Death, Devotion, Dissonance

Evin pondered upon the teacher\'s words. There were twelve countries originally, so it must\'ve taken a lot of blood to dwindle this number to four.

"The very first problem the countries decided to solve after the Empress left them to their devices was to establish hierarchy among the countries. At that time, the concept of magic was a budding one, so no one in the world could achieve something worthwhile with it. Perhaps they thought it only good for tricks and amusement, not for war and conquest."

"So it wasn\'t a surprise when the Colossi with their insurmountable strength, the Myrmis with their unending numbers and the Dragonshifters who were born as half dragons quickly established themselves as the ruling races. The humans were quickly pushed down the hierarchy along the Ivari, the horned ones, and the Layeq, the untouchable ones."

It was ironic to think that the ruling races of now stood at the bottom 15 centuries ago. Evin found himself wondering how these three races managed to survive and thrive during those trying times. It was definitely possible for entire races to be culled or annihilated entirely, since already, two of the Twelve Races managed to die out.

Evin listened on with interest, wondering why other students would find this boring.

At first there wasn\'t much friction between the various sides. The most aggressive of all the races were of course, the Myrmis. They had many members born of their queen and it was hard for them to feed them all so they were the ones who needed land to farm and collect food for themselves. Eventually, this need of theirs triumphed over their fears of breaking the balance that the Empress set and the soldier Myrmis marched towards the lands of humans in the year 16.

Some people wonder why the Myrmis decided to attack the humans who were much harder to reach, than the Layeq or the Ivari, which were relatively easy to invade. This was because humans of that time lived more comfortably compared to the two. The Layeq lived in the Oases of the Eastern Deserts, which wasn\'t enough to feed the Myrmis; and the Ivari lived in the cold climates of the north, which wasn\'t suitable for the Myrmis to live in.

In any case, the humans fled westward, seeking asylum from the Dragonshifters, offering to become their vassal country. To the humans of the time, it was the only method they could choose, as it was too dangerous for them to stay alone. The Myrmis settled themselves in the lands they managed to conquer, and mostly ignore the condemning messages sent towards their way. Like this, some time passed, before the Myrmis started to become needy once more.

Their queen at the time, Queen Regalia, followed her natural instincts of creating as much offspring as possible, without worrying about whether it was sustainable or not. This doomed them to a kill or die lifestyle, which definitely didn\'t sit well with the other races.

When the Myrmis attacked the Ivari to the North, they were once again met with the intervention of the Dragonshifters. Along with the humans, these three races created the first Alliance of races. The Myrmis knowing they wouldn\'t be able to match them, set their sights southwards, towards the Skinshifters. But the Skinshifters had become allies with the Colossi and Undines further beyond.

Very quickly, the Myrmis found themselves in a terrible situation. They had offended all of their neighbors and they had no ally to speak of. In fit of desperation, they charged towards the Skinshifters\' territory, despite their powerful allies. They had more chance against the Colossi, rather than the Dragonshifters, as while the colossi were huge and powerful, they weren\'t coated in hard scales like the Dragonshifters.

A bloody war ensued, between the two forces and miraculously, the Myrmis were winning. To kill one Colossi, two dozen soldier Myrmis had to die, but the Myrmis could pay this price. Individual power could not overcome the power of numbers and this the Myrmis managed to snatch almost two thirds of the land originally allocated to the Skinshifters.

This fact unsettled the other Races deeply and in fear of one day getting invaded by the Myrmis, the Griffins, the Cobfolk and the Chaos people attacked them from behind. Practically all their worker Myrmis were slaughtered and the Myrmi Queen Regalia was forced to flee to the South-west.

The Myrmis\' situation could not have been worse. They found themselves in a hostile relationship with nine out of the twelve races. Quickly, they killed their way towards the Westmost corner of Alvox, leaving almost everything behind, and started barricading themselves underground.

People believed that the nine races would mount an attack on this last bastion of Myrmis to wipe them out completely, but for whatever reason, they didn\'t bother to push their advantage further. And around this time, Queen Regalia passed away due to overexertion and was replaced by Queen Serenity. This was in the year 41. The second queen of the Myrmis was much more discreet in her conduct. She purposefully suppressed her urge to create more offspring and started teaching them to act more docilely, to not offend her previous enemies further.

With the threat of Myrmis gone from the land, the Empire enjoyed a brief period of peace. It was quickly replaced by the tensions rising between the three giant alliances: the Dragon-Human-Ivari alliance, the Griffin-Cobfolk-Chaos Alliance, and the Colossi-Undine-Skinshifter alliance. For the next 30 years, many small skirmishes started to occur between the three forces, but no one wanted to commit their everything on one enemy, in fear of getting pincered by the third side.

The situation between the great alliances was a stalemate, but the Hivemind and the Layeq were enjoying the peacefulness of solitariness. The Layeq\'s Oases were surrounded by deadly deserts so sending soldiers towards it was too difficult to achieve, while the Hivemind\'s land was located beyond that great desert, on the very North-Eastern corner of Alvox, so it was even more impossible to reach for the alliances.

According to the Historians from modern day East, the Layeqs were busy with infrastructure and food during the first century, while the Hivemind was mostly preoccupied with magic. Naturally, they didn\'t wish to involve themselves with the mess that was happening on the other side of the desert.

The three alliances were relatively equal in strength, but the 1st alliance was slightly weaker than the other two, due to the humans and Ivari being mostly useless in combat. But this weakness was quickly being amended, as the research on magic and the Worlds started to become much more sophisticated.

And eventually, on the year 89, magic was first used in combat. It was a battle between an army of humans and an army of Chaos people. But the human army now had a division of mages, who were ordered to shoot giant rock slabs towards their enemies. It was a gigantic failure. The giant rocks were scary to look at, but none of them hit their targets and one of them almost fell on their own troops due to one of the mages losing focus during the spellcasting.

But it was a beginning and the spectators had to wonder what would happen if these giant projectiles could actually hit their targets.

The skirmishes between the three Alliances lessened greatly, with each side focusing on the new topic.

But this silence was soon shattered by another mind-boggling news. The Hivemind was obliterated from the face of Alvox.