From The Flames of Extinction (Book 1 : The Demon Conquests)

-A Shroud of Ages Novel-

-The Demon Conquests Series-

-Book 1-

-From the Flames of Extinction-

-By R.M. Plaiscia-

The Shroud of Ages

The Demon Conquests

From The Flames Of Extinction

Copyright 2012 – 2019 Ronald M. Plaiscia Jr.

Published by Ronald M. Plaiscia Jr. at Smashwords

The right of Ronald M. Plaiscia Jr. to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

-All Rights Reserved-

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

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Part One - A Place to Begin

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Part Two - In The Middle of Madness

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Part Three - To End All Doubt

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About the Author/Other Works

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The Hurricane Journals (Sneak Peek)

Witch-ionary I

Basic Witch Terminology

Willborn – Young Witch, born of sheer will; lack of foresight.

Foreborn – Elder Witch, able to overcome their own will; dependent on foresight.

Foolheart – Young Warlock, ignorant to most magic; playful, void of testosterone.

Warwalker – Elder Warlock, having become one with the battlefield; flooded with testosterone.

Brightling – A Warlock who has embraced the art of wizardry instead of war; flushed clean of testosterone.

Kindlefell – Young Wizard, not yet skilled in the arts of wizardry, like kindle for a fire that is not yet lit.

Wakenwide – Elder Wizard, awakened to the magical arts of wizardry.

Arken – The Native Witch’s term for Vampire, believed to be their ancient creators.

Terra – Used both as a witch description for Earth, and to describe the magical energy they can create and wield.

Hylum – An ancient type of wood carved to create wizard staffs.

Frening/Draking/Draker – Not as versatile as the human variation of the F-word, but each are still used to promote emphasis, or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise.

Skagt’ah – Ancient Demon slang, used to express hatred or insult towards another; the equivalent of a F**k you and a Suck it in modern English slang, all rolled into one.

(Part 1)

(A Place to Begin)

It was over seven million years ago when a particular lineage of ape first descended from the trees. From the lush lands of Africa’s mighty savannahs this singular lineage of ape would ultimately go on to spread themselves across the entire globe. These apes that would move on to conquer the world were none other than the species known as Homo Sapiens. They weren’t the first Homo race to stand upright or start fires or bury their dead and weren’t even present when their species first began to evolve. That all started long before, maybe with one simple step, probably a few falls. But in time those steps became more natural and in the long run led to a great leap in their evolution, a mass migration out of Africa, and that Homo race soon began to evolve into something much more than just a simple animal.

When once there had been multiple off-shoots and half-breeds, soon there would be only one. This sole survivor of Homo evolution was the class of Sapien, or the ‘Wise Man’, as other intelligent species would refer to them, and as minds expanded and intelligence grew, they became the race known as Mankind. But these intelligent apes didn’t arise in a world where they were allowed to carve out their own path unabated. No, not at all.

Planet Earth back then, about eighty to ninety thousand years ago, served as a battlefield plagued by mythical war. With the sapiens not yet molded into conquerors as they spread out of Africa, the genus of Erectus had only recently become extinct. Up north in the lands of modern day Europe and Russia, it was the races of Neanderthal and Denisovan respectively sharing the snow, while the species known as Wicca Urth ruled the land. That’s because these ever evolving races of ape always found themselves overshadowed by the warring clans of two species that had evolved on this Earth long before Humankind, or any other Homo offshoot, for that matter. And these two long evolved species would wage their war for control of the Earth, and sole dominion over these still evolving Hominid species.

One was an ancient form of predator species believed to be long extinct. ‘Locked away within the very fury they’d created’, according to ancient texts. That was the all so destructive race of Demonkind. The other was a much younger species in the eyes of time, one sent forth from the heavens long ago to protect all of Terra, or what most would call Earth, and they were the still evolving race of Wicca Urth Dawnicus, better known as witches.

Both had separate views of the apes… the demons wanting to wipe them out and the witches simply wishing to enslave them – for their own protection, of course. But neither gave any true care for what these early humans actually wished to make of themselves.

It wasn’t that they weren’t strong enough to do anything about their situation, no. But because of their lowered level of intelligence, still far too violent for multiple groups to coexist, regarded as ‘easily gathered’ and showing no signs of even being able to form a mass resistance, these evolved apes were viewed as an ideal slave race. Because of this, the young species of apes got caught in the middle of an ancient conflict long thought to have come to an end. History says that Witchkind had already defeated the demons, once long ago – ‘wiped from the face of existence’, as the ancient texts tell it. But these monsters had returned, awakening the sole defenders of the Earth once again.

The witches had only one purpose in life, a sole mission, and that was to protect the Earth, their Terra, at all costs. The demons, however, wished to drain the Earth of all its lifeblood in order to build their old empire anew. That’s why these witches could not stand for such conceit, such blatant disregard for the order of life. They would not allow any one species to dictate the laws of nature. Those laws remained in place for a reason, and the witches sought to keep the laws as such. And as the demons reemerged from the flames of extinction, the witches found themselves forced to rise up in the defense of their Terra once again, all in the name of peace.

* * *

Before we begin, just to make things clear, witches age in quite a different way than humans. So instead of jumping right in, I feel it only right to first explain the aging process and add a bit of detail to these not-so-fairy-tale creatures.

The witch will go through childhood much faster than a human, reaching youth-hood after only two or three human years. But once a witch reaches this ‘youth-hood’, that aging process slows dramatically. This is an evolutionary process known as Wicca-Anthro-Vos that the ancient witches made sure to set in place by training all the youth to wield magic at very young ages.

So while a human would measure his or her lifespan in years, the life of a witch can only be measured in millennia. And despite their striking similarities to modern day humans, witches are more closely related to the trees than the apes which climb within them. Witchkind’s life-energy is linked directly to the Earth itself, Terra as they call her… the eternal mother. And as legend tells it, Witchkind had been provided life for the sole purpose of protecting her. Now I could go on explaining about those first few years of Witchkind’s existence – back when they were mere pawns upon a battlefield – but that was a time when Demons and Angels and Titans and Gods still walked the Earth.

So to make a long story short, the Demon Race found themselves banished long ago from the physical realm. Yet the exact method of demise set forth by those witches of old never revealed itself in any of their ancient texts. This led many to believe this to be a spell so dangerous, meant to be so definitive, that no trace of its use was ever allowed to even pass onto the next generation.

No one knew for certain the truth of how that first conflict ended, none except those actually present when the demon’s banishment took place, of which there was no one left alive… at least none that were supposed to be. It had been many millennia, and the witches had been a young species then, but prevailed nonetheless. Yet ever since that time, despite the seemingly never-ending conflicts with the Vampire Race and the constant plagues of Sorcery, the Elders had deemed the Earth to be at peace. But that peace, as it so often does, would only last for too short a time.

Not only had the demons returned, but the most innocent of dangers was growing alongside the witches at this point in time, with the witches completely unknowing of the true horror that this still evolving race of sapiens would bring. But soon, all of those apes would have to fend for themselves, leaving the witches to face an all too familiar yet oh so forgotten threat.

The witches never knew it at the time, but this invasion all began with a young magus, better known as a summoner, a race nearly extinct. His name was Anyus, and he had not yet grown into his powers, having only recently learned of his ability to summon objects from the thin air. So one night, in a fit of rage after a horde of vampires had pillaged his village, alas, abracadabra style, the young magus summoned a demon by complete accident. Anyus found himself frozen with shock as this mythical beast stood before him, grinning as it began to laugh. That’s when Anyus found out that this was not just any demon he had summoned. No, he had summoned the Lord of the Demons himself, known only as Claiborne.

Now, this Demon Lord Claiborne stood as the most evil creation next to the King of Ragnarok, having done most of the unspeakable things often blamed on the king. And once Lord Claiborne had his feet upon the Earth’s soil once more, breathing in that all so disgusting carbon dioxide, the greedy beast went right to work gathering what were known as the Elysian Stones. Now these stones stood as no more than a mystery to most, with their true powers left hidden away by the fearful legend attached to them. That was because the only words attached to the stones told of their ability to destroy the whole of existence.

Ragnarok, the witches called it.

The term didn’t exist before the first demon conquest, but no doubt became feared ever since. The ‘end of the end’, as the ancient texts told it, ‘when the light and the dark align as one, birthing the death of all life’, whatever in fury that means. But this also stood for what the demons sought to bring about, and because of that, these words became forever connected to the Elysian Stone legend.

This legend stopped most from even trying to use the stones, and for any bold enough to ignore the legend there always remained a fearful soul or two there to stop them. But Claiborne sought these Elysian Stones out right away, as if he knew exactly what he had to do. The Demon Lord hoped to bring back his army from whatever fate the witches left them to all those millennia ago and bring about Ragnarok all by himself, indeed fulfilling the prophecy of the stones.

The result that came was something no one could anticipate.

Witches all across Terra were trying to make peace with the various ape races of the time, going about their daily lives with nothing at all to fear. Together, these races had finished ridding the land of Afrusha of all beasts deemed evil. The witches had left most of those Beast Purges to the hands of the sapiens, using these evolved apes as their own personal weapons of mass destruction. It was an experiment set forth by the High Elders of Witchkind to see how well this highly evolved ape race would serve them on the battlefield. The results, however, despite their success, only revealed how difficult the sapiens were to control. Also, after ending their last conflict with the vampires, the witches hadn’t seen or heard from the tyrannical race in many thousands of years. So, because of all this, they felt as if they had at last saved Terra from all negative forces.

Thus, most witches had already spread across Terra as they knew it – through the eastern continents of Asia, Africa and Europe – and created kingdoms alongside these early humans. The Elders, meanwhile, those who had taken on the responsibility of coordinating the future of an entire race, they rebuilt a massive castle near the north-eastern edge of the continent of Africa for them all to remain. While the rest of their kind spread out freely across the continents of Asia and Europe, these Elders remained to hold claim over what they considered the most sacred place in all of Terra.

Back then the witches knew Africa as Afrusha, which translated in ancient Wiccan to mean The Birthplace. This was because of the massive storms birthed off the coast, as well as the ape race of Man that had been evolving there for the last seven million years. Not only that, but there were also studies going on to find out if witches may have been birthed into creation somewhere on the continent. The truth of their origins had become a driving force behind many brilliant minds, and it could have played a part in why they chose its north-west cradle as the location to build their race anew.

The Elders had taken an old castle fortress left behind by some extinct race, redesigned it and turned it into Elder Castle. Built in the middle of one of the densest forests around, their beacon of hope was positioned along the northern tip of the unforgivable land of the current day desert known as the Sahara. A tremendous wall surrounded what essentially stood as a small city, with only one single gate to regulate all that entered and exited. The wall was enough to look at, but the castle itself loomed as quite a tremendous sight. Four large towers hung high above to mark the corners, with a point in the center, half as tall, poking up to peek out at the surrounding street below.

All of Witchkind felt safe for the first time in centuries, and most had nothing better to do than make sure that these early sapiens were learning how to treat the Earth in the proper way. Everything seemed perfect, maybe too perfect, with the entire world at peace… and that created a perfect time for everything to fall apart.

And that leads us to the focus of our journey back through time: the witches.

Our tale begins with a young wizard by the name of Palmisano – born of the clan Stonehaven, city of Stonehedge. He was over a half-million years of age – or as a witch would put it, about five-hundred ages. Each ‘age’ for Witchkind was the equivalent of approximately one ‘human year’, and they could live for easily a few thousand of them. His father died during a raid by a horde of sorcerers, serving as the first victim of what would turn into quite a horrible conflict. Nearly two weeks after that was when two Elders arrived – Arabi and Katrina – to take control of their struggle with the sorcerers, and that’s when this young wizard found his calling. His mother had raised him as best she could until he was old enough to join the elder’s version of a military – the Protectors of Terra. There the kindlefell would defend his home until he’d made a safe enough world for him to follow his heart away from it.

He had been up in the northern reaches of current day Asia at the time of the demon’s second rise, helping a small tribe of Denisovan build a new village in the proper way. He understood that this Earth, his Terra, would always provide what it took to survive… air, food, water… and in exchange for these things everyone must in turn give back to Terra and help her survive. The wizard was in the process of teaching these mortals the ways of the world, as witches all over were doing the same, when the Elders sent out their ‘mental call’ for all Protectors of Terra to report to Elder Castle right away.

The Elders had formed these ‘Protectors of Terra’ not long after the witch’s last war. Their creation was a way to bring together all those that were willing to stand up in defense of Witchkind, despite their respective brood’s affiliation. It was all a very new process – created by two of the younger Elders, Arabi and Katrina – and turned out to be quite a strange one. Even though the witches projected themselves as one firmly bonded race, in reality they traditionally found themselves split into many extremely separated broods and clans, with several that simply despised each other. But now those very same factions had come together trying to compensate for all their past failures.

So these Protectors of Terra soon became a collection of all the most powerful fighters of Witchkind, a group of over thirty-thousand strong. These fighters had defended the Earth several times already from very different foes, but never in such a coordinated effort. This was the first time that all these fighters were to assemble together in one place.

Palmisano hadn’t expecting such a call at such a peaceful time, but the voice bouncing around his brain sounded quite serious, and he expected that everyone would summoned together for nothing but a very good reason. The kindlefell walked over to his old friend Corrine, a witch he’d known for most of his life – the one he’d left home for – and told her that a call from the Elders was received. The witch had always recognized how great of a fighter Palmisano was, and that the arrival of this day was nothing but inevitable. And though she did not expect such a day to come so soon, she understood how important it must have been, and bid her should-be-lover farewell. She would miss him more than he would ever know.

After their lips parted for the first time, the young Palmisano strapped his staff across his back with a new swagger to his step, with Corrine making sure its hold was nice and tight as her fingers slipped from around his shoulder. Palmisano then walked off into the wooded area away from the growing city and gave her one last glance before closing his eyes. This was just as thousands of other witches, wizards and warlocks were doing the same all across the three continents at that precise time. He trusted that Corrine would teach the mortals well while he was away. He had no doubt in that. He knew that she didn’t want to treat the apes as the slaves they’d become. Instead, she would treat them as equals, understanding that this world was meant to be shared, not conquered.

Not all young witches thought in that way, which was why Palmisano thought so much of her. He only hoped that he would return to her swiftly, without any trouble. He too would miss her incredibly. But due to the circumstances that dragged the wizard away, his longing would forcibly give way to his will to survive. This would not be a battle, but a war. And forever altered would his path now be.

When Palmisano’s eyes opened back up, he found himself within a large room still filling with witches, appearing all around him every other second or so. Even though not all of these witches possessed the ability of teleportation, there was something about this castle that allowed them all the ability to teleport – or ‘blink’ – inside of it, and it alone. He looked around, trying to get a feel for it all, with this being his first trip inside the legendary Elder Castle.

Right away, he figured the room had to be some sort of meeting chamber because of its sheer size. It was circular, with stone-gray walls at least a hundred feet tall and lined with burning torches. The room rounded a large center piece, with at least forty feet separating it from the walls. At that center he saw a tall set of stairs, beginning as a narrow sliver before widening as the staircase led up to two large doors. And above those doors he noticed a central balcony where it seemed like more witches were gathering. Those witches, he suspected, had to