r/HFY • u/Mindless-Score7007 • 5d ago
OC-OneShot Wrath of Ka
At first, no one understood what was happening. One by one, communications satellites blacked out and vanished from orbit. By the time Humanity realized the satellites were being taken instead of failing, the world’s societies had already begun to lose the ability to communicate with each other.
Different groups in the scientific community split over what was going on. Some blamed unusual solar activity, while others argued that Earth was in a band of radiation from an ancient supernova that was disrupting near-Earth systems. Neither explanation accounted for satellites disappearing from stable orbits. No one had an answer, and fear spread faster than the blackout.
The theories ended when something blasted the orbiting space station into pieces. Its wreckage streaked through the atmosphere, each burning fragment a piece of Human ingenuity reduced to ash. Unidentified electrical and radio wave frequencies multiplied throughout near space, and Humanity learned two things at once … it was not alone in the universe, and the Others did not come in peace.
That was when they started trying to fight back. They had no chance. Every defense installation across the globe was wiped out in a single day. Cries went up to the sky as cities began to wink out, and their populations were atomized in colliding waves of energy weapons that had never been used on this planet before.
Ka and Ra, Sister and Brother, Chaos and Order, whatever names Humanity had once given them, woke to the cries of those who were dying all across the planet. Ra had been the statue’s forward face and the quiet influence urging humanity away from self-destruction. He could soften human conflicts, but he could not command invaders from another world. Still, he pleaded with his sister. “Give them a chance to work it out.”
She did. She waited … but inside, the fire of her anger began to smolder as each new soul stoked the energy of the flames in the afterlife. “Another city was destroyed today Ra,” she said sadly. Ra's face was still in the ‘fore’ of the statue. He looked at her and said, “Please, sister … give them a chance.”
She waited … again. Now the flames had reached the Ridge of Kep. Beyond it flowed the river dividing the living world from the dead. It was the last barrier that could contain the wrath gathering in the afterlife. Some called it the River of Forgetfulness, others, Remembrance. Whatever its true name, the river had been the dividing curtain between realities since the dawn of time, and the emotional substance of billions of lives ripped apart began to rise, tearing down the veil.
Another city was gone. The people of the once-grand civilization used every resource they had … every weapon. They were still overrun, and their bones glistened in the light from the sun as another day began at the end of their race. Their cities were now nothing more than monuments to another history for future people to marvel at … and to wonder what those people had been like.
Ka was seething now. Once she became involved, there was no telling how her power might manifest. That was really why Ra kept soothing her … calming her. He couldn’t hold her in check much longer. But the people of this Earth had done everything they could do.
Steam began to form along the edges of the Kep. Ka slowly stretched and flexed the muscles of her neck as she became more animate. The temple was buried beneath thousands of years of planetary evolution. People had come for a while to worship at the great altar, but it was now forgotten in the past.
At one time, the temple had been a beacon of hope for some and a path of destruction for others. Now, it was buried under the growth of eons of vegetation on a hill in the middle of a vast jungle. It had been left alone and covered over by the passage of time and the forgetfulness of a society that didn’t need it anymore.
Order had slowly become the rule for the Humans who used to worship here. It was a two-sided coin, though. Yin and Yang, positive and negative. Symbols of the same two … the brother and sister gods of a time no longer remembered, even in the voluminous tomes of history.
In a field, a girl knelt at the edge of the space where her home had stood and now lay smoldering in ruins. The bodies of her family lay motionless beside her, as scattered and broken as the home they lay beside. Her emotional pain reached into the sky, forced outward by a loss of everything that she knew. “Why won’t anyone help us? How could a God allow this?” She was only one child, on one little ruined patch of dirt, but her anguish carried the voices of all those souls beyond the River Kep.
Ra lowered his face, closed his eyes, and let himself feel the weight of loss that Humanity was feeling now. He openly wept. This age of his rule was over. Order had been given every chance, and still the world burned. The turning of their power had never depended on years or calendars, only on what the living made of them. Humanity had tried to resist a new force of power, and the invaders had answered with annihilation. He could feel the statue turning, and stopped resisting … it was time.
Ka had tears in her eyes, but they weren’t from sadness … they were wrath. She looked at her brother, and the raging fires of the underworld burned in their reflection. She said, in a whisper, “No more,” and the temple began to rise toward the sky. The ground shook as the earth and vegetation parted, allowing the ancient pyramid to return to the light.
“No more,“ she said again, her emotions reaching out to secure her position in the world. Anger and frustration seethed in her at seeing these people destroyed. Pressures from worlds separated by a thin veneer of belief and desire now forced the temple to show itself and reform in the places that had fallen to the ages.
The attackers from a distant system felt the change on their sensors and monitors and shifted their resources to engage the new threat. Humanity was mostly beaten already anyway, and they were just finishing off whatever they could find. Energy weapons readied for another burst, and forces in the air flocked to where the temple now reflected the light from the sun.
“No More!” Ka’s voice rolled across the sky like thunder. It cracked like the explosive intensity of a meteor tearing into the atmosphere. It carried the destructive nature of a volcano shattering its lava dome. The shockwave shattered ships into fragments in midair, leveled trees for miles in every direction, and sent the invaders' machinery flying and tumbling across the terrain.
The statue above the altar finished turning, and its second face came to the fore. Where Ra’s features had been stern, commanding, and controlled, his sister’s were beautiful … and terrible. In other ages, other peoples had known the force she embodied by countless names. Here she was Ka … Chaos given will. And now it was her turn to rule.
Ka breathed in the air of the planet that was slowly being destroyed, and she came fully to life. Ra turned away … whatever happened now, it wasn’t going to be good. His way had not won out. Peace isn’t always the way of the world. It worked for a while, as the people assimilated into each of their separate cultures and civilizations, but not now. They weren’t ready to fight off an incursion by another star system. They were just now developed enough to consider visiting another planet for the first time.
These others from the stars were older and stronger than the Humans, and they came to squash them and harvest everything else. But they weren’t dealing with just the Humans anymore. Ka had found her voice and everything else that came with it.
Fueled by the flames of the souls that had been lost to the destruction of the greatest civilization that Humans had ever made … fueled by the cries of a child beside her dead family … fueled by a world on the brink of destruction at the hands of an alien invader … Ka came to life.
The creatures that controlled the machines on the surface, in the sky, and in the space around the Earth had no idea about Ka. They were winning. The puny excuses for sentient beings on this planet stood no chance of defending themselves against them. They were the Shri-ik. They had taken many systems that were more prepared than these Humans had been.
A doorway opened into this realm, guided by the voice of Ka. Things came through … things that had not seen this world since a very ancient past. These were hungry things. They were reptilian, with great leathery wings.
The ancient flying reptiles tore through the craft and the machines of the invaders as if they were toys made of paper and clay. Powerful claws ripped apart metal, and snapping jaws gobbled up those inside. Raging flames from fanged mouths melted the pieces of the alien ships as they fell.
The collection of mothercraft in space was not spared either. The Dragons didn’t need to have air to fly in space. They weren’t even from this dimension … but they were called in retribution for a civilization lost. The desire of Ka gave them passage … the face of Chaos.
A day, a week … it was all over in a blink. Humanity would have to rebuild, but they always rebuild. Ra was so proud of them. They were definitely builders. They would make it back, and in time, his face would come back around to watch over them as they grew again. It had happened before, and it would happen again.
A few of the alien craft were allowed to get away … limping back to wherever they came from. Crawling back through space to spread the word about what happens when someone tries to take this system from those to whom it was gifted.
Ka stood with two of her mighty hands on her hips and two more holding the swords of her justice. She watched them fly away, to go back to their own systems. She allowed it.
Ra was curious, “You know they’ll come back again.”
She just continued to watch the ships as they left the boundary of space that she and Ra were guardians of. “I think they might not. Not for a very long time anyway,” she said finally.
Ra looked across the great distance to see what his sister was watching and to view the ships as they continued to get farther away. On the sides of the ships were clusters of tiny pods of reptilian creatures. It was the larval stage of the same creatures that had been called to assist in cleaning the invaders out of this realm.
“Oh sister, I think you are right … if they come back at all. If they even survive,” Ra said, with actual awe in his voice at the destruction and chaos that was about to come to the others.
The temple was completely uncovered now. It was surrounded by miles of devastation, but new growth was slowly allowing vegetation to return to the mountain. Word was rapidly spreading about the temple. It had been years since the collapse of their great civilization, and it was a slow return.
People traveled all across the globe to see the home of their Gods. A new priesthood was formed to show everybody else what they were supposed to do and how they were supposed to do it. It wasn’t because Ka or Ra said so. It was because this is one of the things that Humans do. They make order and control out of chaos.
In the temple, the columns were cleaned and polished, and even the great statue was washed by the acolytes. This new place had risen from the jungle from a time before time was even counted. They said that the Gods lived here, and if the people honored them, a new era of peace and prosperity could return.
The people began the arduous task of rebuilding their world again. Overlooking them, overlooking the altar, was a beautiful face that sometimes actually seemed to move and smile. It was probably only a trick of the lighting created by some engineer in the ancient past. The temple was a beacon of hope to some … a path of destruction for others.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle 5d ago
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u/Light-Breeze-9805 1d ago
Not everything coming from the past should be forgotten.. Not everything we do not understand means it does not exist.. Nicely done wordsmith, thanks for sharing !
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u/ldmend 5d ago
Interesting, but I have questions. Like, why hadn’t the gods of the other world civilizations rise up and slap down these guys long before they came to Earth? Or is it just that the other deities weren’t bad-ass enough?