Many, many years ago, it became obvious that Earth would not survive, for humanity had poisoned it for too long, and there was no way to return it to a habitable state. So, in man's tradition, they turned to science. Having exhausted the means by which to return their planet to life, the humans turned to other planets. While the resources on the Old World were exhausted, there were, out there, countless planets, full of life and resources. And they were ripe for the taking, if only they could reach them.

Some turned to generation ships, exhausting all their money, and that of countless others, and took to the stars, knowing not they, nor their children, nor their children's children's children's children would reach the destination. But someday their descendants would. And until then, there was hope that it would still be there.

Others pushed the envelopes of engineering. They terraformed Mars, but it would soon be obvious that the population possible there was limited. Only a few hundred thousand could live on the planet without destroying it as they had Earth.

Still more pushed towards stellar drives. Bending space/time, they skittered across the folds in the strings that held together the universe, seeking out new planets on which they could survive. Manned missions followed soon after the probes, and the probable homeworlds were reported to Earth, centuries later when the missions returned.

By then, Earth was in its final centuries. It was dying, despite the drastically reduced population, and the skyscrapers were being torn down to accomodate the huge steel structures that would dominate the orbit for the next ten years until they were finished.

And then, the day came. To various outposts, successful generation colonies and earlier experimental settlements and spacestations, the ships departed, evacuating their dying planet, leaving it to the hands of the Martians.

The ships departed for every corner of the galaxy, and sometimes beyond. It was bitter-sweet, but the spacefarers were full of hope.

Among these, science officer Tirival Hend, who had been one of the explorers to chart out the huge world orbiting the blue-hot sun. Despite the changes in gravity and the heat of its sun, it was far enough away that it duplicated most of Earth's conditions. The atmosphere was thick enough to block most of the radiation, though it was too thick to properly hear, and they would have to administer gene therapy to ensure their first generation would not have to continuously accomodate themselves through surgery, as they would need to have done to them.

They set out the robots to seed the planet with vegetation. From there, they would populate the planet with life they could digest. The native species were timorous, but most appeared too scrawny to support them without destroying the ecosystem entirely. This way, there was some hope that the balance could be returned after several generations. As it was, they were going to have to be very careful the first few decades.

Unfortunately, the robots began to malfunction. It was decided the only way they could possibly succeed in gaining a foothold was to repair them. Tirival Hend and another scientist were sent down to the surface of the planet. And there, they were not welcomed warmly.

Every planet has a Soul. It pulses in accordance to every life force that it maintains. The mass of these souls is its own Soul. And each planet has a piece of its Soul as a Keeper. And this Keeper sensed the old Soul of Earth on these men, and he did not like it.

He killed them, took the body of Tirival Hend as his own, and returned to their ship, telling them to leave.

But they would not leave. They would not go. This new Tirival, this new Hend, he schemed, this Keeper of the World. He would not lose his World. He would keep it and protect it the only way he knew how. For as a human, he now thought as a human should think. So. He slowly, quietly, unobtrusively, took over.

He bent their society, shaped it to his will.

And in his blindness, began to kill his World.

Fate conspired to save it, in the form of a dragon. But Tirival Hend discovered this egg, kept safe by the native Gehenians, the tiny sentient creatures borne of magic and roses and reincarnation. He panicked, knowing that it was not native to his World. He panicked, and he sealed it off, stopping its development as soon as he could. He could not bring himself to kill it, for to kill by his own hands was unforgiveable, and he would have destroyed his World and himself. And he still loved it too much to sacrifice that much.

The years, however, were not kind to World or to Tirival Hend and his pet culture of human-descendant citizens. He kept them stupid, as a shepherd keeps his sheep. He allowed them, through bureaucracy, to know what he wanted them to know. To think the way he wanted them to think.

And all the while, the Soul of his beloved World was crippling. The Gehenians, closer to the Soul than any other creatures on the planet, began to change as a result of the evil that sprang from Hend's best intentions and panic. The little dragon egg felt this, began to lose hope, began to despair.

And as the evil became too much for the Soul of World to abide, it reached out and touched its Keeper. It inspired in him a certain lonliness. And from his own DNA, mixed with others at random, a little girl was cultured.

She grew, accepting the state of things as it was. She was smart, though. Too smart for her own good. She loved the Old Books, of which Tirival Hend had many. She delighted in poems and literature, but she had a head for numbers and science, as well. She left school early, finishing what took normally until a child was eighteen by the time she was fourteen.

And from there, she petitioned to enter the bloodsport circuit, knowing there was nothing that could challenge her in the intellectual fields.

And she became World's greatest hope, prophesized by the Gehenians, and held safely only for so long, before fate's hold on Tirival Hend was shaken loose, and he began to see in his own daughter the destruction of his beloved World.