If only we had realized the danger sooner.

We are immortal. We do not fear that which humans fear. The poisons that harm our prey do not harm us, and the diseases they carry cannot infect us.

This 'climate change'? Ha. What was that to us? In the worst case scenario, the oceans rise for a while, and at most one in ten prey die off -- we live thousands of years, and only ever number in the tens of thousands, while our short-lived prey reproduce like rabbits, and are counted in the billions.

Even "disasters" like Fukushima were of little note to us -- the only radiation that harms us is that of the sun. Were they to bomb themselves back to the stone age with their nuclear arsenals, there are still so many of them that there would almost certainly still be enough to maintain a viable herd. Their lives might be short and miserable for a long age, while the fallout faded, they might be wracked with chronic diseases and mutations, but what did that matter? They are kine, cattle! We do not care for their comfort.

Those who thought they could taste a range of subtle flavors, who swore that they preferred the blood of contented, healthy prey were as deluded as those prey who obsess over the supposed qualities of wine. Blood is blood!

Or so I thought.

It began when a few of the children of my nest began to grow...ungainly. Slower. Their strength had not diminished, and of course we do not age or become diseased, but they could no longer move as they once did. It was...perplexing. The arcane mysteries of our unlife, of the dark and subtle thaumaturgy that allows us to defy death, had no explanation for how this could be so.

Desperate, I turned to mortal science, bringing some of their brightest minds under my thrall. They examined our flesh and blood with the instruments of their craft...and found the source of our malady.

Plastic. It was plastic.

We do not conform to laws of mortal biology. We do not "digest" or "metabolize." But we are subject to a more fundamental law of nature, that holds true in both the arcane and mundane realms: that which you consume becomes part of you.

The mortal doctors tell me that contamination in the food chain becomes more concentrated, the higher you go up the chain. It is why even the prey must take care when consuming predatory fish, who have accumulated the most mercury in their bodies by eating other fish. But we are at the very top of the food chain, for we feed on the creatures that feed on everything else.

Slowly, over time, microplastic contamination had built up in our prey. It could not poison us, we are beyond that, but it could make us become it.

I have brought more mortals than ever under my thrall, compelling them to campaign against this contamination on my behalf, straining the limits of my powers to control so many at once.

And yet, more than half of my brood lie helpless and inert in their coffins, more lifeless plastic than undead flesh. The rest help me gather blood from remote places to feed the ones who cannot move, blood from more primitive prey. We hope it will be untainted -- or at least less tainted -- and that it will reverse the transformation, given enough time.

So far it has not.

And despite the care we now take in where we obtain blood, my still-moving children are still slowly changing. They are becoming something neither dead nor undead, something less than either: they are becoming non-living. Like a stone. Like plastic.

I fight to save them. I drive and scourge and browbeat my thralls to work faster and work harder to find a solution, to stop this contamination -- to use that damnable boundless cunning of theirs to find a way to reverse it! But it is growing harder.

And I am growing slower.

[removed]

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

🆕 New Here? ✏ Writing Help? 📢 News 💬 Discord

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[removed]