Author's Note

This story is written by @jae5086, one half of the Scratched and Burnt team, as part of the Xpilar Writing Competition. The plan is to make every subsequent challenge entered a new chapter in an ongoing story. Obviously there is no way to know what the next picture will be so this is a very fluid, unplanned thing. We'll call it a challenge inside a challenge. So meta!

Now, on with the show. We hope you enjoy!

Credit - @xpilar

Chapter 2: Fate Mismanaged

Large dust devils crackled and twisted across the barren landscape, leaving drag marks in their wake like the wandering paths of large snakes once roaming the surface only to retreat, out of sight, to the constrained depths below. Winds raged in some parts of the world with such fury that dust and sand was blown into a blanket that enveloped whole regions. Fire charred and cooked parts of the planet leaving it cracked and blackened like charcoal, toxic smoke and ash spewing forth from the ground. Few of the building blocks of life could be found and little water remained.

It was a cruel and inhospitable world, but it had not always been that way. Once, there was geological diversity.

Mountain ranges sprawled across the land boasting a colorful gradient as flora gave way to rock, which was then covered by pure white snow as the peaks climbed ever high, eventually breaking through wisps of cloud. Canyons cut deep, carved over eons and separating lands, hiding still others in the winding caves that branched out from the basin like tributaries dark and unseen to the world above.

Water slithered across the land, draining from mountain tops and melting from polar ice to gather in streams, grow into rivers and collect as ponds, lakes and large oceans. The water, baked by the solar energy of the planet's host star, evaporated and condensed into clouds to eventually raining back down to the ground. This lead to life; rich and diverse.

Plants grew, soaking in the water and absorbing rich nutrients from the soil. This lead to more intelligent forms of life. Tiny, single celled organisms feasted on the decay of plant matter and, in turn, provided food for multi-cellular organisms. Over time, many more complex forms of life would emerge. From small mammalian creatures to the largest of predators, a balance was achieved, while imperfect. Everything living in harmony...as much, at least, as the circle of life would allow for.

That was a long time ago. Life would continue to evolve. Species would adapt and grow smarter. They would need to feed to survive. Then they would need more.

A satellite slowly trekked across the sky above the now desolate and decrepit planet, lite both by sunlight and unnatural light. Metal structures protruded from the rock, an abomination of nature. Life now found a way to survive on what once was simply a small moon, but now the last bastion of the smartest beings to inhabit the defunct planet they so long ago called home.

Looking down on the lost world of their ancestors, they might wonder if they could have avoided this fate, clinging to life as resources dwindled and desperately waiting to see if a plan many generations in the making could spare them from what seemed an inevitable and inglorious end of their own making. Could, long ago, those that came before have used their burgeoning intellect responsibly and with foresight, instead of for immediate gain?

The first life to attain superior and intimate knowledge of their world and how to wield it to their benefit, it was their proclivity to advance as quickly as possible towards a better future for their own. As their understanding grew, so did their technologies, but as their technologies outpaced their understanding it started to become clear there were consequences to their growth. Advancements, and the luxuries afforded by them, however, are addictive, and few were willing to part with them even as the seductive dangers became increasingly clear.

They had conquered all challenges before, paving over them with roads or building grand structures atop them. Their world, in their eyes, had become a monument to their achievements and the challenges that remained could be conquered as well. New challenges would be met by new technology and the pattern would continue as they looked away from their home and dreamt of new homes. The crisis' of today would be met and solved eventually as it always had been, as it always would be. As the consequences of their rapid expansion became increasingly evident, conviction in their dominion over their world would only strengthen. How couldn't it.

History of success and the luxuries that success afforded breed complacence. Eventually, as generation after generation learned to deal with the ever changing world around them, the difficulty of the tasks presented them by those that came before would require more effort...more input. Luxury gave way to necessity. Hope dwindled as the world they once proudly lorded over rebelled. Crops slowly failed. Water slowly vanished. Balance had long been lost and the planet that had hosted them for so long became twisted and hostile, acting out in a sort of madness as storms grew more powerful, battering and, eventually toppling, their mightiest works.

Like feudal lords they grew fat on their lands but left nothing and now, they no longer looked at themselves as conquerors of their domain. They had become refuges, but they still looked to the stars. Now, those that remained of a once too proud people gazed down upon the world they abandoned...that had abandoned them. They silently said goodbye to all they had known and to all they destroyed.

Several spacecrafts, much smaller than the moon they had perverter into their ark, lite up as engines were thrust to action. Light distorted through space around them but not like a prism. It bubbled and reflected the monstrosity of metal and rock, the only home they had known as the planet below had long regained its independence by rejecting the experiment that was life. They would now hope to survive a new journey in search of a new land that would host them.

---

Chapters

Chapter 1: They Came From The Deep of Space