The Obsidian Wyrm #0. Prologue

Once upon a time, in a similar world where the same people and animals lived, there were dragons. Large, winged and fire-breathing. Red, blue and green. Their very appearance instilled fear among the human race who did not wish to have anything to do with them for the sake of their own well-being. Dragons also preferred not to deal with pesky humans, so both intelligent species separated from each other and found a place for themselves in the larger world. Generations passed, each of them expanded their own territories avoiding each other, but sooner or later fate brought them together in unexpected meetings. Mostly it ended in fights, often fatal ones, but there were also those that led to relationships. With every century they became more and more frequent, and who knows what they might have led to if the history of both kinds had not undergone a fatal rupture happened one day at sunset.

In the middle of the human land covered with twilight, a bright firestorm broke out uncontrollably sweeping cities and villages on its way. Right inside its core rampaged red scaled wyrm who was distorted by wrath. He spared nothing under his wings. His fire destroyed everything it touched until night fell, when the destroyer after being deathly exhausted released his spirit. He left many ruins and casualties behind, but that was only an omen of a much greater catastrophe that started with the dawn of a new day. Instead of one dragon, dozens of its relatives rose into the sky, blocking the sunlight with the shadow of their wings. They scattered everywhere in the surrounding lands, plunging more people settlements into hell. Being confident in their own might, the destroyers did not stop and moved further and further away from each other, continuing their rampage alone.

As soon as the people recovered from the fear, they began to unite their efforts to repel the foreigners. The special units they created could hold back enemy attacks by defending settlements, but after gaining some experience they were able to track dragons and challenge them right in their lairs. For a long time, the victory was on dragons’ side, and battle after battle inflicted considerable damage on their strong plates and scales that were considered invincible. As soon as this myth was dispelled, the tables have turned. Thus, brave and persistent heroes raised their spears over defeated giants. After liberating their lands from the threat, they announced their intention to exterminate the entire dragon race. They organized campaigns that led to bloody clashes on both sides, which continued until the fire of one of them began to die out. The war was lost for the dragons, but they continued their desperate struggle until their last breath, which was interrupted by a sharp steel blade. A couple of centuries after its beginning, the bloody confrontation ended with the slaying of the last dragon known to man.

Further searches for the winged monsters were unsuccessful, forcing yesterday's dragon slayers to return home empty-handed, where their skills were meaningless. But later their weapons found more terrible and bloodthirsty opponents - other people. Over the years, clashes, attacks and carnage among themselves turned into internecine wars, and over decades, even centuries, into international wars. The flames of wars died down and flared up again with new, greater power, and new losses each time erased the memory of the previous ones. The bloodshed that humanity inflicted on itself surpassed the damage caused by dragons long ago: to the extent that with each succeeding generation the stories of terrible extinct monsters were taken less and less seriously, until they degenerated into legends and tales that remained in the folklore.

The irrefutable proof that dragons really once existed in the world was their remains for a long time. By the time they attracted the attention of the scientific community of mankind, not so many of them survived: primarily because the flesh of a freshly killed monster was not left to waste. It was taken apart and turned into trophies, ritual ornaments, armor elements and medicinal ingredients. Only a tiny fraction of the remains was lucky enough to find themselves in safe hands and learn their own age from other people's mouths, based on relatively reliable methods of determination, but even they were questioned and remained a statistical error for a long time. Because of this, the bones of dragons were almost lost among the multitude of similar, but much more ancient remains of creatures recognized by science.

In new times, when reason prevailed over superstition, people were worried not about extinct colossi, but about the colossal possibilities born thanks to the latest advances in science and technology. Opportunities to subjugate and change nature for their own needs: not only around them, but also where it seemed impossible before. In the pursuit of supremacy over each other, human states instead of weapons invested more and more in favor of production and science, but this did not save them from a huge disaster that shook not only human history.

Due to the dispute between the two most powerful countries, the largest war in the history of mankind started. It lasted for almost six years and affected at least half of the inhabited lands, leaving a devastating impact, the echoes of which reached other parts of the world. At the same time, it left behind a lot of mysteries that puzzled people for several generations to come. Like the story about the city that was almost completely destroyed, although it was located far from the hostilities, and it was not possible to determine who and what could have done it. There were also cases of mysterious disappearances of entire military units, both small and numerous, without clear explanations. Even more, before one of the decisive battles, the forces of one of the armies were crushed and burned to the ground. No one succeeded to find out what kind of weapon was able to cause such sudden and massive losses, because people had enough of mysteries without it.

The world that was actively inhabited by people over the past millennia has still remained too cramped for them. No matter how much ground was divided between countries and shoot by cameras from the boundless star heights, much of the world has still remained unexplored. Impassable mountains and forests, boundless deserts and stormy waters of the oceans met countless travelers and explorers, but not all of them came back from their journey. Shortly before the aforementioned war began, the development of technological progress allowed people to break through the natural barriers that were considered insurmountable. Even the sky did not stand in their way. In the new unexplored lands, they could easily encounter those ones who were considered fiction, but ironically, they reminded about themselves in unexpected way.

After a decade and a half since the end of mankind's greatest war and more than seven centuries since the end of the war with forgotten winged monsters, in lands long inhabited by humans, frequent mentions of unusual giant reptilian creatures noticed by random witnesses suddenly began to appear. There were rumors and stories of a direct encounter with them, but whether they were coincidence or a grim omen, it was too early to tell. A notable detail of them was that the appearance of the newcomers was often dominated by red color. The color that warned of danger.

(link will be avaible after edition and translation of the upcoming chapter)