The Zarden Crisis

"How am I still alive and… what happened to me after my attempted suicide...wait...I'm not dead, am I?" Harold asked tentatively as he looked around the vast grasslands and distant snowy mountains.

A look of worry was reflecting on his face, Zverius stared at Harold with a wide grin, which soon turned to a

smirk. Zverius patted Harold's back to pull him out of his bizzare thoughts, he then explained to Harold about

the events which occured before and after his attempted suicide.

Harold told them that he was awake since the 'crimson power' part which meant that he didn't listen about

the history of Zardens. Therefore, Zverius explained the whole history to Harold, which he had done to David and Henry. Harold keenly listened and tried his best to catch all the pieces of valuable knowledge which

Zverius threw at him.

After the tedious talk, Harold looked at the basket, which had some sandwiches, loafs of bread, fruits, carbonated drinks and bottles of...blood?! A tense look appeared on Harold's face and he couldn't help but

ask in a raspy voice as he averted his gaze from the basket to Zverius who was yawning in content.

"Your kin eats humans, don't they?"

Zverius looked at Harold with a dumbfounded expression, no actually everyone looked at Harold with the same expression.

After a few moments of awkward silence which felt like eternity David sighed in exasperation and asked with a

deep frown.

After a few moments of awkward silence which felt like eternity David sighed in exasperation and asked with a

deep frown.

"I don't intend to ridicule you but...how can you be so fucking dumb?"

"I believe that Zverius mentioned in his explanation that the root cause of the animosity between humans and Zardens was due to the fact that Zardens consume human flesh."

Henry said with a cold expression on his countenance, he clearly showed his intolerance for stupidity. However, before anyone else could say anything Harold voiced his question but this time changing the subject of it.

"I'm sorry...I'm not good with words, I wanted to ask that how did you got the access of this much blood?"

"We got this blood from the refrigerated storage of Klington civil hospital."

Cerebius shrugged nonchalantly and answered Harold's question, but Harold wasn't satisfied with this answer, he frowned and asked curiously:

"Doesn't that make you all criminals who stole blood from a hospital?"

Hearing this, a deep scowl appeared on the face of the Prince of Devotion, he glared at Harold and said:

"If we weren't reincarnated then you humans would have been brutally massacred by the Prince of Calamities and his lowly allies, you brat and the rest of the humanity should bow your heads and show gratitude for our benevolence and generosity!"

Harold paled as Klubius yelled at him furiously, as Zverius saw this he gazed at Klubius with a somber expression and gestured him to shut up.

The Prince of Devotion flinched and looked away, trying not to make eye contact with Zverius. Zverius turned towards Harold and, with an apologetic smile, he said:

"I know that what we've done isn't a good deed but we strictly needed human blood to replenish our strength. Of course, we aren't freeloaders so we will definitely save humanity from the upcoming ordeals at the cost of some human blood. That's why I

hope you three pardon our actions."

David looked at Zverius with a neutral expression, he didn't care at all about their actions. He didn't bother himself with these type of things, what Zverius and his comrades did was out of necessity, besides there was no single day when desperate beings refrained themselves from stealing. Harold couldn't empathize with them because he always got what he wanted and needed. Most of his classmates were from a financially strong background, so they wouldn't understand either. David was an orphan so he obviously could relate, his parents were in a line of work where death was very common. They died and left David in this accursed world with a younger brother whom he had to raise. So there were many instances where he stole bread from bakery, vegetables from vegetable shop, pork or mutton from butcher. It was due to his wit which saved him from being detained in juvenile detention centre. Life wasn't easy for him. As David was in reverie, Harold shook his head and questioned:

"It's alright but how long can you three remain in peak condition without human blood?"

Zverius and Cerebius looked at each

other then said synchronously.

"Six to eight months."

"That's good, so we don't have to bother ourselves with this."

David stopped pondering about the past and was brought back to reality by Harold's question and voiced his thought after the answer. Silence was followed after his statement but it was broken by Zverius when he suggested that as everyone was on the same page so he should start to share his knowledge about Evyrynes and their history, everybody agreed, and so Zverius began to reveal the knowledge he possessed.

"Before we jump into this...let me explain something which act as a pretext to our main topic. David, Henry and Harold don't know about this so I suppose it's necessary for them to be familiar with both of the libraries. What do you think, Cerebius and Klubius?" Both of them nodded without any delay.

'Libraries? God stored their knowledge in the form of books? I never expected god to be a nerd' David thought amusingly without letting a smile appear on his stern facial expression. After the agreement of Cerebius and Klubius, Zverius continued: "This world was never created for the first time and never destroyed for the last time. It has existed since the beginning or should I say that it will exist till the end?

There are numerous folktales about a river of time, it's said that if we go upstream in it then we'll go back in the time. I don't know whether it's true or not but I know that this world was always present no matter the time or era. This knowledge is given in the runic books which are present in two otherworldly libraries named Library of Benevolence and Library of Malevolence. Even though I don't know about the creation of this world or who created it but I know who created these libraries. There is an immense amount of knowledge in those runic books present in both of the libraries. Some content is similar whereas some content is different. Mostly the two libraries possess books regarding crimson energy, crimson powers, dark crimson energy, history of the world, crimson science, Evyrynes etcetera.

There are also some books on the life of god and their journey and how both of the libraries function. There is so much knowledge that the long lifespan of Zardens which is about ten to twelve thousand years, is not enough to glean it. The Library of Benevolence was created by the god whose named Yuzard and the creator of the Library of Malevolence was a devil, whose powers, wisdom and authority was equal to the god.

The devil's name was Lykuv. Both of the entities were omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent beings. Whenever they clashed, several galaxies were erased from existence, destroyed. They battled with each other

for several eons causing series of extremely devastating catastrophes. However, after fighting for such an absurdly long period they grew tired of fighting and decided to cast off their grudges and create a world where they could live for eternity, in peace and tranquility.Basically, they thought that instead of fighting with each other they should create a living world and just enjoy the spectacle of wars between the feeble mortals.

Yuzard and Lykuv created this world which resulted in the loss of their omnipotence, they created this library because they believed that knowledge was a heavy burden, so they decided to create their own respective libraries due to which they lost their omniscience. They enjoyed the futile struggles of mortals. Yuzards felt

pleased when a mortal committed good deeds and fought valiantly on the battlefield. Whereas, Lykuv craved for violence, torture, despair, sorrow and all the negative events which occured in the world. Yuzard and Lykuv relished this world but some eons later Lykuv started to find this world boring, he thought that it lacked many evil things so he... without consulting Yuzard created Zardens which were equally smart to humans and he intentionally created them human eating for the sake of his fun. Soon Yuzard observed some devil like creatures hunting and eating humans which were not to his liking because the most interesting beings which were supposed to be the strongest being in this world were being devoured by these pesky devils.

Yuzard vowed to obliterate these Zardens and he almost did it too in couple of minutes but Lykus stopped him as he was about kill some last hundred Zardens which remained. Lykus persuaded Yuzard to believe that Zardens were necessary to keep humans in check but Yuzard refused to believe it and declared that Zardens were vile and destructive creatures which would spell the doom of their world if they let them be so it was logical to get rid of them. Both Lykus and Yuzard were dead set on their beliefs which led to a catastrophic clash between the entities after several eons of peace. They clashed in a void in order to not destroy their world.

They sacrificed their omnipresence in order to regain a quarter of their powers when they were omnipotent and then they clashed for seven eons but neither of them won instead they weakened and slowly began to turn into an unstable Evyryne form. However, this time they didn't turn into nothingness but something different happened. Yuzard who was the god, got his soul corrupted and broke into several fragments of consciousness which entered into the runes of cursed spells present in the books of the Library of Malevolence. Whereas, Lykuv's soul got purified and also broke into several fragments of consciousness which entered into the runes of divine spells present in the Library of Benevolence.

However, before this happened both of them made sure to pass on some of their powers, blessings and curses to humans and Zardens. They also had some servants under them, which now run the libraries of their masters respectively. You guys do remember the six heavenly elemental emperors, right? Those were actually created by Yuzard just before his death in order to protect humanity from Zardens who were already using

crimson energy."

As Zverius completed his explanation...he noticed that Harold's head was spinning and he was about to faint due to information overload!.

To be continued...