Zlaw’s Echo

She cried when they found the chamber. They hadn’t actually been looking for it, or anything like it for that matter. They had lost hope for such a thing a while ago, or rather, it had been methodically and mercilessly ripped from them. There were days when they wondered why they even bothered continuing on, how they could ever possibly rebuild all that had been so thoroughly destroyed, especially with so few of them left. What did they even mean by ‘them’? They didn’t seem to have a common defining characteristic. Men and women, of various ages — except the very old and the very young, for which this whole ordeal had tragically been too much —, ethnicities, skill sets, backgrounds, even languages. They wished they could say they were just humans, but those who had put them in this situation were also, horrifically, technically human. When they had finally managed to push away the rock that was blocking the entrance to what they had assumed to be a rudimentary cave dwelling, that wa...