"Babel has fallen."

The words were delivered in a matter of fact mannerism yet everyone in the command centre could feel the despair and anguish in the commander's voice, no matter how much he tried to hide his emotions underneath his steely and cold straight facade.

In the far distance was a fortified city, nearly tens of kilometres away with a black tower made of metal reaching the skyline. Something bright and fast was approaching the city from the north.

The land around the city was dead, charred black with no signs of life except for the corpses and carrion birds.

"Turn the convoy back to Megiddo," ordered the commander, through the communication and with a solemn tone, he said, "To Megiddo, the final bastion."

The people in the command centre, which was also the cockpit of the airship began to work quickly. Some were punching in coordinates, some were on the flying aparatus and some were relaying the orders to the other airships that were following it.

Amidst all the commotion, a person wearing a modified priest habit to accomodate armors and weapons sent the room into a frozen state with his words.

"And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon,"a voice that belong to the convoy chaplain echoed throughout the command centre of the main airship, "for the final battle, Armageddon."

As the dozen airships turned around, the fortified city was struck by the shining projectile, enveloping it in a dark, mushroom shaped cloud. A huge shockwave of sound and energy burst through.

Many of the airships were caught in the shockwaves of the nuclear aftermath including the main ship, which went crashing down.

The last thing he saw was a red sky and missiles raining upon them along with ashes and fire.

.........................................................................

It awoke with a start. It had a dream. No, a nightmare, it corrected himself.

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What's a dream? What's a nightmare? It didn't know but it seems to like the former and fear the latter.

What was that nightmare? It could not make head or tail of it.

What's a head and what's a tail? It knew but it feels that it shouldn't know. It was a newborn afterall. However, it did knew what a head and a tail was.

Another thing it knew was that it was a He not an It and obviously not a she.

What's a he, it and she? A he had a penis, used for procreation and a she had a vagina, also used for procreation while an it had neither or maybe some it did. It didn't knew much. It just knew that much.

At that moment, he felt a slight tremor. Something had touch him. His vision and sense of touch, taste and hearing came back.

How does a dungeon core taste as it had no tongue? It can taste the air in its claimed area, moreso the prana and mana. Other than that, more cannot be said as the core in question didn't knew.

The first thing it saw was a world draped in black and white in 360°. It was in some sort of a cave. On three side of its vision, it saw walls of mud. It saw darkness below it. Above he saw the roof of the cave, a rocky roof. Several webs were on the corners of the roof.

In the front, as it recognises the position it saw a rotten corpses of some creatures was swarming with small flying insects. It recognises the small flying creatures as flies. There were also large insect, a dozen times larger than the flies in the vicinity with hard, shiny carapace. Beetles, it registered.

There were another flying creatures as well, larger than the flies but smaller than the beetles with sharp jaws and stingers. Wasp.

The most numerous were the little creatures that had six legs and were coming in and going out of the cave in lines. Ants.

It also sense another two types of creatures.

One types were hidden in the sand and the other above. In the cave, it senses three of the former and five of the letter. Scorpions and Spiders, respectively.

To it, the creatures look black in color and so did the walls.

It nearly jump but couldn't as it saw a large, black spider with many legs and eyes above it, clutching a cocoon. It was this spider that had touch its surface.

On realizing that the spider meant no harm, it calm down. It started looking around curiously. It saw dots of white flakes floating in the air. These flakes look appealing. He wanted to eat these white flakes.

It tried to stretch itself towards the closest white flakes but it couldn't move. Instead, something came out of it and caught the white flakes. It was a green tentacles like tendril. As soon as the tendril touch the white flakes, the flakes got absorb into the tendril and travel swiftly into it (Orb).

As soon as the white flakes enter its body through the tendril, it squirmed in delight. The white flakes tasted sweet. It also learnt what it was - an unit of prana. It wanted to eat more. More tendrils shoot out, a dozen or so. These tendrils caught all the prana with a feet from it but the tendrils could go no further. It didn't mind. It felt full.

It view it's surroundings with newfound curiosity after having eaten it's fill. It saw a beetle drag into the sand by a scorpion with its claws after stabbing the beetle with its stinger, the ants carrying away bits of the corpse, flies and wasps getting stuck in the spiders' sticky webs and the spiders roll the trapped insects into cocoons.

Prana got released into the air when something died it noticed, though only in minute amount. Most of the prana remained in the corpse of the dead. A new question came to it?

Will it die as well like the insects?

It didn't knew. At the same time, another question appeared.

What was it?

It focus its vision upon itself. And for the first time after awakening, it spoke.

"Crap, I am not even an insect.