Legend of Shadows: Umbra

Published by Paolo Tibar at Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Paolo Tibar

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. It you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebookretailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1 - The Bang

CHAPTER 2 - The New Species

CHAPTER 3 - The Narrow Road to Mountains of Northern Korea

CHAPTER 4 - The Divide

CHAPTER 5 - Face to Face with Death

CHAPTER 6 - The Story of Death

CHAPTER 7 - String of Hope

CHAPTER 8 - Behind the War

CHAPTER 9 - The Pearl of the Orient Seas

DISCLAIMER

This story is work of fiction. Although its form may be similar to historical events and some religious beliefs, it is all just the author’s imagination.

Events, names of places and people both to include dead and living that may appear herein were merely coincidental and must not be taken as the truth. Stereotypes that may appear herein were not intended to discriminate or offend anyone, but in some instances that you might feel to be offended by the writings in this book, my sincere apologies to all of you.

The words expressed by characters in this story do not reflect the ideals of the author.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to April my wife, for her untiring understanding with all my shortcomings.

Our cats named Datu, Nyoir and Purr, that in their eyes I could see the truth of their true nature, and they are not afraid to show it to the world, this serves as an inspiration to this story.

And to you who are reading this story, I hope that you will enjoy this first book and would seek for the next books in the future. Our appreciation of anything that we can perceive is always within the scope of our knowledge. And for the longest time, the search for harmonious coexistence with others is what we always hope for.

And to the Creator who we owe everything that we can conceive today and tomorrow.

Paolo T Tibar

Author

PROLOGUE

The year was 2459, after the Earth has turned into waste land for more than 400 years, nature thrives to survive. Plants and creatures started to appear on the face of the Earth again. The war between countries centuries ago has brought each other’s civilizations back to the Stone-Age. Major cities were destroyed by nuclear warheads which instantly killed billions of people. The bombs that are intended to destroy the military installations also damaged the nuclear reactors that powered the big cities.

In about a year, after the nuclear war and the fallout, the populations were reduced in half, in about two years, only a hundred million people were left on Earth, and those people survived by scavenging on less radioactive domains. After 5 years, people started to kill each other for survival, food became the currency of humanity since the crops withered and livestock productions ceased. Remaining populations moved to outskirts of cities, chaos and savagery became the means of survival, people killing one another and clans invading weaker groups. A decade after the flight of the last nuclear missile that hit the last city, the humanity has finally settled in peace. There are only about a couple of thousands of human beings that were left on the face of the Earth. Five groups who reside in the most isolated areas won the survival of the fittest challenge for the whole humanity. One of the groups is at the highest mountain ridges of Tibet, next one is at the South Pole, the other one is at the North Pole, the fourth one is in an Oasis of Sahara Desert and the last one is at the Pitcairn Island. These places are already at the extreme conditions that is why nobody bothers to waste their nuclear warheads on any of these virtually uninhabited lands. For the next couple of centuries since the settlement of these groups, they started to established their own civilizations and governments. The remaining technologies from the previous civilization vanish before their very eyes as generations passed.

At a dusk of one summer at Pitcairn Island, Tell us the story of gods asked by a young boy to an elderly man, surrounding them are children who gathered at the great bonfire. Everyone was waiting for the elders to mark the 365th line at a brick wall which signifies the 365th day of the year, while the other elder marks the 400th line on the stone walls at a nearby mountain, the 400th year since the World War 3. This group made a tradition of telling their children stories about the history every last day of the year. Let me ask you about something… how did it start? replies the elderly man in question as he look at few children who raises their hand How about you Epitlous the swimmer, what do you remember from the story? said the elderly man. The sun has just set and only traces of orange clouds can be seen behind the green mountains, and the silvery clouds in the East seems to emerge on velvety sky, paving its way to the full moon. Epitlous stand up and started speaking as he pointed some of the few stars above The gods started the war from above, they fall from this Earth and become United Washington, Europe, Asia, Bombay, and The Desert, they fought each other until all one million people of the Earth died, we survive because our ancestors swim from land of United Washington to here for two months Epitlous proudly said, despite of telling the adulterated version of the history the children applaud his remarkable story And who do you think is the one who started the war? ask again by the elderly man The United Washington! He sends meteors from the sky and kill all people says another teenage kid Listen here young man, when your brother steal the fish caught by Epitlous’ father, does it mean that your whole family is bad? Your mother cooks the most delicious algae soup that I ever tasted, and your father is one of our best hunters in this land says the Elderly man, everyone’s attention is with the old man and they are waiting for the next words that he is about to say. Our story now is about doing the right thing, and it does not matter where you came from and what clan do you belong says the Elderly man as he then tell stories of the past, just like the way it was relayed to him by his father and their fathers before them after the war.

After the story-telling, the island was illuminated with the unusual brightness from the silvery moon. Everyone stare at the wonderful night skies, but only the eyes of Epitlous started to glimmer in red.

The End and Beginning

When someone is about to die, it is an old belief that the whole memories will flash before your very eyes, all things that happened will be sum up into final show. The feeling will be extremely euphoric, that one might even forget the pain of dying or one will forget responsibilities will simply accept any consequences that might lie ahead after the show. But what if a god entity will die, will the millions of years be summed up into a show too? I am Ortus, and I am lying right now at a barren land, watching my body disintegrates as the dark clouds envelops the blue sky, I have to tell myself that this is inevitable, it is the end for me. But as I stretch the time and savor my final moment, I did recall everything during my existence, how it all started, and it all start with a bang.

CHAPTER 1

The Bang

The first believed to exist was knowledge, it defines everything that is conceivable and it was contained within a sphere known as Proleci. Like electricity, knowledge is weightless and it is not bound of anything, just a pure energy circling around colliding with each other, and that is how we are created. It is believed that the origin of the first spark of collective knowledge and consciousness called itself Gocei, the first one to have shown light to everyone about knowledge. This first light pave way in moving knowledge from one to the other, a force was necessary, and that is when Exos appeared, the manifestation of power, the first strength that appears in the beginning of creation.

The first two entities believed that they are the only ones that exist in Proleci, but they did not know that a mirror sphere also exist, the opposite of everything, our world and it is called Scoddei. In all knowledge that Proleci possessed, there is a mirror knowledge that also exist, our first dark entity is Nevma the opposite of Gocei. For every power that Exos possessed, I knew it all too, I am the opposite of Exos, I am Ortus the reverse force. After the two sets of us in both spheres exist, three more of entities were created on each side. First is Coru, it is a manifestation of difference or the distance between one knowledge to another and we call it as the Space Entity, here in Scoddei its mirror entity is Chaos, an entity who knows no bounds. Second is Conus, it is the manifestation of time, it governs the movement and project everything in a forward flow of movement to create order and called it as the Time Entity, here in the mirror sphere we have Stimu, an entity who do whatever it want and whenever it want by messing with time. And last was Prama, the most stubborn entity, the one who bound us all in reality, it is manifestation of limiting all entities into 3-dimensional boundary, but here in Scoddei we have Dasta a dimensional being who could create worlds with its own rules. The entities in Proleci called themselves as the First Five Entities, and we at Scoddei we called ourselves as the Dark Entities, I don’t know why Nevma called us that, we exist for quite a long time until Nevma decided to start a war.

Nevma lead all the Dark Entities and stormed the Proleci, but I choose not to participate with Nevma’s madness. I know that the war between these opposing forces is a war that no one could win. But my absence in the battlefield causes an imbalance in the war, it is when Gocei gathered all entities and merge them into one Supreme Entity that Nevma realized that I am not with them in the war. I was just looking at them from afar when Nevma gathered all the Dark Entities to create a Supreme Entity also. But it is not enough to stop the blow of Gocei that landed on its chest, causing an explosion that damage half of the sphere and sending us all into oblivion. At that moment, I found out that entities can be divided into smaller pieces and they could be able to exist in multiple bodies. Some of the entities were blown into billion pieces which greatly reduced their powers, but remember the stubborn Prama? It is responsible for us to be bounded in 3-dimensional plane as it explodes and attached itself to most of us. Our powers may still have remained in us, but we are limited by the laws of universe now. By the way, I call everyone it because gender doesn’t exist before, and entities were not aware of any emotions yet, only their personal agenda and that made us all to be totally focused on our goal.

We are carried away by the explosion which sends us flying to the void of space. Some entities continue to fight with each other, but I decided to made myself invisible and let myself attached myself to some debris from Proleci. The explosion was so powerful that it allows mixtures of pieces of entities together. Some entities have bound themselves together but others continue to fight up to the smallest sub-atomic level. God Entities are somehow immortal, or theoretically immortal, wait, so it means I am not going to die, I am going to exist again but when? I guess this is the question of every one when facing our own death.

The Consciousness

Everyone is different, just like every one of us, of course we are unique from anyone, except of the Entities, each unique Entity possessed a common consciousness, no matter how many times that it will be divided, it will always remain to inherit the thoughts of the original Entity, but that was before the explosion of the Sphere. After the explosion, the Entities bound with each other which spawned new knowledge. The desire to survive is the first instinct that was developed from the smallest building block of the known universe, it created sequence of memories from the previous conflicts of the entities. The continuous conflict at sub-atomic level created an imbalance which brought something new, an organic form known as the cell, the first unique life form out from pieces of Entities. From a single cell which later fuse with other cells, it created a more complex and stronger life forms. I’ve watched how this species evolved for over millions of years and it was fulfilling to see new species formed out from chaos. From two opposite entities within, it created an equilibrium that allows the species to live in harmony. They named this planet Earth, and I forgot who gave the name for it though, I am more of a remember-the-situation-but-forget-the-name kind of god, by the way, the first light on Earth came from Jupiter, it was the first sun, and the planets revolves around it. And yes, the Earth is spherical in shape, just like the atoms, the expanding universe and the Proleci.

Everything was perfect until the warring entities crashed land to the Earth which is now inhabited by dinosaurs and other huge species, the crashed site of the entities cause massive destruction on mountainous part of the land. All species big and small fleed away from those mountains as the Entities emerge from the explosion. My former boss was there too, Nevma who was hurt pretty bad, the work of that annoying Prama has bounded on its skin. From the far side of the blast, three entities also appeared, my mirror entity Exos and two others Conus and Coru. They could defeat Nevma at this moment, but of course Nevma knew its situation so the bastard ran away. If I could return to the past, I should have stopped Nevma right then and there, we could have accepted the fact that we all could simply coexist, no need to assert dominion. Exos said, It cannot leave this place, I will give you part of my power and we will find Nevma. A yellow glow leaves the hands of the Exos and transferred it to the Coru and Conus and they part ways to hunt down Nevma.

I choose to remain invisible and wandered over the face of the Earth by flying like a shadow, silent and unnoticed. I saw all kinds of creatures, I’ve been to the deepest waters of the ocean and saw the shiny creatures. I lived like a spirit, an immortal that has no form and simply just flying anywhere I go, until I bump into this bird, and a strange thing happened, suddenly I could access to all the knowledge and memories of that bird. The bird crashed by the way, that is what happened when you collide head-on with a god. I just saw the poor thing crashing down, luckily the bird have survive as it spreads its wings and glide towards the shore, but unfortunately a primate grab it and chomp its head off. I saw what happened and I knew that the primate saw me too. The primate ate the bird that collided with me and somehow part of my consciousness was transferred to it, and the primate might have acquired a glimpse on the so-called higher consciousness.

The search for Nevma was an impossible task for the three First Five Entities, the Earth is vast and highly vegetated, and they cannot possibly explore all of it. The evolution of species on earth goes faster, a smaller yet faster version of the previous species started to appear, more resilient creatures are the result of aggressive conflict within each living cells. The First Five Entities tried to explore the Earth, using the power that they have with them, Coru learned to manipulate air, water and soil, and as the Space Entity, removing and expanding the distance within elements it could change the properties of water, create an explosion with air or crush a mountain with just few wave of its hand. Conus have learned few tricks by manipulating time making it slow or faster, what an amazing power, it could be handy in a fight. But Exos only spend its time meditating and recalling the knowledge that they got from Gocei.

For past centuries, I could say that everything is good but one day, a bright red light with black smoking tail comes down the Earth, a meteor from the debris in space.

The Never-ending War

The meteors were actually two smaller pieces of First Five Entities and a larger part of Chaos Entity. They were still fighting as they descend from the sky, and maybe the reality must have caught up with them as they appear to have more defined features. The impact creates a huge crater and shockwave spreads across the land, sending all birds flying away from the crash site. The battle continued, and with every devastating blow from each entity it sends shocks that hit nearby mountains sending chunks of rocks and trees in the air. Bright blue and black flashes of lightning could be seen in the horizon as their axes and swords clash, but none of them seem to inflict serious damage with each other. The roar and clunk of weapons are deafening which drove-off all creatures to run for their lives. Exos