From 188 Contes à régler
Refined, dreamy, intuitive, allergic to all scientism, peaceful, highly evolved but without ambition, atheistic and closed to any form of mysticism, the Scydres nevertheless believed in the apocalypse. Nervous and yet clear-sighted, they had always sensed that this apocalypse would be the end of their world and that it would take place before the year 2100.
They were not wrong. It arrived in 2097. Horror and death came to them from the sky over a few hours, without any religious or divine implication, by the invasion of their planet after a devastating bombardment.
Their invaders had established themselves for half a century as the sole conquerors of the universe. No one could resist them, no one could push them back. The skies were bloodied by their exploits and dozens of planets had paid dearly for this relentless need to conquer, this neurosis to possess, to exploit, to colonize. For every creature in space, whether monstrous or almost human, the name of these insatiable, ever-victorious warriors was synonymous with terror, death, and destruction: the Earthlings.
And the Scydres, in particular, could not be fooled: if a gigantic Earth armada was heading towards their planet, the hour of apocalypse would indeed strike in 2097.
Or more precisely, instead of striking, it burst into an unbearable din of rockets, bombs, missiles and devastating explosions. The Earthlings knew the Scydres to be harmless, unarmed, incapable of the slightest gesture of violence, but they always set the worlds they wanted to annex to fire, blood and ashes. They did this out of principle, for pleasure, to let off steam, and to prove to themselves that they were still killers, as they were often deprived of game since they no longer fought among themselves on Earth, now that infinity had become their battlefield. Indeed, on their home planet, the forces were perfectly balanced, thus costing too many human lives.
On the other hand, how simple everything was elsewhere! The Scydres all lived grouped together in only two cities, the rest of their world was one vast desert. Only two cities, what child's play for Earthlings. The results exceeded their ambitions: there were no survivors among the Scydres.
Those who were not torn apart by the bombs died of fear, struck down on the spot by an unstoppable heart attack. The Scydres truly had a heart, but it was fragile. Their hearts could indeed be broken.