Sunset
The prologue to my story-universe: The Never-Ending War.
A young surk and his father made their way across the savannah. The pair's sand-coloured scales nearly matched the ground upon which they walked, both warm and rich in the setting African sun. The father peered at the horizon, scanning for anything that may pose a danger to him or the happy little whelp that danced around in front of him chasing a sidewinder, whose venomous fangs were no match for the surk's rough scales and thick hide. The disgruntled snake struck multiple times at the young one's grabby hands before it attempted to glide away along the sand, only to have its tail snatched up in little talons. It writhed and coiled over itself, trying to wrench itself free while its captor purred and chirped delightedly.
The father looked down and smiled. His thin, reptilian mouth curled up at the corners under an eye marred by a gigantic vertical scar, and another eye that was completely missing--an empty socket surrounded by heavy burn-scarring and missing-scales. He felt safe here. Africa was one of the few places not completely ravaged by the war between humans and mythic, and for Trangasturàagsna, it was an ideal place to raise what was left of his family.
Forty-seven years ago, in 2055, a cataclysmic event ripped across space-time, and humanity found itself facing a population of several different species that seemingly came out of the air amidst the destruction of thousands of cities and the loss of millions of lives. This collection of sapient and non-sapient creatures was quickly given the name "the mythic" by the humans, out of the striking resemblance to creatures of human myth and legend. The two sides, human and mythic, each thought they were being invaded by the other, and with alien languages blocking communication until many years later, they fought for what they thought was their survival. The event, eventually titled "the Merge," and the resulting war is still being fought today, forty-seven years later.
Those who studied the nature of the Merge theorized that the two realms were once separate dimensional planes which were held apart by a very fragile veil in space-time. Each universe was nearly identical: every naturally-occurring event that was not influenced directly or indirectly by choices made by living creatures happened exactly the same in both universes. Stars and planets were formed alike, mountains and oceans constructed equally on both human earth and mythic earth. What initially differed were choices made by the earliest organisms which, in one universe, gave way to the evolution of humans and the creatures of human earth; and in the other, birthed the Surksàasna and the creatures of et nassii __1.
With sapient species in both realms, great civilizations were born over time. Naturally, civilizations build cities and move earth from one place to another, constructing their habitats around resource-rich locations and moving land to make it more suitable and sustainable. Since the two planets were originally identical, the most habitable places happened to be at the exact same geographical locations. Thus many cities and villages, both mythic and human, occupied the same space in separate universes. When the Merge occurred, this proved to be catastrophic.
At the time of the Merge, any bodies of matter left untouched by beings on either side were harmonious with each other, in that when the atoms from both universes combined, they simply aligned with each other and no matter-duplication took place; their masses remained the same. However, landmasses that were not naturally formed and constructed buildings and landmarks which conflicted between the human and mythic realms created a disruption in mass and energy. Matter cannot occupy the same place twice at the same instant, so where these structures conflicted, their atoms broke their bonds, and huge releases of energy took place. Explosions ripped through cities all over the globe as mythic and human structures failed to merge with each other. Strongholds, capitals and landmarks were completely obliterated in a matter of seconds. Over a period of ten minutes, three billion human lives had been lost in the chaos, along with twelve million surks and millions of other mythic. Mass destruction riddled the planet and each side was thinking the same thing: Invasion.
Small skirmishes broke out worldwide. Wherever man or mythic had a gun, knife or weapon of any sort, there was bloodshed. Land-based communication systems were disrupted and many of the governing bodies of human earth ceased to function, most of them because their political leaders had been killed in the disasters. This made any organized coalition impossible for the first few weeks, and the result was a frantic free-for-all killing spree that spanned the planet.
After several months, some of the stronger human governments were able to gain foothold, and a huge effort was put into evacuating any humans from wrecked towns and cities and erecting refugee camps and emergency housing in cities that were unharmed during the Merge. Most of the surksàasna population made its home on oceanic shores and inlets, so human cities like Houston, Texas and Edmonton, Alberta were still intact. The mythic amassed their own salvage effort, and many of the species who were conflicting with each other before the Merge formed an alliance to combat the humans.
And so the war had begun. Mythic vs. humans. For forty-seven years it had gone on, and there was no end in sight. In the beginning, it was called the "War on Humans," or the "War on the Mythic." Now, there is a single, unifying name which is true to anyone:
The Never-Ending War.
Trangasturàagsna watched his son play with the sidewinder and chuckled at his childish interest in the human-world creature. The sound of his laughter was more like an intermittent growl emanating from the large, bipedal beast. Tran stood over seven-and-a-half feet tall, and to say "muscle-bound" would be an understatement. He was a behemoth, his size further accented by a second set of abnormally long arms coming from his upper back. These arms were an evolved remnant from the wings that the surk's ancestors eons ago once had, with each webbed finger ending in a huge talon. The entirety of his gigantic stature was riddled with scars and missing scales. Two horns and several large spikes pointed back, away from his face, lining the back of his skull and jaw-line. Many of the spikes were broken off or missing and his horns were cracked and chipped. He was a veteran. Many foes had challenged him and died. Tran was no stranger to death, so when his son's frolicking led him to stumble over a pile of bones, Tran looked down at them with little interest. His son, however, immediately ceased his joyful activities and slowly stepped away from the skeletons laid out before him.
There were two complete sets of bones, long since picked clean by the wildlife and weather, but nevertheless easy to identify as human and surk. Near them laid a rusted shotgun with a deteriorated wooden stock. The surk's hand was still closed around the staff of a formidable war-axe, the head of which was at least two feet wide. It was likely that this was one of the "first contact" struggles at the time of the Merge. Several of the human's ribs were broken in a perfectly straight line down its chest, an evident killing blow by the axe. The surk probably was fatally wounded by the shotgun before vanquishing its foe in one fell swoop.
The sidewinder disappeared into the eye-socket of the surk skull. Tran's son did not pursue it.
"It's okay, Naski. These bones are ancient. There is no danger here." Tran spoke in the heavy surk language--a combination of deep, rumbling speech and telepathic inflections. The cacophonic words consisted of rolling R's and long hisses, but their specific meanings were conveyed silently between their minds.
Naski kept his distance from the skeletons and sat down in the short, dry grass, at which he picked idly, not taking his gaze away from the sight before him.
"You were in the war when it started, right, N _àadra__ 2_?" he asked while staring at the bones.
Tran walked over and sat down beside his son.
"I was." He replied.
"What was our old world like?"
Trangasturàagsna paused, reminiscing to himself.
"Well... it was almost exactly like this one. No humans. There was still much fighting, but not as much death. We fought the _ainarr_3 because they were always jealous of our technology."
"But we're friends with the ainarr now, aren't we?" Naski asked as he looked up at his father.
Tran smiled and chuckled a bit.
"Yes. Though I wouldn't say we're friends. They were not very happy in joining with us to fight the humans, but there was no other choice."
Naski redirected his gaze at the bones, still picking at the grass. The sidewinder poked its head out of the surk eye-socket, flicking its tongue, and retreated when it realized its nemesis was still lingering.
"Nàadra, why do we fight the humans?"
Tran turned his head to gaze at the deep red sunset. He winced and inhaled sharply as memories of the endless carnage and destruction he had witnessed and participated in over the last forty-seven years flooded his mind. He quickly pushed it all aside by looking back at his son, who returned his innocent eyes to his father. Those eyes cleared his mind and soothed the recurring pain he still sometimes felt in many of his scars. He had spent enough time eviscerating his enemy to know almost everything about them, so his answer was as easy as telling the time of day.
"My nàarek4, there never was a reason. We fight them because they fight us. Even when we learned their languages and tried to stop it all, there was always someone who found a reason to stay at war. During the Merge, they lost almost half their population, but so did we. Our leaders and their leaders use that as a reason to keep fighting. Nobody wants to stop and live in peace. We just..."
Tran looked back out at the sunset. The sun had nearly vanished beneath the horizon and the sky was lit a blood-red that faded into a dark purple. The entire grassland before him was painted a warm red-orange. His one eye glistened as tears began to form.
"I wish your mother was alive to see this."
End.
1 Et nassii - Surksàasnian for "the earth." More specifically as a being rather than an object.
2 N _àadra_ - Surksàasnian for "father." N_ àa -prefix relating to family; _dra- suffix relating to fatherly figure.
3 Ainarr - A species native to Mythic earth. Sapient, feathered, therapodian reptiles similar to a velociraptor.
4 Nàarek - Surksàasnian for "child." In this case, specifically, "son." Nàa -prefix relating to family; rek -suffix relating to child. Male/female differentiation conveyed telepathically.