Story Time

I was digging through a folder I found in my documents, when I came across this old rough draft. As I wish to extend GLaDOS's Lament as long as possible, I bring this in its stead.

Xiathantha watched her plans unfold from her tower. Everything had gone according to plan. Her servants had traveled through the land to warn of the new dread disease that had killed so many. What they hadn’t realized is that they were spreading it as they ventured. Soon all the villages across the land were little more than mass graves lit by burning pyres. What little life remained was pitiful. She could have just destroyed them with a fraction of her powers. But she knew the value of patience. It brought the most beautiful things to light. She began raiding the graves where bodies had been placed when there was room. She concentrated her dark energies upon them until she made the most terrible undead in known history. She then used her powers to cause the survivors to meet and band together. Then, weeks later, she entered the camp as a shadow and choked the life out of one beloved man known to the others as Father. She cast her charms on his corpse, and then sat to wait for the next day. Dawn was slow in coming, as it always was with the smog choked skies. When it finally did come the people arose and continued to work on trying rebuilding their dead world. Xiathantha sent Father to the meeting stone and waited. Soon he was noticed and the others began to gather around. They kept a respectful distance away and didn’t notice the lack of breathing. When they had all gathered a hush descended upon them. Xiathantha chuckled as she began to manipulate Father’s corpse. His right hand rose jerkily in the air and his left foot shot out and he lurched forward. The crowd backed away instinctively. Xiathantha grimaced at the strings of the marionette she used to control him, and tried again. Soon Father was walking in a more effective, if no less lurching, fashion. Anxious murmurs broke out in the crowd. Xiathantha smiled as she made Father leap into the center of the group from twenty feet away and begin a dance of death. She jerked the marionette left and right, and when Father’s fingers met flesh or bone they carved straight through it. She soon had amassed a large group of dead and took a break to animate them, before she sent them to hunt down the rest. They were quick and effective. Father found the last living human crouched in a charred hayloft. Xiathantha made him smile as his eyes stared blankly ahead. He grabbed the man by the throat, raised him up, waved, and still smiling eradicated the human race.

Xiathantha smiled.