Chapter Zero (Prologue): The First Fracturing

In the early 23rd century, humanity had finally found a small measure of peace and stability. It was hard fought for, and hard won, and, unfortunately, not to last.

The 21st century was a time of great upheaval. Desperation and despair formed a harmony that rang across a hundred years, and through billions of lives.

Wars were fought on a global scale. There were annexations, insurrections, and revolutions. Coups and assassinations. Global pandemics rampaged unchecked, each deadlier than the last. New religions rose and old ones fell, or morphed or melded into something new. Economies crashed, and international trade and travel stuttered and stalled.

People died. In the thousands, and millions, they were snuffed out like candles before a hurricane.

Science regressed, though there were some holdouts. Scientists, those who used their minds as an escape, or who had always found theory more interesting than society, even a few, rare, genuinely altruistic hearts, kept to their studies and hypotheses.

So it was, that when everyone was looking at their neighbour, fearful of them, covetous, burning with fury, that one scientist happened to be looking elsewhere.

They were looking up. And because of it, they were the first to notice.

A hail, a shower, a deluge of meteors in the sky. Fast approaching Earth, unavoidable, inexorable. We had no time to prepare.

Questions were asked. How had we missed them? How had some two-bit scientist with a cheap telescope caught them first? The answer was simple. We had bigger things to worry about. More pressing issues. Who had funding to man space telescopes and to pay the wages of astronomers and astrophysicists when the world was ending? That was money for missiles, men who should be on the frontlines.

It was quaint, really. Pathetic, even. The outrage at these falling, burning, balls of rock. The world was already ending; what did it matter if it came a little sooner? Someone suggested it was humanity’s right to end its own life, and that these meteors represented a removal of agency. That was why there was such collective outrage. But no one had time for philosophers any more either.

The world fell into savagery. We had but days to live, and so, naturally, many people died. Taking their own life, or their enemies’. Or their neighbour’s. Scores were settled. Inhibitions shattered and cast to the wind. Pandemonium reigned, king and sovereign over a dying planet.

But the days passed, and the meteors did not fall. Instead, they hung in the atmosphere, burning, always burning, like thousands of new suns, spread all over the globe. Humanity crouched beneath them, cringing, like a naughty child beneath a raised fist.

Another day passed. And another. The meteors were falling far too slowly. What was going on? How could this blatant violation of physics be happening?

As it happened, there was far more than one violation of physics. The meteors, searing our skies, brought with them a last gift for humanity. One which was perfectly suited for them.

Pain. Destruction. And magic.

Complex technology the world over ceased to function, either intermittently or immediately, but one way or the other, it stopped.

Geological events increased. Climate events surged. And they kept increasing, kept surging.

Mountains fell, and new ones were raised. Lakes boiled, evaporated, formed enormous, raging, storm systems, and were deposited elsewhere. Rivers changed course. Deserts blew away in gale winds the likes of which had never been seen. Ice melted. Oceans froze.

It was destruction on a scale humanity could only hope to achieve. Slaughter an order of magnitude greater than our most earnest efforts had ever produced. Billions perished.

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People theorised that the meteors had a purpose. Humans are always wont to ascribe motivations to things we do not understand. Our world had been ploughed, they said, tilled. But from the turned soil, the first shoots of new green life began to grow. Humanity had been seeded, and magic blossomed.

The rain of meteors became known as the Fracturing.

People all over the world began to feel strange sensations. There was something inside them, an energy. And as is the nature of humanity when given a new toy, they played.

It quickly became obvious that this new energy, this mana, this chi, this essence, was useless to all but a few. It was limp, flaccid, an appendage unable to be utilised. For most, that was.

Those lucky few had energy that was coloured. Flavoured. Aspected. People produced bursts of fire from their bodies. They shifted boulders with their minds. They walked on water, or soared through the air like birds. The deathly ill were healed with a touch. The perfectly hale were killed with one.

It was a miracle. And just like most miracles, we ruined it.

Warlords rose to power on the back of their magic. Territories were claimed. Wars began anew. History repeated.

There were some, of course, that used their powers for good. Others formed new governments, or pledged their services to one, and in doing so, ensured the safety of their people.

Decades passed, and humanity began to adapt. To settle. We learned of the eight elements. We codified them, put them into neat little boxes. We learned that those with unaspected mana could use it, if only for enchantments. Calligraphers around the world found new prominence. Decades more trickled by, and slowly, we began to recover.

Then the burning meteors appeared in the sky once more.

Some rejoiced. A second coming! More people awakened an element. Only the young, it seemed, those within a certain age range. A generation of people missed the boat. Others began to wonder: what changes would this Fracturing bring?

This time, just one: the Wrack.

This time, there was no geological change. No climate events. But after the second Fracturing, when the shards had struck the earth, change did come.

People began to report monsters in the night. People disappeared. Then they began to report them in the daytime, and towns began to go dark. The Wrack had come.

Monsters out of a childrens’ tale, horrifically prolific, they swarmed in the lands that humanity had yet to reclaim after its devastation. And once they had a foothold, they began to push.

The Wrack came for us, slaughtered us, and grew ever more numerous. Cities fell, destroyed. Nations were lost.

But humanity fought back. And we had a lot of practice at fighting.

Humankind has always been good at designating the ‘other’. They are the problem. They are the ones we should hate. They are the enemy. And so when the wrack presented an issue, we found solidarity. And we fought.

Wars raged across the planet. In every corner, in every continent, we fought. Bloody, savage, merciless battles were won and lost. Scales tipped one way, then the other, and back again. Eventually, a precarious balance was found.

The wrack had failed to exterminate us. But we had likewise failed to evict our new tenants. The wrack were here to stay.

There was no peace, merely an unending stalemate. Humanity began to bicker. Us, became us and them once more.

And then for a third time, the Fracturing fell.

Now, we had a pattern. Every fifty years, give or take, the meteors came, and burned, and fell slowly to Earth. It was curious. No one was able to explain why they took so long to fall. The impacts when they hit were large, though not extinction level events. Not even close.

Some theorised it was due to Earth’s ambient magic providing some kind of atmospheric resistance. It did not explain why they had fallen so slowly the first time. Not many people cared.

Humanity anxiously awaited the shards. Would this Fracturing bring good, or bad?

The answer was neither, or perhaps both.

When the impacts came, humanity rushed to the sites, some to collect samples, some in hopes it would force an awakening of an aspect through proximity, others to contain any potential new threat.

At each site, they found meteorites, ranging in size from small to massive, just like the first two times. This time, though, the meteorites contained something new.

Each of them were studded with white gems.

Some had more than others, some varied slightly in size. One and all, they were uniquely beautiful.

It wasn’t long before humanity discovered what they were. A week after the third Fracturing, the gems began to shatter.

Or, more accurately, they began to hatch. They were eggs. And tiny dragons emerged.

It was wondrous, unexpected, a marvel. These creatures from myth and legend were real, and they were here!

Not all the eggs hatched, and it quickly became obvious why. Only those that had been touched by a person with an awakened element had hatched. Eggs were redistributed. Wars were fought over others. There was a mad scramble to secure all the impact sites.

The awakened who had secured an egg realised the import of the discovery immediately. They had a nascent bond with their dragon, could hear its thoughts, and speak to it, in turn. 

They found the dragons had elements, though only four of them, and thus, a new distinction was born: the base elements, and the sacred.

Those lucky awakened, those first dragonriders, also discovered new powers. It was just what humanity needed. They turned their attention once again to evicting the wrack.

When their armies marched, they marched with dragons. They were confident, superior, and assured. When they met the wrack in the field, they got a nasty surprise.

The wrack had their own dragons. Twisted, ugly, perverted parodies of their own, but no less effective. The stalemate held.

More Fracturings fell, though there were no new developments after those first, fateful three. More wars were fought. Nations rose and fell.

Humanity continued to struggle and strive. As it was, so it had always been.

But the scales had begun to tip again. The balance was threatened. Soon, upheaval would come again.