Soft colors still endured in the rotation between sunsets, between the turn of night and the oncoming turn of light of day. All the haze softened the atmosphere and it was needed. All quiet forests and surrounding landscapes were still in a state of healing, in a way. But nothing the darkness of past events shadowed the light. It was felt everywhere.
The embattled dwelling area of well-built structures that blended with the surrounding environment of the woods and nearby bodies of water, had all but been destroyed by the forces of the servants of Dokk the Darkness. This malignant entity had embodied an army that came from a cloud of choking smoke and ash. As if flown in from hostile worlds of volcanic wrath.
Nackendara and Ackea stood in a small, circular room of a small dwelling. Dark with shadows and the sounds of explosions outside. Their eyes filled with dread and their faces showing the effects of a constant line of fear of the oncoming death and destruction that they knew they could not overthrow. Dark shadows encompassed their eyes and the only sparkle there were their tears. Their voices wincing in pain.
The dark landscape lit only by the event of a drawn away sun, eclipsing behind the presence of the planetary entity that appeared as a solid vast world of shadow was all the two sisters could see out of the window of their abode. The only way to survive the physical effects of hunger and thirst was to curse the darkness with all the energies they had left. Drained and near death, with tears heavy in their eyes and their faces collapsed knowing they'll be fighting this entity for what would appear to be ages into eons, they spoke of a way for their bodies to sleep in that circular room deep in the forests until some light could show again but the shadow overwhelmed Arca and the planet's power wouldn't be enough to sustain them as it would have been before. The instruments and coverings of what they gathered were cold and without any electricity of the grounding elements around them. The darkness of this evil presence was an illusion, it wasn't real, but it had gained so much substance from the conquering of Fiod's resources that it was able to project its evil through the evil will of Dokk the Darkness. The entity had been named and they knew what it was and terror was all that could be witnessed of it. Dokk brought death and an ending of any life that was remembered. Even if surviving the devastation, the way life was before was no longer the way life would be.
Dokk the Darkness was first embodied in what was mistaken as one of the people before the fall of Fiod's oldest empire and that was all the Arcans knew about this nightmare creature from the abyssal drop below their star system.
Knowing they could not sleep in the way they had desired until the evil could be conquered, Nackendara and Ackea traveled away toward the inner forests that lay on the other side of a vast stretch of flat lands. For a while they set out to find the passage to the tunnels of Mossy Way. It was a deserted landscape they traveled across without any plan or hope. And in the skies they saw a glimmer at first but it stretched into a longer stream of light and then spilling out light from its being it shone across the sky. Like a sharp beam it pierced the sky and slowed to a stop and rounded into a small globe that lit the grounds with a soft bluish, pure light. But the witness account of all that happened had to be voiced even if through silent anguish. Nothing good to mention. Pain and suffering they uttered and recalled. Someone had to know besides them, the effect of death, and dying in perpetual death and how it was all a lie. The light of the object stayed with them as they traveled. The message the two women silently sent was understood, but they continued on and the light cloaked itself to mirror the sky. They made their way to the secluded forests where the realm of the sanctuary was still intact. It felt empty because not many had made the journey to this hidden kingdom.
It's all a trick as Nackendara had once told Ackea. None of it could be real, it's not how Arca would have it. She spoke those words in a broken tone of sadness knowing that all of it was happening anyway. Nackendara fought alongside the rest, but the darkness of Dokk's servants was too much and the people of the small village they escaped from were overthrown. In battle Nackendara was only so skilled, but not enough to shield all the defenseless. That skill was not an ability to anyone. They all moved at the same speed and rhythm as the invaders did. The upper hand was for the side with the numbers. Which is why the dark servants of this evil attacked small areas of a populace at a time. Some of the stronger male inhabitants were slain and fell under the blades of the invasion. Nackendara being struck many times while trying to block or defend those being attacked. The memory of this evil played over and over in her memory. Even after all this time.
What was the foretelling of the ships from the skies? This was something Nackendara's companion survivors would ask her while she would stand and gaze in the hidden fortress sanctuary of tree and stone, staring at nothing but the movements of the wild. Nackendara never felt Arca's connection. Feeling as if only a living witness for archival purposes only.
The legend of the ships was that they'd come to all the surrounding worlds. They remain somewhere but unseen. We are, she would say, connected to everything, yet belong to nothing. In her case, she came from out there, a solar child. Looking out over the vast star field in the sky, she'd felt that connection but one that was viciously severed. As if there was no going back, but she never wanted to be away from. Whatever it was that she felt from beyond her experiences of life on Arca.
Arca would have never allowed the darkness of death to descend like it had. That world had fought against it with everything. The forest outside the watery borders south of where the survivors dwelt now was starting to grow again. Even after the winds uprooted and shattered it. Even though the vile dark of Dokk had placed spines of steel in the ground like poisoned spears. Nackendara paused to look out over the long range of the pathway that lay hidden to all outside eyes. She uttered softly that Arca still fought to survive, the spirit of what dreams and hopes were still harbored in the people's hearts. That remained, but very muted.
All the people and the various places of population of Arca had been so isolated for so long that any gathering would be a force that sent out energies that would surely alert any dark forces to it. Arca and the people of Arca were forced to give up so much. But the spirit of fighting and revenge against the evil that had been done was strong and that was something that could not be measured or honed in on. The energies were almost identical and elusive. An evil entity could not read with any certainty, the wrath of the people who were invaded as it was the same energies that flowed from that entity's own dark works and deeds. Blending like smoke into the sky and fading into nothingness. A power that could not be seized. And because of that alone, the people of Arca began a subtle accumulation of this very need for avenging all that was lost to them. To use the same power against their foe. It would be that energy alone that a sizable force against the enemy could be organized. But all on soft whispers spoken, slight vibrations of the drums and tones in the forests, and energies of living in a state of constant waking and awareness.
As disconnected to Arca and the surrounding worlds that most perceived, Nackendara and in fact, all the people left, were endowed with the power of their world. It was once so powerful that fighting off something as horrid as the entity Dokk would have been an ease. But a shadow had settled long ago from something small in the distance at first. The world's own creatures were much-loved and cared for with the utmost of honor and loyalty. But the shadow sought to take all the lives of everything in Arca's nature and absorb the energies of the pain the lost souls would generate. The shadow formed in the beginning on the world of Fiod and became as one of the people. In appearance only but still unlike any living being on the planet. The very darkness of this being was so treacherous that it would lead others into falsehoods and betray those who trusted they would be safe, only to find that their lives would end and any plans to conquer the strange presence of something that never belonged to the world but against it entirely and seeking the destruction of it. So it was that Arca experienced the same apprehension and recoiled from it. In doing so, the entity embodied as Dokk would begin massive war efforts against Arca, and because his evil was already interfering with Arca's own natural defenses, the people were weakened as a result. But the planet's powers were still building a defense from the energy of the core sun. Become one with the grounds, the rivers, and the trees. Rise up anyway. Arcans began to repeat the saying from long ago.
The vibrations began shifting, all off-balance, and the sounds of Dokk's dark curses and intent to harm and kill were now what Arca absorbed and itself was wounded by. As clouds from the grounds, a dreary haze from the skies, and the linear points of geometric travel lines scrambled to lower and burrow into other routes and planes. The worlds themselves had been conquered earlier, unleashing death on the living who were before protected by the living hosts that were their own planets.
And while Arca had still so much of its strength intact for the very reason it traveled close enough to the core sun, having that connection, the mover in the night that still lingered upon Arca's surface chilled the air at times and drifted like a ship that lost its way only to be guided by the mere pull of the solar system's own rhythm and function. To be connected to everything but belong to nothing was the notion and belonging to any one thought, journey, or outcome was the impossibility. That it was even more impossible to belong to a given world when all the origins in and of itself were scattered bits of mass that at one time, also, had no vibration or movement. Having to be created and designed. Formed and set in motion of something else. The solid world of Arca now could claim its inhabitants as its own but all the living and all those that passed on now, were all still individual points of energy and all their own life-force. Worlds within souls. And it would take so many to pour knowledge into the grounds through sound and telepathy and draw back the reflections from what the planet might convey. A process that could take so long in time. And so many to sharpen the memory of the past they saw and lived through and focus that as a concentrated effort. And still the grounds and the mass of it could just absorb it and store everything for much more time. And although the mover in the night had all but disappeared from the world of Arca, the damage of its evil was carried on because of the terror that the people remembered. There was no erasing these past events.
It was difficult to know how the planets reacted to adversity, and the task of finding the answer had to be considered without upsetting any more of the balance of its own light while it endlessly absorbed the light of the suns.
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