5 Not of Day and Not of Night - Six Ancient Tribes

"We humans are inferior creations, one of the eight lesser tribes. Like elves we could harness magic into spells, like dwarves we can enchant magic into our weapons, even with that, we are but inferior creatures. Our steeds are struck down by the mere gaze of a Sphinx and even the elves dare not sail south during the rain…."

- Traveler's Diary, p 34, Unknown Author

The thousand year period had passed and Amanah continued her act of creation. She travelled to the deserts, created a being known as Buraq, who guarded 7 eggs.

Buraq was a Sphinx, another rational creation. Buraq resembled a centaur, but with a lion's half, covered in white fur and a lion like head. A pair of fiery wings sprouted from the back of his lion back and golden patterns adorned him. A halo of light floats above his head and his tail possesses 3 rings of light.

Buraq dwarfed trees in height and Amanah granted him the power to wield light, fire and thunder with magic. Sphinxes are naturally proficient with magic, to an extent that even the weakest sphinx could rival a human prodigy without any practice.

A Sphinx's magic potential is so high that a drop of their blood could create a small oasis. They also possess the power to shapeshift, but only into humans but with the odd property of having fiery wings.

Sphinxes are immortal and powerful beings, capable of defeating any army without heavy weapons like ballistas or spells that could shatter houses in a single cast.

However, they possess a weakness. Sphinxes must sleep and warm their eggs until they hatch, taking years and halting any possible rampages as Sphinxes, both mothers and fathers are extremely protective of their eggs. Even to the point where if an egg is not warmed, any nearby sphinx would immediately come to warm it until it hatches.

Amanah created an oasis the size of a city and gave it to Buraq and the eggs. They are commanded to dwell here until the oasis cannot support them. The water will never run dry and the land will stay green forever there, but even then there are limits to how many sphinxes could inhabit it.

After creating buraq and the sphinxes, Amanah turned her eyes to the sea once more, but closer to the open ocean instead of the abyss. 

Mermaids are known as beautiful maidens with the tail of a fish, granted a myriad of different powers, varying in culture. Then there are sirens, dangerous creatures who use their harp and beautiful voices to lure ships into crashing against the cliffs and sinking into the sea. In some myths, they possess the power to control the winds with their song.

Amanah created three hundred and eight maidens to control the southern seas. Each maiden had tails of various fish anf the upper body of a beautiful human woman. They all had long hair and enchanting eyes of various colors.

Amanah gave them the power to control the wind and water. A dive by any of them into any body of water would summon six, twenty foot tall saltwater waves and they could propel themselves to the speed of a commercial plane underwater.

When they sing, their voices would shatter wood and snuff any candle. They can summon mist to blind entire fleets, summon tsunami waves and call out water sprouts from the ocean. Sharks avoid them as lesser fish avoid sharks and their body smells of fine perfume to creatures of the land but reeks of putrid blood to any creature of the sea. 

Although fearsome and dangerous, they could not make more of their kind. The mother of all had granted them no means to expand their numbers beyond awaiting for the arrival of mankind and having virgin girls willingly jump into the sea during a storm, hereby transforming them into a part of the sisterhood of the sea.

Before Amanah departed to create another tribe of sentient creatures, she bestowed and entrusted seven golden spears to them. Each spear possesses great power over the ocean and are the only weapons they would have for thousands of years capable of repelling the leviathans once they encounter them.

She stayed with them for only 7 weeks, to teach them to control their powers and with it, carve their own kingdom beneath the waves. At night, she departed to create more tribes.

This time, Amanah descended to the depths of Arkhaia's crust, into the hollow layers where chemotrophs thrive. Glowing moss like creatures thrive on the walls of the underground and black, slime like creatures surround small pools of magma.

Insects and fish adapted to the dark were the only moving creatures in this land, feeding on the likes of the glowing moss and the black slimes. Symbiotic colonies evolved, white maggots that eat dead and dying pieces of the black slimes, allowing the slimes to regenerate and absorb heat more efficiently.

Then there are also creatures, hybrids of plants and animals who use the glowing lights of the moss to photosynthesize. The weak intensity of light required them to be small and they travel in swarms, cannibalizing their dead and scavenging for corpses.

In this subterranean land, Amanah created the Kinnethar, black shelled insectoids with the power to dig faster than a bullet train, feed on uranium and use magic to cause powerful earthquakes. The Kinnethar could "see" things kilometers away using ultrasound and creatures approaching too closely would have their blood vessels shattered by the unhearable sound.

She placed 12 coccoons around a pillar of pure uranium-232, to feed on the ejected alpha particles and hatch in decades. Amanah enriched the underground with more uranium and thorium isotopes to feed the Kinnethar and provide more sources of nuclear energy on Arkhaia.

Then, she visits the jungles of Alcata, a vast rainforest in the western continent. There, she created the Saurus, a diverse and sentient species consisting of humanoid and non humanoid dinosaurs.

The Saurus have two forms, one of which are humanoid dinosaurs, similar to beastmen while the other is fully dinosaur. Their fully dinosaur forms do not depend on their lineage but depend on both random chance and their personality.

A saurus is born with a vague humanoid form, that gradually changes and is set in stone upon adulthood. Their humanoid forms are already formidable, as a single punch from a humanoid tyrannosaurus hits just as hard as being rammed by an actual tyrannosaurus at full speed. In short, their humanoid forms are as strong as normal dinosaurs.

In their fully dinosaur forms, they gain 3 abilities possessed by the dinosaur they transform into. These abilities grant stronger members of the tribes the ability to slay even dragons on their own and make the tribe a force to be avoided by lesser beings.

The tribe was born through a clutch of sixty eggs and these eggs are guarded by the rainforest itself till they hatch. They would remain for decades in their eggs, to be birthed as full adults.

Three more tribes were left to be seeded. First, the Garuda, four winged, castle sized hawks with the power to manipulate wind freely with magic and in some cases, control fire too. The Garudas were created as full adults and placed on a mountainous valley surrounded by jungles and large creatures for them to eat.

Second, the Daeva, divine like humanoids typically standing six feet in height, possessing multiple arms and unusual features such as a tiger's tail or fish scales. The Daeva are masters of magic, much like the Sphinxes but the Daeva are individually more potent and diverse.

Daevas each develop a unique set of magical abilities and depending on how powerful are they, it will be reflected on their skin. If their skin are no different to humans, their abilities would not exceed the limits of human potential.

Any color of skin departed from natural human color grants a portion of abilities beyond human limits. Such as the ability to reincarnate or to reverse entropy. The greatest colors are having black or blue skin, this means that the Daeva's magic, all of them are above human potential.

Although the Daevas with their massive power ceilings may seem to surpass even the first four tribes, the Daeva have weaknesses. A Daeva's form and abilities can become twisted by the mere perception of a person to that Daeva. If a Daeva is perceived as evil and his powers seen as evil, the Daeva's form and ability would shift.

Another weakness is that Daevas cannot reproduce at all, they must convert other beings into Daeva. This requires an elaborate ritual of harvesting magic from the sea and skies, then infusing it into a piece of honey.

Additionally, a Daeva has one final weakness. Daeva were created inside a place known as Brahmanaloka, a pocket dimension resembling a golden city in the clouds, a mirror but far inferior image of heaven.

If Daevas do not return to this place at least once a decade, they will lose their magical powers and be reverted into whatever they once were. Original Daevas would turn to dust but cause a calamity upon their death by releasing uncontrollable magic into the land. The entrance to Brahmanaloka is in the east, between the dragons and the sphinxes.

Finally, she created the Sarknosis, a fearsome race of creatures made of filth, flesh and bones. The Sarknosis possess no magical abilities beyond their ability to devour dead bodies and spontaneously grow parts of said body so long as their hearts remain intact.

These creatures seek to grow by devouring dead bodies only, gaining more mass and hearts from it to power its existence. They can only be killed by fire, severing or injuring the heart or by complete incineration. Anything less is not sufficient as the Sarknos would regenerate back quickly.

The first Sarknos would be Saklas, created by Amanah from the carcasses of an entire forest, thousands of rotting animal corpses to create it. The Sarknos could only reproduce by budding off parts of its body into individual hearts and lumps of flesh. Severed but intact bodies would form new Sarknos.

These creatures are nocturnal as the light of day induces a strong sleeping effect on them. They would generally avoid living creatures except for the elderly or dying, which they tend to wait for their deaths or kill them and harvest their corpses.

Six times Amanah created the races of Arkhaia and so six thousand years will have to pass before the last batch of tribes are created.

Six thousand years more the Lord of Night would have to wait. A thousand years had shown his patience well as the Lord of Night did not give up and seek a way back to their hut in the plains. His growing powers and created pets entertained him enough but even for immortals, there is a limit to patience.

So, Amanah sent a veiled angel, a being known as the Petrifier to put the castle and all its inhabitants to sleep and entomb them for seven thousand years in a dreamless, near instant sleep. The Petrifier also placed a seal over the land, so that none will disturb them in their long sleep.

The angel departed back to Heaven and six thousand years quickly passed.