4 People of the Day - Four Great Ones
"On the fourth day of creation came the people of day. The ancient trees of Theonika, then the great dragons of Long Tian, the abyssal Metachondria and the Petralos of Lemuria. Twelve people of the day and they were the first four…."
- Chronicles of King Avant
After exiting her physical form and raising her eldest creation, Amanah began to fill Arkhaia with more sentient beings. She began with her mortal home being surrounded and covered under a massive tree of all colors and seasons whose leaves reach the clouds.
Its bark is harder and stronger than any diamond, not enchanted by magic but merely configured on an atomic scale for such durability. It could not burn either and is crystalline in appearance where the bark is thin. Yet, the titanic tree could grow even faster than any plant and replenish its own bark within a day's time.
This tree has one purpose only, to birth a new race continuously, a womb for an entire species. It has produced the first three seeds of the Haoma, a species of magical plants, blessed with the power to summon vines, merge with forests and accelerate growth.
The Haoma were much like the treants in fantasy but they are much more deadly and they rely solely on the Tree of Seasons to grow their numbers. All Haoma start out as vaguely humanoid creatures made of oak wood, towering at twice the height of a grown man and could summon vines strong enough to trap and kill several cavalrymen.
On their first decade, they would rival a house in height and begin to change. A random species of plant will combine with them, granting them new appearances and abilities. A dandelion for example, grants the Haoma the ability to eject a cloud of dandelion seeds and to grow a ball of dandelions on its back, allowing it to fall more slowly.
Another change will occur on the 50th year, where they would double in height and gain another plant's abilities. On their first century, they would gain two new plants and no change in height. For every century after, either a new plant will be added to them or a quarter of their height will be added.
For every month, the tree would produce three fruits and their seeds at once. However, the tree will only begin doing so a century after the first three Haoma have emerged from the soil. This is to give the three time to develop and mature before they are entrusted with the next wave of their kind.
Amanah transformed the plains into a forest containing all species of plants, both alive and extinct. Manipulating space, the plains was much larger inside than out, with entire jungles of prehistoric flora represented within it. From outside, it will look no different than a normal forest but with a titanic tree at its center. But from inside, an ocean of trees stretch as far as the horizon.
Amanah noticed where Daevel had built his settlement, a massive cabin of wood built within a year since he left, courtesy of his superhuman senses and strength. Even five years after he left, she knows that he is lonely and homesick. He distracts himself to forget about trying to return home and finding it, to follow his mother's command and find a wife and continue his life as a father.
He has built a mansion out of wood in those years, with 27 rooms and two floors. A vast farm, an acre of land cultivated by him alone, helped by his newfound power of seeing life. A wooden fence, almost a wall was built around certain areas of the forest, Amanah observed that it marked his territory and was used to let only certain beasts inside. Beasts no bigger than a certain size it seems.
He did not have to worry about his clothes, they have been enchanted to stay in their prime condition at all times. He had not aged at all and was still waiting, sometimes impatiently when he would take out his frustration in hunting any large animal in sight for days before returning to his new home. Farming helped him remain patient too, as although fruits and vegetables disgusted him, growing herbs helped him cook the broth he so liked and even experiment different tastes at times of boredom.
To help him a little more and alleviate his boredom and longing, Amanah would give him advice and knowledge through his dreams when he needed it the most. He had never dreamt much before, and took the dream as a way to speak to her. However, she would not appear in every sleep, only in some but he feels much more at home than before and his loneliness would not disturb him as much.
A hundred years pass and Amanah created the dragons in the far east. Eight dragons, each of their own unique colors and abilities.
They were created in 8 days, one day for each dragon. All of them possessed serpentine bodies a hundred meters in length, with three pairs of antler like horns and three pairs of glowing eyes. Magical ornaments like halos, orbs and symbols floated around them, but not one had the same pattern as the other.
Magic was given upon them as a natural ability, each of the eight dragons possessed great power that even those of modern earth would look upon them like gods. They have the power to create elements as they please, silence and disturb inferior magic.
The first dragon of fire could transform any element into fire and summon pillars of flame so hot that any atom would break into ionized hydrogen. Fire magic weaker than the power of a nuclear bomb is easily under its control and a single stare is enough to break the spell.
Amanah did not spend much time with the dragons as she had with the lord of the night. She only stayed and raised them for a year, teaching them her laws and passing on her wisdom. She commanded them to bring forth more dragons, to be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.
In those 100 years, she taught her firstborn how to make bricks of stone and concrete. With that knowledge, he built a castle where he settled. Decades were spent building a castle towering 230 feet that covered 23 hectares of land.
The castle was made of basalt, concrete and wood, harvested from the mountain and collected from forests in the vicinity and beyond. As he built the castle, his strength and gifts grew over time, he would not be able to build this without it.
In the first decade of building the massive palace, he found that he could levitate things with his mind and summon invisible forces to move the rocks. Combined with the materials and the bricks, assembling the castle did not take too long.
Then, in a few more years, his hearing allowed him to "see" through the walls. By boiling water in certain construction areas, he could see the entire castle's layout through hearing. These two new powers were enough to help him build the castle.
However, they weren't the only powers he developed. In the third decade, he received the power to control nocturnal animals and in the fifth decade, he found that his blood allowed him to enhance and control things. Using that, he remembered how his mother farmed silkworms to weave him clothes. With his blood, he created many creatures to serve him.
His castle was not as lonely as before, with all the creatures gaining a great degree of intelligence from when his blood modified them. Many of them were unsightly, monstrous creatures and lived outside the castle as they could not fit.
Several of them were unconsciously made in the image of Daevel or his mother, and had some intellect, becoming more than just useful beasts but even developing souls of their own. Amanah gradually stopped appearing and left him to his newfound creations, it would be the first step for him to understand the feeling of a father.
Amanah, after creating the dragons dived into the depths of the sea, where the first fountain of water sprouted and brought forth the seas of Arkhaia. Down and deep into the pitch black waters she goes, descending into the greatest abyss on the planet, a hundred and twenty thousand feet down from the turbulent surface.
Even though the active mantle of arkhaia made life abundant in the dark and cold wasteland of the midnight zone, this part of the ocean is largely empty, due to the immense depths before the sea floor is reached and the pressure so strong that even the strongest titanium alloy would cave in immediately.
Even after 1,200 million years, the seafloor resembled much of the deserted basin it once was. Although, a few active undersea volcanoes were present in the distant, rumbling as lava is churned out into the cold waters. Those were the only sources of light down there.
Amanah began to create the Leviathans, great abyssal beasts who will dominate and inhabit the darkest depths of Arkhaia. To withstand the very pressures of the depths, their skins and muscles would need to be stronger than diamond and their bones far more so.
She created them in the form of seven eggs, each the size of a house and placed them hundreds of miles apart from one another. Though with skin superior to diamond and a massive bulk comparable to giants, that is not the most dangerous aspect of the Leviathans.
Leviathans have the ability to incorporate the bodyparts of the creature they eat. If one devours a crab, the Leviathan could grow a crab's eyes, its claws or its legs. It could also grow any organ it wishes, allowing the Leviathan to quickly adapt by devouring a diverse set of creatures.
Of course there are limitations to this. Leviathans cannot grow more things out of thin air, they would need to eat more things to increase their mass. Secondly, they cannot retract anything they've grown, they have to be severed or the Leviathan has to live with it until it is removed. Thirdly, Leviathans cannot assimilate the traits of another Leviathan, their bodies will reject one another.
Fifteen minutes is all it takes for a Leviathan to regenerate its mass or grow new parts. Not fast enough to change in battle but fast enough to allow prolonged battles. Amanah provides these eggs with an abundance of life around them.
By creating new hydrothermal vents and planting lifeforms near the eggs, Amanah turned this black ocean floor into a shining candle in the dark. Of course, she varied each Leviathan's habitat, diversity is their greatest advantage.
The eggs would take 400 years to hatch, ample time for the deep sea biomes she planted to grow large enough to support them.
In those 400 years, she placed a few artifacts around Arkhaia, failsafes to be activated by the planet's denizens in dire situations. She is aware of their potential to be abused and so each artifact is guarded by the greatest dangers of the world, whether by rational beings like the dragons or surrounded by a forest of monsters.
500 years longer she waited, the Haoma have begun to develop their civilization, the first generation Dragons have been born and the Leviathans had matured into beasts rivalling the likes of godzilla.
A thousand years had past since Ravel left Amanah and the first Haoma seeds were planted. Her last act of creation for the next thousand years is the creation of the Petralos.
An isolated continent exists in the far east, a land made of a single tectonic plate shattered into dozens of pieces due to an ancient meteor. Because of that, the continent of Lemuria was filled with volcanoes and earthquakes were frequent. The common appearance of ash clouds made life extremely harsh but not impossible.
However, only 7% of the continent is populated by any form of vegetation, everything else is only a grey wasteland with ash rains and poisonous sulfur contaminated lakes.
From the sulfur lakes and the ash rains, Amanah fashioned a pair of Petralos. A hundred feet tall with hard grey bodies, flaming eyes and embers forming patterns on their skin. Through a voice in the sky, Amanah taught them how to release fire and lightning from their arms and shape it to their will.
After Amanah saw that they do not need her guidance to survive, the voice in the sky vanished and Amanah rested for a thousand years.
