"Ah, there was," Fenrir agreed. "The dark elves and regular elves were segregated into one race. The Tabaxi were kept as pets who were commoned used as sexual toys. Worst of it, elders of the high-elves even ate them. Eventually, they were eventually bred to the point they were no more than humanoid cats that people ate or fucked."
"Are you freaking serious?" Cyril's mirth died away, replaced with pure disgust and shock. "The Tabaxi are my favorite race! How could they've done that!?"
"No one actually knew what your favorite race was, aside from Akyryss and I." Fenrir explained. "At this point, both of us were too busy dealing with the sudden influx of rising gods and demi-gods to care much about what the mortals were doing. After the terrasque had decimated the Errol Realm's army, everyone saw they weren't all they were chalked up to be. The land broke out into war everywhere."
And it was true. Glynii had finally gotten her elven revolt in the west, and Alistair joined her. If not for Glynii shielding him, Fenrir and Akyryss would've slain that man before he could've ever done what he'd done. It'd also been the reason why the Big Three had turned into the Big Two, though even that'd been falling into myth for a long time ago.
Fenrir looked to his mistress, his love, and found her silent and still. Her golden eyes narrowed with a slow simmering rage. He felt shame and guilt boil along with it. He and his "sister" had been given the express command to care for this world, and it all blew up in their face before she could ever come back. There was so much he would have done wrong. So much he had the choice to right, with the first was taking those bastard's heads before it ever got to that point.
But he hadn't, and the past was set in stone. Maddin had died and Edward was an insane lunatic - while silent for the past few hundred years - was hell-bent on murdering all the surviving races.
"So what happened to the rest...?" Cyril murmured.
"The last vestiges of the Tabaxi live on the satellite islands of Haven," Fenrir said. "Akyryss was able to save them before they were wiped out. She's been trying to rehabilitate them, but a few thousand years of enslavement and cruel breeding practices had devolved them into mere shadows of their former beauty."
They were no more than slinking pretty panthers that were in heat half the year. They had to be culled yearly, or they'd strip the islands bear. Even now, Akyryss had to import game animals to the islands to keep them healthy. The last report he'd gotten on them, two years ago before he'd gone hunting another rising god, was that one Tabaxi child had been successfully nurtured into a viable sample.
Bringing one or two Tabaxi that'd been bred well enough to be intelligent wasn't hard. The issue was they were quite primal, mentally five-year-olds in their adult ages stages. There'd been a few times they'd been able to raise a good specimen, but it'd been killed when it raped several female researchers. The Tabaxi hormones were something fierce after being used for sex toys for so long. They became insanely violent when not regularly "played with" throughout the day.
"I see..." Cyril said. "What about the other races?"
"The Arakocra similar, though they weren't kept as sex pets," Fenrir reported. "They were bred down to their base instincts. They were used in fighting pits and war. After the Errol Realm fell, they were forgotten and eventually became 'Griffins'."
The Arakocra were nearly hunted down to extinction. They escaped by hiding away in unreachable peaks or mountain passes. Eventually, they became populated enough, breeding with previous griffins and a few other flying beasts the become bigger and stronger. Now, they were menaces that even Akyryss didn't bother to try and rehabilitate. They were hunted down without a thought.
With their wings, they'd reached every corner of the world. They were ever problems for Edward's devils.
"Gnomes were killed off by the Dwarves," Fenrir changed the subject seeing Cyril's face grow darker. "It was a spat between their two kings, and unfortunately, the gnomes had neither the technology or strength to stand a chance. Their war ended two years after it started, with total genocide. Apparently, the Gnomes had been quite the thorn in the Dwarves' asses for a few generations. The high-elves were using them as engineers, mostly because they could create more elegant if weaker, versions of what the dwarves could do."
The two races' spats had been but a small bump in the history of this war. Neither of the races had many numbers behind them. They'd numbered less than a million put together, but that'd been by Errol's council's design. They were excellent tinkers, the gnomes. The Dwarves had been excellent smiths. Each played a role in Errol's war machine, but during that little war; they'd been more focused on trying to stamp out hundreds of wars raging across the continent.
It wasn't until the war was nearly over that Errol ever find out about it. Fenrir never did understand how a racial war, one that raged for nearly two years between their two most important vassals, had escaped them. They'd not been missed though, because Errol had been finished off a year after the Gnomes fell.
And so on it went, Fenrir recounted the casualties of their own World War. The Triton had stayed out of the war, and history. Keeping to their watery depths, they remained hostile to those above their seas and thus, were not considered a race at all but monsters. The Giants, for all their sweetness, had been enslaved and culled to the point that they were myths. Exiled to far northern reaches of Edward's lands.
The race never recovered from their bondage, and the last giant had died nearly fifty years go. Tundra, the Last Giant, had died of old age. Last of her kind and scared, though, Fenrir had been with her in her final moments. The four races had never taken a liking to the giants, only seeing them as tools of the high-elves and thus, had forever been hunted down until only Tundra had been left as a child along with her sister, Marble.
Marble had died at the hands of a Devil for not joining him, but Cao Hu had ended that one quickly. Tundra had lived the rest of her hundred years in a lonely and cold peace on the Northern Walrus Harbors.
And of that, Fenrir could no longer remember what other races had lived. Their populations had never risen beyond a high enough headcount to matter. Though, he knew that beyond the mentioned, they were hunted down. Maybe small pockets of these races still existed in some far corners of the world; like the Tabaxi.
But after Tundra, Fenrir no longer looked. He'd grown tired of his failure, and no longer looked to be reminded more than he needed. Akyryss had gotten her island, and dallied herself with that. He, however, roamed the lands and watched it grow. When the tale had been told, the sky had already darkened. The lanterns illuminated the street. Everything, but their balcony, basked in the warm orange light of candles
They left a handle full of single coins, more than enough to cover their bill; neither wanted to count it out. \Cyril no longer rode Fenrir and they walked side by side silently. The crowd slid around them all the same as beautiful music played over the cheery voices. Cyril did not share their joy.