Morpheus opened his eyes slightly, he was extremely sleepy and his body was sore from the bruises and the rocking of the carriage he was in.
He could hear the voices of his kidnappers but they sounded like distant whispers to him. He closed his eyes again and drifted to sleep.
Get up, somebody said as they kicked him. Mmm, just five more minutes, he drifted back to his sleep but was woken up by a much stronger kick to the chest.
He groaned and grasped for air, struggling to breath. He was dragged out of the carriage to the cold sand of the sunless desert. He knew why they were here.
He heard his captors talk, apparently a treasure was discovered around these parts. The only problem was that the dessert was extremely dangerous.
Even ability holders could not guarantee their lives and the further in you go the more dangerous it becomes. Morpheus did not have much education growing up, as an orphan who grew up poor, he could not afford it.
Not that there was much to learn in this world anymore besides history and fighting. Although he never had any official education, he was able to teach himself how to read and write which is impressive if he says so himself.
Through a diary he found in a ruin, he learnt about this worlds history. Over 130 years ago, humanity had reached new heights in technology.
They had things called cars and air planes, they had accumulated knowledge of advanced medicine and lot of other things. However humanity was not satisfied.
In their thirst for knowledge they looked towards the stars, with their giant machines they called rocket, they aimed for the sky. However what they found was not what they sought.
When they tried to pass through it,the sky shattered like glass, a hole opening above the world. This caused mass panic amongst the people. Before they could adjust themselves, an unknown energy poured through the hole.
It transformed the world in an unprecedented way. Animals transformed into giant beasts, the world itself stretched, becoming larger and the plants died, those that survived became man eating plants, inedible to humans.
Humanity who had ruled this world as the apex predator for thousands of years suddenly found themselves at the bottom of the food chain in a single day.
With their advanced weaponry they were able to push the beasts back for a while. However before humanity could adjust and reorganize themselves another change occurred.
Giant swirling portals appeared around the world, mostly concentrated on the continent below the hole, people called them gates. From these gates came out horrifying creatures.
More powerful and more violent than the transformed beasts. Worst of all, every weapon, car or plane disappeared, turning into dust, nobody could explain why that was.
This almost caused the extinction of humanity. Within a month, only 7% of the human race remained, billions of people had died tragically.
Or atleast that what humanity believed, without their modern technology, there was no way to confirm. If that was all, things might not have been so bad.
However they also lost the knowledge of how to create them, nobody knows how but everybody lost their memories of how to create those things.
They could still remember the objects themselves but did not know how to make them. Some tried but failed miserably, ofcourse, technology of a certain level could still be created.
Like carriages or melee weapons but it was as if something prevented the creation of anything more advanced. Humanity was pushed to brink of extinction.
When humanity had lost hope, drowning in their despair,they descended, their saviours, Angels. The diary described them as beautiful beings with silver wings and their bodies glowed in golden light, with golden halos above their heads.
The angels brought with them, humanity salvation. There was no mention of what the salvation was as that where the diary ended but he had an idea.
After all, he was kidnapped by a group of people that held that so called salvation. MOVE IT YOU MAGGOTS. One of his captors shouted.
He stood up, he staggered forward as they moved further in. The beasts that were drawing the carriages refused to move any further.
Only fools who didn't value their lives or idiots like these guys would choose to move further into the desert. There were a lot of people with him.
All wearing worn out clothes and were barefooted. They were obviously the drags of humanity. He sighed, I want to sleep. He hated walking, it was a waste of energy but he had no choise.
Although he loved sleeping he valued his life even more so he continued walking. STOP, he heard the familiar shout. We camp here. A fire was lit and the group of armed men sat around it eating their rations.
He could hear the stomachs of those around him growled. They were eyeing the food with red eyes but none dared to try anything. They knew even if all of them attacked at once they would lose.
A single ability holder could easily kill tens of mundane humans and there were 7 ability holders here including their leader. He pitied these people.
Some looked like they were not used to hunger which was strange. People like them are lucky to have a single meal once a day, they should be used to not eating.
Eating once every three days was fine for him so what was wrong with these guys. He chose to ignore them. Thinking about them was a waste of precious time he could be using to sleep.
He placed his head on the soft cold sand of the desert, the stars of the fake sky tinkling above him like jewels. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He was woken up by screams, he turned his half closed eyes to look around him. People were running around screaming, reluctantly he stood up.
He noticed all the other captives looking at him with fear. What wrong with them? I'm not that scary am I? However when he looked closer he saw they weren't looking at him but behind him.
He turned his head slowly and a creature that towered over him stood menacingly before him. This isn't good now is it? He thought.