After several days of bordering each other, scrutinizing their every move, keeping eye on every inch of hot sandy desert, every inch of coastline, watching everything and anything that rustled the shrubbery near the many colonies, the brewing storm overlooking Ezekiel is coming to fruition: the build-up of our troops against the False ones, and the False ones against we the free. The Explorers have ignited and catalyzed our tense relations once again. Perhaps war is imminent.

     The Explorers don’t seem to have noticed the heated tensions nor the conflict they’ve ignited; all that needs to happen now is a trigger for war. The explorers, however, still seem to visit us, and they still visit the False ones, yet they do not know the impending fire that will consume the colonies, and many will be caught in the heat of Ezekiel’s conflict. 

     As the war had raged before, great and terrible loses will be sustained, for the explorer’s cities have not yet uncovered the extent of the war that happened many years ago. Our blades are sharpened to a pristine, sharp sheen of cold metal polish, our guns loaded with an explosive thundering punch, our walkers whir and sputter to life, stomping like angry animals; we are ready this time, and so are they. I wonder if the Explorers will one day thank us for trying to protect them from the aggression of the Falsely Enlightened. At the moment, however, despite all this, the explorers have this feeling to them… a feeling of indifference to the conflict and ignorance to their involvement.

     Such is the vanity of these prideful creatures.

     The Explorers, as nice as they seem, are so different from us. They are bipedal, their complexions and textures seem soft and squishy, their bones appear to be inside them, they have trouble breathing, they seem weak, and all of them seem to be the same, as if none of them serve a role to each other. As though there is no system to them.
     They communicate with each other using long, strange sounds; quite unlike the clicking and chirping of our kind. We should protect these weak, soft, and fragile things, for they don’t seem capable of protecting themselves.

     But then that brings the question, “Is it worth it?”

     Is it worth the lives of our workers, warriors, and colonies? What will they do for us after the war?

     What would be the result of this alliance?

     This perplexes our minds; queen to queen, warrior to warrior, worker to worker… to what extent will our actions and decisions matter to them? Will our actions and decisions be even understood or appreciated by these strange aliens?

      I fear that even if we do acquire information from these creatures and manage to protect them from the False ones, they will not be able to comprehend what we did for them. I fear one day, they will turn on us, just as the other queens before us did as they founded what we call today the Falsely Enlightened. Their blasphemous words of deceit and poisoned minds; they are blind, they are followers of a false belief, what could’ve poisoned their minds? Everything seems to be muddled in the water.

     Questions I had not asked myself since the days of the first conflict, questions that I had during the hundred-star war, questions that other queens who had been with us since the beginning have had.

     Who do they refer to? 

     What teachings did they find out there in the desert? 

     Why have their minds been so twisted and rotten? 

    They live and breathe like us, yet their ideology, their beliefs, their culture, it’s all different. Who or what could’ve done this to them? I pity them; they follow blindly, without hesitation, without remorse against their own kind. It’s as if they lost their mind and soul.


     Their very presence is disturbing. I have never experienced fear or uneasiness quite like this. I have never experienced such content in bloody, barbaric murder and massacre; they’ve shown their willingness to kill their own kind before as they returned the eviscerated, dismembered remains of the ambassadors we sent them, they’ve shown their willingness to go to violent war in order to achieve their agendas. The atrocities they committed are unspeakable and numerous, never before encountered in our kind.

      It makes me question whether we are really protecting the Explorers, or merely using them as an excuse to go to war, as an excuse to bring them back to sanity. They are lost, a pitiful shell, a husk of their former selves. Great builders, a wonderful colony with ambition and vibrant culture. Nothing but lost, it is the first time we have experienced such a sense of purpose. Perhaps, it is our duty to guide them back to the light.

     What we do now matters.  Whatever happens, we will have died trying.