Microstory 1442: The Interstitial Chaos

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The world was in ruins after the end of the war with the monsters. Not very many people died when you really do the math, and consider all the destruction that occurred. Still, the government was gone, and their protectors were gone. No one knew what ever happened to the source mages. Many believed they were locked away safely in their hidden pocket dimension, but no one had the ability to go up there and check. The majority of the town mages were still around, but they no longer had powers. Jayde Kovac had successfully sucked up nearly all temporal energy, and used it to defeat the time monsters. Had she not succeeded, all would have been lost, because though some of the monsters did manage to survive, they were few and far between, and it seemed they kind of now understood that there was nothing more they could do. They attacked every once in a while over the course of the next several decades, but for the most part, they remained in the remotest parts of the planet, and didn’t bother anyone. For four years, the Durune humans survived, but they were no longer a cohesive civilization. While it would come to be known as the Interstitial Chaos, the survivors didn’t initially call it anything. It wasn’t considered chaos until later, when history reflected on how life was at the time. In reality, it was a recovery period, where there was no government, but people still worked to rebuild, and find their purpose in a world without monsters or mages. Besides the military establishments, which once sat closest to the monster portal ring, none of the towns were completely destroyed. Enough of each was left standing to justify repairing the buildings, but they would never return to their former glory. People stuck to their respective towns for the most part—excepting those who couldn’t—though they did conduct the occasional trading. Hidden Depths had good mushrooms, and Hardtland good fruits, for instance. Not every town could survive, though. Distante Remoto was left almost completely standing, but they had relied on time powers for their resources, which no longer existed. The people from there headed out, and found homes elsewhere, but they brought a lot of their building material with them, so they were at least contributing something. Peak Valley also fared pretty well, because they too were harder to access, and their enemies simply never had enough time for more than one attack. Their pipeline was damaged, but not beyond repair. There were no internal conflicts, really; at least nothing major. If someone took something from you, you either took it back, or took from someone else. This sounds like it would only lead to true chaos, but the chain always eventually broke, as soon as someone was robbed who just didn’t care anymore. What the people living during this time didn’t realize was that things could indeed get worse from here. They were absolutely not at their lowest. That wouldn’t come until their greatest hope became their worst nightmare.