Aftermath

Ye shall reap as ye sow... and the harvest will be blacker than the heart of the devil... Blood shall flow free as the world is submerged in darkness
Darker than the darkest sins...
The lesser born shall inherit the earth... and everywhere there will be the spawns bearing the testimony of the misgivings committed by the human race in the days of yore.
It would be the beginning of the end; a legacy of the rise and rise of blackness…

He reflected over the words as the stale wind of centuries that had seen fresh air breathed down his back. His body ached of toil that he would not; he could not do. Sweat trickled down his temple and managed to find its way down his throat before he brushed it off casually. The sky looked as it had looked for the last two centuries, after the Great Fall had erased the last traces. Nothing had survived. Nothing higher.

Black was the new blue. Or the red. Or the green. No other color; shades of darkness swirled like ominous vultures closing in on a dying prey in a desert dream. The ground crackled beneath his feet, as he scrunched through matter he would rather not want to know. Twigs? Bones? Boney twigs? He shuddered and let the thought pass.

The blackness shall rule over thee, as it swarms over kingdoms that were and washes over your defeated Sun. It shall not melt, nor shall it be washed away. It shall remain, a presence that would surpass all that has been. It would rule on for all eternity and there would be no respite this time; no army, no hero to salvage the planet. There would be no society or the world that you have known and destroyed down the ages. There would be darkness….

He stopped dead in his tracks. Something rustled in front of him. No wind induced stimulus, no cause and effect action. Voluntary action. The winds howled like a banshee, as he drew closer to the pile of rubble that seemed to have acquired a life of its own. There was destruction all around him, clouding up everything that formed a part of the lost past. It moved again…

No being shall age, no flower shall bloom…
Forever ringing the knell of doom…
No telling of time, in remorse shall ye dwell
No heaven shall absolve thee, your salvation; hell…

It was another survivor; a lesser being. The higher beings had immersed into the great fall with all their might and valor, leaving the lesser beings to fend for themselves. They were all that were left now, something that reflected a dim silhouette of what had been. Rare, but not extinct.

He reached out to the rather sorry remnant of a race that they called human. “And what would your name be?, he asked. Recognition, like lightning, rippling across dark skies filled his senses before he heard the answer.

“Hope”…

[the story started off as a dialogue between a great writer and poet, Preeti and me, and took this form. The opening lines are actually a chat session, later moulded into fiction that does not seem too fictitious. Today's experience with fuel only strengthens my belief in this rather bleak prophecy. But, as they say, "hope" remains. I guess I am back. :D ]