Legacy of a Race: Zalla
Excelsior, I am Zalla Rei, pronounced Zah-ya for you who have little understanding of Asuran grammar. As said, I am Asuran, a race of hyper-intelligent beings who once lived underground but were forced out alongside the Dwarfs by the Destroyers, a species of lava constructs, when we had built a gate complex above an elder dragon’s resting place. Of course, this did not stop us from advancing to the top of the metaphorical food chain. No, instead we came to the surface and despite the assault on our senses by the sun, as we evolved with nocturnal vision in the depths of the planet, we thrived before the Great Cataclysm.
We became one of the five great races alongside the Humans, Norn, Charr, and two hundred years after our rise to the surface, the Sylvari. Now for you who lack the ability to look up who I’m talking about in one of the various data bases I have saved and/or created to preserve the history of the world I lived in before the great cataclysm, I would recommend you stop reading now before you infect this entry with your incompetency.
For those of you have studied our history, good for you, you can read.
Now, where was I. Ah yes, the great cataclysm. I told you of the destroyers, controlled by the dragon Primordus, but there were far more. All across the world elder dragons had risen: Jormag, who forced the Norn south from their home far up north in the Shiverpeak Mountains, Kralkatorrik, who flew south of his resting place through the Charr homeland and turned everything under his flight path to crystal, and Zytan, the dragon who’s power allowed him to raise the sunken peninsula nation of Orr and reanimate the corpses of its drowned citizens and those who were unfortunate enough to sail too close to the Sea of Sorrows.
We faced utter extinction, to put it simply. The races of the world were divided. Some not so much, others well, the Humans and Charr had been at war for centuries and thanks the Charr, Kryta was the only Human nation left in Tyria. None the less, when the threat of the dragons reached its apex, a group of individuals from each race formed Destiny’s Edge. Two of these individuals were some of the greatest golemancers to grace the planet with their intellect. One of them I happened to admire from afar before they died fighting an elder dragon. But that’s for another time.
It was these individuals that were a major factor in uniting the five great races. In the coming years it would prove to be useless however but at the very least we didn’t sit on our posteriors and let the dragons roll over us.
I’m rambling.
Now much like Destiny’s Edge, I was part of a group of individuals each of the great races: a Human ranger, Charr warrior, Sylvari necromancer, Norn Guardian, and of course me the Asuran elementalist. While I don’t tend to get overly emotional or too attached to people, I could call these four friends, comrades, family even. We did nearly everything together. We fought, we bled, we laughed at my inability to hold more than a shot of alcohol, and we hunted the dragons together.
Within the first year we defeated Zytan, in the following year Kralkatorrik, seven years after that Jormag. With each consecutive year our numbers dwindled. Our nations bathed in the blood of our people. In his final act of vengeance, Jormag toppled entire glaciers and wiped out millions of our soldiers, mainly Norn. Zytan’s power still lingered after his defeat, allowing his armies of the undead to continue their assault against the living. Kralkatorrik’s body crashed into the Charr’s impenetrable Black Citadel. Not so impenetrable apparently. My home Rata Sum, the floating city of the Asura, returned to the state we had originally found it in. Imbedded in the ground, nothing but rubble and dust. The Human city of Divinity’s Reach crumpled as it was swallowed into the earth.
Soon, all that remained was the Pale Tree and the forest that surrounded it. By the Eternal Alchemy it was horrible, the final battle. The undead surrounded us. Forest fires created by destroyers cut off our hopes for escape. We fought them off for months with the flames slowly moving in on the Tree despite the efforts of our elementalists. Finally on the final day Primordus split the earth and rose above us, magma from the planets core falling off him.
I remember one of the globs falling right in front of me as I fought the horde of destroyers that had risen with him.
He toyed with us, I know it. He flew long, slow circles around the tree while we fought his minions. It was his undoing however.
Zojja, the apprentice of Snaff, both of whom were in Destiny’s Edge, followed in her masters footsteps and tried to force the dragon down with her mind by using crystalized dragon blood shards. I’m not proud to admit it but how she had done it baffled me at the time, even with my superb intellect. Snaff had done it by having a dragon, a champion of Kralkatorrik, place a yoke on her ex masters neck. The Norn in their group had then fired explosive arrows with the blood shards into the dragon’s body to allow the mystical energies to flow evenly throughout it and allow Snaff to bring the dragon crashing down when he gained control of its mind. It worked until the dragons minions passed his defenses and killed him.
Zojja however was successful. Hundreds of golems designed by her had taken the duty of attaching the yoke to the air-borne beast. The same Norn fired her arrows into it. The hundreds of thousands of survivors made it their number one priority to protect the female. The chances of success were exponentially higher this time.
When the dragon was brought down, my friends and I, alongside Destiny’s Edge, had fought the beast ourselves. It was not until Rytlock Brimstone had charged the beast from behind with a strange spear and jamming it into the dragon’s head did we have a chance to rest.
For me at any rate.
When the beast died, it had released a blast so powerful that it had split the earth. The planet bled as magma erupted from its core. The oceans turned monstrous as they engulfed continents before spewing them out. Ash and smoke blotted out the sky as fire fell from it. I could do nothing but watch as my friends were thrown around like rag dolls in the hands of a tornado. I watched as Destiny’s Edge, the group that everyone thought to be infallible, vaporized before me.
And I remember approaching a tear in the earth at what I assumed was several dozen meters per second. And I fell into darkness.
Now, it has been hundreds of thousands of years and I have reawakened to the world. A world where I find myself surrounded by prancing pastel colored ponies.
Who talk.
And fly.
And use magic.
And have built the most powerful kingdom on the planet.
This is my story.
A.N: Ponies next chapter