How the Sun got its Flame
There was a time, in ancient past, when there was no sun.
In the beginning, there were two moons---the moon of the night, Fain, and the dead moon, called Sol.
The moon Fain was revered as the deity that made life possible, but Sol was useless, and was looked upon as a dark hole in the sky, visible only during “day”, because Fain dominated the sky at all other times.
This age was called the Nought Millennium, as named by the dragon warriors of the West, who lived in the Plains of Fire, where all daylight originated.
These plains burned bright because of the dragons who made their homes there; the dragondust cast from the warriors' scales after mating, along with the egg fragments of their young, fertilized the ground so it grew fiery weeds that overcame every other growth. These grasses were called Char, and consisted of magic. Since Char produced no warmth, it was prized for its light only, which eventually became so consuming that it lit the whole world during what is now called “day”, and only “day” because when Fain came out, the Char plants faded and rested as their dragon sires slept.
Char existed only in the Plains of Fire, for only here did the dragon warriors of the West lie. Journeymen came from all around to try and harvest the Char, but to no avail, for soon as it was cut from the ground, it shriveled into ash. So these journeymen attempted to grow it by planting dragon eggs, and seeding their fields with dragondust, but instead of beautiful Char, thorny black brambles grew. These brambles were hard to manage, persistent, and worthless. They were despised, and became known as Barbwier.
So Char was exclusive to the dragons of the West, who prized its light, because they remembered the tales of their forefathers (the dragons of the North) of when the world was all dark---and the dragon warriors of the West could think of nothing worse than complete night. For while the dragons of the West were powerful and intelligent, they stood nothing against Fain and the dark, because when night fell, the Western dragons had to sleep. Without the light of their Char, they would be forced to sleep for eternity, and should they sleep for eternity, Char would be gone and the whole world would be plunged into darkness. So everybody was content with the arrangement, even though the men and elves still wished to secure some Char for themselves.
This age was known for its peace, up until the time an Eastern dragon named Kismet was born. Eastern dragons were very different compared to their Western counterparts. The dragon warriors of the East were the descendents of Southern drakons, creatures that thrived in the dark, rather than the light. Whenever the Char lit up the sky, the Eastern dragons were forced to sleep.
Kismet longed to destroy the Plains of Fire, so his kind could have continuous night. However, he knew that the only way he could destroy the Char was to kill all the Western dragon warriors, so he built up an army, and before the twilight hour, when the Char would begin to burn and the Western dragons would awake, his battalion set out to the Plains.
His warriors succeeded in destroying all of the Western dragons, because even though they were being murdered, they could not wake up from their slumbers and retaliate, as long as Fain was in the sky.
Once the last of his enemies were slain, Kismet and his army gathered in the sky; but before they could set off to return home, Sol rose in the sky. Kismet was not worried, after all, Sol was a dead moon, and posed no threat to his kind.
But then Sol blazed, a light so furious that all Eastern dragons in the air were instantly disintegrated, for they were too close to the fire. Sol was alive.
When the dragons of the West had been killed, the dead moon had caught their souls as they floated up to heaven, and absorbed them into its vacant bulk. There had been so many souls, the moon Sol had broken out in Char, Char so bright and powerful it actually burned---burned with the hate of the Western dragons, who had trusted the Eastern warriors for all of the Nought Millennium, only to be betrayed in the end. And so, even though the Western dragons had been killed, their want for revenge blazed on after their deaths in the moon Sol, who shared the sky equally with Fain from then on.
But the Plains were forever mutilated, and the Char was gone forever. From then on, the old home of the Western dragons was called the Plains of Dead Fire, and remained covered in inhospitable ash for all eternity, and no living thing was ever able to live there again.
The Possession of Tommy Meeks
In an anonymously-written book somewhere it is stated, 'He who speaks in alien tongues, is either very smart, very not, or an alien.'
But because being an alien is such an unlikely occurrence, when Tommy Meeks started babbling on about concurring earth, the human population just assumed he was b) very not smart.
Concurring earth is such an alien idea, isn't it? What human representation of an alien doesn't want to enslave all of mortal kind, and infest earth? How come his own parents, Dad, and Miss Halie, didn't think something was wrong? Well, maybe because Tommy was such a nerd. Even before he was...err...possessed, he was usually running his mouth about the little green men from mars, and talking about well-known conspiracy theorists that the rest of the world had labeled as loonies to be put away in asylums for their own safety, and the safety of the society at large. So when his brain was invaded by an extraterritorial apparently trying to destroy humankind, his parents weren't really alarmed by his behavior. He was acting, sadly, no different than he had the past five years of his nine-year-old existence.
The alien that had made home in him was called Nar'grog'zim, pronounced exactly like it looks. Typical, alien name. In fact, this young Spawn was the typical alien child. Unnoticed by his peers, uncared for by his friends, and unappreciated by his parents, who were well-known Bloodies---aliens that had spare mouths on the back of their heads, used to suck the blood of their victims. Nar'grog'zim had been born without a mouth on the back of his head---an unbearable shame. His career...gone, before he could even get a start at it.
He was a dead-weight to the alien race, which was small and weak to begin with. They were a new species, the miracle offspring of toxic waste and space spiders. Their whole race had only been alive for a couple of decades. Luckily, they aged quickly, and had around a thousand members, with more being born all the time, the little marvels. Except for him, of course, he didn't have an extra mouth.
So Nar'grog'zim was sentenced to death---doomed to be fed to his elderly (thirty-year-old) grandmother, who was too weak and sickly to hunt humankind on earth, but still needed fresh blood to survive. The family had discussed this lengthily while he was in his bedroom sulking, and had decided that the puny grandmother was more use alive than he was. Nar'grog'zim figured out his parents' intentions when they told him that he would be bringing cookies over to old granny Aerie'zim, who in fact, didn't like cookies. But he knew he had to escape, and decided that the best time to run away would be during the walk to his grandmother's hut. He took the cookies, and left the house, knowing that it would be the last time he would ever see it.
Halfway to his granny's, Nar'grog'zim threw the cookies (they were burnt anyhow) to the neighbor's tamed rat, and made a break for it.
Somehow, he managed to board a cruiser of Bloodies headed to earth by disguising himself as his father. He did this by stealing a lady's mascara and panting moles all over his face, and wearing a hood to cover the back of his head. Everybody on the planet knew that he, Nar'grog'zim, had no mouth on the back of his skull (he was the only one alive, the others had already been killed, fed to family members, or pet rats, likely), and if he was spotted as himself, he would have no chance of escape.
Once on earth, he quickly possessed a young human boy---the first one he saw. He'd had this gift all of his life, and as far as he knew, he was the only alien able to use it. Maybe because he had no mouth on the back of his head. Maybe all the other without-second-mouths Spawns were able to use this gift too, but had been killed before they could utilize it.
He'd never know. He wasn't ever going to go back to mars.
Nar'grog'zim lived inside this little human boy for a long, long time. He learned that the boy's name was Tommy Meeks, and that he was a nerd, and talked about aliens a lot. This confused Nar'grog'zim, because nothing mankind said about aliens was true. They weren't green, they weren't small, and they most certainly didn't want to take over earth. If they did, they would have no more humans to feed off of. Of course, if they took over earth, they could keep human prisoners to herd like cattle and keep as food, but that would be too much work. Maybe in a couple of centuries, but certainly not yet.
However, Nar'grog'zim figured that if he suddenly made little Tommy Meeks stop talking about all these alien lies, somebody would begin to suspect that something was wrong with the boy---after all, he appeared to be a world-class nerd. Probably the nerdiest nine-year-old in the world. So Nar'grog'zim talked about destroying earth, crop symbols, and alien comic books, even though he was actually more interested in LEGOs, and Pokemon. Who knew that humans had such cool toys? Nar'grog'zim was glad he'd decided to come to earth and possess a human child. It was fun, and he didn't have to die. That was two major pluses right there.
But Nar'grog'zim still needed to eat. To feed on blood. The human rations he ate as Tommy Meeks were not enough to sustain his alien system, and eventually the family dog had to mysteriously disappear in order for him to remain strong enough to keep possession of the boy's mind, which was always fighting against him. Silly Tommy, didn't he understand that Nar'grog'zim meant no harm to him?
Nar'grog'zim didn't have to feed often, and when he grew hungry he was able to survive semi-well off the blood of animals, but because he had no mouth on the back of his head, it was very hard to properly drain the creatures of their blood. And so a lot was wasted.
At last, he decided that he needed to do something drastic, or he would die. He had to kill a human. Human blood would last him a lot longer than anything else, even if he didn't get much of it. So, one day little Tommy Meeks snuck out of his bedroom window and out into the town alleyways. Before long, they and found a little suburban street called Lark's Rd. And there Tommy Meeks laid in wait behind some shrubberies, until a stray person came strolling down the sidewalk, listening to music through snaky black headphones. Pop, or rap maybe. Something with a snappy beat. The young man moved with jerky movements as he walked, bobbing his head.
Nar'grog'zim leapt from the shrubberies with a length of copper pipe, and whacked the man across the back of the head. He crumbles instantly to the ground, and his headphones fell off, clattering into the street.
After Nar'grog'zim had fed, he returned sneakily to Tommy Meeks's house, which he had started to view as his own. He hadn't left behind the man's headphones or iPod though, and listened to quite a bit of Lady GaGa's Extraterrestrial, and Usher when his parents...grrm...Tommy Meeks's parents were not around.
The police had been unable to figure out what had happened to the man that had been killed on Lark's Rd. His body had been found, deflated like a balloon and surrounded by muddled red stains, on the sidewalk where he'd been struck down, and fiction nerds all around claimed that the man had been killed by a vampire. He'd been drained of blood during the night! It must be a vampire.
Nar'grog'zim heard this, and shook his head. Humans were insane. At last, real proof of an alien was found, and they assumed it was the work of a vampire. They could be no further from the truth.
Did they not know that vampires didn't exist? That would be crazy.
The Legend of the White Horseman and his Steed
A popular folktale among the centaurs was the story of the White Horseman, for the White Horseman was rumored to be the first to foster peace between mankind and the Centaurus.
The legend goes as so: he was born as a weak, frail thing, barely alive. Some say his skin was pale as a vampire's, white and bleached of color. Some say that his eyes were gems of violet, but others disagree.
As the years passed, he remained sickly, barely hanging onto life. But then he was saved. His savior was a foal, a young bay foal with a heart of fire and eyes that held all the answers of life. This foal was gifted, he knew all, and he knew the souls of men. The boy didn't find the foal, the foal came to him. And when their eyes met, so did their consciences, and their minds bonded. The boy was saved, and the two grew up together. In some forms of the legend, the boy's name was Marth, elvish for “Luck”, but usually he was just known as the White Horseman, and his stallion brother was called Ixen, dragonic for “fire”. He was considered to be a creature beyond any other horse, and his origins are unknown. Some believe that he was a godling, descendent of Aerion, the Greek child of Poseidon. But others believe that he was a dragon child, hatched in the womb of a mare bred by a dragon lord, and was then orphaned because his mother perished during his delivery. But nobody knows for sure.
What is agreed upon, however, is the bond between man and stallion. Their communication was practically psychic, and together they both grew strong. Seeing into the eyes of his brother, the White Horseman became a higher being, for it is true that any man becomes a better creature for having once been friends with a horse. The White Horseman learned more of his own race then he would ever have, had he survived infancy, and not met Ixen. He started to see himself set apart from his family, and the rest of mankind. He and Ixen were one, against every other creature. Joined, they were a single deity, apart from anything in creation.
The White Horseman and his brother saw many dark forces in the hearts of their races, among others, and worked to settle many miscommunications that the rest of the world were too blind to see. They could not fix everything, however, and were loathed by some; hated by people who were jealous of their friendship, jealous of their power of insight. They were exiled by many, and at times their exile tore them apart, as did war and other obligations. But never were they apart in mind. Some say the White Horseman learnt the ability to shifte into the form of his steed, and Ixen learnt to shifte into a human body. They accomplished this because they had, in the most intimate way, become each-other.
