Natural Selection

The mistake which doomed this reality was actually a rather simple one, one which was made by an entity foreign to Gaia, an inhabitant of one of the two sister planets that was berthed at the same time as Gaia.  Each planet represented an ethereal component, and as such, its development was linked to the usability of this element.  Gaia, being affiliated with Matter, was expected to develop most slowly, due to the complex nature of matter which made it difficult to wield while its sister planets Vadkhan, the Ki planet, and Solios, the Magic planet advanced past it.  The mistake, the external influence as it is known throughout history, which only served to retard Gaia’s development even further, was made by a former inhabitant of Solios, a relatively young organism at the time… one called Fate.

Fate and his people had grown at an astounding rate, coming to grips with their potential and achieving their power much faster than their Gaian and Vadkhan brothers.  It was because of this, that they saw fit to assist the Gaian and elevate them to the place where their race now stood.  For this reason, two beings were dispatched, one to each planet.  Esprit was to be the shaper of Vadkhan and Fate would shape Gaia.  Esprit took to his task without enthusiasm, and would play a miniscule role in the fate of his Brothers, guiding them only as necessary to keep them alive… but Fate went about his task with zealous enthusiasm. 

It was this enthusiasm that would be to Gaia’s down fall.  Before the inhabitants of Gaia were even able to fully comprehend the power which they were destined to command, Fate would have it that they stumbled upon another source of power, one which it was not in them to command.  Such was the birth of Magic into the world.  With its discovery, came the birth of Ki and soon, the inhabitants of Gaia would embrace the patriarchal energy, Ether, all before they fully exploited to potential of their native Material Affinity.

With all convention abandoned, Gaia fell to ruin, with the more power of ether channelers vying for her control.  As wars raged on above the surface, the reckless use of ether disrupted the balance of power within Gaia, causing her to berth deformed and corrupted souls as time went on, leading to the creation of all manners of creatures.  It was in these wars that Heiarch and Teros would finally emerge, abandoning their neutral stances and taking up arms.  Being the oldest and wisest of his race, the predecessors of modern humans, Heiarch’s power could be matched by none from his line, allowing him and his army to quickly claim dominion over his half of the world, while Teros, the young prodigy fought his way through hordes of misshapen beasts to claim the role of champion of the younger generation and nemesis of their father, Heiarch.

Fate watched in horror as his assistance led the planet into ruin, before finally, Gaia was forced to take action.  Unable to simply erase Fate’s mistakes, the wars caused the degradation of the ether stream around the timeline in which they took place, fracturing this reality into millions of shards, while the timeline prior to Fate’s tampering progressed steadily, overwriting what had happened as a result of his intervention.

Unfortunately, all that he did could not be erased.  As the time-stream raced along the probability fields, the events of the world would shape its path, and because of this, this singular timeline would be prone to ‘picking up’ shards of the now non-existent fractured reality according to their position within the ether stream.  It was because of this that the two destroyers, Heiarch and Teros were able to breech their prison and escape into this realm, which Fate now watched over even more carefully.  It would be there presence now that would once again introduce the ability to channeler ether into the world, and with it, bend the time stream towards picking up even more fragments from their destroyed timeline.

As Heiarch came into his own and was allowed to fully manifest his power in this new world, he realised how truly set apart he was from the rest of the world into which he was reborn, and though the corporeal shells which he and the few other temporal refugees were born into still lacked the complex knowledge to fully grasp the severity of the situation, deep within their Astral selves, Heiarch and his kin knew that their kind had been done a grave injustice.

This temporal ‘reboot’ enacted by Gaia was a travesty, erasing what the planet considered to be a failed civilisation from existence within the universe, leaving no trace of its existence but the shattered memories in the Psychein Energies of those refugees whom were lucky enough to be saved from oblivion.

It was with these feelings that Heiarch led his armies into battle each time they went to war, and with these feelings he would ride out triumphant.  Reborn on  the other side of the earth Tero would be prone to the same fate, and though his hatred for his father would never allow him to admit it, the two fought for the same cause, the Restoration of an Earth which they knew long before this weakened shell attempted to take its place.

Left with no choice, Fate would be forced to bestow his gifts of knowledge once again, imbuing the Archetype of this new human race with the knowledge of ether channelling, knowledge which he had gained from this planet’s previous failure.  It was with this new knowledge that the four guardians would be birthed, four of the most powerful of the Archetype’s line, created specifically to combat the menaces that were Heiarchs and Teros.  Once again, Fate would watch as his planet’s sister was wracked with genocidal wars, now between the Guardians of the rightful heirs and the Destroyers that sought to rebuild their abandoned civilisation.