The city is pulsating, alive with a life all its own. It stretches on forever, a great stone forest with loud footless metallic beasts that make their way around on hot black ribbons of poisonous rubble. Beneath them flow streams and rivers of filth, and great loud serpents that crash their way through vast black tunnels, screeching like tortured demons. The great gods of this dead forest pulse like blood through veins. They are masters of this great stone domain. Or so they like to think.

For they forget the true rulers of this great stone kingdom. We who dwell just beneath the throbbing stone skin of the poisonous dead world they have erected to replace our once lush green realm. But no matter. We have learned to survive, to live on, and flourish. We have invaded their safe, sterile world, and we are here to stay. Our children, and their children have spread out into the streets. We spread fear, apprehension, loathing and disease. Of course they have tried to get rid of us. They have poisoned our food and destroyed our nests, and yet we still return. We will not be defeated, for we are immortal. We are the gods of their artificial world.

But who are we, you ask? We are of the underworld. We of dank fur, wet nose and naked tail. When the city sleeps we are awake to feast upon your filth and breed within your walls. It is you who make us strong, keep us warm, and fill our stomachs. Foolish creatures, it is by your own doing that we thrive. For each one of us you kill, ten score will replace us. Much like your world, we are forever growing. Nothing you say or do can ever change that.

In the underworld, we too have our own laws and customs to live by. Move swiftly and silently. Never stay in the same place twice. Consume whatever you can whenever you can. If you are male, spread your seed as soon as possible, before someone greater and stronger than oyu terminates your exhistence. And if you are female, bear your young in a warm protective place, and eat plenty so that your milk is rich and plentiful and warm. Yield to the larger brother, but if you are stronger, kill your weaker sibling so there is more for us to feast upon. Hesitation and stupidity kill. Those who do not live by these rules end up in the gutter, putrid and bloated. We do not mourn their loss. It is not within our nature to mourn. We benefit from their destruction, and thus grow stronger and greater in number.

We are the immortals of this great stone kingdom. We feast upon the great banquet of putrefaction brought about by those foolish mortals who have erected for us this world of noise and light, misery and poison. We are graceful, elegant and smart. The great law of Nature does not change in this world. The weak perish, to make way for the strong to benefit and thrive. You useless beasts create artificial weather to compensate for pelts as naked as our tails. You create loud steel creatures that carry you because your legs are too weak. Even your food is fake, and yet you do not realise that you take in poison. You feast upon it, breathe it in, bear your offspring in it. You not only poison yourselves, you poison the very ground beneath your feet and the very air you breathe. And yet you mourn your own folly, as the world around you gets weaker and sicker, so do your bodies, your minds and your hearts. You are the ones who breed out of control, which is why you must create artificial stone worlds to house the surplus, to cage the beast that you forever nurture and allow to grow stronger.

And yet you are running out of room, to the point where you go crazy and slaughter one another by the thousands. You wage crusades, killing one another by color of pelt or accent of tongue. In a lbind rage you scar the earth, kill your offspring, or allow them to live in misery and madness. You allow the weak to prey upon the strong. And yet you still dare call yourselves gods, while we are considered the loathsome ones, the dirty ones who live without reason or custom. Think what you will. Ignorance is bliss. It will only be so long before you must pay the high price for the error of your ways. But rest assured, for until that time we will be eagerly watching and waiting. Until that time...