest in inflicting as much death as possible on the people, acting instead like any other beast of the realm. While this confued most everybody left alive, they rejoiced because, even with the newly gained abillities from "The Wave", unde the continued assault from the monsters they would have all uickly perised. As the people began to rebuild and many years passed, the horrors of the early days were almost forgotten, their history only being passed on as oral tradition and legends.
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AN: So. I'd say that's magnitudes better than before.
Writing this took me a good five hours, compared to the twenty minutes of the previous chapter 0, I hope the qualty reflects this as much as I think it does. Now on to the next one... later. Writing is haaard....
-Vox