Ruins:

A group of broken buildings which provided shelter to its inhabitants.

It very well hid people from the harsh desert sun. Thanks to the height of the buildings that towered the little town there had been an almost everlasting shadow which also cooled the hot desert winds.

It was also a place where lowlife thugs go to find second chance or hide from bounty hunters—for how long though?

The remaining human population on the planet, now less than a fraction compared to what existed also found ways to thrive in desert havens like this, but no matter where they went they were belittled, bullied and sometimes eaten by predators, a prejudice stemmed from before this era.

From memory, I remember the world was filled with lots of people. I remember watching it from the box which showed moving people. They lived in all sorts of places, some so beautiful and others a ways different than the situation this new world is in.

Down below a human girl is being chased and it would seem by a pack; two Monstrose and two Faes: two Orcs, a fairy and a Dwarf… Serves them right for thinking little of themselves.

Fairies looked just like elves, with more similarities than one can try to point out. After all they were part of the same spiritlike race of beings.

There is one thing that sets this new world apart from the old world, the power called magic, once never believed to have been real, is. But, unfortunately, it is scarce as a result of the event—from ‘records’ the otherworlders now residing in our world said it was more or less somewhat ‘common’—causing almost all the inhabitants on earth to be without the ability to wield it, with the exception of demons, a few rare cases, and it so happens I know a few tricks. That’s what I’ve come to know picking up words here and there. So with no magic for the greater majority of fairies to change to their actual small size, the only way one could set a fairy from an elf would be… honestly I can’t really tell how others do, but I use my senses to tell them apart.

This world is too complicated to even bother about knowing anything.

Since there wasn’t really much magic around everyone is pretty normal and had to rely on building strength and stamina to survive this harsh world.

As I mentioned magic is rare but there are substitutions, such magic items; an example is the stone which produces light in the lanterns. They help in the daily lives of people even in battle and so called adventures. I am still yet to find out how they came about. If somebody from the past saw how the world is now and the whole magic item stuff they would have instantly concluded this being a fictitious world like in the stories. Unfortunately, it is anything, but!

It’s been over fifty years since I woke.

What I remember first opening my eyes was the hunger which gnawed at my own stomach as if it wanted to devour myself. The bloodlust that had accumulated the over century and a half I was asleep.

I found myself in a world I was unfamiliar with, a terrain I didn’t know. I was stranded in the middle of a desert, without a clue of whom I was, not knowing if I would have found a single soul or food to sate my starvation.

At first, after regaining a few of my memories and senses I did assume that I was spirited into a different world like in the stories I’ve heard of… but after gaining part of myself back and after a few inquiries it was the very same planet I once knew. But something had happen which left such a scar…

That feeling is gone.

The feeling that brought me here seems to have disappeared. It took me a while to realize it but I don’t feel it anymore… Mm, so I guess I’m in the right place, but… what was it that brought me here, though?

The bed is hard as I thought. And looks somewhat uncomfortable. Its hardness is almost like a rock.

Flip the sheet that covered it to find it nothing but a broken slab of concrete smoothly chipped on the edges to look like a bed.

Guess it would be pointless to complain. The sand had been my bed for over a hundred and fifty years. If I felt anything during that time it would have been more uncomfortable than this. On the other hand comfort isn’t what I seek. If I could sleep I would on almost anything.

Stop before the chair and take a seat. The chair feels more comfortable compared to the slab of concrete…

My name…?

I can’t remember, for new memories flooded my old ones... only to find the old ones in dreams, blurs and flashes.

Over two centuries gone and I stand in a damned world of my own doing… Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could take back what happened.

It was a piece of my memory that I found in my dreams. It always begun seeing myself burning in black flames, my eyes black as the blackest night, standing in the middle of a blood soaked gravel plateau, surrounded by dismembered corpses as far as I could see. The flames around me begun to grow and once big enough fired an explosion which continued on and on, turning everything into ash.

I killed the earth.

I stand before the glass wall staring out to the buildings across the street below.

Faint,

It’s always a blurry memory.

I shut it out cursing the day I took that ‘DEAL’ with that black figure.

I am neither human nor am I fully a demon as result of the deal, an abomination.

I only have memory of some; somehow, though the times have changed I haven’t aged since. I watched everything and everyone fade, all that I might have loved (?).

Once upon a time I had a family. One that I can’t seem to remember. Now, they are nothing but shadows lingering deep in the recess of my mind.

But I still can’t help but wonder:

Did I really have a family?

… Or was I alone in the past?

I think I did, but I have no recollection of them.

True, it’s confusing and vexing to think of my existence if I had no family. Then who brought me into this world, who took care of me? But if I did…

Who were they?

What did they looked like, the sound of their voices?

I’ve tried so hard to remember them, to remember everything, but no matter how hard I try—nothing.

Who am I? What really am I? Destroyed by my own hands!

This was all that clouded my thought.

How many souls have been lost at my hands, ashed, never to be seen again.

I’m still not sure what I am or how everything came to be, but that memory of the black figure is all I have to push me to get back my old world.

I wish to rectify, but how?

Find him. Defeat him and everything will be as it was—

“Kwroar”— and sate myself.

I almost forgot and so did they, I haven’t eaten yet. I was so preoccupied that I almost forgot. I guess I’ll to go down to get it myself…

But I doubt they’d have what I crave.

Click, goes the door when the key turns.

I make my way towards the stairs.

This feeling again!? I am being watched, I just know it.

A quick look behind before making my way down the stairs.

Night already?

It was a moonless night, but the ruin basked in the bluish glow of the bright stars.

I look up to the night sky from the corridor.

A starry night.

The corridors that were out stargazing from the section that was broken off the building were lit in the glow of silver blue, any brighter than that I could say it was almost like daylight.

Did I take that long getting cozied up in my room?

To me it seems that time run fast. The moment you let a second slip from your grasp it flows without ceasing. It has no effect on me though; time is irrelevant to my course, even in my haste.

It didn’t take long for me to reach the inn below.

Faster going down than climbing up.

The glow of silver blue had already slipped into the inn through some overlooked crevices and the open windows but the light from the magic stone lanterns outshine it. It was a perfect blend of silver blue and the dirty-white of the lanterns.

The place is empty with just a customer taking his time drinking ale from a metal mug. Before him were half a dozen mugs, a couple empty.

How could one person down so many mugs?

He had a Mohawk—I wonder what they call it now?—three scars slashed across his face and wore a punk black leather jacket with spikes and studded.

“Food… hungry…”

That distorted voice in my head. It wants to take control.

Quickly, find something before it’s too late.

I reach the counter—No one’s here?

Where is she, the serpent girl? Anyone?

“Sorry kid, they in the back… Time to close so they packing up or something.” The man said with a hint of drunkenness behind it. I turn to him. “Why don’t you wait on ‘em, someone’ll come soon.”

Then, best to wait. I’ll take a seat and wait till they return.

I sit where the lights from the lanterns would not reach me, at the center-back of the room.

Night of a new moon.

Only the clearly visible stars illuminated the night sky, the dark void overhead was magnificent enough to draw passersby into its depths.

Out the window the street was slightly busy as most shops were still opened. The rugged streets were lit up by the bluish white magic stones in lanterns strung up on poles and the silver blue of the starry sky.

The earth had really been laid to waste!!

They had been literally sent back in time, medieval times it would seem. They were in the dark ages. No electricity, no technology of any sort—at least that’s what he’d gathered moving from one place to another.

It was unbearable—the world wasn’t favourable to any of the people and surviving animals.

Never seen him around before.

The man thought to himself as he gulped down his forth mug.

“Ahh that’s the stufff. Stroooong” he slammed the mug to the table.

Drunk was an understatement, he was wasted so much so that he wouldn’t be able to see his own fingers before him. The ale he was drinking was different from the usual one served. It was more potent. Nanos, translated: Blood of the dwarves, as the name implied it was a strong wine of the highest quality brewed by dwarves. Taking even a single mug was enough to get a person drunk, but six? He must have quite the tolerance for the stuff.

The hunter was seated looking into the street.

He couldn’t help but wonder how it would have been if the earth wasn’t so messed up. He wouldn’t be alive but it might have been a place so magnificent.

And maybe, just maybe humans would have accepted ‘monster people and the other races’ into their societies. That is if for some reason they came into the world without it being plunged into despair.

He had no grudge against the inhabitants of the new earth yet still he despised their existence. To be fair he hated everything, including himself.

His mind raced back to the moment before he entered the inn.

The feeling of being watched felt strange.

I guess I’ll talk to whoever they were.

Up in the hallway when he turned he had seen an eye from behind the small gap of the door right in front of his to the left.

The eye looked like that of an adult’s. Catching it in that split second he knew the pain the person endured and he could smell the fear that held it captive.

Instead of investigating he decided to move on so as to not alarm whosoever it was, but also he needed to quickly find something to eat before what he had prevented for so long happened.

He was lost in thoughts that he didn’t notice the person standing beside his table.

“Um, excuse me…”

The beautiful human girl with white hair, she looked around his age, perhaps a tad younger, looked a bit puzzled on what to say.

A girl with such beauty wasn’t fit for this job, a waitress.

She nervously clung to the tray pressed to her chest which hid her perky bosoms. Her dress which tightly clung to her slender body which had the right curves and flawless skin made her perfect.

Was she afraid of him? Or just intimidated by his thin muscular body?

She was nervous.

She had seen him earlier with his Jacket on, but now he was in a tight black long sleeved t-shirt—which he always wore under his jacket—pulled up to his elbow exposing parts of the dark markings on his arms.

Her nervousness was slightly overshadowed by curiosity when she saw the strange markings on his body but held back her curiosity.

“Excuse me?” she spoke in a sweet voice.

He turned craning his neck up to look at her, blank—as always.

She looks familiar… Her scent also familiar.

Indeed she was.

She was the very same white haired girl who stood behind the counter when he first arrived, only that she now had no tail.

He couldn’t help but stare at her, waist down.

The average mind would question, but when you’ve lived so long in a strange world, things wouldn’t seem to bother as much, and that’s how he was. There was not an ounce of surprise on him.

A rarity. It wasn’t a known fact but it was said that a small percentage of her kind, like her, before the event, had the ability to shed their tail for a pair of legs at will. An ability which was notable to only their nobility.

Even though he hadn’t seen anything like that he was just blank having no apparent expression on his face.

But why was she in this form?

He asked himself, wondering why she was in her current form. It wasn’t any of his concern but why would she grow a pair of legs?

What was the need for it? It made no sense. He didn’t know how things ran in the inn but she had been in her usual normal form, by the looks of it, the whole day. So why change when there were still people around? It must have been important.

Why is he staring like that?

As he stared at her intently without any expression on his face she couldn’t help but wonder. A person she had never met before looked at her with no readable expression on his. Only one thing came into her mind.

If it were to be someone else she would have definitely found it a offensive yet she couldn’t sense any malice in him.

Could he be wondering my transformation?

But she felt if he continued any longer her nervousness would completely take hold of her.

“So what can we get you? You didn’t tell us what you wanted so I was about coming up and ask?”

I see. That’s why. The hunter thought to himself.

She’s right.

In my haste to exit the inn I’d forgotten to place my order.

I must admit seeing her in full human made her even more beautiful to look at.

“…Anything edible?”

Living in a world where nothing grew made food scarce. So far the only thriving animal species I’ve seen were that of ravens, vultures and the unfamiliar carnivorous birds, a couple of others.

And not to forget there’s an abundance of Cockroaches in places like this since there weren’t many predators to control their population growth.

Aside from that, monsters preyed on other races for nourishment and so did the races on the monsters.

Colonies like this grew their own food.

I don’t know how the desert sand can hold any crop or where they had grown them but, I do think with the constant shade from the tall buildings and the presence of little rain the ground was able to regain some nutrients for some crops to grow. But is it that easy for soils to regain its usefulness? There must be another factor.

Just a fraction of life surviving the event; should include land that could hold crops but I doubt that would do much so this is my only guess. Magic could be a factor as well but it won’t play much part due to its quantitative and qualitative decline.

Why bother about that anyway?

“Yes…” She answered in a low voice.

She gives a quick nod and walks off to make my meal.

This isn’t what I crave for. I can’t go about mentioning something like that to everyone so I will have to make due with whatever I get to sustain me.

I wait…