Anima World Part 1
#1 of Anima World
I don't know why, but this story came into my mind, and I want to write it all down before I forgot.
So basically, this story happened in the world of 'Land of Discord', but the setting was not the modern world of that main story. Instead, it was of a modern world of the previous era, and the start of the Second Era, where 'Land of Discord' is from.
I don't know if it is a good story or not, and some part might feel rushed, but it's just a short 4-part story that I want to share with you guys, so please enjoy!
Critics and comments are welcome.
By the year 2025, the world as we know it has ended...
While it is not a sudden event, the whole eventful year had been a gradual process which started unexpectedly since the year 2012. The world still looked the same; it was a bleak and realistic world of might and magic where Magi and Humans lived in a modern world of political tension and racial problems that many were still trying to solve, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement. Magic and technology coexisted and had produced inventions that combined the best of science and magic. Interests of both sides of the fields were vast and growing, with a lot of crossovers of knowledges, creating distinctive occupations that would never had been possible many years ago, like a Magi arcane inventor and a human mage. The world of science and magic was such a neutral place many people regarded the field as a safe haven of the world's political problems.
But then, in the year 2012, that faithful discovery shook the world of science and magic, and with it, political tension started anew.
After an alleged failed illegal experiment of accessing the world beyond the third dimension, things had never been the same. The experiment was never contained, and it had become a designated magical hazard, which was akin to a nuclear hazard. The town of Azkran, where the experiment was conducted, was not immediately evacuated due to the late response of the government and the officials in the town, contaminating magi and humans living in that town. Since then, the anomaly that ended the world, and the chain of events that resulted, caused a tension never felt since the Cold War.
As if out of horror movies, those contaminated by the Azkran Outbreak slowly turned into animals, including their offspring, which was the first generation of true animal-humanoids. The transformation was not a rapid and painful transformation, but it was of a very slow process that did not alert many people until it was too late. It was not after three months since the outbreak did the world heard of this phenomenon, and it was a month since the news did researchers from both magic and science found the pattern, and was working on a cure that would prove ineffective in the long run.
It was always the same pattern. Those with magical affinity like the magi would turn into a magical creature like dragons and gryphons, while those with no mana in their blood became more of a regular animal. Their DNA were being rewritten into something absolutely different from their previous lives, and they became proficient in talking to their feral counterparts without the aid of a magical apparatus. It was an extraordinary discovery in the world of both science and magic, but real world would soon take over.
There had been conflicting opinions regarding their status as humanoid races, and as a result, the role of the animal-humanoids, which we called 'Beast races' for simplicity, became a low-income working class working in labors that most humans and magi wouldn't be able to do efficiently. The world slowly elevated into a segregated world once more, but many, especially those humanoid minorities, refused to acknowledge the beast race's status as a humanoid, for they had 'degraded themselves into animals'. Even their sufferings were overlooked by a racial shooting incident that caused an outrage to the minorities, but not their status and their rights.
This had sparked a strong criticism from the Beast races, especially those who had once a respected scholar. By 2017, an incident of a draconic beast race refuting claims of a land which he once owned ended with the death of that draconian. The worse thing that ever happened during this time was the fact that people who weren't supposed to be changed slowly turning into the beast races themselves. This changed the segregated world into a world of dystopia, where the transformations were regarded as a plague, and the once segregated beast races became the hunted as they were hunted, with the intention to make them extinct and preserve the magi and human race.
It was a false move, as they all had forgotten the beast races' former lives as a military strategist, generals, scholars, and researchers. It was 2018, and the human and magi races were on a brink of extinction. Confined into walled cities and awaiting their doom, they could only curse at the beast races as their population slowly turned into beasts.
But a personal event that changed the world...and especially my world, was something I would never forget in my entire life.