Prologue

         

Prolog: The fall of flight
I know this may not make a lot of sense to you, and for that I’m sorry. I have not been very forthcoming with my life, nor the childhood I left wrapped in your bedtime stories. Tales of fairies and wizards, and of courageous heroes who came to save the day. A world of fantasy just for you, but we both know that life is rarely that comforting. I just wish that I could be there to tell you this in person. Though, I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you the truth.
I know that from this you expect to hear my story. Some semblance of who I am or was and if you are searching for that then I must apologize. I can not give something that I have yet to learn myself. No, this is a story of the family you never got to know. A family that rode the lines between fabrication and reality. This is the story of the Kanes of Omnia and how the land of everything became nothing. Though, I suppose I should start from the beginning. From the destruction of flight.
In the beginning, before the land of Omnia held its name there was peace. Humans and Pure-bloods lived in harmony under one sky. The land was fresh and newly formed. Filled with bountiful tribes that lived off of the fruits the trees bared. The human race was silent then and chose isolation rather than confrontation. They formed ties with the other pure tribes and built cities by the water that became known as Kingdoms of the Mare.
However, even with these ties, each race chose to live alone. Claiming portions of the land for their own and raising their young in the way of their people.Though, on rare occasions, you would see an exception. The first to mix with the humans were the tribes of the sea. Water spirits and Mers that entranced sailors to take their beds and bare children as a result. Creatures of neither sea nor the mainland. Neither human nor water sprite, but something in between. Something beautiful and new, or at least it could have been, though not every race saw it as such. The Avians more so than any.
The Avians were a plentiful race known for their riches and untethered pride. Their kingdoms on the faces of cliffs and mountain sides. Burrowed deep and built with white marbled stone that made the light refract in golden hues. With doors that led to sheer drops into a misty abyss and rare crystals used in healing that hung from caverns. Where their wings, like that of large birds, carried them farther than any other race could go. A people of old values. Older, than it would seem, time itself. More than merciless and seen as barbaric in their customs, the Avians rarely left their skies. They believed in purity and as other races chose to forget their purist values, the Avians in their vanity could not.
It was these values that led the Avians to believe they were more than the common races. That their purity and gift of flight symbolized their divinity over all others. All would pay respects to them. Even the great Kingdoms of the Mare. As the vanity of the Avians grew, the goodwill of the Kingdoms ran thin. No one knows exactly what broke the first ties. The humans said that the Avians threatened the safety of the land; the Avians, however, tell a different story. They say that the humans killed a flock of their young. It’s sad, my dear, how quickly these bonds can be broken. How friendships can be lost to the wind. How easy it is for peace to become war.
Slowly the days turned to darkness and the once warm nights turned cold. The seed of chaos began to suffocate the Avians as they held up in their mountains. White feathers quickly became stained in hues of black and red. The Avians' vanity and pride had brought the beginning of their ruin. The once beautiful people began to morph into a caricature of their darkest desires. A curse had befallen them to forever reflect their black hearts onto the world. For as long as the sun still rose, they would not die and they would be forced to watch themselves become monstrous while their minds drowned in anguish.
It was the fall of the oldest tree that signaled the start of the war. A crash that howled through the forest and echoed into the mountainous caverns. It cracked the new saplings as it fell and the land shook with loss as the roots left her generous Bussum. Nature spirits howled in agony as their home slowly died and was dismembered before them for the use of arrows. Promising to seek their revenge on the humans who turned their back on Nature’s generosity. The armies followed shortly after. The Kingdoms of the Mare had called for help from the north and with them, they brought devices of fire and torture. Large nets with thorns to capture winged beasts and shackles of iron for fae who chose to intervene. For fifty years the fires of war burned. Such death was dealt those years, as the Avians’ numbers dwindled and the humans yearned for blood. There was no such thing as neutrality and the pure tribes who attempted such a feat were massacred in droves.
Even as the Avians fell, the humans did not cease their siege. Their eyes were set on another prize. With their numbers growing they devoured the open land and removed the once pure-blooded tribes that had offered kindness. The peace they once had was lost and those who remained were forced into hiding. The Kingdom of flight had fallen and with them rose a much darker force. A figure of death that took the shape of a broken Avian. The last of its kind with a mind riddled in vengeance and voices of his fallen kin screaming for blood. The human race was shown no mercy as the figure reduced their population by a third. No help came to humans those days nor any days since.
Robbed of their peace and their homes, the pure-bloods wandered the wilderness. Bringing their kin into hiding and slowly becoming a rare sight in regular life. Hybrids continued to amass numbers and even with a claim to both worlds, they were accepted into neither. The last of the Avian blood-line disappeared. The figure of death, known as Thanatos, became nothing more than a bedtime story humans told to their children. A scary ghost to encourage good behavior and sleep. A fading figure to the new world, but always remembered by those of old. Cast in the blazes of fire and drenched in blood. As the screams of his victims surrounded him and his eyes reflected the darkest of insanity. For he had seen hellfire in the flesh and watched his people burn to ash.
In the years to come the war faded into history. Pure-bloods had all but died out and hybrids hid away from prying eyes. The world had become something new and the land became known as Omnia. The Land of Everything. The Land of Wishes. The word fell into sections ruled by kingdoms. Old structures were repurposed or lost to the changing of tides. Magic became something humans used in everyday life and history was censored to appeal to the winning team. Wars became almost make-believe. Stories conjured by old drunks in dark bar corners. They became as harmless as a field of flowers. While tales of hybrids were twisted and in those twists bonds were formed and that, my dear, is where the Kanes come in. It was the beginning of an unlikely group. One that I still owe my life, but that is not the start of their story. For them, it began, well it began as one might expect. In the middle of a fight to the death.