Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest! // Week 16 | Fate worse than death

Enter the cold and damp tunnels of mine, past the dark pit where many a miner has fallen when intoxicated with the sulfur vapors emanating deep from the mother earth.

You will hear a foreign sound from deep underground as chirping canaries sing a song for freedom only to be used as an alarm for when they stop chirping then you know dangerous gas has seeped into the cavern and we all need to make haste and escape.

The place is dark save for the light from a wicker of a candle atop our head. Endless we toil under the ground looking for earth's treasure.

Yet we were not always miners. Once we were Kobolds out in the open plain, hunting animals and skinning them for their hides but we were pushed out by man as they took and took more lands. They breed like rabbits in heat, ever birthing a new mewling babe that would eventually grow big and strong. Stronger, faster and more intelligent than us, more than we could ever hope for.

Man has become the dominant species in the land as it pushed away all manner of creatures to the fringe lands.

We find ourselves in these unfriendly fire lands where the ground is hard and unyielding to the green. No fields grow here and the sparse animals hardly can fill the bellies of our tribe.

They came astride their massive warhorses. Their armor gleaming in the radiant sun. They came bearing water and food. The elders approached them and in halting language asked for some. We were no longer proud hunters of the plain and if meant getting something in our grumbling bellies then what is pride.

We sacks of grains and the meat of many a beast in their great wagons and they gave a portion of it while saying how their god is merciful and kind. The elders accepted it with grateful expressions and started to give it to the children and the women of the tribe.

We gave what remained of the few pelts that we were able to hunt but the man leading the group shook his head and said there was no need.

A child in his haste fell down and the bag of toys he kept spilled out to the shining sun. A few wooden carvings of hunters, some animals and a lot of rocks. Some the color of the earth, brown with touches of green like the plains where we came from, some black as the night and brittle to the touch. Yet some gleamed like the stars.

This caught the eye of the man and he asked one of his soldiers to look at it. The soldier bent down and held the rock between his fingers.

With a gasp he says "it is a diamond my lord!"

We do not know what this diamond is as it was too hard to be shaped into a tool and not heavy enough to use as a hammer. The children did like playing with it as it shined when the light hit it.

"Bring me all these rocks!" the man shouted.

The children emptied their toy sacks and we could see the laughter in the man's eyes. He was very happy with these rocks.

"Find me more of these rocks and we will keep you fed." He said.

The elders talked to one another and agreed that it would be a good set up. We knew some of the caves that had these stones and if it saved our tribe then it would be a blessing.

More and more of these men clad in iron came to our village. They brought food and water. They also brought these barrels filled with black powder which was awful to taste and yet when lit exploded like the sun.

They started to build a wall all around the village and its nearby area. First it was wood which they brought with them, later on they started to order us to dig for large blocks of stone. These were where the barrels were used to block huge chunks off a nearby mountain.

Sometimes we would be get hit with the large stones that flew up the sky, killing some of our tribe. We were not even allowed to take them to the plains to be one with the earth. Their bodies covered in rubble and at times blasted away by the black powder.

The caverns were no different as they ordered us deeper and deeper to find the rocks. At first it was the children who would find them but as they demanded more, the elders set the fittest of us to go and carry loads of dirt from deep within while the women would filter it in large water pools, their fingers and toes wrinkled from standing in the water all day.

Deeper and deeper we went with only the light of a candle guiding us. Armed with pickaxes and shovels we dig away and haul it back to the surface.

Cave ins were a constant thing as we would hear the cries of our fellow kobolds as they suffocated to death. Gas was also a problem either exploding like the black powder or lulling us to eternal sleep.

We often talk how we would die.

What was once thought to be a blessing was now a fate worse than death. All because of these diamonds. Blood diamonds.

And so young Kobold Miner who has been listening to old Ghag The Sinner hear the history of how our existence became so pitiful. To be slaves of the greed of man. It was I who doomed us to our fate and I shall be the one to free us all.

For these men only looked forward and above. Never looking what is below. For five generations we have tunneled beneath their keep, beneath the walls and where their horses are kept.

We have patiently made our way and sneakily stole some of the black powder. We have stockpiled it in the areas where most of them are.

I won't be able to live long as I have the black lungs from spending all this time under the ground. Yet I will see this through and get my revenge on the men that enslaved us. Some of us has already tunneled their way into freedom. Not a lot so as not to arouse their suspicion.

Some of the declared dead were spirited away to join other creatures, denizens of the flame that hated that man was encroaching on these lands. Go now to them and join the fight for freedom!

Leave me here with the light of this single candle that will blow this place. Go now and make haste or be one of the restless dead here.

Sneak under the cover of the night and the blast of my revenge and fight off these invaders.

Go now!

I took the candle from my helm, looked at the flame intently, whispering to be my vengeance. To be swift and destructive. I watched the flame snake past the dark pit, into the tunnels no longer with chirping canaries, past blocked off tunnels of the fallen.

It sped towards the barrels of the black powder and then I hear a boom in the distance and it gets nearer and nearer as if circling back towards me.

I hear the cries of both man and beasts as the earth erupt beneath their feet, engulfing them in flame and rocks.

I see the flame going back to where I sat, barrels of the black powder stacked high under the keep where the lord sleeps. Tonight we both dine in the afterlife!

Boom!

---

And that is my tale for the Kobold Miner. One of sadness and of revenge because of man's greed.

I started the flow of my storyboard with the Kobold becoming like the dwarves that was enraptured by the treasures of the earth but quickly changed it as it was too similar to dwarves.

Kobolds often in games and lore are from the great plains or forest and often times shown to be weak and stupid that any beginner adventurer can kill.

So I made that weakness as part of their story of enslavement.

The blood diamonds was a perfect backdrop for me as it had taken countless lives all because of greed.

Yet I could not let the Kobold stay as slaves as they did a sneaky uprising. Knowing they cannot best their human slavers in combat, they stealthily made tunnels that would undermine the objects of oppression like the wall and the keep that was bought with the blood of their tribesmen who quarried the stones and left unburied.

It was a sad tale of enslavement.

This is my entry to Steem Monsters Common Card Fantasy Story Contest! // Week 16