We are the diseased ones. The cursed ones. The forgotten ones. We are left alone. We are born, die and are reborn. It is out curse. We cannot prevent it. And we are all here on the whim of a god. A god whose name we do not speak any more. I do not think we even remember it.

   Allow me to explain properly, or as well as I can at least. Quite why we are here, I am not even sure of myself. I think I used to know once, a long time ago. But we are here, in an old, abandoned temple, perhaps a mile or so beneath the surface. It is barely lit by a few torches that eternally burn.

   There are only a handful of us, roughly equal numbers of men and women. I am the oldest this time around. The little girl who wanders nearby, speaking in a voice and a manner which is too old for her, she is only nine this cycle. But her spirit and soul, black and diseased though it is, is the oldest of us all.

   This cycle. Like I said, we are born, age and die. And when we die, we are reborn. We teach this to the young, who then teach it to the old the next time around when they return. And we teach them hatred and anger. The handful of people who are here now are the same people that were here before. The same people who were here at the start.
   
   We do not have names, not any more. We gave up using them when we realised our fate. We do not name each other now. We do not name our children, whose souls were once our parents.

   Our children. They are brief blazes of light and colour and life in all this darkness. We look on them while we can, for soon their shining skin, bright blue eyes, gleaming hair and precious soul is corrupted with a sick, black tint that spreads fast. In an hour, they are as ugly as us, and they no longer even cry. They just stare with those old, sick, yellowing eyes. Accusing us. Our children feel our hate. When their colour has gone, our anger returns. They bring us brief seconds of what is almost joy. Then there is no happiness in the rest of the time they exist. There isn’t even any joy in their creation.
   
   We used to have sex to create the next generation, but no more. We do not have to. If we die and another is not to be naturally born, they just appear, crawling up out of the filthy, slimy waters. There is not even the smallest spark of life or hope in those. The last naturally born child was nearly 70 years ago. We do not even touch each other now. We do not comfort each other in our anger and loneliness. We do not hold each other when someone dies because we do not care anymore. We cannot even cry for them. I don’t think we even know how. Better for those who died if they were to stay dead. Better for us all. At least that way, if they do not come back, we know that there is hope that one day, neither will we. That one day, this disease will claim us, and we will die the permanent death that is granted to all other creatures.

   We do not take good care of ourselves. We are reborn, so why bother? We are diseased with a blight which has no cure, so why should we attempt to keep ourselves in good health? There is very little light save for the lanterns, no soil, no plants. The only other living things save for us and our pitiful lives are the adventuring, sentient sort – yuan-ti and beholders. Hard to even wound, let alone kill and eat. We learnt this long ago. So we fish. We fish in the deep, gloomy depth that surround us. The fish that are spawned there are as horrible as our own young.

   We hate the other races that live down here. Those damn yuan-ti, more snake than person, slithering around and speaking in their cold tongues, mocking us with their hissing. And the beholders. Little more than eyes and a mouth. They are even more of an abomination than the yuan-ti, more of an abomination than us. And yet we envy them. We envy that they are well, that they can see the sun, that they can die if they really want to. We are trapped, and they are free. We find them repulsive, but even in their unnatural, otherworldly ugliness, we find them to be more than us. We do not talk about them now.

   We hardly even talk to each other at all. We did all out talking lifetimes ago, there is nothing to discuss. Nothing new happens, so we cannot talk about current events. No one new arrives, so we cannot discuss them. Everything that happens has happened a million times before, and we have long since become bored of talking about it.

   We can just sit in the dark and curse that long forgotten god, and hope that one day, someone will bring an end to our miserable existence and protect us where he never did.