I believed in the Alchemist but I chose not to speak, because I was too afraid to be judged, too afraid that I might lose my power if I sided with him. What the leaders thought of the Ancients wasn’t all wrong. No one has ever seen them, but the Alchemist argued that before us there were them. The ancient trees that exist in our forest, the stars, the sun, the green pastures that we feed our animals, all of them exist because of them. We had only thought of what he told us as a figure of speech, nothing more.
After that one dire meeting, the Alchemist left without saying a word and from there on, we never saw him again.
...
Now years and years have passed and he had not come back from his search. Years have passed and we only became a husk of the nation that we used to be. Years have passed ever since our rebellion and there is nothing but pure and utter devastation. I regret the moment we made slaves. I regret the moment we were fueled by our greed as a nation. I regret every decision I have made. It was true: we only created a pathway to our own destruction.
“There’s a battle happening from the north,” one of my fellow slaves said as we clean ourselves from the filth from our body. They have only given us an adequate supply of clean water as almost all the water from our world has been infected by the black goo that came from the Harvester itself.
“Is it another uprising?” I asked with a hopeless sigh. There had been previous uprisings but they had always been cut off, because the Legions’ thoughts are simple. If you don’t do what they demand you to do then you’re already dead.
“No. Workers from the north told us that it was an army of trees.”
I couldn’t believe his words. I almost wanted to laugh but my throat was sore. I could only help but stare at his eyes. An army of trees? It didn’t make any sense.
I ignored what he had told me, my people had lost their minds ages ago. I almost regretted listening to him. I decided that talking was futile. Everything was futile. Death is the only thing waiting for me. And with those thoughts in mind, I fell asleep.
I was woken up by the sirens, telling us—slaves, that it was time to work again. The work given to my batch was simple, but it was back breaking. We mined for stone. Simple as that. With our pickaxes we hit the stone wall, and whatever small pieces we bring back to the surface. The Harvester eats anything for fuel, may it be coal, stone, water, anything. But it consumes a lot to function, just like the legion.
“It’s nearing the core,” one of the workers said as we mined. We all knew that once the Harvester reaches the core, it consumes all energy of our world, killing everything that is enrooted in it. It would then only be a matter of time before we are taken alongside it. The final days of our world had come.
“Good,” I said.
I had lost all hope when they had taken my last child away from me. He was taken away from my thin and fragile hands. He was the only saving grace in this godforsaken world. He was taken away and brought into the Harvester. People who work inside are never to be seen again. I had always thought that them taking my child was impossible to happen, but when reality sets in, when the black soldiers with black gas masks took him away from me, everything else fades away.
I had wished that they had shot me instead, I had wished that they had burned me instead, I had wished that they killed me instead, but they didn’t and they never will. I knew that they wanted all of us to wait until our world is dead, I knew that they wanted us to see what we had done. We were all meant to suffer for our sins.
That was when I told myself that spring is never going to come and that all hope has been lost when we had given ourselves to our anger.
