Darling Mine

Welcome (The King)

In every corner of every continent, it is an established fact that predators outrank their prey. The stronger feed off of the weak. This had been the case for millennia. For every species but one.

Since humanity emerged we had been hiding in the shadows. Watching our prey from the safety of the unknown depths. We watched as they discovered farming, and built civilisations. We watched as they waged wars and spread across the planet. We watched and we fed.

It was impossible to stay hidden entirely from that which we hunted, so myths became the new forest of our existence. Our sanctuary from the curious.

But why should we, the gold in the rust, the wheat in the chaff, be forced to subjugate ourselves to our prey? Why should that which is inherently weaker than us grow fat in excess while we starve away from their preying eyes?

This question sat with me for the longest time. Burned itself into the depths of my brain until every breath, every mouthful of blood I took from those creatures was tainted with the thought. The anger at the injustice. I knew, I knew we were the greater species. We deserved power. We deserved freedom.

So began the long wait. Waiting for the time to strike. The time when victory would be sure to fall on us, the worthy. The hunters. The powerful. And as any predator knows, patience is key to success. Only when your prey is no longer searching for your advance can you strike. Only when their eyes are filmed with safety and plenty will the kill be in your hands. So I, and every other noble member of this great species, waited. Watched once more. But now in the long depths of night, when the ice burns up your bones as the world falls away into frost and shadow, we have something to comfort ourselves with. Something to ease the ache, the hunger for our greatness. For the life that we deserved.

That time did come. Just as the wolf catches the dear, just as flames consume the hall and ruin runs through the streets of empires the time came for the fall of humanity. They who had grown confident in their might, arrogant in their plenty were torn down from their self-proclaimed pedestals and learnt what it was to suffer underfoot. To choke on the dust of your own ruin. How we relished in that time. Never had we known a time of more plenty than then. The ground ran red for a century.

Until those insufferable wretches thought that they might be greater than us. Mighty in some way. That was a fight most pleasurable. For I knew they would never truly rise again. There is no greater joy in this world than to see the old masters trapped in self-forged chains. And now they were those few children, creatures that they were who sought glory? Let them know in their dying breaths that this, the riches of the world, will never be theirs again.