Long ago, before history as we know it, fantasy was more than a genre of book or film, of myth and tale. It was a way of life.
Dragons soared as birds do. Unicorns ran faster than horses. Leviathans made any sea creature beg for their moms. And magic was more than a trick of light and slight of hand.
Sadly, the world will never know what the world once was. The ear will never sail in fear of Siren song. The nose will no longer flinch from zombie rot. The eye will see pointed ear and lack of height and think rare disease or genes gone wrong.
The world will only speak of Elves, Dwarves, and Merfolk as things that could be, instead of what was. Where did this world fail, you ask? How did it disappear like a shadow in the night? What was the cause of such an extinction, you consider?
The answer is simple, clearer than any glass in it's purest form. You see it everywhere you go. You are never far from it. You see it everytime you look in the mirror. The answer is humans, nothing more, nothing less.
One would say elves, for their lack of ambition and complacency with life. Others would argue Dwarves, for their obsession with crafts. Merfolk aren't innocent in these accusations, for their hate of those who walk on land and judge them. Targetted were the men, for their greed and oppression.
But forgotten are the facts teat all were human. Dwarves loved the mountains and the art of craft, and gave their height as a price. Elves traded ambition for the points on their ears and forms of grace, tuned to nature's chord. The people of the sea so how much there was to behold in depths yet unreached, and sacrificed their legs to quench the thirst of the sea.
All were human, at heart and spirit, but those who remained unchanged by magic saw these changes as imperfections, and reserved the right to call oneself human to themselves. They wanted nothing more than to eradicate those they saw as lesser oppression and disgust forming at the base of their civilizations.
But how could they accomplish this, they asked themselves. No one could hold their breath long enough to swim to a Merman's home, much less fight him there. Elves were the children of nature, a people whose swiftness and grace made them great warriors. A Dwarven child had the potential to be strong as a grown man if they tried hard enough.
So instead, the self-proclaimed humans turned to magic. Of all the races, they excelled at mystic art. Their pursuit of it wasn't contained by moral codes or physical disability. They chased after anything that would erase anything that was made wrong in their eyes.
Decades passed and centuries faded, generations came, went, and came again. Each race grew with the times, living life to the fullest, content in who they were. The only exception were the humans. Even after so many years, the humans did not forgot the will of their ancestors. The hoarded and schemed, and hid behind smile and word of honey.
One day, they succeeded in finding what they were looking for. One mage made a spell that when a head of a family was struck with it, they and their descendants would be killed. The human empires sent soldiers and mages armed with this spell everywhere. Their orders were to kill every creature of magic, to create the perfect world meant only for humans.
The spell that the mages had created worked faster than a plague. Every elf, merman, dwarf, or creature of magic fell like wheat to a havester's scythe. It was nearly no time until the humans were satified with the results that the reaped. The last thing to do was to rid the world of magic.
The mages disappeared to die a peaceful life, never to be heard from again. Texts on anything regarding mystical arts were burned and destroyed. The stories of dragons, heroes, and all of those who were wiped from existence became tales of fiction. It became as if the humans had never shared a world of extraodinary beings, rather the stories were thoughts of imagination.
So, the world began living a life of ignorance crafted by their ancestors. There was nothing from the world before that they would ever be exposed to. None of the other races, no more creatures, and no more magic.
Or so they thought.
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