Part II: The Fading Echoes
Chapter 4: The Invisible Killer
"As if their own furious battles were not enough, my curious ones," Mitthu chirped, its gaze sweeping over the cracked earth and the skeletal remains of what were once lush fields, "another enemy began to steal the humans away, one they could not fight with their sharpened metal or their frantic shouts. This foe had no face, made no sound, and could not be seen, yet it gnawed at them from within."
"What was it, Mother?" Chirp asked, tilting its head, its small eyes blinking.
"It was the legacy of their own rage, little Chirp," Mitthu replied, a somber note in its voice. "My parents and grandparents spoke of the unseen dust that had settled everywhere after the Great Roar. It was in the very air they breathed, the water they drank, and the few plants they dared to consume. It was in the broken ground where they sought shelter."
The Old Watchers, with their keen eyesight and detached perspective, began to notice the subtle, then increasingly stark, changes in the remaining humans. At first, it was a weariness beyond hunger. Their movements became even slower, their attempts to scavenge more feeble. Then came the visible signs. Their skin, already taut over their bones, began to blister and peel in strange ways, not from sun or frost, but from an internal rot. Their once-thick hair fell out in clumps, leaving their exposed scalps patchy and raw.
A group of sparrows, known for their habit of nesting close to human dwellings, recounted chilling observations. They had watched a family – a father, a mother, and two small, whimpering human fledglings – trying to cultivate a patch of earth near a ruined farm. The parents, driven by a desperate hope to find food that wasn't scavenged from the tainted world, meticulously tilled the soil, but their hands and faces developed angry, weeping sores. The human fledglings, already too thin, coughed constantly, their small bodies racked by unseen fevers.
One afternoon, the sparrows witnessed the mother, her face ashen, collapse as she tried to draw water from a stagnant puddle. The father, his own body trembling, knelt beside her, his cries echoing weakly in the desolate air. He tried to force water down her throat, but she lay still, her breathing shallow, her eyes staring blankly at the dust-laden sky. By the next dawn, she was a motionless heap. A few days later, one of the human fledglings joined her. The other, too weak to cry, simply lay huddled against the father, a silent, fading ember of life.
"They became frail, Pip, like leaves in the autumn wind before they finally fall," Mitthu explained, remembering the chilling accounts. "Their strength drained away, their bodies betraying them. Even the ones who won their petty wars for scraps would soon find themselves too weak to hold their spoils, succumbing to the invisible sickness."
There were also strange, rapid growths that erupted on their bodies, festering and consuming them. Their minds, too, seemed affected. The birds observed moments of sudden, irrational fury, followed by long periods of vacant stillness. They would stare into space, as if watching phantoms, or speak to themselves in low, guttural whispers. The invisible killer stole not only their bodies but their very essence, leaving behind husks of their former selves.
The Old Watchers understood. This was the Earth itself, reacting to the wounds inflicted upon it. The air, the water, the soil – all had become instruments of slow, agonizing retribution. And as the sickness spread, silently, relentlessly, the fires that dotted the landscape at night grew fewer and smaller. The desperate shouts became rarer, replaced by the deep, heavy silence of the dwindling. Humanity was not just fighting against each other; they were fighting against the very world they had broken, and the world was slowly, inexorably, winning.
No comments:
Post a Comment