The last battle

There weren't always dragons in the Valley, just as people used to live

above and not below. No one remembers how the dragons came and

tipped the balance. All we managed not to forget was how to survive them.

We had to surrender our way of life, habitat, and will to fight. We had to

take refuge in the only place they did not have access to, the Earth;

specifically, 50 feet under the ground. We lost more than our freedom; we

lost our planet.

Our ancestors were already working in the underground facility,

conducting different experiments and research, but we never imagined it

was to become our salvation.

Everyone else perished in pain and devastating destruction, making it

clear the world belonged to dragons, and we had fallen to become sub-

species.

Dragons might have wiped out human ingenuity and ability from the face

of the Earth; it lay actively at its "bottom." We had to adapt to our new

conditions; we had to make it work. We needed so many things to

maintain and repair our installations, and we had to find the minerals by

digging underground tunnels to reach the destinations. We built bigger

chambers and new facilities to extract and use it. The key,

however, to the discoveries and new resources we found was our tiny one-

person wide tunnels. One person was a strong description, more one

wriggling crawling person, barely enough room for the shoulders. Why did

I have to be so good at it!

You guessed right; that was precisely the position I was stuck in, holding

my sensor to detect in which direction our next tunnels will be. I was far

from everyone, alone in the dark except for the small light on the sensor

that shone different colors depending on what was detected. And in times

like these, your thoughts are the only ones that keep you company. My

thoughts always turned me back to the past, how I wished we had won. I

could still feel the hatred boiling in my blood, how the dragons showed no

mercy or misgivings. They went straight for the kill and gorged themselves

on their imposed horror. The dragons didn't hesitate to burn alive the

people; they didn't eat raw as sushi because they had different tastes to

fulfill. They burned their victims through fire or acid, roasted or fried.

That was how their acid acted on our living tissues; it fried them to a

texture the dragons found delicious. It took close to five minutes for it

to be over, and the flesh detached itself from the skeleton with such ease

that it quickly became their favorite meal. They left the remains behind,

still trapped in their traumatized form, a reminder of their fate for

everyone else to see.

At least, that was what my parents told me as their parents told them.

I know it to be true, a sort of genetic memory; my ancestors lived those

exact atrocities at one point. I nearly bumped my head on the "roof,"

jumpstarted by the noise made by my detector. It was a unique sound,

more like an alarm to warn of unknown elements, and it had never

happened before. I pinpointed the location and tried to rush there, hoping

to find the Saint Graal or something of equal value. We needed a break,

and it was the dream of any "wormer" to be the one to provide it. Far from

me was the idea that I was about to discover the opposite.

I was in such a hurry I did not notice the signs; the air had a different

smell, and the tunnel had land and rocks in the way as I was becoming

closer. I turned left with the knowledge I would find the source that had

provoked the detector into such a frenzy. It was beeping with more

insistence and spurred a sense of urgency in me!

I landed in a room and fell right next to it. First, I was more disoriented

because I was no longer in a tunnel but in a chamber too large to have

been made by us. I was so used to the small and oppressive environment

and too flabbergasted by my discovery to feel anything else. A skeleton was

lying rigidly in pure horror; plants surrounded it that could only come from

the exterior world. Yet, the whole scene was buried, so its killer had taken

the liberty to cover it up from above.

It hit me like a sledgehammer, who the murderer could only be! and who

the victim was. Mary was written on her bracelet. I knew Mary; she had

disappeared two days ago, five other people had disappeared, could they

have been?

I backtracked and started my way back as fast as I could. I had to warn

everyone; I had to tell them that our most fierce enemy: the dragons, had

discovered our existence. We were no longer safe; the threat was real,

and we faced nothing less than extinction!