THE END / THE SAGA OF THE METEOR SNAKE (Guardians of Nature #13)

These four artworks of mine tell a saga billions of years old, concluding the Guardians of Nature series. A story that has repeated itself again and again and again, but always seems to end in a similar way. This is a tale of Life's ultimate triumph against Death every few hundred million years. Of a Dark God's constant attempts to destroy all life and bring about entropy, only for Life to continue persisting and struggling in spite of what seems inevitable. Of humanity's double folly, both in destroying the environment, then summoning Extinction itself in a last ditch attempt to reclaim sovereignty over planet Earth, failing to learn the lessons of 200 years prior. The Meteor Snake had been the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, having failed to destroy all life on Earth the previous four times by sending one of his then three knights to kill everything on his behalf (and usher extinction events via ice ages, poison/anoxia, volcanism, climate change, etc). When he landed on Earth, however, he was slain by the Guardians and dismembered, but not before creating a tiny spawn of himself that would eventually come back to revive its fallen master-- the False Prophet. Seeing his master fall, the Prophet plotted to bring down the Guardians and annihilate all life for 65 million years, but was too weak to act in his current state. So the Prophet, the Deceiver, bided his time, and waited for the perfect moment to strike. He found it when Pabuntu and Mabuntu had created humanity. He led us astray 10,000 years ago, and had us destroy the environment through civilization on his behalf. But the Guardians acted to stop the Prophet just before his goals could be realized, forcing the Prophet to once again go into hiding and plot his next move. He waited for the Guardians to grow complacent, and re-emerged 200 years after the Fall of Man and the collapse of industrial civilization, channeling humanity's resentment and anger against the Guardians for his own benefit. He declared himself Emperor of the World-- Rex Mundi, the Last Caesar, and manipulated humanity into serving him, falsely promising he would reclaim the Earth for humanity. He ordered humanity create prosthetic limbs for him, and taught them the ways of industry and technology. He traveled to the US-Canada border, where he summoned the Dark God, his Master, who emerged a decomposed petroleum shell of his former self. Having completed the first part of his plan, the Prophet then bid humanity construct for him a concrete throne and a great city from which to rule. His capital would sit atop the ruins of New York City, widely heralded as the so called "capital" of the world, from which the Prophet would rule as absolute Emperor over a new Roman Empire-- a global regime powerful enough to finally destroy the Guardians. By this point the Guardians had already taken notice of the Prophet, and declared war on him and the Meteor Snake. In response, the Meteor Snake created the Four Knights of Destruction, Gemorah, Dendread, Smoldr, and Borgoth, to walk the Earth and kill the Guardians. Each time they murdered a Guardian, the species they ruled over immediately perished and went extinct. Eventually, the knights killed Pabuntu and Mabuntu, but by the time humanity realized they had been deceived, it was too late. Humanity went extinct alongside all the other Guardians, except for Cytos. Furious and pained at the death of her children, Cytos adapted and evolved into a silicon-based life form, and battled the Meteor Snake and his followers, resisting his every attempt to kill her, no matter how extreme his measures. Cytos destroyed the God of Extinction, and afterwards healed the world, and rebirthed life into it-- life that would be far more resilient to the Dark God's future attempts to commit omnicide upon his eventual, and inevitable return.