“The creation of earth is by fire and by redemption.”
We have brought the end upon ourselves. The devastation around us is a product of human greed and there is no way out from this. The forces of chaos consume this land, with their flamethrowers and their weapons of mass destruction. We called out to them to create this unspeakable destruction within our land, within the place we call home. Now we watch them consume whatever’s left and what they cannot consume, they destroy.
First there was us then there was them.
The Black Legion is what we call them. The legion of metal, the legion of annihilation, the legion of fire incarnate. There was a war before in which they sparked out from. The war of the ages.
The legion was the damning soul of a forgotten nation. The nation that lived by greed and lust. The nation that carried itself with pride and hatred. It is our fault that they come into existence; they used to be slaves of our nation for years on end. We had not realized how smart they were, how manipulative they could be from such a small position. Then one day, they broke the chains that bind them. They all reunited and brought upon a rebellion that no one has ever foreseen. Then when they succeeded, they brought in so much wealth upon themselves. And with wealth came power and with power came corruption. And as the defeated force, we only succumbed towards their hateful intentions.
Then they created monsters to protect them, monsters of metal and fire. They created a black army equipped with weapons that only burn and aimed to destroy. Their pride was within their force, their greed was within their machines, and their lust was within their hearts. They continued to harvest without revitalizing the earth, they continued to destroy with no means to create, and yet we let them, because we became a part of them.
Us, the citizens of this mighty nation. Us, the weaklings. Us, the feeble. We gave them production to destroy our world, we gave them the money to fuel their greed, we gave them our bodies to satisfy their lust. But we saw their unspeakable horrors only years after. It is only then we realized that it us not only us they have defiled, but also our world. Our innocent and loving world. When we had then realized that we didn’t want them to destroy our world, we had let them push us for far too long. So we fought, we started a war that we couldn’t finish.
The war of the ages. The war that burned our world down.
Once they knew of our rebellion (because this time we were the meager ones and they were the strong), they manufactured their weapons and machines twice more. They created facilities that only created more of their weapons. They started to destroy what they can’t use. They brought on the winter that lasted for centuries, a winter that was endless.
The war only harnessed the worse things in life. Anger, hate, betrayal, all of these was present and yet we raged on, it is only in the end we realized that we only fueled them even more. Only then we realized that they fed from our anger, from our hate, and from our betrayal from each other. We lost slowly and surely. We couldn’t win the rebellion like they did. They made sure to take pride from our lost, to finally close the circle, to let everything end with us. But we fought on even if it was inevitable.
Our capital was turned into ashes by them. They entered with an overwhelming force. A force with only one sole purpose: To decimate whatever stands in front of them. I watched as our final forces crumble against the fist of the great Black Legion. I watched as children and women were burned down in the eyes of their husbands and fathers. I watched as they take everything that was ours. I watched as they take our earth. It was the creation of their earth and it brought upon a new age.
It was the Age of Black. There were only grey ashes and black skies. We became their slaves and no longer their citizens. We felt what they had felt ages ago. We were inferior and we have always been weak.
The Black Legion created the Harvester. It was a symbol of their power and might, a metaphor for the upcoming destruction that they will soon make. It was a massive building that harvests the life essence of our world, from the crust, to the mantle, and then to the core. Once we have seen that demonic machine, we had only then realized how our sins brought destruction into our world.
We became slaves towards the machine. There was only winter around us, a winter that did not drop a single snow flake, but dropped the black ashes of our world. We can no longer see the greed within our invaders eyes, we can no longer see their lust nor their pride, all we can see are lenses that aimed to destroy. Lenses from their masks that reflected our own faces.
“Will there ever be spring?” I remembered my child asked me, his face filled with grease and ashen snow. He has never encountered the beauty of spring. The vibrant color of the sun and everything around it. I was lucky to experience it in our world before, in a world without the Black Legion.
“As long as there is hope, there will be spring.” I said, as I washed away the grease from his face and the ashes from his body. There is hope and I could still see it in my people’s eyes. There is still a force fighting the legion. Even if they’re scattered, they will find a way to save us, to redeem us all.
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The alchemist of green was the sole survivor from all the alchemists of our world. The Alchemists were scientists of the elements, aimed to research and to profound our knowledge. When the Legion took control, they were wiped out one by one. The Green Alchemist was the alchemist of purity, the alchemist of the earth. He decided to not go against the Legion, telling us that if we don’t get rid of them swiftly, there will only be hasten destruction of our world. We didn’t heed his counsel. We only saw one way out of the problem and that was through fighting.
“If you don’t want us to fight, then what other alternative is there?” One of our leaders asked with fury in his eyes. The alchemist stared at him in a humbled stance.
“Find the Ancients. Let them revitalize the earth and the earth will fight for itself.” He replied. The leaders of the round table only laughed.
“Are you mad? The Ancients? They are a myth! They don’t exist.” One of them said.
That brought anger in the Alchemist’s eyes. They do not know what they are saying. They choose not to believe the one force that could save us all.
I believed in the Alchemist but I chose not to speak, because I was too afraid to be judged, too afraid that I might lose my power if I sided with him. What the leaders thought of the Ancients wasn’t all wrong. No one has ever seen them, but the Alchemist argued that before us there were them. The ancient trees that exist in our forest, the stars, the sun, the green pastures that we feed our animals, all of them exist because of them. We had only thought of what he told us as a figure of speech, nothing more.
After that one dire meeting, the Alchemist left without saying a word and from there on, we never saw him again.
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Now years and years have passed and he had not come back from his search. Years have passed and we only became a husk of the nation that we used to be. Years have passed ever since our rebellion and there is nothing but pure and utter devastation. I regret the moment we made slaves. I regret the moment we were fueled by our greed as a nation. I regret every decision I had made. It was true: We only created a pathway to our own destruction.
“There’s a battle happening from the north.” One of my fellow slaves said as we clean ourselves from the filth from our body. They have only given us an adequate supply of clean water as almost all the water from our world has been infected by the black goo that came from the Harvester itself.
“Is it another uprising?” I asked with a hopeless sigh. There had been previous uprisings but they had always been cut off, because the Legions’ thoughts are simple. If you don’t do what they demand you to do then you’re already dead.
“No. Workers from the north told us that it was an army of trees.”
I couldn’t believe his words. I almost wanted to laugh but my throat was sore. I could only help but stare at his eyes. An army of trees? It didn’t make any sense.
I ignored what he had told me, my people had lost their minds ages ago. I almost regretted listening to him. I decided that talking was futile. Everything was futile. Death is the only thing waiting for me. And with those thoughts in mind, I fell asleep.
I was woken up by the sirens, telling us—slaves, that it was time to work again. The work given to my batch was simple, but it was back breaking. We mined for stone. Simple as that. With our pickaxes we hit the stone wall, and whatever small pieces we bring back to the surface. The Harvester eats anything for fuel, may it be coal, stone, water, anything. But it consumes a lot to function, just like the legion.
“It’s nearing the core.” One of the workers had said as we mined. We all knew that once the Harvester reaches the core, it consumes all energy of our world, killing everything that is enrooted in it. It would then only be a matter of time before we are taken alongside it. The final days of our world has come.
“Good.” I said.
I had lost all hope when they had taken my last child away from me. He was taken away from my thin and fragile hands. He was the only saving grace in this godforsaken world. He was taken away and brought into the Harvester. People who work inside are never to be seen again. I had always thought that them taking my child was impossible to happen, but when reality sets in, when the black soldiers with black gas masks took him away from me, everything else fades away.
I had wished that they had shot me instead, I had wished that they had burned me instead, I had wished that they killed me instead, but they didn’t and they never will. I knew that they wanted all of us to wait until our world is dead, I knew that they wanted us to see what we had done. We were all meant to suffer for our sins.
That was when I told myself that spring is never going to come and that all hope has been lost when we had given ourselves to our anger.
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They say that when the first stone is thrown it sets off a cycle of violence never ending. But it was different for us. The first stone would be next to the last in an ending conflict. Also the first stone that was thrown was big as a vehicle and the one who threw it, wasn’t human.
The Ancients were a group of primordial beings who only aimed to revitalize our world. Then they went into deep slumber once we took form. Us, the failed beings. Us, the meek. Us, the weak.
The stone that was thrown by the giant humanoid tree came from the stone wall we were mining. They were these huge beings made of barks and leaves and there were hundreds of them fighting squad upon squad of the Black Legion’s soldiers, squashing them underneath their gargantuan weight, flicking them as if they were toys, but they groaned like human beings do, they moaned in pain like human beings do.
There were also these smaller humanoid beings that came out from the enormous trees. They were humans with bark for skin and leaves for hair. They had spear like weapons that could penetrate through the Legion’s armor. They screamed with fury, but they too easily succumbed to the flames that the Legion carried with them.
Up above were these gargantuan eagles, taking control of the Black Legion’s air superiority. They took the Legion’s mechanical planes apart with their enormous beaks. But the eagles were few in number and it was clear that they too were about to get overwhelmed.
The Ancients fought on and the war raged on, but we knew they would lose without us. I felt a familiar feeling inside me. It fixed my broken body, almost curing it away from the aches and faults that it had. It was anger. It was fury. It was redemption. I held my pickaxe tight and rushed towards one of the soldiers. I whacked it into its metal head and blood spurted forth from it. The soldier screamed in agony. I had forgotten: They scream and bleed like we do. My people watched in horror in what I had done. They looked at me in fear.
“Don’t be scared. It’s now, or never!” I shouted as I pulled my pickaxe away from the soldier’s head and raised it into the sky. My throat hurt as I screamed, but I never felt more alive.
Thousands of us charged with the Treemen. More of us followed to reinforce the lines that the The Ancients created for us. The battle lines were drawn, I felt the same exhilarating feeling when I was in war against the Legion, but this time there was no doubt in my head, I knew that we would win.
In the battlefield I saw a familiar stature. A man that I used to know from the past that was forgotten. It was the Alchemist. I shouted at him and he looked at me with a wistful smile. It was him and it wasn’t him at the same time. His skin had changed, he had the same skin as the treemen, and his eyes were turned green. He was carrying a peculiar pouch on the right side of his body. It was glowing.
He fought his way towards me, shoving any soldier that came to block his way. He had gained superior strength that one shove was enough to push a soldier a couple of meters away, enough to stagger them to the ground so that the treemen or my men could have a go at them.
The smile from the Alchemist didn’t fade when he had reached me.
“Power of the gods.” He said, gesturing to what he had become.
“I could see that.” I said. He gave me a pat on the shoulder, telling me that after all that had happened, we were still friends. It’s hilarious to think that there is still friendship to be found in the end of it all. He took something from the pouch he was carrying. It was an orb partly growing green, partly growing sky blue. It reminded me of the color of the trees and the color of the seas we used to have.
“Heart of the oasis.” He remarked while we stared into the orb. It was like a world inside it, thriving and breathing. “We have to get inside the Harvester with this.” He said. “It’s our redemption.” He added.
The battle heated around us and we couldn’t let on. Explosions and fire engulfed the grounds and we were losing men as much as the Legion was. But the Legion was endless in numbers compared to us. More of them kept coming and most of them were protecting the Harvester, as if they knew our intentions. We were low in numbers and we couldn’t keep fighting the battle for long. The eagles that used to be in the skies were now retreating. Air superiority was theirs again. A rain of fire once again came from the skies. Time was against us.
“We must go now!” The alchemist shouted. The power of the gods does not render him or anyone invulnerable, after all.
I rallied what remaining men we had and the Alchemist gathered the remaining tree men and tree monstrosities he had. We both looked towards the hulking giant that was going to decimate our planet. It was a sea of black between us and it. We knew that we were going to dredge through that abyss even if it’s going to take everything from us.
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The Harvester clanked and raged on when we got inside. It was hot and if my skin weren’t so used to the heat of our unforgiving world then I would’ve actually felt it. Instead what I felt was a prickling pain on my skin. The alchemist had lost one of his arms during the raging battle outside. It had been burned from one of the flamethrowers and he screamed in agony while it happened. Even the Ancients feel pain, even the Ancients still know of death.
All of the colors we could see inside the machine were red and black. It was only metal clanking and lava pouring out from the ground and in the different veins of the machine. There was no living thing inside. As we made our way into the core of the machine, my heart sank. The Harvester was a living entity by itself and there wasn’t a need for anyone or anything for it to function. It functioned by itself. All it needed was…
In the core of the building was this humongous opening. It was the entrance towards a gigantic heated furnace. Inside it was literal hell on earth. We were only outside but I felt the burning heat on my skin and it was unbearable. I looked around the entrance and that’s when I saw a pile of dead bodies stacked on top of one another. My body froze. I ran towards the pile with my veins and arteries freezing over. I didn’t mind the heat, for me it didn’t exist. What I could only see is my child’s smile. His sweet lingering smile and his emerald eyes that came from his mother. Had I lost him? Had I really lost him?
I pushed and pull bodies away, but all of them had the same skin and had the same face: Ashen black. They were all sacrifices to the machine. They all came from the sins of the father. They were all my children. All of my world's children. Tears fell from my eyes. I started so sob and it echoed throughout that hell. The machine echoed my sadness, as if it could feel it. But that wasn’t true. The machine could not feel sadness, it was only mocking me, laughing at me for everything I had lost. I felt the Alchemist placed his remaining hand on my shoulder.
“We both have lost something to the machine. We both had lost something of importance to them.” He said and he was right. I had lost my own flesh and blood he had lost his entire life. We were both fading men and we were fading fast.
“There is only one way out of this.” He said as he knelt in front of me and showed me the Heart of the Oasis on his hand. “Go inside and end this.” He added. I saw sadness in his eyes, but within that sadness there was a glimmer of hope.
There was a bustling noise from whence we came. That was a sign that we had lost the battle outside and the Legion came to take what is theirs. Our men held their ground long enough, but even they too know that the end is inevitable and that we were nothing more but fuel to the machine.
“I’ll hold them off.” He said, “Although I can’t say for how long, especially now that I only have one arm.” He looked at me and smirked. His bark of a face still showed much emotions, he was still human and I knew that he would never had let go of his human form unless it was dire. He gave me the orb. “Go in and place the orb into the core of the machine. The orb will do the rest.” He said.
We stood up together. No words were further said. There was only one end to this story.
It was living hell inside the machine. I felt the heat sizzle through my skin as if I was some kind of meat ready to be cooked. There were pipes around the machine that released fumes, they were clattering and shifting. I knew then that even if the machine could function by itself, the core of the machine--the heart of it still required maintenance. I could see my child’s fragile hand replacing the broken pipes of the machine. I could hear his skin sizzle as his hand burn under the heat of the pipes. I could see his skin turn black from the heat around him. I could hear his agonizing pain, his moans. I meant to suffer the same fate as him. I was meant to live his harrowing life inside that machine.
I dredged on and the closer I get to the core, the more I felt my skin melt slowly. The suffering was about to end, everyone’s suffering was about to end. I thought of the Alchemist and I could imagine him fight The Legion’s soldiers one by one. I also thought how his fight was futile, how he would eventually succumb and burn from their weapons.
We were so little. We were so meek. We were so weak. We don’t deserve spring, we don’t deserve salvation, we don’t deserve to be saved. And yet, I was that one pretentious savior that walked that earth, thinking that there is still something new to be created.
I crawled as I had lost my legs from the lava that surrounded the core. I could no longer feel pain. I was just a husk of a body that I used to have. There was a spherical opening that contained an orb that was black as the night.
It was the orb of the Legion. It was the heart of the machine. I grabbed it with my free hand and I felt the orb fight my hand away. Blackened tendrils came out from the orb and penetrated into my skin. I felt intense pain. The tendrils were taking control of my veins and my arteries, slowly consuming me from the inside. I shouted in pain as I pulled it away from its place. Through the pain and through my suffering there was only one clear thought in my head: Everything was going to end one way or the other. I felt like the orb knew that so it doubled its onslaught on my body. But its fight was futile. The pain, the anger, the hatred it showed me only fueled me even more. I had felt what they felt and it felt good. I laughed menacingly as I pull it off the Legion’s orb from its core and throw it into the lava. It melted from the heat in a matter of seconds, as if it never existed in the first place. My left arm was now soot. Pure black. Similar to the bodies outside. The only thing left on my body was my head, my chest, and my right arm which carried the Heart of the Oasis. I had protected it from the lava and from anything that would destroy it. I pulled myself up into the container one last time, with every inch of my strength I placed the orb inside. My vision started to fade. I started to lose my very consciousness, my very being. With last of my vision I could see the veins of the machine turn from red into clear blue. Lava started to turn into water. The pipes turned into branches that harbored leaves. Our salvation came. Our act to redeem ourselves made it through.
Spring has come.
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I woke up under the shade of a tree its leaves and branches blocked the sunlit sky. I heard children’s laughter from far away. I sat up, seeing endless vibrant colors towards the fading horizon. There was no shade of black or gray, just blues and pinks. I closed my eyes and continued to hear the sweet laughter of our dear children. They were happy as I was.
I don’t care if this is a dream or if it’s just a mirage of the dead body I had left behind. If it is a dream, it is hope towards the future. If it is a mirage, it is beauty within itself. There is peace in my mind knowing that spring has certainly come and we were the pioneers of it.
In our fight to restore our world we had created a whole new world after it. As long as there is hope there will be spring. As long as we hope we will have spring.
This is the creation of our earth.