Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alyx awoke to a cacophony of noises. He woke slowly, hearing the sounds as if from underwater.
Once he was fully awake, he realized what the noises were. Sounds of battle. Screams of pain, hunting calls of the demon-possessed beings called Tyadusha, the tolling warning bells, a call to arms from the center of the village nearby, and cries for help from the Ylrunen. The Ylrunen were Alyx’s people, known easier by the term coined for them by the Nekoes. Kitsunes, they had been called.
The only ones capable of answering the call for help were his father and older sister, his father having already left the den it seemed, his sister staying behind to mind him and the three little ones.

Fox’s ears covered in red fur poked from the entrance-hole of the den, followed by brilliant ice-blue eyes. Alyx pulled himself the rest of the way out of the hole, and froze for a moment as he heard a new sound. Silence.
He looked around, scanning the shadows carefully for Tyadusha. He smelled the air, smelling blood- blood and fire.
He heard a voice, seemingly from far away, a familiar one. I hope that so, as he had heard it all his life.
“Alyx! Stay inside where it’s safe!”
“But father…I’m old enough to protect the village, and I want to fight…”
“Absolutely not, do as I say and switch the headings of your nose and tail!”

Alyx obeyed, mostly out of fear of his father’s wrath. He slipped through the tunnel that connected the entrance to the living quarters of the den. The living quarters consisted of three chambers that had been dug from the earth about forty-five paw-widths below the surface of the tight-packed sod.

The first chamber was filled with hand made tools, weapons, and clothes stored on racks. The second chamber was a room with a floor made of the softest materials that could be found on the Burning Plains. A sleeping chamber; where he, his father, his sister, and the three little ones slept. The third was impossible to enter without a solemn emotion coursing through the body.
The third was impossible to enter with a light heart, as it housed two altars. One, held his mother’s ashes and her necklace. The other, was an altar to the gods, mainly the Earth Goddess and her husband the god of Moon.

He quickly paid respects to his departed mother, asked for strength from the River Goddess, and grabbed his bow and quiver from the tool room.

Prepared thusly, he exited the den, keeping an arrow nocked on the string. He looked for Tyadusha, and luckily saw none.

As he walked in the direction of the village, he heard a noise that made his blood run cold. Rustling grass, such as the noise a body would make upon shifting in grassland. He whipped around, and readied himself to release the arrow in the direction of whatever beast sprang at him then turn tail and run.

He relaxed visibly when he saw the familiar face of a villager, a girl he had befriended. She was tall, slim, and very pretty. The subject of her father was thrown into question, because she looked to be the daughter of an elf rather than the offspring of the short, portly man who was supposed to be her father.
He smiled, at the same second she did, and lowered his bow. Even if it were an accident, it would be a horrible crime to slay this female, as she was the only child born as such in nearly twenty long summers. He knew this to be true, as his father had told him.
He dropped his bow, and lifted the girl in a tight embrace. “Evara... you scared me…”
She wheezed, “Alyx... you’re crushing my ribs...”
He apologized, and loosened his grip a little.
“Are you alright? What is it like in the village? Is the battle over?”
“Alyx! One question at a time please!” she pulled out of his arms, and sat down.
“I’m fine. Alyx…it’s terrible... the village is gone. It wasn’t a battle, it was a slaughter…” She looked sideways at him as he sat down, and pulled on of his hands into her lap. “Your father saved me from the Demonshells, the Tyadusha, and told me to head for the fox-hole.”
Alyx frowned, and nodded. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand gently, wanting for some reason not understood by him to comfort her. It made sense that Telmar would send every survivor he could find to the den; it had been dug big enough to house the entire village in times of need. He didn’t know what would have caused the Tyadusha to organize and attack; mainly they just wandered, lost souls.
“Well then, let’s go to the den. The other survivors will probably be there by now, and my sister doesn’t do well around humans.” Alyx began to stand, looking down as Evara grabbed hold of his arm and looked up at him with terror in her eyes.
“Alyx… there are no more survivors. I was the only one Telmar got to in time, everyone else has been slaughtered, the village burned and the fields razed.”
Alyx’s eyes widened. “Everyone… dead?”
He shook visibly, and he was sure she could feel it to as he helped her stand. “Run!” He took hold of Evara’s hand, and started running in the direction of the fox-hole, Evara slipping into the entrance first, and him following a close second. The girl stared in wonder as she always did, amazed by how spacious and home-like it was, for a hole in the ground.

Araya, Alyx’s sister padded into the room. The only sound she made was the clinking of the mace chain anchored in her shoulder and twined around her arm. Tall, slim, and much more fox-like in appearance than Alyx or their father, she took after their mother, who had had paws, fur, and a muzzle. A full fledged fox-demon she had been.
“Wha’s goin’ on in here?” she mumbled, trying to keep her eyes open.

“Araya, something terrible has happened. Tyadusha attacked, and wrecked the village. There’s nothing left, and the only survivor is Evara. Father’s still out looking for survivors, but I don’t think he’ll find any others.”
Araya was suddenly wide awake. “What?! Then it isn’t safe here! We have to leave!”


Finished shouting, she ran into the supply room to arm herself. Two swords were buckled onto each side of her hips, another larger blade on her back. In her hands, she carried a crossbow, which hung from her non-impaired shoulder by a leather strap. To Evara, she tossed a quiver of arrows, and a longbow. Alyx was handed his sword, one he had build himself. He called it a Gyadaryn, and it consisted of a blade one paw-width wide, and six paw-widths long, attached by way of a hinge to a manacle. The force generated by swinging the blade in a scissor motion could cleave a horse in two.
“Alyx. Wake the little ones, and get them ready to leave.”
Alyx nodded, and entered the sleeping room.
Laying curled up in a heap of fur, were the three little ones. Taken in by Telmar after the aging Kitsune found them with a dying mother and already dead and cold father, they were triplets. Ferrets, one male, the other two female.
Gently shaking the male, Alyx whispered to them. “Kyony, wake up.”
“Alyx, what is it. I’m sleeping…”
“Kyony! Wake your sisters, we have to leave. It isn’t safe. Tyadusha destroyed the village.”
Kyony woke up, and stared at Alyx with one sleep-muddied eye. “Really?”
“Yeah. Wake your sisters, get dressed, and get your butts out here.”
Alyx smiled with pride as he watched the male ferret wake his sisters, and explain the fact that they urgently needed to leave to them. He left the room, and helped his sister fill packs. Put in each pack was cartable food such as bread and dried meat, medicine, and containers to hold water.
Araya’s pack was special; having one strap so it would not damage her shoulder. Evara’s and the packs for the little ones were lighter, and smaller.
“Where will we go Araya?” Ukykyo asked, looking up at the much taller girl.
“Someplace safer than here.” Araya bit her lip. She did not know where they would go, she just knew they had to leave, could not wait for Telmar to return.
Evara spoke up, watching the older girl. “My father once brought me with him to a village far away from here. A day away, two tops. Plus the dragon-lady of the forest. We could leave the little ones with her, they’d be safe.”
Alyx and Araya both looked at Evara with blank looks. In unison, they said, “Forest? What’s a forest?” Having lived on the plains their entire lives, they didn’t know what forests were. They were familiar with trees, little ones like hashan and tkashnia growing up from the grasslands.
“Um… it’s a place with a lot of really tall trees.” She nodded, and looked down. “We going or what?”

Alyx nodded, and drew his bow. Nocking an arrow to the string, he left the hole, and turned, looking for Tyadusha. Seeing none, he looked back down into the dimly lit den. “All clear.”
Hearing a sudden noise, he whipped around, string drawn fully back.

Okay but there's More.
Thirtieth day of Atekia,
Fire moon, 16 kilo-beats AST

Strahn sat back in his chair, sighing contentedly. His guest, a thin, pale male with flashing eyes the color of amber, long blue hair pulled into a tight braid, and a mouthful of very sharp teeth. Daigan Vasilieve was an Arynyk, a dragonish creature able to disguise itself as human.
“Please, have some more wine, my friend.” Strahn said, holding out a pitcher of dark red Faynya wine. Fermented from the juice of a bloody-red fruit, whose name literally meant ‘blood-fruit’ in the Ylrunen language, it contained enough alcohol to kill a human with one draught. Luckily, human was one thing Vasilieve and Strahn were not.
The Arynyk smiled, wiped his hands, and held out his goblet.
“Arredovle Codrien.”
“Daigan, were any of today’s experiments fruitful?”
“Dreit Codrien. Only one. Piro was extremely successful. The latest attempt was still alive when I last checked it.”
Codrien Strahn, a tall willowy Neko with hair graying at the temples grimaced. Piro was one of the experiments where the subjects died, often in spectacular fashion. Sometimes their blood literally boiled, they burst into flames, or they exploded.
“That knowledge warms my soul. Coincidentally, what was the subject’s body temperature?”
“About 10 degrees. They still have it in a cryo-tube.”
“Really? I would hope that they’d have had it out of the cryo-tube by now.”
“The Board wants you there when they take it out. Being a senior officer and all.”
“That can’t be the only reason. There has to be something else, like they’d thought that anyone else would torment the poor thing into revealing what the chemical infusion had done to it.”
“Maybe it is, or maybe they just don’t trust the rookie scientists to properly take care of things. They said you could pull it out at anytime.”

Strahn leaned back in his chair, and stood. Putting on his jacket, he smiled. “Wanna go do it now?”
Vasilieve returned the smile with his own shark-toothed grin. “Let’s.”

A few moments later, they were settled back into the plush seats of Strahn’s Zezle aircar. Glasses of wine in hand, another bottle chilling in an ice bucket for celebrating the subject’s survival, or for mourning its termination.
They both hoped to drink to the former, but they would drink in either case.

When the aircar settled on the roof of the Ekra-Tern Facility on the outskirts of Anyatropelis, Strahn was the first to exit the aircraft. He snapped a salute to an armed guard, who lowered the fearsome-looking weapon in his hands and returned the salute. He ran a hand through his hair, which was graying at an early age of thirty-five summers.
Vasilieve followed, but did not salute the guard. Instead, he laid a hand over his heart, and bowed stiffly, an Arynyk’s salute.
Walking quickly, they reached the bounce tube headed down to the R+D branch of the facility in about five-hundred pulses of Strahn’s watch. Entering a passcode and swiping their i.d. badges at a blast door let them into the chamber where the experiment was.

A tube dominated the center of the room, the Piro floating in a greenish substance that provided nourishment through the skin while diffusing heat.
The experiment was in a fetal position, head tucked between knees drawn up to its chest. Although it was naked, its gender was indiscernible. A respirator covered its face, a bulky black monolith compared to the small size of the subject’s face.
“It’s….unlike what I expected. I expected something larger, with the skin burned off in places, maybe liquefied.” Strahn said, awe in his deep voice.
“The technicians did a good job, as soon as the chem. infusing was finished, they had all needles out of it and it placed on ice. Ten heartbeats later it was in here.”
“Let’s awaken it, see if it will survive.”

Nodding to one another, Strahn and Vasilieve went to terminals on opposite ends of the room. Tapping commands, they both swiped their i.d. cards on the computer terminals.
A klaxon sounded, and a light on top of the tube started flashing as the greenish fluid began draining from the tube. The eyes of the subject snapped open at the noise, and its head lifted.
Eyes that appeared yellow through the sludge looked up and out of the tube, into first Vasilieve’s amber ones, then Strahn’s black ones. They both stepped back in shock.
“Gods! It’s a Neko!”
Strahn stared dumbstruck. He had no idea the Council would ever use a member of his race in an experiment in his facility.
The air supply to the breathing regulator was cut off, and the subject clawed at its face to remove the object. It managed to hook its fingers behind the seal, and pulled it off.
The subject took a gasp of air, as the sludge drained past its lips. It had the strong jaw line of a male, and tattoos on its cheeks.
Strahn smiled, relieved. It was not a Neko after all; it was a tribal Kitsune; a savage.
Walking to the tube, he pulled recessed handles out, opening a hatch that swung out noiselessly on its hinges. Lifting the small male, he wrapped him in a blanket and carried him to a small examination room. He inserted a probe into a vein in the left arm, which measured heart rate and temperature. A circlet with cables coming off it went around the head to measure brain activity.
Turning, he snapped on several monitors that corresponded to the equipment attached to the boy’s body. A line crooked across it, and numbers flicked up. One was the temperature of the male’s body; the other was the heart rate.
“Temperature, 37 and warming, heart rate ratio 1:1.”
Vasilieve entered the room behind him, and commandeered the monitor. Strahn went a chair on the side of the room, opened a folder, and began reading. After a few seconds, he huffed, and reached in his pocket for his reading-glasses. Pushing them onto his nose, he returned to his perusal of the medical findings on the subject; blood type and such.
“Temperature and heart ratio please Daigan.”
“Temperature 57 and climbing about ten diags every other beat. Heart ratio 1.2:1.”

Strahn sighed, and started as the monitor began beeping loudly.
“Again?”
“A... A hundred and twenty diags, heart ratio 1.5:1.”
Strahn stood, the folder falling to the floor. “This is the way the last one went, and then it burst into flames…”
“Its temperature is stabilizing, its heart ratio returning to 1:1.”
“Amazing.”
Walking by, Strahn took a stethoscope off the cart of tools, and put the modified earpieces into his ears. It was a little uncomfortable, but he still took up the end up and reached out to touch it to the Piro’s back.
Vasilieve looked up, and his eyes widened. “Don’t touch it. Its body temp is over two hundred and fifty diags. The flesh of your hands will be cooked, and stripped off when you try to move.”
Strahn paused, and let the stethoscope drop from his hands. “You do it then, it needs must be done or the Council will have the facility shut down.”
Vasilieve shrugged, and started walking towards Strahn. As he did so, his body seemed to shimmer, and it appeared to be made of smoke as it undulated and changed. The face lengthened out into a snout, the skin turned red and changed to scales, and appendages like the whiskers of a catfish grew down from the juncture of his lower and upper jaws. He took the stethoscope, placed the earpieces into the shell of each sharply pricked back ear, and raised the stethoscope to the back of the Piro.
“Strahn.”
“Yes?”
“It’s breathing is undamaged. Its core temperatures are high enough that it should be dead, but the sound of its breathing is like listening to yours or mine. Albeit yours or mine whilst we are extremely afraid, but otherwise ordinary.”
“Are you serious? Daigan, do you know what this means? We have done it! We have successfully infused the chemical mixture into a living being!”
“Good thing too, this was the last of the batch that the person who knew the ratios of each chemical in the mixture made before he killed himself.”
Strahn paid him no heed, ranting to himself about the implications this rose.
“We will have funding for as long as the Council is the governing body! Which, is shaping up to be forever!”
“I don’t know Codrien. They weren’t very impressed with the Vulfishes.”
The Vulfishes had been a breakthrough greater that Piro, just in the department of Genetics. Successful hybridization of Mahari fish and foxes. There were three of them, all three fertile hermaphrodites and able to breed and reproduce. They were impossible to contain, however, as the hybridization unlocked the unused 85% of their minds. If one attempted to keep them in a cage, they would not hesitate to use telekinesis to unlock the latch, kill the guards, and escape. They were kept in tanks, and fed often enough that they would learn that they would be better off in the facility.
Strahn gained a thoughtful look, and he shut up. “That’s true. However, we also got the Vulfishes on the fourth try. Piro has taken….”

Vasilieve looked up from the experiment. “One thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight. One thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight dead children, killed by our hands in spectacular fashion. All in the name of science.”
Strahn rolled his eyes. “Let’s get lucky subject one thousand, four hundred fifty-nine squared away then, and then go celebrate. Remember we have the bottle of wine we can now drink with joy in our hearts.”
Vasilieve looked sideways at Strahn. “You’d have drank with a clear conscience and a light heart either way.”
He stood, and walked out of the room, jackboots clicking on the tile floors as he shifted back to his human form. Strahn followed, his lighter boots making not quite as much noise as they went to find a room for, and design a testing program for Piro-1459.

There's a sharp contrast between the cities and the Plains. They still use hand-made swords and bows and such on the plains, and the cities are super-Futuristic. Alyx and them go through a battlefield that's a graveyard of mechs and vehicles, and see them as the corpses of Monsters.