New Years Special 2017

In the first few years after the Elven trees grew on Earth, and the Elves emerged along with them, they were greeted with a strange mix of hostility and acceptance. Their races inherent beauty went a long way towards smoothing relations but the best reason for their acceptance was necessity. With other less open peace races also appearing around the same time, humanity simply had to take every friend they could get.

The opinion of the first Elves, however, was somewhat different. It was said that the first words ever spoken by an Elf on Earth were, “How truly ugly.”

That sentiment lead the Elves that arrived there to live in a state of depression that lasted for nearly fifty years. Even before the great calamities their population was slow to rise because of that. In fact, it took thirty years for the first generation of Elves born on Earth to come around. Many humans at that time had reached adulthood with the assumption that Elves never had children.

Amongst that first generation, Kat Anaon was Born. The previous generation was too lethargic to raise children at that time, so that whole group of children were able to be born with visible defects, and were raised in human society. That was why Kat developed an understanding of the world that was as close to human as an Elven mind could grasp. She didn't see the world as ugly, she lived in a luscious green hillside farming community where the wind danced through the grassy planes. Even when the dust started to rain from the sky, like golden snowflakes, the area only seemed to shine more radiant it the light.

The community Kat lived in was remote and isolated, distant racial wars and descending gods had less impact than a neighbour’s prized bull being available in spring and the latest technologies were slow to make their way there. With magic to make their crops flourish and solid trading partners, they didn't feel like there was a need for the security that the Glass Towers provided in the city. Kat had considered going in once, just to get the injection on the off chance that she needed it, but harvest seasons came around and planting seasons followed. The falling sand was rich with prana and crops grew rapidly in that quality soil. Animals that ate from those crops also grew faster. Since no one knew how long it would take for the Earth to pass through the dust cloud, though it was unlikely to take very long, farmers and breeders were taking advantage of it while it lasted.

Kat's foster parents, the Anaons, knew that Kat had wanted to see a city at least once. They also knew that Kat was worried about them and wouldn't leave them to work alone during that bumper harvest. They were getting old while Kat was just starting to understand just how different the lengths of their lives were. That was why, they forced her to go that year. It was a Christmas present to her, a bus ticket to the nearest city and a booking at a pharmacy to have the inoculation. Since they paid in advance there was no way she could turn it down.

She had made it her New Year's resolution ever since she first heard about the benefits that the Glass Tower System had to offer, but never got around to it. To start the year off fresh, and prevent Kat from finding an excuse out of it, she was scheduled in on the first of January.

Seeing the city for the first time, Kat couldn't help but be completely shocked. She had never seen so many people in a place with so little prana. She could see the rain-like falling dust being drained of its energy before it got anywhere near the ground. Looking at the towering structures that filled the streets with her trained prana sight, they appeared black and imposing as they drained the magic from the air and converted it into more readily usable forms.

Every car on the road, every house in the city, it was all powered by the magical electricity generated by the towers.

Catching a bus, Kat made her way down a major street, heading towards her destination; Smith Street Mall. As the bus turned a corner, Kat looked out the window down the street that the mall was named after. A heat haze like fog seemed to fill an intersection as cars drove through it as if it was unnoticed.

As the bus was about to clear that street, now outside of Kat's vision, a thunderous crackle could be heard. That sound, that sounded like the air itself was breaking, was accompanied by a wave of force that shattered glass and tipped the bus onto its side.

When Kat regained conciousness, she could hear distant screaming. Heavy smoke filled the bus and pain shot through her left leg. A large shard of glass had gone cleanly through her leg, through both bone and flesh like butter. Worse still, the strange shape of the glass acted like a pin, holding tight to both the ground and her leg.

Looking around, Kat could see chaos. Buildings were toppled, cars were crashed and bodies were lying tattered and dismembered. Holes filled everything, as if eaten by a giant.

It was at that moment when she first saw it. Like solid fog. Like death given form. The Grey Wraith devoured everything and everyone around it. It was a cloud of grey mist, too think to see through, that dissolved anything that came in contact with it. Only the falling dust seemed immune to its effects. The streets were eaten by the gas, leaving only sand behind. Even the Glass Towers, the greatest power humanity had, were eaten by the fog.

The Grey Wraith suddenly stopped moving. Moments later, it seemed to shrink; it crushed itself down to a two meter sphere.

It then burst out in a pulse like wave, like a blade that cut down everything. If Kat's leg hadn't been trapped, her instincts would have made her stand and run. But she hadn't stood. She hadn't run. That was how she lived. The plus travelled just centimetres above her, she could feel even her breath dissolve, but her life was saved.

There were thousands of people in the buildings that creature ate. Hundreds on the street. She completely froze up on seeing that monstrous abomination, that was synonymous with death. Her fearful gaze matched the dead faces of the bodies around her and they hurt her to see. She knew that thing, she knew it was the most disgusting thing to ever walk the planet.

And walk it did. The only trace it left behind were a set of human footprints in the sand.

As it left, leaving her alone but alive, she felt no relief. The existence of such a creature was etched deeply into her very soul. As she fainted once more, she made a grim realisation; the Grey Wraith was travelling towards her hometown.

An unknowable amount of time passed and she woke up once more. She had been freed from the glass and moved to a hospital. However, the hospital seemed to have been attacked by something, it was broken with scorch marks and bullet holes. With no one living around, Kat ran off in a panic. Whatever caused the damage was apparently no longer around, but thankfully it happened after Kat's leg was healed.

The area around the hospital was much the same, destroyed and burnt. The streets were littered with debris and bodies. The cleaning devices that was keeping the dust away was also broken, as the sand now reached ankle deep. Having never seen such destruction, so much death, Kat couldn't cope with it. She shut it from her mind and started to run. She didn't know where she was, or even if she was even in the same city, but she picked a road she though would lead her home and started running.

She ran and ran. Shutting her mind off she ran. With her mind shut, she might have gotten a lift along the way, or even stolen a car, but either way she made it home.

But it wasn't her home that she found there. The crops, the houses, even some hills, they were gone. The people she knew and loved all were gone. All that was left was golden sand, sand that fell like a heavy downpour.

Even in her numbness, that sand turned to mud as it made contact with her face.