I just dug up something I wrote a few months ago. It's a real shorty but I think it's one of my best, so I thought I'd give you guys a look-see!
The Firsts
They called themselves the Firstborn.
To the rest of the Galaxy, they were the Makers, the God-like beings who traveled amongst a sea of stars in the search for intelligence.
Their eyes fell on one small planet, a planet of roaring seas and rocky mountains. Within this planetary cradle, a race with incomparable intelligence dwelled. They were Humanity.
So the Makers came, in their glittering world-ships of steel. Humanity revered them as living gods, though they were still trapped in their prisons of flesh and blood. To Humanity they brought what they considered the Galaxy’s greatest gift, knowledge. Within a few centuries, Humanity escaped their planetary prison and became a space-faring race.
Years passed, the Makers still planted the seed of knowledge amongst Humanity until it came time for them to depart. The Galaxy had one hundred billion suns and there was so much to do in this cosmic ocean.
So the Makers went, leaving Humanity to its own devices. As the centuries passed, the memory of the Makers faded in Humanity’s racial memory until they became far-off gods, revered as the creators of human intelligence. Humanity began to discover new technologies. Far-off suns that were before unreachable became accessible through hyperspatial technology.
A Human empire began to spread across the Galaxy, bent on becoming the Galactic Empire. Emperors rose and fell but the Empire stayed stable. The Galaxy was still a melting pot of intelligences, both human and non-human when the Human Empire was formed. But Humanity rolled outwards faster than any of the other races could have thought and soon Humanity became the sole race of the Galaxy.
Except for the Makers. They still watched the experiment that their ancestors had begun eons ago. In the beginning they had not been immortal. But it had been a long time since they had dwelled in flesh. They had transferred their souls to new homes of steel. Now they soared the Galaxy freely, no longer fearing the ever-present eventuality of death. They looked upon the experiment with disgust. Humanity had wiped out every other intelligence that their race had labored to produce. They decided that Humanity had to be destroyed.
So the Makers became the Unmakers.
Humanity saw this new threat to the regime that they held for thousands of years, so begun the Unmaking War. Both sides in this war possessed the technology for weapons of war from their ancestors. But the Unmakers began to overcome the Human Empire and struck at their very heart. In the very beginning of the war, the Human Empire’s capital planet burned, and so human morale was mortally wounded.
The war ravaged the entire Empire. Humans began to find that in an ironic twist of fate, their race was being wiped out. The Unmakers reaped the benefits of their conquests and sought to establish new intelligences to participate in the Unmaking War. Humanity was pushed to the very brink of extinction when the Unmakers had a change of heart brought on by nostalgia for the very old days when the Unmakers were free, the sailors of a million suns, respecting and fostering life where it existed.
So Humanity’s eye fell on an outer planet, unknown until the time when it was vital to the survival of their race. So the last few hundred of Humanity landed on the planet. Then suddenly the Unmakers struck with one final cruelty. Across the Galaxy they erased every bit of evidence that the Human Empire had existed and destroyed the technology and recordings of knowledge that the surviving human colonists had had. So Humanity once again became trapped in a planetary cradle. Without aid from the ancient Makers, they were forced to find their own way in knowledge, trapped on that planet until they were worthy enough to once again venture out and find their destiny among the stars.
The Unmakers still exist, still watch over the experiments of their ancestors. No longer are they encased in metal, now they exist as pure energy, free to roam the Universe forever. On a small blue planet in the outer spiral of the Galaxy, a race once again flourishes but is still trapped in their planetary cradle. They are not worthy yet. They have forgotten the history of their once great Empire and believe themselves to be native to their prison. This is the prison that they consider a paradise or a purgatory. Sometimes they wonder if they are alone, the Makers forgotten. They look outwards towards the silent Galaxy, struggling to find the answers. They know not of their prison, which they call home.
They call this prison Earth.