Demons

Remember these words my child, for this is the story of our people, and this is the story of how we were ended.

We lived here on the earth for many years, growing strong – sometimes growing wise – and all the while spreading across our mother planet’s surface. We learned to fly great kites of bronze and fire across the skies. We could touch the moon and her sister the sun. An age of peace lasting a thousand-thousand years dwelt upon us. We could heal the sick, stave off the scythe of Death. We ate food till we grew fat like slugs, and such wonders and pleasures we knew that happiness gave way to boredom.
Towers of glass and steel were built, stretching into the sky so tall that the gods themselves moved away, giving us more room. Such was our might that we rivaled the divine.

That is why the demons came.

It happened without warning, great castles of steel descended from the stars. They spoke to us, begged us for parlay, mistaking us for the gods due to our strength. We were such fools, full of hubris and arrogance. They traded us for our secrets, and for all the good we gave them they returned wickedness. We gave them the cures to sickness, and in return we received plagues. We showed them that we could love, and in return they provoked our hate. We taught them of our gods, and in return they built idols unto themselves. We showed them our mightiest warriors, and in return they clad themselves in dark armor, their faces shining with single golden eyes. We showed them our fields of plenty, and in return they sewed thorns and poisons.

It was only some months when our great chieftans decided they could no longer stay, that the castles in the sky had become ominous, haunting our dreams. The spirit world, the voice of our old gods still spoke to us, telling us to rid ourselves of these demons. The demons wanted nothing of it, insisting that we turn over our holy earth to them, for the great beads of glass and the black-blood beneath her trees. If only we had listened. If only we had said “No.”

They bled the earth, spreading corrosion and pestilence wherever they went. Fish died, birds flew away, and the beasts of the field and forest were slaughtered by the dozens, the flesh-eaters amongst the demons slaking their thirst and hunger in meat and blood. Even our sacred beasts that no-one could touch became nothing more than a casual meal to their soulless gullets, while their equally heartless machines ate the trees themselves, belching smoke and rancid gas.

The demons struck first, slaying our great chieftans. Their horrors knew no bounds, and they killed all tribes, all colors, and all ages. Our warriors fought back, hurling spears like lightning. But the demons’ armor repelled them, and their swords clapped with thunder, shredding flesh from bone. The castles in the sky opened up a rain of stones upon us, hellfire streamed from the skies, and they hurled their own spears like flaming hail.

Horrors were known by us that we will never see again, and we are thankful. Our people flayed alive for their study, our children raised as animals in cages for their entertainment. Our food was turned
against us, poisoned by their taint. They shackled us, pitted us against animals in their pits, and sometimes against each other. They set their beasts upon us, monsters the demons had enslaved from other worlds, taught to consume our flesh.

The demons moved faster than our bronzed fire-kites, riding their own wicked winged steeds. Their claws shred stone from steel, their mouths spat venom that blinded us, burned our eyes out with snake-tongues. They commanded fire and steel like a parent does a child. We fell in droves. When our warriors died, the women took up the call, only to be culled like cattle. Then our babes were dashed on their swords, and the demons laughed, mocked us.

We made our final stand in the charred hollows that had once been our greatest forests, jungles that thrummed with the life-essence of a thousand thousand trees and their children, the beasts that dwelt
there. We prayed in circles, like in the days of old. Many came together that night. Dark and light, young and old, zealot and free-spirit. Our love destroyed hate in that moment, and the demons retreated to their steel-fortresses in the sky. We had such celebration! We drank wine and danced in the starlight. We had won! Love had destroyed the universe’s greatest evil!

We were wrong.

The greatest horror then presented itself: the demons summoned pillars of poisonous fire. Columns of Hell stretched to the sky, taller than our mirror-towers and churning the sky black with venomous ash that poisoned with the great-eater. Know their sign: the death-cap mushroom made of smoke and hate made manifest, the truest expression of these demons’ nature ever presented forth. It was a death-sentence for our people, and all life on this world.

Now as the Eternal winter draws closer, I know we as a people are doomed. Great machinations of steel-flesh and starlight-eyes churn forth the prizes for the demons. The slaves made of metal heed the
endless hunger of their masters for planet-souls. The oceans have boiled away, long ago becoming barren and drier than mud. The demons themselves rove the ash-dunes in packs, hunting us down wherever we hide. Most of their castles are gone, or hiding in the endless clouds of soot that roll across our once beautiful blue sky.

I tell you these things with hope that you live, that some day you will not make the same mistakes we made. Do not fall to hubris. Do not fill yourself with arrogance. Do not trust the things called Humans. Do not trust the things called Man. They are the demons that did this to us, and they cannot be stopped.