Chapter 2. The World of War

Her body was found by travelers the next day and brought back to the city.

An investigation was started immediately to find out how such a tragedy could possibly happen.

It turned out that the little girl was playing at the edge of the city and wandered off from her friends to follow a small fluffy hare. The hare was the cutest thing she had ever seen, so she chased it through the field towards the woods. The story was recalled by the other kids with her that day as they saw her run off and.. Well that story basically tells itself.

It wasn't long before the new Leader seized on this story and used it to condemn the Hares. The people were angry and he knew it. He used it. The girl was set up as a martyr.. A god like figure that some of the people began to worship.. Shrines were erected around the city and a movement was started.

The others amongst the Leaders were utterly horrified by this new development as they had always shunned religious thinking in favour of science. Data. That could be measured and replicated. This new force was non falsifiable.. You could not recon with it. And it was gaining steam among the people.

A famine took over the land as rain became scarce and crops started to die. The new religion growing among the people looked at this as a failure of science.

The new Leader rode this wave of resentment against the skeptical class and by the next election, won a massive majority and mandate byt eh people. The new people. The new ideas. The new religion.

The deified girls face was monumented around the city and countryside and fundamentally became the religion of state.

But the new Leader was not religious. It was simply a means to an end. He neither worshiped the girl nor cared about her story beyond how it could be used to launch him into power. And thus, he succeeded with his wicked plan.

The Hares were immediately singled out as animals or pests to be disposed of. He turned the people's anger against them and blamed the Hares and the scientists for the famine that was still plaguing society.

War soon broke out, with the old Leaderhip and their supporters against the new powerful Leader and his forces.

The Great Hogs were at war. The world was at war. And every animal was drawn into it whether they wanted to or not.

But many of the other animals, including the hares sided with the Scientists and after a few years the war began to turn against the new leader and it looked as if hope may be at the horizon soon

Thus the new Leader ordered his soldiers to hunt the countryside for any advantage that may turn the tides in his favour. Venturing into all 4 corners of the earth, these troops scoured the ma, investigating every rumour.. Every theory.. everything

A small village many days walk away from the central city of the Leaders sat just at the foot of the Great Grandfather Mountains. These mountains were very old.. Very very old.

A deep set of caves ran under the mountains, but the locals knew not to ever venture inside as many stories of animals getting lost forever inside them are told by the elders to their children.

But it is not because these caves go deep and branch off at many points into the darkness, rather there is something dangerous that lies in the deep. Something unearthly. Something that drove their ancestors mad

And it was exactly this that motivated the Leader's troops into the darkness to investigate. And it is there that they disappeared.. Almost all of them.

Weeks after the troops disappeared without communication the Leadership sent out a new investigating party to find them. They searched at all entrances of the caves and roamed the foothills. After many days searching, nearly ready to give up, they stumbled on a lone figure hobbling weakly through a small village.. The villagers ran from this figure hiding in their homes, screaming in fear at the other locals. "PLAGUE!" they yelled "SICKNESS SICKNESS!

It became clear as the soldiers approached that this figure was once like them. One of the Noble Hogs.. the Leaders. But this figure was a decayed, emaciated visage of its former self.. The skin had turned from pink to sickly green and almost black.. The hair had fallen out. The eyes were sunken and puss festered out of open sores around his body.

As the soldiers drew near, their captain ordered them to approach no further as the figure turned to face them directly. His hands were clasped tightly as if to shield something within..

He drops to his knees, whispering horsley "its...inside...inside.." And just like that, whatever life was left in him expired and he collapsed to the ground as if he was made of only paper.

The commanding officer drew near and with his rifle, pried open the hands of the deceased figure, only to reveal something that looked like a very small fungal like growth.. yet more alien.. Like nothing he had ever seen on this earth.. Its fruiting body was jet black with fluorescent yellow tendrils reaching away from it. These tendrils moved on their own.. Almost like they were vibrating together.

The officer collected the sample in a small pouch, leaving the deceased body on the ground

Little did he know that the contents in that pouch would be instrumental in turning the tides of war in a way so catastrophic and unpredictable that the world would change.. Of course the world is always changing.. But not like this.. Never like this.

The boy remembered this story vividly. He remembered his mother reciting it by the firelight. He remembered her words as she described this little alien thing that the Leaders discovered and its terrifying power weaponized by the new Leader during the war.. Almost completely wiping out the other Great Hogs.. the scientists.

It was no mere chemical weapon, though it had this effect in spades, but it could infect a single organism in a village that would in turn utterly devastate the entire village without the attackers so much as lifting a finger. There were many stories of an infected animal almost bursting apart with tendrils as long as 3 tanks lined up, ripping and tearing the flesh of any creature in its wake. Creatures would explode in a pool of blood as these alien like arms destroyed any moving thing, infecting new hosts which would carry on until the entire village was covered in the blood and body parts of the innocent lives shredded by this monstrous force. Even the little children were shown no mercy as their legs and arms were torn from their bodies, with new tendriles reaching out from the wounds..

This force would ultimately stop once the entire village was destroyed.. Somehow.. Always under the control of the new Leader. But how... How could such a devastating force be controlled.. How.

The boy often had nightmares of these wire like tendrils, though he had never seen them in real life. So many dreams of exploding bodies and pools of blood running like a river. So much suffering. So much crying.. "God... God please..".

Now it definitely occurred to the boy the incredible dangers that were in this dark world, and how this danger would exponentially increase as he ventured further and further from the central safe area. But, sometimes a child is meant to disobey their parents.. For better.. Or for.. Worse.

As the boy marched there in the old officer's hat, trying to impress his friends, none of them saw, or expected, or smelled the massive body that was approaching behind them. And that might be for the best.

In front of the boy, watching his entertaining gestures was a young girl hanging on his every word.

And just like that, powerful horizontal jaws with long tusks on both sides reached down, almost out of nowhere, severing her body in the middle.. Lifting her upper body up to the monster's full height, the boy watched as its powerful jaws crunched down on her quickly dying body with the awful finality of a killing blow. She then disappeared down the beast's throat.

Paralyzed with fear the boy and the other children did not move.. Until almost by some mystical forces, their legs and voices grew power and they scattered and screamed.. But the beast was not done. Though it's size was 20-30 times their own, it somehow moved faster than them and was quickly upon another, tearing the child's face clear off its head and goring his abdomen with its tusks.

The monster was a horrifying creature resembling a huge bear with a mastodon's tusks, but with jaws opening horizontally instead of vertically.. Its eyes could barely be seen under its thick dark hair... the monster stunk like dead rotting corpses.

Picking the kids off one by one and bludgeoning their little bodies, the beast then turned towards the boy, but there was nowhere for the boy to run.. This was it.. It's over.. His short little life was going to end in the ugliest, most terrifying way and he knew it..

The beast approached with its tusks.. And just as it went in for the kill, something happened.. Something very unexpected.. Something very very .. odd.

Lying with his back against the ground, preparing for his final moment, the boy's chest explodes open, with blood spraying everywhere.. But it was not the beast.. Something quickly emerged from inside the boy, reaching out towards the beast. Like dark blackened wires, there were 5, 10, 20 of these long protruding branches extending out of the his chest now wrapping themselves around the giant beast.

The beast used its awesome physical strength to try to release itself, but some of the black wires reached down, plunging themselves into the ground as some sort of support or leverage as they clamped down and squeezed the beast.. They squeezed harder and harder as if powered by some sort of hydraulic machine.. The boys watched as they crushed the beast and blood gushed out of its sides.. Dying.. Suffocating.

Looking down the boy saw these very wiry arms still connected to something inside his body. The pain of his torn open chest cavity suddenly hitting him like a truck.. He screamed as he looked inside to see his own heart beating with little black wires running around and through it.

Sometimes too much can happen for the brain to manage and it does a reboot. By some mercy of the gods, this occasionally happens during the worst of things. And it happened to the boy that day

Black.

Eyes slowly opening. Blinking to see sunlight and a face staring down at him. It was the other boy from the safe zone that had tagged along.. Still alive.

He lurched upwards grabbing his chest. His shirt was torn open, but his chest was... fine? He searched his whole body frantically for injury and found nothing.

"What happened, where are the others?" he asked in a panic. The other child's face filled with tears "they're dead.. There's nothing left.. THERE'S NOTHING LEFT"

The boy rose to look around.. Surveying the landscape there was dried blood everywhere and the body parts of other children strewn around like garbage littering the grass and rocks. And there, in the centre of it all was the wrangled, strangled corpse of the monster.

"What happened?..." he said out loud.. Looking down at his chest, not knowing if he was in a dream, a nightmare, or an even more frightening reality. "..what happened.."

Cut to black.