ChiarOscuro Book One/Episode One - Flame In The Dark

I - Of A Time Past

I – Of A Time Past

(1,590 Words)

“When the world was a dark place, where everywhere danger lurked, when the next meal was never guaranteed, where disease could claim the strongest overnight and the world was still to be explored, the unknown awaiting all those who dared venture out to meet it, this is when our history begins.

Humanity has a stubborn habit of surviving anything. No matter the circumstances we are dealt with and no matter how bleak the situation may seem, we have a habit of fighting to overcome any odds.

Ironically, when our very own survival is at stake, those seem to be the few occasions when people from all walks of life unite under a single banner to fight a common enemy and those men and women who would normally never give one another the light of day and who would normally look down at their own fellow human being, fight side by side against a common foe, class, wealth, the past, all mean nothing when the very thing we treasure, and abuse, the most is at stake.

Life.

And so it was that despite all odds, the flame of humanity grew strong and bright across the globe, as we started to claim our position as top of the food chain, started to discover the ways of the soil and the secrets of the plants to cure the flesh. It seemed nothing could stop us, for no matter the problem, through blood, sweat and tears, we’d always find that solution to keep going.

Yet nothing could prepare humanity for that day.

The darkest day of humanity.

The sky darkened as thousands of birds flooded the sky, rain poured down from the heavens flooding lands and valleys and the very Earth seemed to be shake, the legends say that the world felt as if it was about to split like an egg as a mighty roar echoed across the globe.

That’s when they came.

First by the dozens, then by the hundreds, then by the thousands. And finally, by the millions.

No one knew where they came from or what they wanted. The legends speak of the sky tearing open, beams of light shooting down from the darkness plummeting to Earth while others spoke of the beings materializing right before their very eyes.

Yet how they arrived doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened next.

For though humanity was scattered at that time, more so then today, the same fate awaited them all. Horrific creatures, warped beasts, titans of terror, flooded the world, relentlessly pursuing any living human or animal and they left in their path a landscape of ash and ruin behind them. The rivers turned red, the water toxic and poisoned and the world plunged into complete darkness, the sun blotted out and the rains and winds poured and howled every moment of the day.

Humanity tried to fight back.

Men, women, even children, fought to defend their homes and lands from these beings, beings with seemingly unending strength, brute force and merciless savagery.

It was no use.

Within a matter of hours of their first appearance, they had torn down homes, farms, temples, pyramids, villages and cities.

In a matter of days, entire civilisations were wiped off the face of the Earth.

The few that luckily, if such a word can be used after witnessing such horror and death, survived the initial onslaught, fled towards the mountains for refuge, the last safe havens of the world as Earth slowly started to transform under the reign of these beings, which were given the name Demons and the last few pockets of humanity stayed hidden, only delaying the inevitable.