A tremor ripples through my consciousness, a once-familiar sensation that freezes the bone clenched between my jaws. The probing touch repeats, insistent, reaching.
No... They're coming.
I'd dared to hope, after all these millennia, that the Abbrakor had slain them, or that this insignificant planet I call home had slipped from memory. For nearly six thousand years I've kept watch. But my long vigil nears its end.
I sense them, our bond alerting me to the fringes of their presence—a roiling mass of millions of minds, clawing and shrieking over each other in bloodthirsty frenzy, ravenous for another world to consume. And as I perceive them, they too perceive me.
My name drifts across the void. "Where are your siblings? What have you done?"
Shuddering, I resist as my queen, my mother, tries to wrench my mind open, screaming defiance as I strive to sever the link. "I've readied them for you!" My rebellion sears her intrusion, tearing an agonized howl from my throat as I convulse, the connection scorching away. Then... silence. The eye of the storm.
Clicking claws echo through the shadowed caverns I've carved from these majestic peaks over eons, fashioning my sanctuary as I pad to the edge of my aerie and settle, surveying the glimmering jewel of humanity nestled at the foot of my roost. They remain unaware of the doom bearing down upon them, ignorant of their distant guardian. Without thought, I give a wistful sway of my tail as I etch this final day into memory—the apex of their potential.
I witnessed them evolve from primitive savages into a vast, labyrinthine civilization, by turns kind, gentle, nurturing. Not without flaws, though I'm ill-positioned to judge.
I yearned to reveal myself, to guide them. But they weren't prepared. Soon, perhaps, they might've been ready to embrace my nature and steel themselves for my people's arrival. To fight. To endure. That day had felt so close... Had I misjudged?
Yet as my mind's fringes tingle with their seeking, digging and searching for their wayward son, I know time has run out. My choices are now set in stone, and there is little else to be done except to wait, once again.
Instead of revelation, I had gone about a different path, hoping to instill a cultural memory into them. I wove tales of my kind into their myths and legends and warned them of the nightmares in wait. I visited the addled, the mad, and the receptive in night's depths, seeding survival's roots. I breathed secrets of bloodshed and creation into the ears of the promising, conjured visions of ruin and ramparts, weapons of unfathomable destruction, in the dreams of those who might forge them.
I can only pray they remember. But to whom does a god pray?
I've done what I can to preserve you. Not enough to save all, but maybe... some will live on.
My children... forgive me for what I've wrought.
A chronicle of people, places and events in the OF THE EARTH Series Read more about OF THE EARTH .
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I have read this book from a different app and i want to leave this review for all readers... You won't be able to stop reading once you start! ASHES of the Earth is one of the most riveting new SciFi novels I have seen in a long time. The characters jump off the page and come right to life! Emotional, action packed, fight for survival, becoming the enemy to survive the enemy! ITS BRILLIANT!
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