1It was a cold day. The last day of the world as we knew it. We never knew who they were. Militant guerrilla fighters stealing weapons and stockpiling them for years. When the attack came, no one was prepared. It wasn't the Russians who attacked first, and it wasn't the Americans either. No one's quite sure who fired off the first nuclear warheads. Some say it was the rebels, who so suddenly arose and started all this chaos. Some say it was North Korea, some think it was some Middle-Eastern country, and some even say China. One thing we do know for sure. Everyone remembers the day a pillar of fire engulfed Brussels.
What followed was a maelstrom of fire. Nations lobbing nuclear weapons at each other, at their enemies, then their allies, and sometimes even themselves. Some billions were left dead in the aftermath. Near every great city the world over was nothing but ashes and glowing embers. More than seven billion lives had been extinguished over the course of five years. The planet was blood-soaked. They say nuclear war would send us back to the stone age, but we were barely pre-industrial. The cost in lives was greater than any technological blow could ever be.
The following struggle for survival is what held us back. The few survivors, maybe a hundred million across the globe, reverted to farmers, then to simply foraging for food. That's what took us back age after age. As newer technology wore down and broke, and few who remained knew how to build more, firearms vanished, then books and good knives, and eventually nearly everything recognizable as part of modern Human civilization. Hundreds of years past, with each new generation knowing less and less of the events that led to the world they knew, until all remnants of the lost world were scattered to the wind or buried beneath hundreds of years of time.
Then, life began again to move forward. Once again, each new generation would finally know more than the ones that came before them. The stories parents told to their young were no longer about things they remembered that had disappeared, but rather about things they imagined that one day might be. After their ancestors had been enslaved and brought across the ocean, it was they, the ones so long removed from their distant homeland, who first relearned to farm in what had two thousand years previous been known as Lower California. Further North, still standing strong after so long, the great Sequoia forests were home to a growing tribe of Jewish peoples, who had managed against all odds to maintain their community where so many had collapsed.
On the ruins of a great city long forgotten, a new kingdom was born. Where once stood San Francisco, there now stood a new city, the shining jewel at the center of civilization. Culture thrived, society, community, economy, and theology had a new center. One book remained alone, the book that was seen as the guiding light to every man, woman, and child. A blank cover, and words foreign to the eyes of all those who read it, a church seized power over the minds of the people and claimed to know what it said. Their lies were believed, and eventually even the church themselves were fooled. They believed that a holy man of the church could read the mystic letters and understand the message it would give to him.
And so rise was given to magic. Sorcerers and witches, warlocks and wizards, magicians and charlatans all began to appear across the land. Feared and bowed to by the common folk of the kingdom and the surrounding tribes, the church came to fear their influence. So the king formed three branches of his military. Rangers, Knights, and Guardsmen. Together or apart, they defended the kingdom and drove out the sorcerers with all their magic and charms.
From farther North, in what was once Canada, two more groups came. One by land, nomadic marauders, and one by sea, bloody pirates. Traders from far South, sailing up the coast from the long gone Chile, called themselves Corsicans and battled the pirates for control of the waves. The new age of swords and sorcery was a time to be alive, but also a time to die. Like all things, good and bad, it would come to an end. On the continent's East coast, thousands of ships struck land. For in the three millenniums since the last great war, civilization had grown and expanded in other parts of the world as well. Now, armored riders bearing the banner of justice, swept across North America. The light had returned.
And another thousand years come and go. I watch as the world rebuilds itself and history replays almost word for word. Genocides and holocausts, holy wars and crusades, plagues and wars, and through it all mankind perseveres. And who am I to complain. For in the day mankind either wipes itself out or ceases its fruitless wars for good, I become the unemployed. Who else could possibly have witnessed all these things and more? Countless centuries of Human history before my eyes.
Well, not truly countless. Of course I could tell you exactly how long this foolish race has squabbled under its glaring star. I am a perfect timekeeper. I have to be. But regardless of who you are, you probably wouldn't like my answer, so I'll let that be my little secret for now. Anyhow, this concludes the first part of my history of mankind. Yours truly, lovingly, adoringly and valiantly, the Grim Reaper.