Trillionth year of the terrestrial calendar.

​

A year of respite, a year of good intentions. We had convinced ourselves it would be the first, truly peaceful chapter in the history of this universe. A story that would otherwise remain at the mercy of interspecies cosmic conflicts, or the collapse of entire ecosystems due to artificial interference. These plagues were meant to be a residual image of our past — ever so present, yet never to be exhumed again. Bringing down the curtain on those ill-fated millennia was not the work of a divine plan or a chain of providential events: there were the means, thus the responsibility to change things. We did so, but clearly it wasn’t enough; it’s as if our reality were bound to submissively follow the plots woven by the cosmos, yet each thread of the vile tapestry leads to ruin. At present, the Myrmekonid Invasion is the scourge that drives hope astray and plunges it into oblivion without hesitation.

How it all began is hard to tell, and even harder to care about... Whether they slithered out of Satan’s rectum or a laboratory, it does not really matter. We merely yearn for the return of that peace, which, albeit stagnant and verging on hypocrisy, we chose ourselves, for ourselves... In the name of this, millions upon billions of lives rose to face the threat, and to cement a fragile ideology of good. They attempted to deceive fate, whose tormenting road is always, damnably, one-way. The tally of the dead? Millions upon billions. The munitions exploded against the enemy? More than that. Nevertheless, it was still not possible to scratch the exoskeletons of those titanic, towering beasts, much less their primigenial form...

The Megapede.

The first sightings of the Megapeds were reported on the planetoid of Ehb, located in the remote Cepheid Jungle, when it was already too late. The local scientific community failed to pay proper heed to the data concerning the anomalies in the firmament, which indicated several variable stars emerging from one day to the next. Conversely, the military branches were reluctant to draw the same complacent conclusion, partly due to their predisposition toward an almost dogmatic distrust. They instead relied on their state-of-the-art monitoring equipment, ground and satellite, yet the scanners always yielded the same results: “No foreign inorganic material detected”. Ultimately, they accepted the idea that such bursts of light were nothing more than the radioactive residues of orbital mines — mines that had detonated upon reaching their pre-set life cycle. Against all expectations, it was the people, thanks to their primordial instincts and their unfiltered perceptions, who first grasped the truth. Those emerging in the sky were eyes. Countless eyes rapidly approaching... And when that became clear to the entire population, avoiding the worst was like trying to stop an avalanche: pathetically futile.

As twilight stole yet another ordinary day, the clouds turned a rancid green. Thick humps of giant chitin loomed over the roofs of burning shacks, and through the ashen shroud of smoke, a swarming mass of hairy legs gradually became visible. The segmented colossus had just finished crushing two cities under its own weight: Gorda in the southern hemisphere and Dyna Town in the northern hemisphere of the planet were wiped out together, and not even a second elapsed between the downfalls. The survivors were incredulous, helpless, and utterly terrified. Such devastation… A single culprit? Absurd. But when the rest of the raiders landed on the unfortunate Ehb and obliterated it from the stellar maps, the absurd turned into brutal reality. Unfortunately, that episode was not an isolated case, but rather the prelude to a daily occurrence. People are tired. Only the children remain to take up arms. The animal rights activists and those who used to kiss trees under the banner of pacifism have already done so, and have become shadows of themselves: soulless shells who, even if the war were to end, would not be able to have their future back, as they’ve already sold their spirit away.

A change is necessary… You.

Teach those Megapieces of shit who’s in charge.