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Black skies surrounded Aleris for several weeks and while some believed it was a prolonged stay of night, the stars and moon had vanished. Scholars studied the skies and found that the darkness they saw had nothing to do with night at all. In fact, the sun that shone on Aleris every morning for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, had just disappeared. Because of this, Aleris fell into a frigid coldness that no one had ever felt before. Even creatures that stayed naturally warm, like the therianthropes and dragons, felt the a touch of ice in their bones.
Vegetation began to die at a fairly rapid pace and forests were destroyed en masse. People on every continent, even in the deserts of Heruin, tried to keep warm, but the fires they burned only protected them for so long. Animals fled from the woods trying to find new homes and certain sources of meat vanished dwindled. The earth dried out, cracked and injured from the lack of water and the life that was being sucked from it. The strange thing was, though there was cold, there was no snow or bitter winds. It was said that even the snow that had laid over Arthuran for years was now gone.
Some stayed on Aleris and prayed to the gods. Some stayed and just hoped things would get better, as they usually did. The gods did not answer. People had said Aurora had died. People said a lot of things, but as far as getting answers from the gods, it became apparent that this was a useless thing to do. And after some time, after the devoted had exhausted their prayers, the temples were abandoned and left to thieves and those who simply had nothing better to do than scavenge.
The worst of the cold came shortly after the faith to the gods was lost. The oceans froze. People tried to carve holes and fish from the oceans, but no amount of tools or magical fire could get through the ice. As a result, the race of the merfolk was killed off first. Rivers inland were either dried out or frozen solid. The dwindling food source was once thing, but the seeming loss of all water supply was another.
No matter where you travelled, the ground was littered with corpses of animals and humans. For quite a few people who chose to stay, they turned to cannibalism as a resort to continue to feed themselves. The vampires, during a certain point, were at the top of the food chain as they relied on the blood of others. But as people died off and they were too greedy in their consummation of blood, eventually their food source lessened.
Others finally took the crippling of Aleris as a sign; they had to leave. Sailing away by ship was not an option. Several people left by airship to points unknown, hoping the fuel would take them far enough, and in some cases, airships were outright stolen, manned by only a select few. Families with no hopes of getting on an airship and not knowing what else to do, took what little supplies they had left and made a trek out across the solid oceans in hopes they would find something inhabitable. Mages began scouring their books trying to find spells that would conjure portals to other worlds. As for the rest, they remained with the thoughts that they would either perish in the cold or be eaten by whatever cannibal would find them.
But even as Aleris withers away, there are still a few stories left to be told. Despite the weakness of all things on Aleris, memories are strong and if there is any hope to be had, it is that some of these memories and stories make it safely out of the realm.
Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2014 7:42 pm
