‘Hmm… Why would they build so many robots if they were so strong evolutionarily?’
‘Why ask that? Seems pretty simple to me.’ Luna questioned.
‘Go on.’
‘If there are so few of them, then maybe they need extra hands to build such cool things as this.’ Luna analyzed, switching her mindset into a more thoughtful attitude. ; a stark contrast to her usual peppy personality.
Kain was slightly taken aback, but quickly recovered, saying, ‘Well the only thing I could think of that would limit their population size would be death or low birth rate. So you think that they made robots to counter their low birth rate?’ Kain asked, surprised by both Luna’s insight and his inability to think of the idea himself. He was beginning to feel very useless on this adventure, as Luna had been pulling most of the weight.
‘Maybe. We’ll see when we move on, right big brother?’ Luna asked happily.
‘Yeah, we can only continue.’ Kain took one final glance at the picture, looking at the happy family. He noticed that the background was the very tower they were exploring, albeit in much better condition. A sudden pang of sadness shot through his chest. He had been dissociating the blood that painted the tower from any sentient creature almost unconsciously. Now looking at a picture of a family that seemed happy made him remember how all of their stories ended; they did not end with a peaceful death, but one of blood, steel, and fear. Kain was becoming melancholic, so he quickly left the room, guided by Luna’s floating flames.
The two exited into the hallway and began to walk to their right. They walked for a few minutes, seeing the giant bedrooms lining the halls. They eventually took a turn at the end of the hallway to see more rows of bedrooms. At the end of that hallway, the same scene met their eyes. Kain and Luna were both becoming a bit impatient to see the same thing again and again, so when the next hallway had a double door at the end, they were very relieved. Kain had roughly estimated the amount of rooms that they had passed and spoke to Luna, ‘I think you were right about the low population of these creatures. I have only seen a few hundred rooms in this whole first level. Assuming that this place was meant to be more than just an outpost, they would have a very low amount of people for anything more than just a small settlement.’
Luna replied, ‘But that raises another question, doesn’t it?’
Kain smirked seeing Luna so confident, ‘Yeah, it does. There were actually relatively few sets of armor out there, so what were the rest of them doing in here if not out there fighting? They obviously had a purpose, so what was it?’ Kain finished his train of thought only to see Luna pouting on his shoulder.
‘I was gonna say that…’
He laughed and stroked her head, lightening her mood a bit. When done, he pushed the giant metal doors in front of him with the help of his energy. Behind the doors, the scene was quite grand. A giant grand staircase climbing to the second floor more than a dozen feet above was the main centerpiece of a large pentagon-shaped room. Around the walls of the room were tables with chairs next to them and what seemed to be fake potted plants on the tables. Of course, the room was also splattered with more blood than anywhere else Kain had seen. Kain’s body had the instinctual urge to retch from the sight of all of the blood. Kain also felt another wave of melancholy wash over him as he remembered the smiling family of creatures. Luna noticed his odd behavior and looked at him.
She said in a comforting voice, ‘You okay, brother?’
‘No… not really. I just remember that all of these blood splatters used to be sentient creatures, just like you and me. They had dreams, ambitions, desires, thoughts, emotions, everything we have; but they have all been reduced to splotches of blood in decaying ruins.’ Kain sighed at the end. He was never one to really brood in negative emotions; he always preferred to take action to change the situation that caused him negative emotions himself, which coincidentally always led him to isolating himself from others. But seeing all that remained of these great creatures brought him sadness. It was only further reinforced by the picture of the happy family he saw because it reminded him of his own family and Uncle Trunks.
‘There’s nothing we can do, brother. They have died long ago and there is no way to bring them back. Besides, we can honor them by remembering them and understanding and making use of what they left behind.’ Luna said, comforting Kain.
Kain exhaled and said, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Well, let’s head to the second floor then.’
‘Alright!’ Luna exclaimed. Finding nothing else of note in the large room, they climbed the giant steps.
*=====*
The creature flew slowly across the open skies, draped in a blue fog that one could see through for hundreds of miles, of the place it called home. It had one emotion in its head; it only held hunger. It flapped its colossal wings again, propelling itself forward. Its herd, which came in every shape and form imaginable, followed it as it sped up. For many years now, they had been chasing the first signs of a collapse. To them, they knew that the chances to find edible food were very high when at the sight of a collapse, but not guaranteed. Despite this, they endured their ever-consuming hunger and flew toward the feeling of salvation. Their herd was strong, and it was able to contend with or even surpass every other herd the creature had ever met. Just recently, its herd had met with a herd hundreds of thousands strong led by a giant floating eyeball the size of a building. They were not fighting over any prey, but both knew that the other was heading toward each others’ intended prey. They clashed and, after a fierce fight, the other herd was forced to disengage and fly toward the next nearest point of collapse, more than triple the distance from the nearest collapse. The creature felt no pride, no happiness, no emotion from its victory; it was simply incapable of emotion.
Its herd had since been flying for a year, never resting. They were close, the creature could sense it. Below it, many different chunks of land hung in the air holding many mysteries that the creature had little care for. One chunk housed the remains of a tower that was tall enough to pierce the bottom of the chunk above it, were it still standing. Another chunk had an ocean that looked like a cube of water. In the cube, there was a city at the bottom of the ocean filled with marvels of magic. A different chunk housed nothing but a forest of fungal plants that grew as tall and as lush as any other forest. I went on and on as the creature led its herd across the open skies. A fortress brought to ruin. A city of gemstone. An old battlefield with remains of some of the greatest armies possible. A giant sphere that rested on the land, taking up its entire chunk. The only things that were common traits among all of these structures were the wounds the structures sustained and the numerous splatters of blood that drenched the land and marvels of civilizations.
The creature ignored all of these creations; there were more important things. It flapped its wings again and scanned the area in front of it with its sole black eye. It noticed a shift in the energy up ahead which was immediately recognizable to the creature: another herd was up ahead. It saw the stragglers of the herd flying slower than the rest, but it knew that the foreign herd was heading toward the same thing it was. It released a cry to its herd that urged them forward. They sped to the back of the other herd and began to tear into its members. The creature saw a small creature with the torso of a bull and had tentacles growing out of every appendage instead of limbs. The small creature was 30 feet long, a pathetic size compared to the one-eyed herd leader’s length that spanned hundreds of feet. The one-eyed herd leader cleaved the bull-creature in half with its sharp claws. It fell down into the abyss, where everything but the bones evaporated into vapor. The one-eyed herd leader paid its victim no mind as it did the same to many other stragglers of the foreign herd. Along with the leader, other members of the herd ripped into the back of the foreign herd, always moving forward. Eventually, the foreign herd released a cry of battle and turned to face their opponents. A fierce, savage conflict ensued. Many of the best members of the one-eyed herd leader’s host had fallen. Their sacrifices were not in vain, however, as they helped their leader face off against the enemy herd leader.
The one-eyed herd leader’s opponent was not weak; it was impossible for a herd leader to be weak. The opponent was a giant boulder, hundreds of feet in radius and deep blue in color. When the one-eyed herd leader approached, the boulder-leader shattered the sides of its body, using the chunks of stone to create pseudo arms. Eight of them to be exact. The boulder cleaved and stabbed at its opponent, hitting nothing but air. The one-eyed herd leader dodged and weaved, barely feeling challenged by the massive boulder. It eventually grew tired of the game and went in for the kill. It dodged one of the arms and flew underneath the boulder, cutting into the stony opponent in the process with its claws. The boulder shrieked and began to flail around, trying to swat its opponent. The one-eyed herd leader once again flew close to it, dodging many attacks in the process. It then drove a massive claw into the center of the boulder. The boulder-leader shrieked, struggled, and flailed, but it was dropped into the abyss below in the end. Little changed about the creature once its flesh evaporated, as the rock shell was like its exoskeleton.
The moment the boulder fell into the abyss below the conflict ceased, and the one-eyed herd leader perched itself on a nearby chunk of land. It gazed at the members of its herd who had not perished and unleashed a cry so loud that it broke windows in the city on a chunk nearby. The members of the original herd mimicked the cry, but even with the hundreds of thousands of voices, it still did not match the one-eyed herd leader. Once the cry faded, the herd leader cried again. The members of the defeated herd then either mimicked the cry or unleashed a cry like the one unleashed by the boulder. The ones that picked the latter option were swiftly torn to shreds. Soon, the one-eyed herd leader flapped its wings and accelerated to the location of the next collapse and soon came upon the empty space that would house the chunk.
The leader let out a cry to tell the herd to make an ambush with its newest members. The one-eyed herd leader then flew to a chunk of land with a massive mountain that housed a cave for it to sleep in. The leader was about to lie down when it felt a tug on its mind. It was not the first time such a thing had happened, so it knew what had occured: a seed had sprouted. The leader had planted the seed what it felt could have been hundreds of years ago and was thankfully finally sprouting. It also seemed that some other influence had assisted in the seed sprouting. That just meant that it had more food to itself. It left its cave and turned toward the seed. It would take a long time to reach. Exactly how long it did not know, but it knew it could make it in due time. The one-eyed herd leader let out a cry to the herd, telling them to remain there and to find him after the next collapse. It then shot into the direction of the seed. It knew it was only a matter of time before it would be devouring the seed. It knew because it had never let any prey escape from it before.
