Rise of the Beasts

Prologue


AS DAY approaches high noon the once arid air struggles against the ever increasing and suffocating dampness from the canvas below. Each day ends with a capitulation to neither taking siege against the other. Each morning the first bursts of light gives hope to new life, setting seed and proving an ecosystem of abundance to all of its inhabitants. What is queer about this particular ecosystem is where it resides and when it thrived. Thousands of years before humanity began its ascent to the stars, nature orchestrated its own citadels to the sky. Then all seemed a garden of paradise. This sanctuary has long since become myth and often romanticized in a land destined to one day be dominated by the oceans of sand.

However, the future was still undetermined in a world that presently flourished, lush with its seemingly endless variety of sustenance filling the air with hope. Another day turned into night with the sanctuary’s nocturnals welcoming their new day. Guardians of the dark they hunted and fed like any other day underneath the midnight sky, beaming with millions upon millions of stars. Just as night bid adieu to Dawn something rustled that would forever change the course of this private sanctuary. 

As morning arrived an uncomfortable tension permeated across every living creature that stirred. And just as newborn birds began to cry for nourishment a force spread across the grove, leaving silence in its wake. Nothing moved, not even the wind as a vortex opened before this wondrous grove to eschew forth beings far beyond this world. A leopard silently arched his head as the hair upon his back raised in alarm at what he knew not. At first, a slight rustling of leaves broke the silence before all was still once more. Only the merest of indentation left a trace and revealed their presence. The air pressure dropped just for an instant with all above in the citadels of trees and on the canvas floor huddled in silence waiting for what they knew not. 

Just then a dry branch cracked beneath a foot as one by one the camouflage washed away to reveal three beings dressed in shape-shifting attire; one by one their very presence overpowered this jungle flooring and all its mist laden sunlit streaks from above held motionless in sublime reverence, as if time stood still: gods to the primitive mind; many centuries from now perhaps an imperceptible code in human DNA will help to shape the forebears to all modern humans alike…