《A World Withering》 Enlightenment ¡°Do you know why the flowers never bloom?¡± Karis poked at the green bud and looked up at Gren. ¡°Not really,¡± he replied, watching the flower sways back and forth. ¡°It¡¯s like everyone tries to avoid talking about it. Seems like they just stopped one day.¡± She pulled at the stem, bringing the bud closer towards her. She took a faint sniff at it, before inspecting the flecks of pink painted across its tip. ¡°Why?¡± he asked cautiously. ¡°Do you?¡± ¡°Of course.¡± She stood up and brushed some imagined dirt from her clothes, which were immaculately clean as always. She looked around her for a few moments until another bud caught her eye. With a smile, she casually trotted over towards it. Eyebrow raised, Gren followed after her. It had started to snow lightly while they talked, wetting Gren¡¯s hair and skin as they stood unsheltered in the middle of the clearing. Yet the girl, wearing a dress undoubtedly unsuited to the weather, did not so much as shiver. ¡°Care to elaborate?¡± Without acknowledging him, she knelt before the new bud. It was hanging limply, its stem broken. Gently, she reached out with her left hand and used the nail of her thumb against her index finger to prune it. She brought the bud up to her face, watching it closely. For a moment or so, it retained its form and colour, but within a blink, the vibrant red petals turned a dark crimson and sagged under their own weight. Another blink, and the whole thing crumbled into a crisp, brown dust of dead plant matter that fell straight to the ground, no wind to blow it elsewhere. Gren was shocked by the sudden punch of nausea he felt at the sight, and unconsciously took a step back as Karis turned to face him with a smile. ? Gadry¡¯s breathing was dangerously heavy as he reached the crest of the hill. He was an active man for most of his life, but perhaps that was the very thing causing his joints and muscles to be protesting so loudly. After seventy-three years, they likely thought they were owed a good rest. Kris was waiting for him atop the hill, and had been for fifteen minutes. Standing there with a patient smile on his face, the much younger man was a beacon keeping Gadry on course, with his obsidian skin somehow appearing to glow in the darkness, a phenomenon that Gadry dismissed as a trick of the moonlight, though the moon was little more than a slither in the sky that night. Not that he would have been able to see it behind the clouds in any case. As Gadry approached him, Kris extended a hand to pull him the final few steps, and then helped him over to an outcrop of rocks, his body providing a welcome warmth in the cold of the night. Once Gadry was safely seated upon one of the flatter rocks, Kris turned and pointed towards the bright light on the horizon. ¡°What is that?¡± Gadry stared blankly at his youthful companion. The question could not have been one of sincere curiosity. It would be simply impossible for him not to know. Nevertheless, his patient gaze compelled Gadry to humour him. ¡°That¡¯s Regua, the capital city.¡± Kris pondered the distant city for a few moments. From this distance, only the peaks of the highest skyscrapers could be seen poking over the horizon, silhouetted by a bright halo of light pollution. ¡°Why do you not live there?¡± ¡°Rotten luck, mostly. Anyone could come or go in the old days, I hear, back when it weren¡¯t much bigger¡¯n most other towns. Then it started gettin¡¯ bigger an¡¯ they decided they got no space. Load of crap if you ask me, looking¡¯t how high those towers are. Plenty¡¯ve empty land around ¡®em, too. Nowadays, you ain¡¯t got much chance unless you¡¯re actually born there. You can try smuggling yourself in o¡¯ course, but gods help you if you get caught, which you likely will be. And if you aren¡¯t, you¡¯re just an illegal living in their gutters, and I can¡¯t imagine that¡¯s any better than just staying out here, miserable as it is.¡± Kris nodded slowly, still staring out towards the horizon. ¡°How do they power it all?¡± Gadry paused before responding. Nobody was entirely certain, but they had all heard rumours, especially in recent years. Besides, he could not shake the growing feeling that Kris was not asking these questions to remedy his own ignorance, but to test Gadry¡¯s knowledge. ¡°Well, they¡¯re connected to same power grid as rest¡¯ve us. Hydro, coal, nuclear ¡ª the usual. I hear there¡¯s still some wind and solar up in the mountains an¡¯ floating on the seas, but they¡¯ve been all but abandoned, seeing as they probably ain¡¯t producin¡¯ much anymore. But some have started sayin¡¯ they ¡®ave their own stuff. That they keep to ¡®emselves.¡± Hearing these hints of conspiracy, Kris turned back to him, raising an eyebrow expectantly. Gadry cleared his throat. ¡°People say¡­ Well, people say that they found summin¡¯ deep. Down in the ground. Nobody has any idea what, o¡¯ course. But whatever it is, you just need to look over that horizon to see how much good it¡¯s doing ¡®em.¡± Kris¡¯s face had grown darker while Gadry gave his answer. ¡°Are there others places like Regua?¡± ¡°In the whole world? Sure. At least a dozen or so, I¡¯d say. But here in Daria there¡¯s not a town even close to comparing to it.¡± ? ¡°Magic!?¡± ¡°Strictly speaking, it is a form of energy connecting all living beings. That breathes life into them. But it would be possible to manipulate it in ways that most human cultures may recognise as ¡®magic¡¯, yes.¡± For a while, there was no noise but the steady rolling of the tide against the sandy shore as Gera tried to digest what Korin had told her. ¡°Well, I suppose I was always curious how the flowers could stop blooming and then just stay that way all through the year without dying. Magic sounds as plausible a reason as any, I suppose. But you¡¯re telling me the citydwellers discovered magic is real and of all things decided to¡­ harness it for electricity?¡± ¡°More or less. When concentrated, it is capable of powering generators at incredibly high levels of efficiency without producing a single speck of pollution, and it never runs out either.¡± Seeing the sceptic look on Gera¡¯s face, she carried on. ¡°It was the nation of Hera that discovered it first. This ¡®magic¡¯ ¡ª each nation names it differently, but I believe in your tongue it is Elisia ¡ª is thinly spread at the surface, invisible to the eye. But deep, deep underground, it flows thickly in great rivers and lakes of light. So, if you dig deeply enough, you can hit it from practically any spot in the world, as a group of scientists from Hera found out around two centuries ago while trying to see how deep they could drill. I won¡¯t go into the grisly details, but there¡¯s a scar of earth in southern Hera that¡¯s still scorched bare even now. By the time they had sent some people up to investigate the sudden radio silence and then waited for another, larger group of scientists to show up, the initial release of magic had cooled, and they now had a convenient hole with direct access to the greatest discovery in human history. Throw in a decade or so of experimentation and they worked out not only how to harness it as a power source, but also safer methods for tapping into and containing it with less explosive results.¡± Gera nodded slowly, intrigued by the sudden history lesson, if not fully convinced it was fact. ¡°But how do we have it here in Ashlia? There¡¯s certainly no love lost between us and Hera, so I can¡¯t imagine they were kind enough to tell us all about it.¡± Korin smiled and lay down flat on the sand dune. ¡°No, they weren¡¯t. You have some spies to thank for that. Once the secret was stolen from Hera, somebody else stole it from the thieves, and then somebody else stole it from them, and so on until the whole world knew. All of a sudden, energy independence was not only possible for all nations of the world, but relatively easy to achieve. Global hierarchies were turned on their heads almost overnight, and humanity experienced an explosion in technological innovation that hadn¡¯t been seen since the first industrial revolution.¡± She picked up a pebble and examined it in the fading light of early sunset. ¡°But then, you see, doctors started to notice that people who were spending prolonged periods of time around these power stations were healing from injury and illness much faster than you might normally expect, and their children living on-site were reaching heights far beyond the averages for their ages. Plantlife, too, flourished nearby. What really got them salivating, though, were experiments that revealed a link between high exposure to magic and longer lifespans in animals, with no reason to believe it would be any different for humans. So what do you think they did next?¡± Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. ¡°Oh, I couldn¡¯t possibly imagine,¡± responded Gera, rolling her eyes. ¡°But considering I started this year with a cold that lasted for what felt like two months straight, I¡¯m inclined to believe I am not currently benefiting from this quite literal magic medicine?¡± Korin lifted her left hand from behind her head for a high-five, to which Gera obliged. ¡°Very perceptive of you. As you would expect, the people in charge quickly took notice, and soon enough every major city was clearing out entire districts to drill down and build these power plants in their own back gardens. The following decades were a time of plenty for all, and the cities doubled in size many times over into the megalopolises you know today. Their residents, meanwhile, were loath to let the twin boons of longer, healthier lives and unlimited energy to go to waste, and not only grew more and more extravagant in their appetites, but also increasingly jealous of what they possessed. So, one by one, they began to cut themselves off, and left the rural rabble outside of their walls to stagnate ever since.¡± Gera let out a whistle. ¡°Well, I can¡¯t deny it sounds like something they¡¯d do. And it certainly goes a long way to explain why their cities are so fancy. But how do you even know all of this stuff?¡± Korin turned to look at her and raised a single finger to her smiling lips. ? ¡°What do your mummy and daddy do for a living?¡± Klie asked. She was sat on the edge of a small river, her feet immersed in the water. Glas was playing alone a little farther in, crouched slightly so that only her head was sticking out above the water. With a flick of her arms, she spun around at the sound of Klie¡¯s voice. Glas had always felt she was rather smart for an eight-year-old, and yet Klie, who looked about the same age, was always teaching her all kinds of new things. ¡°Farmers,¡± she finally replied. ¡°Mostly potatoes and carrots.¡± ¡°Any fruit trees?¡± ¡°Those things come from trees!?¡± Klie smiled knowingly but refrained from explaining, choosing instead the inspect her toes as she wriggled them under the water. Glas took her silence in stride and returned to floating around in the water. When it came to Klie, questions were something she often asked, but rarely ever answered. Eventually, Klie looked back up and scanned their surroundings. She pointed towards the far bank. ¡°See those flowers?¡± ¡°Uh-huh.¡± ¡°Do you think they¡¯re supposed to look like that?¡± ¡°I¡­ guess? I haven¡¯t seen them looking any other way. Weird stuff happens if you pull them out, though. But the adults get real mad if they find out you did it.¡± ¡°What if I told you they¡¯re only supposed to stay looking that way for a few days, and until just before you were born, they did.¡± Glas playing around in the river¡¯s current and gave Klie a quizzical look. ¡°I mean it. They can look really pretty when they bloom.¡± Glas stood and slowly waded over to join Klie on her rock beside the river. ¡°So why¡¯d don¡¯t they¡­ bloom now?¡± She had never heard the word before, and could not even begin to guess what it meant, but she was growing increasingly self-conscious about how ignorant she must seem to Klie. ¡°You know about the cities, right?¡± Glas perked up at the opportunity to finally show off something she did know. Lifting both her fists, she started counting them off one finger at a time. ¡°Uh-huh! There¡¯s Tela and Mosrey and Ingel in Ashlia, and Yamur and Horb in Erva, and Dinvery and Ceral and Lop and Greel in Hera, and Regua in Roth, and¡­ and¡­ and Smi and Dira in Anor!¡± Even the usually restrained Klie could not how impressed she was, prompting an ear-to-ear smile from Glas threatened to break beyond the boundaries of her cheeks. ¡°Well, then you know exactly who to blame.¡± Without elaborating, she stood up and strode towards the centre of the river, where she dove underwater. Glas began to grow genuinely concerned after a couple of minutes had passed, only for Klie to resurface a little farther down the river. After swimming a few strokes back to shallower water nearby, she continued talking. ¡°Basically, there¡¯s a kind of magical energy that connects all life on the planet. It¡¯s pretty unimportant for humans and most animals, but small things that are rooted directly in the ground, like flowers, rely on it to live. But then the people in those big cities found a way to use it for power and started sucking it all up for themselves.¡± She slumped back down beside Glas. ¡°Eventually, they sucked up so much magic that the rest of the world outside of the cities started running out of it, like sticking a sponge in a puddle. And that¡¯s why the flowers stopped blooming and went to sleep, ¡®cause otherwise they¡¯d end up using what little magic they had left, and die.¡± Klie was growing increasingly agitated as she explained, and Glas had to lean away slightly to avoid being hit by her wildly gesturing arms. ¡°Then without the flowers, all the little pollinating insects that relied on them started dying off, which was the beginning of the end for the rest of the food chain too. I mean, just look at this river! I haven¡¯t seen a fish the entire time we¡¯ve been here! Have you ever even eaten a fish? Or any meat? This is why your parents can¡¯t grow anything that needs pollinating either!¡± Glas nodded solemnly, hoping it was not obvious that she had only understood a portion of what she had just heard. She opened her mouth to talk, but paused a moment, looking Klie up and down. For a girl who had just been swimming, she was remarkably dry. More than that, her tanned skin was sparkled as if in sunshine, but there was no break in the clouds for any sun to shine through. Klie cleared her throat. ¡°You were going to say something?¡± ¡°R-Right¡­ What about the cities then? I¡¯ve never seen one, but they¡¯re meant to be super big and full of people. Even with what Mummy and Daddy grow, we still get lots of food from the commissary. Like fruit and stuff. And I heard that all comes from the cities. If they need these insects and things so badly, how do the cities feed all their own people and then still have a bunch left over for us?¡± ¡°Remember what I said. All the problems you have here are because they¡¯re hogging all the magic for themselves. So, since they have all the magic, they have none of your problems. In fact, they¡¯re better off than they¡¯ve ever been. Everywhere you look there are flowers blooming, and then they have big giant greenhouses underground where they grow all their food with technologies your parents could only ever dream of and pollinators both natural and artificial. Anyway, they only give away all that food so that you country bumpkins are fit enough to do the grunt work in their factories and mines while they live it large in the city.¡± Glas gazed across the river at the patch of flower buds before turning to face Klie. ¡°That sucks. But what¡¯re we supposed to do about it?¡± Klie giggled. ?? Cren stood looking out through the window that comprised the greater part of his living room, a glass of wine in his hand. It was night, but the city outside glowed as bright as early morning, a forest of towers lit up from within and without. Looking down, the ground was a distant blur hidden behind a thin mist of vehicles flitting between the trunks. Kwel rose from the sofa and walked over to his side. He had not known her for long, but the look of distaste on her face as she took in the view was clear. ¡°Was the wine not to your liking? Or is it the glorious march of human progress that displeases you?¡± He swung his arm widely with a dramatic flair, one corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. She turned her head only a hint, glaring at him from the corner of her eye. ¡°Do you know what this ¡®human progress¡¯ has done to the world, all so that a privileged few can live in luxury? Cren took a sip of the wine. ¡°A privileged few? Not at all! I won¡¯t deny life is good here, but when you make it possible for the best of us to excel, all benefit equally. Food grown in our greenhouses helps feed the entire nation, while the vaccines we develop keep them free of disease. Life expectancy has skyrocketed in the past few decades, both inside and outside of these city walls.¡± He saw Kwel open her mouth to speak, and silenced her with a raised hand. ¡°Yes, yes. I have heard the rumours of what this has meant for the natural world as of late, but it is the universe¡¯s cruellest law that nothing good comes free. Give us a few more years, and I¡¯m sure we will find a way to reverse the trend. With the minds we have gathered in the great cities of the world, anything is possible.¡± ¡°You could simply transition to other forms of power.¡± This elicited a bark of laughter from Cren. ¡°Why would we willingly choose to regress? Shall we return to living in the mud as well? Then we won¡¯t need any power at all, and the flowers can thrive in our shit.¡± Kwel stepped closer to the window. All the way to the horizon, there was rarely a building shorter than twenty stories, with most boasting far more. Each and every one was spattered with brightly lit windows or neon-coloured signage. Rails snaked between them, carrying the masses back and forth across the metropolis, while the elite of the elites flew around freely in personal vehicles. Streets lined with trees and gardens painted with flowers in vibrant abundance, a sight which should bring her joy, made her feel nothing but nausea. She turned back to Cren with a smile. ¡°We shall see about that¡± ? Awakening Glin often enjoyed an early morning walk alongside the large Lake Lora near his home. It was the height of winter in his hemisphere of the world, and the vast surface of the lake was frozen thick, complete with a dusting of fresh snowfall on top. Deciding it was about time he headed back, he stopped to rest a few moments on an old bench that had likely been there as long as he had been alive, and basked in the silent tranquillity. When a loud, sharp whine smashed through the calm and reverberated several times around the surrounding hills, he near enough jumped out of his skin. Disorientated by the sudden assault on his ears, Glin scrambled to his feet, just in time for another whine to cause him to flinch and lose his footing, slamming his left shoulder hard onto the frozen ground with a thump. As he rolled around groaning in pain, several more whines cut through the air in quick succession, all seeming to originate from different locations across the wide lake. Swearing liberally, Glin lifted himself up on his right elbow and looked out across the lake just as the whining chorus abruptly morphed into a cacophony of harsh cracks and scrapes. Scrambling back to his feet, he saw that a small hill of broken and crushed ice was rising in the middle of the lake, with half a dozen similar but small bulges radiating some distance away from it, bitterly cold water pouring out of them all in torrents. With a boom, the central hill exploded in a spray of water that reached all the way to the shore, falling upon Glin in a fine mist. With no shelter around him, Glin closed his eyes and resignedly accepted the freezing shower with a sigh. A hairy abdomen of near total black heaved itself out of a large rupture in the middle of the lake, rising like a new island. A fair distance from it on either side were the bent tips of four pairs of thin appendages, trembling under the strain of lifting the bulk of the body out of the water. As Glin stared, frozen to the spot both figuratively and perhaps also literally, a second island, attached to and slightly smaller than the first, also appeared. At its front were two gargantuan, obsidian-black claws flanked by a pair of much smaller appendages. Above these, two large black globes for eyes, followed by three more pairs running down the sides behind them, each smaller than the one before it. With its bulk raised fully out of the water, it blocked out the early morning sun, casting a giant spider-shaped shadow across the landscape and Glin, who now began to shiver violently. But even as he willed himself to run as far as he could, his body refused to listen. It raised one of its segmented legs fully out of the water and placed it cautiously down upon the remaining ice. Thick as a house, the leg sheered straight through the moment the spider tried to place any weight on it, resulting in another booming crash and spray of water. The colossal spider swayed slightly as it lost its balance, but was able to recover quickly courtesy of its seven other legs. Learning its lesson from the experiment, it reached a leg out towards the nearest shore instead, which happened to be exactly where Glin was standing. The leg loomed over him for a moment before it hit solid ground some ways behind, to the sound of several trees being split straight through. Satisfied with the results, another leg reached out. With a yelp, Glin finally broke out of his petrification and scrambled out of the way as the leg landed not far off from where he had been standing, only for the slope to collapse beneath its weight, gouging a deep trench before finding purchase on the flatter ground below. Despite the chaos of sound it had been creating up until this point, the spider itself remained eerily silent as it strained to pull itself closer to the shore with the two legs. Not long after, a second pair of legs followed behind the first, gouging more trenches and felling more trees. Confident in its stability, it lurched forward out of the lake, and made shocking rapidly progress away across the landscape, causing a great shaking and rumbling as it did so, and soaking Glin further with the cascades of water dripping from its body as it passed overhead. ?? Gyra pulled on her jacket and, warm tea in hand, walked out to make herself comfortable on the conveniently flat rock a few paces in front of her door. She was looking upon the forests and rolling hills extending beneath her mountain home for the thousandth time, but the sight made her feel no less content than the first. Others would go mad with the seclusion, but Gyra had never been happier. Courtesy of her little vegetable garden and the monthly deliveries, she had more than enough food to keep her by, with several mountain springs providing her ample clean water to drink and wash with. When the weather was too poor for hiking, boredom could be staved off with a collection of books, music, and films even an archivist would be proud of, and on the rare occasion she felt a little lonely, there was always the internet to connect her with the rest of humanity. Electricity was also easy to come by, thanks to the field of slowly crumbling wind turbines and solar panels she was tasked with maintaining, and the wider power grid they were connected to. In recent years, the mountains were one of the few places that could still boast winds strong enough to power such turbines, but the perpetually gloomy sky had condemned the solar panels to being all but useless, allowing Gyra to neglect them entirely in favour of other pursuits. As she took a sip of her tea, movement on the periphery of her vision dragged Gyra¡¯s gaze upward, and she froze with the mug to her mouth. The monochrome mass of clouds, usually so lifeless, was slowly rotating in a vortex stretching across the entire sky. At its centre, the clouds were violently twisting and rolling, alternating between the darkest grey and purest white. Yet, despite this movement, there was not so much as a gust tickling at Gyra¡¯s hair. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°What the hell¡­¡± she murmured to herself, fumbling her phone out of her pocket with her free hand to check the weather forecasts. Nothing of note, especially concerning tornado risks or hurricanes forming in the middle of a continent. Of course, it many years had passed since there had been either. The world as a whole had grown largely dormant of late, just like the unbloomed buds that coloured the meadows around her humble mountainside home. As she continued to watched, she noticed small flashes of blue in the swirling centre ¡ª rare glimpses of the heavens beyond. Soon, the main mass of tumbling clouds began to reach downwards, bulging out from the otherwise flat blanket and appearing to take on a more defined shape. Face scrunched in disbelief, Gyra lifted her phone back up and used the camera to zoom in on the mass for a clearer look, making sure to tap the record button in the hope of some short-lived internet fame. Increasingly, the scattered spots of blue sky were merging together, severing the developing shape entirely from the surrounding clouds. Seen on its own, and with the closer view through the camera lens, the clouds were unmistakably taking on the resemblance of a colossal bird in the midst of a dive, its beak pointing downwards and broad wings stretched out behind. Once this shape was settled, the tumbling, rolling clouds grew thicker and darker until, in the blink of an eye, they turned to feathers and keratin. Gyra watched in silent awe as a fully-formed eagle, several kilometres long from beak to tail, broke from its suspension there in the eye of the storm and entered a smooth glide that carried it out across the horizon. She stood and turned to walk towards her home, in a daze as her mind ran wild trying to make sense of what she had just witnessed. Reaching the door, she turned one more time to glance at the spot where the eagle passed the horizon, and then gently shut it behind her. She placed her mug on the kitchen table and walked to her bed, slowly lowering herself down onto it. She lay there staring at the ceiling for some time. ?? Garth was sat midway down the steps leading from the bridge to the deck, his head resting in one hand. They had been at sea for three weeks now, and he was fed up with seeing the same old empty horizons. The total absence of a single squawking bird or sea creature riding their wake did little to help break the sense of monotony. With a sigh, he pulled himself to his feet for a few laps of the 400-metre-long deck, hoping that something may catch his eye, or perhaps that he might slip and fall off of the side. That would certainly spice things up, and he was at least half-confident that his shipmates could fish him back out of the water. The ocean was calm, as it almost always was these past few years, forming a perfect and abrupt line on the horizon between the blue of the sea and the white of the cloudy sky. Hence Garth was caught all the more off guard when the boat suddenly lurched, throwing him against the guardrail. Despite his earlier musings, he was not, in fact, particularly keen on being thrown overboard, and so, despite being mildly winded, managed to cling on for dear life to avoid being flipped over the top of the rail. He was about to push himself back onto the deck and spend a few moments dramatically hyperventilating over his near-death experience when he noticed the water below the boat was considerably darker than it should have been. Confused, he raised his gaze. Farther out towards the horizon, the water remained the same navy blue it should have been, but it grew significantly darker halfway towards the ship. He looked around to see if the phenomenon was the same in all directions, and noticed that the line of darker water was in fact advancing in front of the ship. Garth was still struggling to comprehend what he was seeing when the shadow fell away significantly on either side, and the ship found itself in a much thinner sliver of dark water protruding from the main bulk that had pushed on ahead. Garth ran towards the bow in an attempt to get a better view of both of the sliver¡¯s edges, fighting to stay on his feet against the constant rocking of the ship. Immediately upon leaning over the railing, he noticed that the sliver was swaying side to side, its edges occasionally almost touching the ship. Looking farther outward, he could also see what appeared to be similar slivers. As he watched, each of these slivers slowly began to curve and twist, until the ship found itself once again in blue water. Garth instinctively leaned farther over the railing in an attempt to keep the slivers in sight, and had little time to react as the one they had previously been sailing along swung back in an arc towards the ship, its momentum steady and relentless. The lurch as the shadow passed beneath the ship threw the precariously balanced Garth straight over the railing. His body moved with little conscious input from his brain, hooking his right arm around a lower rung of the railing as it rushed towards him, providing a perfect point of rotation for the momentum of his fall to swing him around until his waist slammed into the edge of the deck, the abrupt stop yanking his shoulder half out of its socket. Garth struggled anxiously to maintain his grip as the continued rocking of the ship kept slamming the deck into his kidney again and again, all the while screaming and shouting a long string of the worst expletives that came to mind. Eventually, the rocking abated, and he was able to use his good arm to pull himself high enough to swing up his legs and throw himself back up over the railing with a kick. Upon hitting the deck with another sickening thump, he promptly rolled over and vomited up the entire contents of his stomach, and perhaps a little more. Once it seemed the coast was clear and nothing more was due to come up, he slowly dragged himself back towards the railing, half-delirious from pain and with sweat pouring down his face. Pressing his face against the cool metal of the railing, he was unable to suppress a sigh of pleasure. Though his vision was hazy and obscured by dancing black spots, he could see that, clear to the horizon, all was blue ¡ª and then he fainted. ?? Resurgence The life force, or ¡®magic¡¯, that connects all beings has no name by which it calls itself, simply because it has no need for such trivialities as speech. Therefore, in the interests of avoiding confusion, allow me to refer to it by my favourite term among those given to it in myriad languages of humankind ¡ª Elariel, a delightfully inventive name meaning ¡°living force of life¡± courtesy of the nation of Anor. Elariel flows deep within the planet¡¯s crust, at depths that for much of human civilisation seemed impossible to reach. Yet it is little more than a shadow of a greater, far more ancient magic, that runs much deeper still, into the planets very core. This ancient magic is much too old for any lifeform today to know how to harness it, and lacks any name in human language that I can provide you because humans have no idea it exists. Like the drifting of continents, it flows slowly, but with relentless momentum. As humanity hoarded Elariel for their cities, this ancient magic was drawn from the core of the planet, flowing thick like geological syrup, to fill the void that was left behind. Decades passed this way, constituting a great many generations in human terms, but hardly a blink of an eye in the grand timescales that ancient magic acts upon. As much of the world¡¯s surface grew deprived of Elariel, the natural lifeforms that relied upon it, including most plantlife and many small insects and rodents, entered a spiral towards extinction. However, the same lack of Elariel that triggered this catastrophe had also allowed the ancient magic of the core to reach nearer the crust than it had at any point since the planet¡¯s formation, and it was able to extend its influence towards these plants, rooted as they are into the physical body of the planet, and freeze them in a kind of stasis. Having made this connection, it also became able to exert its enigmatic will upon the surface in more concrete ways, and this is where my kin and I enter the story. For my own part, I was born naked in a forest ditch, a day¡¯s walk from the nearest human settlement. Hardly dignified, but not out of keeping with my thousands of siblings who were also popping up elsewhere in every corner of the world, both inside and outside of the cities. Our task was simple. We were to mingle among humanity, learning what we could about the state of the world, all the while spreading whispers to ensure that when the time came, they would why. We lived this way for almost a decade, feeling the ancient magic growing closer with each passing day, until we could feel it tickling at the soles of our feet. The time had come for nature to reassert itself. The histories, if any are to be written, will likely say that the calamity struck everywhere at the same time, perhaps as the clocks ominously chimed the hour. The human penchant for the poetic is one of the first things I learned in my time among them, and will likely prove their most enduring attribute. Unfortunately for the poets, though it all unfolded with relative simultaneity, their dramatic opening line would not be strictly true. In truth, the first of the cities to be hit was Ingel, in Ashlia. Followed an entire hour later by Yamur in Erva, and the twin cities of Ceral and Greel on the eastern coast of Hera roughly twenty minutes after that. Some consolidation may be found in the fact that the remaining eight, at least, were indeed struck within only a handful of minutes or even seconds of one another. The ¡®calamity¡¯ I am referring to, of course, is the process by which every last city in the world that had grown gorged on the nectar of Elariel was felled by a menagerie of colossal creatures born straight of nature itself, a number of which I will detail here: Ironically enough, despite being the first to be hit, Ingel was among the last to meet its utter destruction. The reason being that the harbingers of its fate were a trio of unhurried, lumbering tortoises that were not only the size of small mountains, but had quite literally been small mountains only an hour prior, their shells still thick with forests and snowy peaks. In the many years of rapid technological development since they first embarked on their exploitation of Elariel, humans had ¡ª perhaps understandably ¡ª neglected to develop a means for repelling attack by semi-sentient landscapes, thus providing these great tortoises free rein to walk through the city unimpeded, tumbling skyscrapers simply by walking into them. Apparently working up an appetite from all of the exertion, at one point, one member of the trio stopped for a while to take a bite of, well, an entire public park before carrying on its way. Scurrying over and around these tortoises, and in fact present in almost every city, were gangs of spiders built like small islands, their long, spindly limbs stabbing great trenches into the ground wherever they were placed. These critters found great delight skittering up to the top of the tallest skyscrapers they could find and swaying their bodies back and forth until the foundations broke and brought the whole things down, often setting off a domino effect on the surrounding buildings. Being pulled straight from humanity¡¯s worst nightmares, the primal fear they instilled in all those who witnessed them was perhaps the only thing they were good for, as their random and uncoordinated destruction did more to slow down their colossal companions than to assist them. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. On the coast of Hera, meanwhile, the twin cities of Ceral and Greel were first struck by an immense surge of water that lurched out of the sea with little warning to sweep clean through most of the city. In its wake followed an enormous octopus that slithered over ¡ª or rather through ¡ª the sea wall, slapping its limbs around with wild abandon, and on more than one occasion plucking skyscrapers from the ground and swinging them around like clubs. The great cargo ships traversing the oceans were not spared either, crushed between the coils of massive eels or dragged down to the depths by truly giant squids. From the skies, eagles and falcons dropped an assortment of debris ranging from entire mountain peaks to some more of the aforementioned cargo ships, before compounding the carnage further with hurricane winds produced by a few strong beats of their wings. At the same time, entire sections of cities may be dropping out of sight into vast caverns borrowed beneath them by train-sized worms and moles. Residents of Regua had a rude awakening in the middle of the night when their own destruction was kicked off by a mob of frogs, each as big as a sports stadium, hopping straight out of the wide River Reg that cut through the south side of the city. There was an aim to the wanton destruction, however, with the ultimate prey of these behemoths being the sprawling power plants in the centre of each city. You can build a wall as many metres thick as you like, with toughest materials know to science, but there is essentially little one can do architecturally to provide protection against a collection of creatures several times the size of the building itself, especially when some of them are armed with other buildings. The end, when it came, played out in much the same way across every city, albeit with some variation in the creatures responsible. However, as I was personally witness to the fate of Yamur, it is their particular case that I will recount. It was early evening as the anaconda slithered its way serenely across the ruins of the city, dwarfing many of the fallen skyscrapers it passed over. Before long, it reached a large complex centred on a great metal dome reaching 200-metres-high and as spanning as wide as a small town, with a series of circular silo-like towers twice its height running around the circumference. Across the entire structure was a jostling swarm of truck-sized ants that had been hard at work for some time using their powerful pincers to chip away at any structural weaknesses they could find. Despite the anaconda¡¯s mammoth size, its smooth scales made little noise as it flowed over the complex¡¯s walls and meandered around the buildings inside. Upon reaching the dome, it began calmly to coil itself around the structure two, three, four times. And then it started to squeeze. Almost immediately, the outer towers began to buckle, quickly followed by a collection of small explosions dotted at random points around the circumference. One after another, more towers crumpled, setting off further explosions each time until, with a sudden jolt, every remaining tower caved in at once in a ring of fireballs, slamming the anaconda¡¯s bulk into the body of the main dome. Greatly weakened by nibbling ants and rocked by numerous explosions, its outer walls withstood for only a handful of seconds before crumbling, triggering a sequence of much greater explosions all over the structure. This all appeared to prove too much abuse for the anaconda, which, rather than die writhing in agony, dissolved back into the river from which it was originally formed, sending a great tsunami flooding into the power plant from all sides. A few minutes later, the entire landscape was illuminated in a burst of light and shaken by. The explosions and floodwaters had finally overwhelmed whichever fail-safes were in place within the power plant and led to a cascade of failures within its containment systems, violently unleashing the reservoir of Elariel it had been feeding on. A great pillar of light pierced the sky. At its base, all that remained of the complex was a crater scorched completely black. Above, rain began to pour in torrents that would not relent for several hours through the night. As this scene was repeated across the world, the colossi returned to nature, be it by settling back down into their former roles as parts of the landscape, or dissolving into the sea foam, sand, or soil they had formed from. The atmosphere is once again rich with Elariel as it spreads across the land with the rains, and the ancient magic is withdrawing back towards the core. As it does so, my kin and I will lose the force that animates us, and our bodies will soon die, to fertilise the soil where we fall. Sitting upon a damp hillside, I feel a faint breeze tussle my hair, and turn to see the sun peaking over the horizon, lighting up a clear, blue early morning sky. With quickly gathering pace, its warm rays rush across the landscape towards me. Wherever they pass, the dewy flowers open up to welcome them.