Tev's Contest - Entry #2

**Mawashimono** Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:39 am

Wintry Metamorphous

The end began with the opening of the Core. The goal we knights had sought as our hoped for salvation instead became the source of our demise. In retrospect, we should have known better, for the Shadow Lairs had given us glimpses of the dark, stun-inducing, vampiric creatures that hid and preyed upon us in the dark hot depths of the Core.

The Swarm . . . the swarm . . . so aptly named for the sheer numbers of mixed monsters that had oozed from the Core like toxic lava in endless waves of doom and death. Most of us knights perished fairly quickly. Some of the more powerful and uniquely skilled knights were able to withstand the onslaught long enough to band together and flee to Sanctuaries. A few of us, like myself, found unlikely allies amongst our former enemies.

But what none of us realized at the time – neither knight nor monster – was that the energy in the Core had been the main source of heat for the planet internally and externally. Once the Core had been breached, that heat began to dissipate. WINTER – brutal and unforgiving - had come upon us all, friend and foe alike. No longer did knights and monsters battle one another. Instead, we all fought merely to survive long enough to hopefully one day thrive again.

Alliances that were once unthinkable were formed, as well as friendships and sometimes more. And thus it was that offspring were born to us who were neither knight nor monster but rather a hybrid of the best of both. Mixed breed though they were, they brought a purity and peace to the planet – and hope – hope that this mysterious, dreadful, wonderful Spiral World might finally become something that it had never truly been before – HOME.