Once upon a time it was a dark and stormy night.

It was a night that lasted many hours, and days, and weeks, and years.

It was a dark and stormy time for an entire planet - a planet nestled somewhere in a solar system in the vastness of space.

On that planet, hunkered down as the storm clouds gathered and the thunderheads roiled the people of the many lands cowered in fear and confusion.

For theirs was a world turned upside down and inside out.

A world of warriors turned to jelly.

Of leaders whose grasp on reality had slipped into self service and personal aggrandizement.

It was a time when secret forces aligned with the dark had allied themselves with a race of scorpions - an insect-like heartless gathering of overlords whose dwelling places were caves beneath the earth.

History has recorded that time as the time of the Kovid.

The Kovid was an all-enveloping boogey-thing that scuttled out of the dank shadows to terrorize the populace.

It did so at the behest of those who thought of nothing but their own eminence, their pre-eminence, their mission as members of their own nest of vipers who must ensure that they and they alone might inherit the Earth.

And thus they plotted. And planned. And deceived. And smiled the smile of the fanged, their eye teeth glistening in the lightning flashes that permeated that dark and stormy time.

And so it was, once upon a time, in a dark and stormy night.

Which only lasted until from among those they accused and abused and winnowed like chaff arose their nemesis - the Few.

The Few had weathered the raging madness that cloaked their world in the darkest of times.

But having weathered, they had gained strength and purpose.

Though small in numbers, their numbers were greater than those of the rampaging scorpions, and where the stings of their suppressors had for a day and a week and a month and years burdened them with fear and doubt and sometimes despair, they found within themselves a core of purpose, a strength of mind, a growing cohesion that started as a gossamer thread then entwined itself with others of like mind.

As the warp and weft of their slow awakening became a tapestry of resistance, the scorpions began for the first time ever to feel a sense of unease which slowly but surely turned to doubt about their omnipotence and then to the stirrings of fear.

The end to the storm was sudden and swift.

The scorpions found themselves exposed to the light.

And the newly awakened warrior class, those who had in years prior been but humble spineless thoughtless selfish ignominious bumbling fools, were now a mighty force of knowledge.

And they pounced.

And destroyed the scorpions and all their minions.

And the clouds parted.

And the sun returned.

(c) 2022 Michael Knight

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