A humanoid cavecrawler hummed a strange tune as it dragged the massive carcasses of an elder worm and an alpha cavecrawler deeper into the labyrinthine cave.
The cavern opened into a sprawling facility, a fusion of a prison and a mining grid. Rusted machinery hummed faintly, their lights flickered.
In the center of the facility stood a humanoid cavecrawler, grotesquely swollen and restrained in place. Its body convulsed rhythmically, laying eggs with mechanical precision. Its eyes were dull and lifeless.
"Where did the others go?"
No response. The restrained cavecrawler merely continued its grim work.
With an exaggerated sigh, Ophmer leaped down from their perch, landing with a soft thud in front of the enslaved figure. They leaned in, their sharp claws tapping lightly on its head.
"Hello? Anyone's home?"
Silence.
"Fine. Be boring, then. Guess I'll go wait in my chamber."
The hum of their tune resumed as they walked away.
Eventually, Ophmer arrived at their chamber.
"Who's been rummaging through my things again? So uncivilized."
Scattered across the floor were the skeletal remains of the long-dead wardens, their bones a chaotic tangle of limbs and fractured ribs. Ophmer's eight-limbed frame tensed as they surveyed the scene.
With deliberate care, Ophmer knelt and began arranging the skeletal remains.
Their clawed hands moved with an odd tenderness, setting the bones back into a semblance of order. The skeletons were tall and spindly, with elongated limbs and broad, rib-like structures that extended far past what might be expected of ordinary humanoid anatomy. The skull is elongated and bulbous, designed to house the oversized brain characteristic of their species. The cranium extends backward into a smooth, rounded ridge, providing support for their cerebral mass.
Ophmer paused to admire the remains. These bones were relics of their kind—a race cursed by its very nature. For Ophmer's people, birth was a death sentence. The act of procreation burned through their life force, leaving only lifeless husks behind as new life emerged from their remains.
Their people eventually splintered into two factions: those who upheld the sanctity of natural order and those who sought to defy it. Both sides, however, were united by one grim reality—they were a dying race, their vitality slowly eroding with the passage of time.
Then came the Sage King Polower, a figure shrouded in mystery. It was as though he had emerged from the void itself, an emissary of forces beyond comprehension. With his arrival came a promise: to save their kind from extinction. But his solution would tear their civilization apart.
Polower allied with the faction that rejected tradition, the ones who refused to accept the inevitability of death through childbirth. Together, they constructed a terrible machine, one that could capture the essence of a soul and implant it into a new host. It was a breakthrough that promised immortality—but at a cost.
The naturalists, who believed in the cycle of life and death, denounced this technology as an abomination. They resisted, fighting a desperate war to preserve their way of life. Yet, they were no match for Polower's power or the relentless march of progress. In the end, the traditionalists were defeated, deemed enemies of the new order.
As punishment, these naturalists were condemned to a fate worse than death. Their souls were forcibly removed from their bodies and trapped within the shells of insectoid creatures, their existence reduced to perpetual servitude. They were sent to toil endlessly in the mines, digging deeper into the earth to sustain the growing needs of the machine and the new society it birthed. Worse still, to ensure an unending supply of laborers for the mines, within the facility, a cruel system had been established: a soul-transfer mechanism designed to force prisoners to take turns serving as the birther of the cavecrawlers.
Over time, the cavecrawlers began to weaken. With a limited genetic pool and the constant recycling of the same body's essence, the creatures were doomed to inbreeding. Each successive generation was smaller, frailer, and more prone to defects.
The facility's overseers, if they still existed, seemed indifferent to this decay. As long as the mining operations continued and the prisoners remained subjugated, the weakening of the cavecrawlers was of little consequence to them.
"There. All cleaned up."
Ophmer muttered, stepping back to admire their handiwork.
Suddenly, loud voices echoed through the halls.
"Care to explain why these things are on the floor again, Ophmer?"
A second voice, sharp and accusatory, chimed in.
"We agreed to not bring these back long ago!"
A reference to the time when they still mourned their children.
Ophmer's jaw tightened, but they immediately leapt from their chamber to floor below, landing with a practiced grace.
"And we also agreed not to intrude into each other's private chambers, didn't we?"
"You managed to get your hands on a worm. Why did you let it die, Ophmer?"
"This worm was hosted by a person."
That caused a ripple of unease.
"Someone from above is trying set up the mine again?"
"If that's the case, then their technology must've advanced significantly. They were able to exit the worm without needing access to the soul transfer system. In any case, this is our ticket to the surface."
Ophmer raised their fists high, their voice echoing through the cavern.
"Our long-awaited freedom!"
A wave of jeers and shouts erupted from the others
The restrained birther, their hollow eyes lifeless for so long, flickered with a faint, fragile light.