I was only a child when the first explorers came. My father was the village leader at the time. All that I knew about them I learned from the stories he told me. He described them as soft looking creatures with big eyes and four limbs. I often wondered how they had managed to survive when they could only see in front of them. The explorers had come from another world in search of resources. My father had told them they would find nothing but dirt and rock on our planet. Our atmosphere is thin here. Our kind had discovered methods of harvesting the air here to sustain our civilizations. The explorers seemed unconvinced and searched the planet anyway.

We did not know they had found anything until the first wave of alien soldiers descended upon us like a plague.

I can never forget that day. I had grown by that time, old enough to fight to defend my village. In crafts forged of black metal and fire they came. They surrounded us before we had time to prepare our own weapons, which proved useless against the exoskeleton that the aliens grew around their soft interiors.

Those that tried to fight, died. My father, even aged, was the fiercest warrior of a generation. He managed to knock one of the aliens to the ground and tear the armor around its head off. But before my father could strike the fatal blow, the alien lunged, exposing the protrusions of bone inside of it's head and bit into my father's neck, tearing the life blood out of him. I watched another warrior strike at a weak point in the aliens' armor, cutting one of its limbs clean off. My fellow warrior assumed this meant victory. He was wrong. Even with its lifeblood flowing freely, the alien did not falter. It attacked, with more ferocity than I could have believed, and tore my fellow warrior to pieces with a strength I could not have imagined such a soft creature capable of.

I am the last of my village. Every warrior was slaughtered without mercy. The women and children were forced into the wastes to suffocate and die. Never have I encountered a creature capable of such cruelty. For what my village died for, I fear I will never understand. The aliens do not value life. They are capable of frightening feats of strength and endurance, they have weapons that can kill from long distances, but it is their lack of mercy that scares me. Their empty eyes cannot see life, only death.