Human Exodus
TORIEL was such a Guardian. A male, strong and sound in head and body. When he challenged the idea of balance, asked to build new things and discover new lands, he was ushered in front of the Matriarch. She patiently explained what consequences such actions would bring. If he broke the law, Toriel would be removed from the world. It would be as if he had never existed. Toriel bowed his head in submission. That was the last time he ever spoke to a fellow Guardian. On the next sunrise, he left the land of his birth. He knew that, to the West, there was only the sea, so he walked to the East.
With the sun in his eyes, he kept marching, only stopping to rest and to gather new strength. When he found the mountains in his path, he forked North, and kept going until the ground became green again and rich with life. In this land, there were no Guardians. Just him, and creatures both strange and familiar. In this place, he decided the law he was taught to obey would not apply.
Toriel felt free for the first time in his life. His mind could finally unleash its potential. He made tools to cut wood, to chisel rock, to kill more creatures than he needed to eat. He had always wanted to dominate his environment, he knew his possibilities were limitless. Fire, water, steam, and ice made him as powerful as a hundred Guardians. He started to build, to burn, to make strange new noises that echoed in the distance. Soon, another Guardian came to him. AZEL, a female. In her mind, there were questions no one wanted to consider. Toriel answered them in such a way she decided to stay. Soon, they had offspring. And more like them came to the colony they had founded in this new land, far away from the Guardian dominion… but not far enough not to lure in the curious and unsatisfied.
The Guardians noticed this slow trickling exile. They knew Toriel and his kind has always manifested amongst them. They too were an expression of nature. Toriel had found a place for them.
Wasn’t he, like all Guardians, an expression of nature’s balance?
Time proved them wrong. From Toriel came a change no Guardian could ever conceive. The seed of a new world had been planted. The laws of Toriel were not intended to break the balance, but confronted every rule of the Guardians. He taught his followers that each individual being could shape reality. Nature was not the answer to all questions. The mind was the ultimate tool to achieve meaning. Guardians were not all equals, no more than creatures of different species. Some were meant to lead, others to follow. Some had to be gentle and kind, other strong and tough. In order for them to prosper, they had to let the industrious and inventive emerge. Thusly were chosen the Elders, and, to lead them, the King.
Toriel’s land came to be known as the KINGDOM. The strongest and most intelligent led, no questions were asked that could not be answered. Challenge and emulation became familiar. If the king was no longer to be the best of his people, a new king would arise to push the kingdom forward. Merit and craftsmanship prevailed over peace and harmony. The individual came to mean more than the group.
Progress was the only way. With it came order, justice, valor, and honor. Civilization. Buildings, devices, inventions, weapons, and tools. Endless ways to control nature and turn its bounty into an extension of the mind. But with progress came hubris. Arrogance for one’s intelligence. Contempt for beings and ideas that were judged more than they were understood. The Kingdom had nothing to do with the Guardians anymore. They were different people, with different laws. A frontier was set to the West. The descendants of Toriel, who now called themselves humans, were never to cross it. And no Guardian was to set foot in the Kingdom. For humans, the future lied to the East.
The Kingdom prospered. With each new season, it grew apart from the Guardian Dominion. Progress brought science, artistry, critical thinking, and an endless string of machines and devices to push all boundaries. With development came work, money, wealth, and influence. But also came the moment when humans realized that progress was no longer the bearer of good news. With new tools and new facilities came new illnesses. Fevers strange and strong, aches not caused by nature. Remedies were found, cures discovered, few died, few remained sick. What happened to RANON-AS had never been experienced before. In her flesh, a disease settled, like a bug nesting under the skin. She grew weak and cold, she coughed blood. She was given so many sophisticated medicines that her very essence changed: the building blocks of her body, the chemicals that made her glands and brains. Ranon-As mutated, and not only in appearance. Her mind followed the shifting of her body. She grew taller, slimmer, her skin became dark, her eyes turned red. A new fire blazed in her mind. A new hunger, not for food or knowledge, but for a chance to show what she could achieve.
Ranon-As was studied and questioned, but she was too smart to answer truthfully. Her mind was far more capable than the smartest Elders of the Kingdom. It wouldn’t be long before they became aware of the shadow she had cast over their existence. She was an accident, not a premeditated thought, and yet she was better. Ranon-As knew the Kingdom had fallen prey to its arrogance. Humans had embarked on the wrong path for progress, carried away by the wrong truth. Chaos was stronger than order, more dangerous, more volatile, but ultimately better, like her. Her mind was infused with such powers she could read people’s thoughts and plant her own in their brains. The corruption of her genetic pool was a miracle. Her greatest asset and most powerful weapon.
Soon, the order for her murder was issued, but Ranon-As had long outthought her opponents. She fled the Kingdom, taking with her the most advanced human technology and a hundred captives, all males, that she could control like the dolls she used to play with when she was confined to her bedroom in sickness.
With her powers, Ranon-As could have taken control of the Kingdom, but why settle for a rotten fruit when she could grow a new one, perfect in every way? She crossed the river that made the eastern frontier and pushed North through the mountains until she reached a secluded valley. She decided to settle there. Entrenched in her Citadel, she could repel any human army sent to destroy her. From the hundred seeders she had kidnapped, she bred a multitude of offspring, all rewarded with her unique genome. From that first generation came beings that were like her. Taller, thinner, darker, with red eyes and an insatiable hunger. No longer humans, but DEMONS. In their newfound city of Tartarus, ablaze with the inferno of industry, Ranon-As created a new dominion, destined for either total domination or total annihilation. She shed her old name and became LADY BRALLMERAN. She vowed never to embrace progress or balance, like her forefathers, but chaos. The accidental nature of her greatness was to light her way like the flames of the forges she had created. Chaos was not created, but provoked. For it to occur, all levers had to be pushed: invention, experiment, risk, war. Time and resources should not be wasted on justice or valor. Whatever could happen had to happen. The end always justified the means. No allies, no plans, no tactics. Spontaneity, deception, tricks, and the never-ending appetite for more, more, more…