The hazy stream of golden light from the Penumbral Edge was blotted out by hundreds upon thousands upon millions of buzzing wings. In the center of the swarm, flying proudly side by side, were two equine figures with insectoid features. Their eyes flickered green, and their hatchlings pulsed a furious emerald to match. Crooked horns burned with vile purpose, and the chitinous swarm flew into every available space of the curve, Chasing all forms of life and clinging to victims with venomous hunger.
Alas, the First Penumbral Invasion.
Two poisoned sisters, Chrysalis and Tchern;
From the Realm of Light they came, hungry and
Ravenous for all that lived, loved, and breathed.
Too selfish to sustain harmony and
Cursed by their own dependence on chaos,
They sought the bright gift of their forebearers.
The flying soldiers of the swarm formed dark shaows in the twilight—shadows that morphed and shifted as the need saw fit. Within centuries, they had captured samples of every species that had bravely eked a meager survival under the chaotic shroud. In deeply-seeded nests, they imprisoned creatures—both sapient and not—and they bound them with misery and seduction.
Over time—as the older nests withered and crumbled—scant members of the imprisoned masses slipped away, unnoticed. They fled and scampered through the darkest niches of the Curve, eventually forming pockets of desperate, impoverished civilization. Hunting and foraging for food, the survivors constantly looked over their shoulders, fearful of the encroaching swarms that might once again blot out the miasmic starlight.
Before they were Keepers of the Flux, they
Were vile Harvesters of the Burning Heart.
From Paradise they brought with them captives:
Scrumptious victims of passion and hatred.
Over the years these translocated souls
Escaped into the darkness to form the
Lost denizens of Twilight: the Dihmers.
Equine, Impish, and Elsewise, these persons
Suffered a new purgatory under
The building storm of war between Keepers
And the Ruby Chorus who already
Had staked a claim on the Sarcophagus.
Silken webs flounced in canyons and crevices from a heated wind. Above the arachnid sentries, a new war was being waged. Metamorphs—utilizing the genes stolen from thousands of smuggled and leeched species—flocked in high numbers, flanking and surrounding giant floating structures of mana-infused crystal.
With steely patience and poise, the translucent monoliths weathered the attack, gathered otherworldly mana, and fired back at the attacking swarms with waves upon waves of crimson fury.
The insectoid sisters—corrupted monarchs—watched from afar, hissing in rage as their children were reduced to brittle ashes... and the ruby clouds remaining were subsequently harnessed into even greater firepower by their aloof foes.
Undaunted, the metamorphic monarchs preyed even harder on the suffering vermin of the darkscape, infusing their blood with a hundred other species and giving birth to greater and more complex atrocities that eventually would launch bigger, bolder, and more menacing attacks on the nemeses floating over the location of the Sarcophagus. Inch by inch, decade by decade, they managed to push the monoliths back—but their crystalline enemies countered with stronger and stronger volleys, until the battle came to a grinding halt at a veritable wasteland centered upon the Armory itself.
The Ruby Chorus countered the Keepers
With Every Attack, but the dual Monarchs
Possessed something that their foes did not have:
A Hive Mind bent on ruthless aggression.
They matched boundless death with unfettered life
Equally miserable and damning
With no regard for the consequences
Of their pursuit of unbridled power.
Control of both halves of the Slice was worth
The unending bloodshed of their children.
And this forced the war into a stalemate
With no victory in sight for both sides.
The Dihmers, helpless, waited for the strife
To incinerate all life on the Curve
Until all that remained was Ruby Song,
But then came a new Symphonic Movement.
Upon the fringes of the dark zigurrat, insectoid and crystalline forces made another charge for each other. Chitin reflected off gloss. Ruby light crossed with emerald.
But then—stretching across the battlefield—came a new shadow, immense and all-engulfing, carried on scaled wings of onyx.
The translucent monoliths stalled in the middle of their flight. Metamorphic swarms perched on ravaged battlements while Tchern and Chrysalis looked on in a brand new apprehension.
The dim heavens above were pierced by a blacker-than-black figure, a majestic silhouette of awesome power and harrowing majesty. Slitted eyes opened, brimming with ethereal light. Three bright crests illuminated in a pale blue row along the length of the creature's skull, and soon her serrated maw opened wide, billowing with obsidian flame.
As her mountainous wings spread wide, nimble figures dove from the stars behind her, sailing straight for both opposing factions with reptilian grace, emboldened by ravenesque fire. One by one, they decimated the first lines of the facing armies, riddling the scarred earth with glass and insect limbs.
Almighty Endrax, First-Born of Gardez
The Divine of Death, Matriarch of Time
Loyal to Everything and Nothing, Queen
Of Equilibrium and all it took
To maintain balance between Harmony
And Chaos—She arrived with her broodlings
And breathed fire on all that dared encroach the
Sarcophagus of Ages, knowing full
Well that to lose the gift within would be
The death of hope for both sides of the Slice.
Endrax knew—as my Children know—that the
Song must persist until the Circles can
Be brought back to the point before Breaking.
And for centuries she succeeded in
Protecting the Harmonic Gift, stalling the
Symphony in wait of a flame, a Spark
That will unite the Song with the Spectrum.
For whether Endrax understood or not,
There was another gift besides that which
Was left by the stellar Benefactors.
Ilrifa's codex, the Austraeoh, comes
To ignite the penultimate Movement.
But before that Dawn, a final Eclipse:
There was yet to be a Lunar phase to
The Penumbral Invasion: the Bloodwings.