Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26537023-20150826164946

Things had not always been like this.

Long, LONG ago, further back than anyone except the All-Consuming One can remember, This was a carefree place to live. Sure, the King didn't do much, and his Knight could be a bit of a hardass at times, but in general, our lives were easy, happy, and long. And my people inhabited most, if not all locations on this planet.

Then one day, everything changed.

We aren't sure what happened, but one day he didn't copy the right way. A Hypernova Fruit turned him from a sweet, albeit ravenous kid into a mindless ball of appetite. The best explanation anyone could come up with was that maybe he ate a species just a little too closely related to him while under the influence of that fruit. Cannibalism has been known to cause brain-destroying diseases...

The King and the Knight fell in fairly short order. Swallowed up in less than a second. Accounts of survivors whose fates are now lost to time state that their screams were enough to make even the Dees who had seen true combat freeze in terror. Out of an army of a few thousand, only a few dozen ever left that battlefield. Several later took their own lives.

It took years before we found a way to confine the beast in the domed hut that had served as his home. And even then, still many more were killed in our efforts to get him inside and cripple his body, so that he may never move from that spot again. Our once populous race now rivals the puffballs themselves in terms of scarcity.

Still, we fear what will happen if he is allowed to grow too hungry. His Hypernova-strengthened suction grows considerably stronger after a week with no food. We do not even want to think about the possibility he could eventually swallow the planet itself, So we have no choice.

Each week, I must lead a small, randomly-selected group of our own to the All-Consuming One's lair to be a sacrifice to the beast's appetite. I and two others are exempt from the drawing, as this job is a evil, yet necessary one that must not be left neglected.

I have seen Waddlets cry out for their fathers they will never see again.

Mothers pleading for the lives of children whose numbers came up.

But the worst are the soon-to-be widowers begging for me to somehow spare the lives of their wives... and unborn children.

Despite how quickly us Dees breed, we cannot keep our population stable. Starvation and disease kill so many infant Waddlets before they even open their eyes. Even the ones who survive to childhood face the constant threat of being selected for the offering. We can no longer disqualify children from the drawings due to the decreasing numbers of adults of breeding age. Each week I watch more and more of our homes slowly grow empty as the last inhabitants are called to be sacrificed. Or worse, volunteer willingly.

After all I have seen, done, and will continue seeing and doing until the day I die... I think the sacrifices are the lucky ones.  