The Scout

We were once a great race. We ruled the whole known world with unstoppable force. We fought wars against hideous beings and cleared out land, making a name for ourselves.

We built a civilization that rivaled all others, with armies numbering in the tens of thousands. We established an infrastructure and legal code, created an agricultural program to support our great cities, and developed an educational system.

Our tales of heroes spoke of vile arachnids (immense and hideous spiders) in the southern lands, which men slew and tore asunder, though they were many times their size. Yes, we were a great civilization. That was the one thing our people grasped above all else. It was the board in the sea to which we could cling, whispering to each other in the dead of night, “Yes, we were once great.”

The twilight of our nation had come. Despair and darkness reigned. The queen, our last great monarch, had fallen ill. All because of the creatures.

They came in the depths of night, sweeping over our herds and fields, leaving only ashes behind. They systematically poisoned our wells and food sources, killing and massacring, slaughtering and torturing those they caught out in the open. A hideous plague swept through our ranks and armies, unlike any other. It drove men mad and made them attack each other before falling and twitching to the ground.

How can one fight an enemy who has no form? Who flits in and out of sight as if they aren’t truly there?

You don’t. Because you can’t; helplessness is all we have left.

I scrambled down a sharp incline in the wilderness, several miles from what remained of our last city and the seat of our ill queen. Our only hope for food these days was scavenging. If one of us found a food source, we would head back to the capital and gather a group of men to return and gather it up. Because of this, I made slight signs or indentations wherever I went to show where I had been.

Most of the scavengers were mortally afraid of the giant beasts and wouldn’t go near the valley they lived in. Daily, I would travel down from the plateau encircling our city into the valley of the monsters. My theory was that whatever these creatures ate, there must be an abundance of it. It reminded me of one of our ancient legends that speaks of a land of giants in which a great cup is as large as the whole sea.

I dropped down nimbly, showing my great practice to all the crowd that wasn’t there. I was now along the ridge that led down into the giant valley. Honestly, it was not remarkably big, nor was there anything about it that suggested it was anything but an ordinary valley with no giants in sight.

This ridged plateau extended mostly evenly in a relatively box-like shape around the whole valley. To my left was a system of mountains sprouting from the tops of the cliffs as if they were their stepping stools. I couldn’t hope to climb them, though they were the oddest mountains I’d ever seen and warranted further study. They appeared to be a mass of large boulders the size of a city, all stacked together in a crazy jumble. Some were long and flat, standing upright, while others were domed and upside down. However, to their professional credit, they seemed not to mind.

I thought back to my anthropology class from long ago, concluding it was either a tomb for one of their ancestors (highly unlikely since I had heard they were multiple mountains high) or maybe a place of worship.

To my right was a further open space with less even ground, heading to where a cliff suddenly jutted up out of the plateau, forming an even higher mesa. I jogged along that way, crossing into a swamp. I tasted the water, only to realize it was a mixture of. Well, it seemed to be fruit juice. I thought back to the ‘cup the size of the sea’ idea and shuddered. Perhaps this was only a splash from their cupped hands. But judging from the size of this swamp. I could only hope that they were smaller than that.

It was interesting to note how much industry these monsters appeared to have. They had built miniature cities my size out of large cylindrical towers and block-like buildings just outside the swamp. I went over to investigate but left a marker in the swamp. It pained me to say it, but this wellspring of fruit could be necessary for our survival. It made me feel no grander than the insects that gleaned our plates, but these small crumbs appeared to me as large boulders or logs of meat and bread.

The city was a disappointment but led me to a pile of rocks. I climbed a few to get a better view of the area, only to realize they were crumbs. Was everything here made out of food? As to a source of food, this might last us awhile, but I had bigger plans.

I marched stolidly on until I reached the immense white-bleached mesa. Its height was impressive, with its top lost in the clouds. Undoubtedly, the giants could be no larger than this! But that brought minimal comfort. I started up, thinking that if anything would give me a clear aerial view, this would be it. The surface was very rough, which gave me good footholds.

It took me nigh on an hour to reach the top, and when I looked down once, I nearly threw up. I struggled through the mists and up the side of the mesa’s plateau, which didn’t afford me much view because everything was so small below and shrouded in mists. But interestingly enough, there were dragons up here.

It appeared I had stumbled on a sort of dragon boneyard. All of them seemed to have climbed up here today after being poisoned or starved. None of them had wings because they were the thin-skinned white dragon species (they were more gray in real life).

We had driven the dragons out of our homeland centuries ago. Occasionally, one would wander into the cities and try to get a takeout meal, only to be carved to bits (apparently dragon meat is delicious).

Recently, no one had seen any dragons, and this appeared to be why. The monsters had driven them out as well. I felt some pity for these majestic beasts dying on top of each other, driven to extinction by powers beyond their comprehension.

If dragons many times were the size of a man, they would not be a match against these creatures. How shall we fare better? I thought, but no answer would come, so I marched through isles of bones until I came to the very edge.

Misty gray shapes flitted back and forth below, perhaps just shadows of my imagination. I couldn’t quite see the valley floor but could make out the U-shaped mountains and the exit from the valley mouth. It was all so peaceful, like a breath of fresh air after being locked in an examination room.

I closed my eyes and took a step forward, then suddenly I slipped through the ground, sinking up to my waist in… I wasn’t sure what, but my bottom half felt frigid.

I glanced around, noticing I was in a groove in the rock, whose bottom was two separate slits of a flexible material. I tried to wiggle free but failed. It was like a giant rubber sealant, which it just might be.

I pushed at the rubber on either side, attempting to pry myself loose. I should have paid better attention in physics because after removing what was holding me up. I only sank further in. Then, I began falling, ever so slowly, into the emptiness below. I kicked my feet around while trying to find purchase, but as my head sank under, I still found nothing. I slipped slowly through the quicksand rubber until I went right through, falling a fair distance to the glass floor below.

I lay there for a moment, contemplating the absurdity of my situation. My whole body was sore as I stood up gingerly, testing to see if any bones had broken.

I glanced around, looking at everything made of glass. It surrounded me like a weird type of crystal palace. It was another city like the one outside this hollow mesa, but all made of thick glass. Skyscrapers towered near the ceiling, where above, ancient dragons slumbered. Long, fat buildings stacked like so many crates against the walls.

I clambered up the smallest one, probably twenty feet tall, examining its clasp that clung to the side. It was large, blue, and ran along most of the roof of this object. Below and inside of this cube, there appeared to be a blur of color. I started to sweat, wondering if these buildings could be just boxes of supplies for the giants. That would undoubtedly explain a lot, but could the Giants actually be that big? Warry of a warning system or any peering giants, I yanked the whole roof of this glass cube free by pulling the clasp off.

Where I could see only blurry colors, I saw piles of tomatoes. I rushed to another small building, popping it open to reveal piles of potatoes inside. I clambered into a plastic tent, only to find the building inside made of solid bread! I was ecstatic and became even more shocked when I realized the glass floor looked out onto other floors below, with years’ worth of food stored there. It wouldn’t solve all our problems, but it was a start.

I eventually found my way out through another set of rubber seals below all the floors, and I dropped about ten feet down to the valley floor. It was a brilliant system of entry and exit. I wondered whether this had been invented by one of us in the past since it suited our size so well. I was within sight of where I had first seen the glittering white mesa, a telemetry of a half mile. It was a long trek back to the city. The whole time, I was filled with anxiety lest the giants see me and destroy me before I got news of the storehouse back to the town.

It took me about six hours after I left the capital until I returned bedraggled and weary to the borders. I thought this discovery was at least semi-important, so I needed several groups to help me. To get that, I  needed to get an audience with the queen. This wasn’t likely to happen because she was sick. Yet it took me knocking down her guards and bursting into her presence to get her to sign off on my project so we could loot the warehouse.

The next day, I led my hand-picked men into the valley of giants. We stealthily infiltrated the warehouse, this time from the bottom up, and then all that was left to do was cart off the load, hoping no one caught us. The men were just as stunned as I was, but we didn’t have time to gawk.

I hurried them on, afraid we might dawdle and lose all hope of survival. In the systematic way we had grown accustomed to, we unloaded these huge buildings bit by bit, carrying them down through the rubber and out into the valley.

After an hour of hard work, we emptied one and had already started on the next. One man suggested climbing to the top and shoving stuff below, but I told him he would likely crush someone. The walls began to shake as I pondered how the giants accessed their loot when the entrances were so tiny. Suddenly, lights overhead glared to life. The wall in front of me swung away like a door. The monolithic entrance moved at a fast pace for such a colossal object. We had been discovered!

Jerry was hungry; there was no doubt about that. When he woke up, he thought immediately of how inadequate his visiting brother’s breakfast burrito had been the night before.

I mean, who eats breakfast food for dinner? And who in their right mind would fill a perfectly good burrito, who had never done anything wrong with eggs?  

Jerry entered his kitchen, stretching and yawning. His brother wouldn’t be up for another thirty minutes, and then he would leave again to visit their parents in Wisconsin. He looked around the familiar room, the large white fridge standing sentinel next to the blocky U-shaped counter. The mound of unwashed dishes across the room elicited a sigh.  

Hashbrowns sounded nice, maybe with eggs.  

I’ll show my brother the proper way to eat eggs! Jerry thought, opening the freezer and then the fridge. To his surprise, ants were climbing up and down the rubber seal, attempting to run away with his diced onions on the bottom shelf.

Jerry couldn’t help but think what a waste of money all that ant poison had been. It was only a week since he supposedly destroyed their nest, and here they were back. Reluctantly, he grabbed some ant spray and shook it up, aiming at the trail of ants on the rubber seal…

Any man who got a lung full of the strange smoke dropped flat, the rest of us scattered.

“GET TO THE TOP!” I screamed, “Take refuge in the dragon bones!”

No one listened, and the rain of poison fell even more continuously. The creature’s face leered at me, grotesque and awful. A grin spread across its face as the nozzle pointed straight at me.

Jerry went back to work contentedly preparing hashbrowns. Jerry couldn’t have possibly known that he had destroyed the last vestiges of an ancient civilization whose culture and lore went back at least a month or two…