Yuriko's eyes widened briefly, a rare flicker of surprise crossing her normally composed face.
These creatures, the dryads standing before her, were once the remnants of two ancient, fallen civilizations—the Solar Children and the Greenwardens.
Once proud and powerful, their bloodlines had mixed over millennia, twisting them into the inbred forms they now inhabited.
Their existence was a just another curse of the time's cruelty.
It had been Yuriko—at least, in one of her past incarnations—who saved them from extinction hundreds of millions of years ago.
Their civilizations had been wiped out, their creators abandoning them to their fate.
It was only through her intervention that they had been spared.
But now, the cause of their rage had nothing to do with the past.
For the last few years, these dryads had been hunted, slaughtered mercilessly by an alien species.
