We are they who dig! Tunnellers who seek the light. Those who scramble for glory. We are birthed into darkness and secrets, desiring only to claw at the world upward to salvation. For though our time and form emerges in the dark we desire one thing only, the light! Through some evil our race is born of the deep darkness, yet suffers waking dreams of the glorious, gleaming light above. And so, as if we do not have autonomy over our wretched forms, as a single mass upon the moment of emergence, we hold our claws to heaven and rip at the imprisoning earth. Ever do we tunnel forth, the infinite gloom our greatest enemy, our natural fear. Such is the tragedy of our existence, such is the mystery, we come into being not knowing of any others of our race, yet knowing somehow of the light, perhaps those who have dug and tunnelled to glory await us in the light’s embrace, there in the gleaming world above! Many die on the way, exhaustion is the greatest threat. Yet there are others, tunnellers whose forms are so very different, they, unlike us, are blind and seek no glory. Our bodies are hard, though I suspect the softness is within, we have claws to dig the earth, we feel vibrations with strands upon our heads, yet the others are all softness, they have no means of defence, we are drawn to consume their soft flesh to sustain our hard flesh. And when the others become scare, we have been known to turn on ourselves, to consume the weakest of our kind whose chances are limited. Though sustenance is secondary to our primary and divinely ordained goal, to tunnel forth and greet the blessed light with our claws! As we dig, we sing, sing our great song which we know but know not from where, as our creators we have never seen. Some say it is the very earth that has birthed us, though my band renounces this as blasphemy, as the others create more of themselves using naught else but the functions of their forms, this we cannot do, though perhaps once we reach the end of our tunnelling the possibility will emerge. Yes! We sing our song, we have sung it since the day of birth, we sing to each other so we know where we are in the gloom of our world, we sing to understand if the earth can be dug or if the hardness will harm our claws, we sing to our divine goal, we sing to the glory, we sing to the light, we sing to ever dig on. As we tunnel, we find that in the everdarkness it is not just us and the others, yes, there are others who are other to the others. They are terrible and claim many of us, my noble band suspects a great horror, that they consume our mighty bodies to sustain themselves much as we sink our sharpness into the flesh of the feeble ones and devour them. The song changes in form, it becomes a song of warning, a song of fright. They descended from the other way, from the direction of our desire, we can feel the glory of the light upon them, they come from the place of our yearning! Yet how terrible these creatures are, vast in size, faster and stronger than us, with a greater aptitude for tunnelling. If they discover a band of our kind they will consume them all leaving no trace. With our singing we can feel their form, warm and soft, with many thin appendages from their body and long strange protrusions with which they find our race. Though fear we must overcome, the other-others prove to be a constant threat, all we can do is dim our singing and scramble ever on through the earth to glory. For if some, if one can survive then our divinity is still attainable. But know this truth! Though terrible creatures do exist, if we form together, if we act as one, merge our songs and cease our selfish consumption, we can swarm upon these savage beasts from the world above and rip the life from their strange bodies. Vanquishing such horrors not only brings glory to the band, but sustains tunnelling for many cycles of warmth. It seems there is a law to this world, though it is encased in despair. The strong triumph! Or else, the many triumph. The weak must fear the strong we suppose, but at the same time, the strong must fear the many! Yes, there are infinite paths to victory but the brute fumbling of the strong. The glory of the light sings to us through some means and so we sing back as a great unified voice. Light, we come for you, we dig ever forth from a world of darkness, make ready a place for us in your eternity. Onwards my band! The song changes to. For the glimmer of heaven awaits us! Though we age upon the journey, our forms grow weaker, our tunnelling less productive each day, as the earth grows softer and we move closer to our salvation we feel the inevitable failing of our bodies. Indeed, as we progress we find the abandoned tunnels and lifeless shells of our comrades, those shameful ones who have failed in their duty and ceased upon the way. Upon such revelations we are filled with dread, fearing the same fate for ourselves as our wretched bodies begin to lock and fail. Some half-dead from unknown bands impart information to us. Forbidden speculations of the world above! With their mouthparts creaking and groaning we are given glimpses of our salvation. When our digging ends, and we cease to be wretched, buried creatures, we will burst forth into the glorious giver of life. From this moment our aged and terrible bodies will split and we will be granted the gift of new appendages to our forms which will permit us to take upon the very ether and move with such grace in an endless void of only pleasure, reborn as new and less wretched creatures. We hear the song returned from above, the voice of our kind! Though hark, they have sweeter aires and allure us through some enchantment, what autonomy remains slips from our failing limbs. Even as our bodies falter we are drawn to dig ever on towards the sweetest song of all, echoing gently through the darkness of the earth. It is not uncommon at such a point to see many cease, their bodies locking in place, a final groan emerging from their jaws as they breath their lives into the gloom. Terror it must be, to know your final moment is in place as the alluring song still calls. Be we cannot have pity, for to turn and drag another is to exhaust the last of your strength which we must sustain to reach salvation. As we claw forth, ever pushing at the earth which grows softer as our bodies grow weaker, we glimpse our first shafts of golden light. Tiny threads of brilliant, gleaming rays shoot through gaps in the earth, beaming from the divine world above. But shame! Horror! As we scramble our tragic bodies through the golden rays we are struck with agony, our eyes burn, our skin stings and blotches fuze upon our hard flesh. In humiliating weakness we are forced to scuttle screaming from the shafts of light and yet are urged to clamber forth toward the song of heaven, as if the very sound is an instruction to draw us forth to our ultimate destruction. But why? Why would our world be constructed in such a way, why do our natural lives follow such a tragic path? Yes, there is an order to things and it is terrible and it is wonderful. As we tunnel ever forth not fathoming why, we wonder, is the song known from birth naught but a song of futility? Finally! Finally our claws burst forth from the earth of darkness and secrets. We turn the appendages on our heads toward heaven and after such strife hear the glory of the song in brilliant clarity and feel the cleansing force of heaven’s light upon our doomed bodies. Then, evil fate glowers at us. The most terrible tragedy of all, for the glimpses earlier were not false! When we finally see the light, we cower from it, the divine rays burn our forms. We scream and smoulder upon exposure to the glory, some stay and give their bodies to heaven, turning upon their backs in throws of agony and screeching a final song as their flesh scalds. Most scramble with cowardly wails and bury themselves back in the embrace of the dank earth. We push our claws above the threshold, yet the light still burns, so we crawl deeper, forlorn and dying beasts taunted in our last moments as the sweetest song in all creation calls down to us from the brightness. They our kind! Somehow taken to the ether and sailing upon fine wings almost invisible. All our being leaps forward as if we are to take to the heavens too, but shame and horror! We cannot. Surely it is the cruelty of creation, that we must wallow under the earth, desiring only light and to join the song from high above, yet the light burns us and we cannot take flight and reach those sweet ones who sing from the place of glory. We see them silhouetted in the light, they are us, but transformed! Changed by the divine into wonderful new forms, their song so sweet, we are struck with awe and wish to join with them in eternity. Yet no such transformation takes place in our bodies, we struggle under the protecting earth and watch their beautiful dance in the last moments of our lives. Yet the legend lives on in our dying minds. Are there truly some who will be granted wings to fly upon the ether? To escape our horrid crawling and take to the air and light and greet the calling song? We hope, we hope. Perhaps some noble few will take flight and find the ones who sing, if those few succeed then we must have means for salvation. Is there truly the possibly for change, for such a profound metamorphosis. Do we feel this coming on? Is it not death but simply the transference to a greater glory? We are the ones who dig, but we can become so much more. We are the ones who dig, yet we can transcend the mundane. Yet, there is the dooming thought the song is a song of futility, for if we cannot reach the light and the ones who sing we are doomed to the worst fate of our race, to be delivered from the mundane world without leaving a trace of our history. For we suspect now to reach the light and the song has some profound connection to the creation of more of our race. It seems that most of us will die here, the empty husks evidence to such a fate—suffering the indignity of being forgotten by our kind and the world. My band and I shall be truly forgotten, there is so much that we tend to forget…and yet there is always the transformative possibility to overcome.
