Empire of Dust

Prologue
You may be reading this merely wanting something to pass your free time. You may be reading this because the title seems interesting. Or, you may be reading this right now wanting me to hurry up and start the story.

Well, settle in your seats and hold tight, 'cause this is gonna be a long one.

Now, you may also be wondering what this story has to do with an empire made of dust. That can't really be possible, right? Gotta be a figure of speech, right? Well, as a matter of fact, it is possible. But not in the way you'd think. This situation is entirely different.

You see, this empire's tall, proud cities are not made of dust. Citizens of the empire are not made of dust, either. In fact, this empire has nothing to do with the dust that you see on old antiques and books. Look closely at the title. What do you see?

It says "Empire of Dust". Now, normally, you'd think that the word "dust" is capitalized because it is the title of a story. That is how English goes. But no, in this case, it is capitalized not because it is in the title of a story, but because Dust in this world is a terrible creature, a timeless monster, an ever-watching overlord of this empire. Dust is the name of this creature.

But of course, you may wonder "Well, the title of the story usually has words capitalized anyways". You are indeed correct. But this tale is translated from another language, a language so complex and vast that humans are unable to comprehend it. And in this language, only the first word of a title is capitalized...except if it has a proper noun in it. So consider that you are holding in your hands a book crafted by people you will never be able to begin to understand.

Look again at the title, "Empire of Dust". What immediately comes to mind now? An empire that is ruled by Dust? If you thought that, then I apologize but must say that you are incorrect. Dust is so incredibly complex and unthinkably comprehensive that this empire I speak of is not peasants and kings ruled by Dust, but this empire is Dust itself. Dust is this empire. How does this work? Well, if you are patient enough to read through the rest of my explanations, then I will gladly tell you.

To tell the truth, Dust is a hard creature to describe. It can near-infinitely replicate itself in clones that can each take the form of an individual object. In a nutshell, Dust can be billions of people at once, all those people the same Dust. That is the Empire of Dust - the ever-watching army of billions of creatures and things that are all Dust. Not to mention that Dust can immediately change any one of its forms' appearance at any given time.

Where did such a creature come from, you may ask?

Nobody knows.

However, before Dust came, there was a great race of incredibly intelligent creatures on one of the most beautiful planets in the universe - a planet named Earth hand-crafted by God Himself, as all other planets were, except this planet was special, because it was the only planet to support life. This race of creatures was called "man". Man ruled their home planet for a very, very long time, until out of the blue-

Oh, you guessed already? Well, yes, Dust came to Earth. And, as you can expect, Dust wreaked chaos upon that poor planet, slaughtering millions of innocent lives. And guess what? Dust then replaced those people with his own clones, one by one. The whole of mankind was slowly deteriorating to but a few thousand individual survivors of Dust's wrath. At first, though, "Dust" was not Dust's name to mankind. It had many names to mankind - Death, Satan, Sauron, Necro, and Man-Killer.

But the kthruv were what brought around the terrible creature's name. You don't know who they are? In truth the kthruv (that is said KOO-throov) are equally hard to explain. But in short, the kthruv were what mankind saw as their saviors. The kthruv were the only other sentient existing life in the Local Group.

As you might have already guessed, a kthruv is the author of this book you are holding right now. (That kthruv did not write this prologue, however.) And it wrote this book in its native language that I have mentioned beforehand. Remember, the impossible-to-comprehend-by-humans one? Yes, that one.

According to legend as well as eyewitness, in the year 2050 the kthruv arrived to Earth twenty years after Dust arrived. At first, the people who saw the kthruv were scared and thought that it was Dust coming to destroy them - but as it turned out the kthruv were coming to help. The kthruv spoke in pictures, not words, however - they used what people call telepathy to talk to the humans. The kthruv were incredibly intelligent creatures that teamed up with the last 4,000 humans on earth to one day ultimately stop Dust.

In the process of teamwork the humans and the kthruv built what was called The Sanctuary. By using materials only found on the kthruv's homeworld, the two races constructed a place where Dust was unable to penetrate through. It was also discovered that the kthruv were immune to Dust's powers, which lead to the idea that the kthruv and Dust came from the same place.

Oh, you think I'm rambling now, do you? I apologize if this long introduction is boring you, but I promise, this story will be one that you will never be able to put down. Now, there's not a whole lot left to explain, so please hear me out for a few more minutes.

The Sanctuary was finished about 10 years after the kthruv arrived - sadly, during its construction, about 2,500 humans died, which left just half of what used to be there. The kthruv, however, strictly warned that the humans should never add on to it, for they would be risking the chance of going out into the open, where Dust dwells. Upon this agreement, the Legion was formed, containing the last 2,500 surviving humans that were dedicated to finding out how to slay Dust.

However, there was an issue - the kthruv helped design The Sanctuary so that the humans could stay safe while the kthruv went back to their homeworld to gather the weapons they had so they could stop Dust - this was not a matter of selfishness, but out of understanding that humans were completely incapable of taking on Dust themselves, lest they all die to their own hands. The kthruv were trying to protect the humans while they went back to do their duties. The kthruv specifically told the Legion this, but the Legion made a false promise. They wanted to be the ones to slay Dust. They thought "We are strong enough to take on the Man-Killer, for we are adaptable and smart", so the Legion started research on Dust after the kthruv left.

The distance between Earth and the kthruv's planet was huge, so it would be a long, long time before the kthruv came back. And during this gap, the Legion made many, many mistakes that the kthruv never learned about.

Although the data retrieved from Dust's clones seemed promising, the Legion's leaders thought that their small knowledge of Dust was enough to built weapons to fight against Dust. And it was far from enough. Dust itself had no knowledge of what the humans were doing, but any counterattack was to be expected from such a bloodthirsty, revenge-seeking race. Dust knew more about the humans than the humans knew about themselves during the twenty years it wreaked havoc on Earth.

The Legion made the terrible mistake of sending 3,000 troops to go fight the Dust clones. But what they didn't know was that Dust could merely make more copies of itself in case the copies died. These 3,000 troops all died within a matter of minutes. However, the Legion kept pressing, thinking that drafting more and more children was the best way to go.

Of course, as you can imagine, there was quite a lot of rebellion against the Legion's leader's orders. Mothers were terrified of their 10-year old sons being drafted to fight a war they could not possibly ever win by themselves. And any rebellious Leigoners were banished from The Sanctuary to die by Dust.

But where did Dust's name, "Dust", come around, you may ask?

In the kthruv's last "mindwords", they warned "Humanity will fall to dust if you try to take the beast on yourselves". Of course, this was said in the form of pictures.

Mankind perceived this as "Dust" to be its name.

You may be greatly questioning this story's contents already - What are the kthruv? Why did Dust attack Earth? How did the kthruv know that the humans were in danger of becoming extinct? Why did the kthruv even help at all? When will the kthruv return? Will humanity die in vain?

I promise you, all those questions will be answered if you read this story, cover to end.

Now, you may be sick of all this introduction, and I apologize if I bored you to such an extent. But this is where the story starts - this is where the real action takes place. And I promise you, you are going to savour every little bit. And you should consider the story's message - you never know when such an event like Dust's reign of terror could happen again. History that is forgotten is doomed to repeat itself, as they say...

Chapter 1
TBC