7 First Blood

Gilgamesh walked out of his hut on the outskirts of the village. He began putting on his new shoes made out of rubber before someone grabbed him from behind and whispered, "Going out without telling me?"

He looked behind him and sees his wife, "Of course not. I just wanted to check the garden."

"Well look at you working so hard. Make sure to get me some etsu. I'm eating for two after all."

He looked at her enlarged belly with an expression of fondness then gave his wife a quick kiss before walking to the garden behind the hut. As he walked, he looked at the sky and saw how deeply azure it was. His spirit was lifted by a beautiful day. He looked at the drifting clouds flowing freely through the sky and thought of the visitors.

Life was going as usual in the village. Since the 21 people he had met in the forest had come to the settlement, they were almost instantly hailed as gods. Gilgamesh like the others believed this to be true.

When the visitors came to the village they came bearing gifts. Just like the ancient gods had taught mankind the use of fire, the new "gods" taught them to cure the diseases that had plagued them. They explained and taught them what caused the diseases. They had saved his wife and healed her as she was suffering from an up till than fatal disease. He still remembered when Vex had personally visited his wife to take care of her when she had fallen ill. As the years passed since their arrival, only good things had happened.

The humans began to learn at an exponential rate. While some of the visitors disappeared into thin air, one had stayed with them throughout the years. With the help of exalted Lord Vex, humans were able to advance their technologies and improve their agricultural methods which led to bigger harvests.

Then 6 months ago Lord Vex disappeared.

Even in his absence, the settlement prospered. With the increased harvests, families felt safe enough to have multiple children. It seems that their village would greatly expand in the future.

Gilgamesh knelt to harvest etsu for his wife when he heard an explosion and a heart-wrenching scream. Gilgamesh tensed. In a panic he ran to his wife. She was worried but she understood that Gilgamesh as part of the village's protectors had a duty to find out what happened. Quickly he ran to the center of the village.

As he was running, he saw smoke rolling towards him. As he approached the village center, a scene of horror unfolded before his eyes.

A large creature with sharp fangs and wings growled before slashing a young girl in half as her intestines spilled to the ground. The beast jumped at her head feeding on her brain matter while the girl was still twitching. A second scally creature reached for a pregnant woman eating her head in one gulp before biting into her belly and chewing on the unborn child inside. A third scaly monster bit off a girl's arm while playing with her and slowly removing limbs with his teeth and fang perhaps seeing how much blood and pain it would take to kill her.

Gilgamesh froze as he looked at the three dragons. Unable to break out his shock but the scream of the girl whose limbs were being taken off one by one woke him from his stupor.

"I'll kill you dragons," he said with hate that could scorch the earth, "I will kill you all."

Gilgamesh ran at them screaming.

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Vex looked at the unfolding drama from his pocket dimension and wondered aloud, "I wonder how many will survive." He saw a series of similar scenes in many other human settlements.