Ants Versus Spiders

The last human died in 2097. Humanity had long dominated the planet, treating it like their own and using up its resources as if they were infinite. They filled the seas with their rubbish and the skies with their pollutants. The climate began to change, the other creatures they shared the planet with began to disappear, but still they continued greedily consuming, taking more and more until there was nothing left to take. Bitter storms killed their livestock, whole crops failed because there were no more bees, plastic choked the oceans and corrupted the very flesh of each and every living thing.

The great die off began.

As before, the death of the dominant species left a gap ready to be filled. The wounded Earth recovered one tiny step at a time. New species emerged, old ones resurged. The scars of humanity were completely eradicated as if they’d never been. And rising from the evolutionary shadows came two families of animals previously overlooked and even vilified.

Ants. Before the fall they were small but numerous, surviving almost everywhere but the coldest of places. They changed, they grew larger in the oxygen-rich atmosphere, they evolved a better breathing system to allow them to grow larger still. They preyed on the lesser species, they dominated the lands they controlled, nothing could stand in the way of their teeming thousands in their city nests.

Spiders. They too had lurked in the corners of the human world, a primeval fear driving people to kill them as soon as they were encountered. They clung on to life by the slimmest of margins, enduring until better times returned. They too grew larger, evolving in leaps and bounds, growing smarter and stronger. They dominated the landscape, rulers of all they could see. Who could stand against them?

Ant met spider. Each tried to dominate the other. Threat turned to fighting, to battle, to war.

If the Earth had a mind it would have sighed and thought ‘here we go again.’

This is an entry for the 2019 "I wasn't gonna make this anyway - year 2" game jam.

Cover Image made using resources by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay