A story from the greatest war.
10,321,101,001 BCE. Ranmat, Yallt Galaxy, Virgo Supercluster.
The sounds of whizzing bullets, whirring lasers, and wailing artillery filled the air with a haze of radioactive ash.
The Soldier had been breathlessly running on the alien dirt and humus of this unknown planet—a rifle in her hands, a sword at her hips. Vast, cratered monoliths, remnants of the race which once resided here, now swept away by the ruthless flames of war. Her species was once like this one too.
The surreal architecture, paired with the alien, purple skies of this planet, made her feel a sense of… liminality. A sense of being, yet not.
With a mask covering her face, the woman had been running, sprinting. Loud clamors of artillery were coming from the distance. This war had lasted ages, maybe even billions of years. The soldier threw herself down as the deafening cacophony of an Amat[1] grenade struck the battered ground not far away.
The war had taken so long now; the soldiers were growing tired, and countless were already dead. This war was painful, it was devastating – all for what? As the soldier threw herself down, the bomb's impact just grazed her, but the blast wave struck another one of her comrades, reducing him to subatomic slurry in an instant. The onyx mask cracked on one side, revealing a pure purple eye. The soldiers of the enemy took up their blades and charged at the lone Soldier.
The Soldier, though, was no usual one. She was trained from birth to be a warrior of all things, but this war? This was a war between the client races of opposing Children, vying for supremacy in the greater cosmos! They were but motes of dust in an entire galaxy of insignificant races. Other races, whom they were once allies with, now followed different Children. Once friends, now bitter enemies. This soldier was no exception, and so were the ones wielding swords.
The soldier pointed their rifle at one of the soldiers with white, glass-looking armor. Their hands gripped their serrated blades tightly, the three of them. Charging at her. Those weren’t the best odds.
The Soldier pointed her rifle at the one closest to her; hesitation, she pulled the trigger. A beam of pure energy swept towards the humanoid, erasing their upper torso, and sending the lower half tumbling onto the ground. Unfazed, the two others continued closing the distance to her.
As their swords clashed, the soldier quickly ducked down as one of the white-armored foes tried to decapitate her. But… they failed. She was too fast, too strong for them. She ducked down and slashed straight through the abdomen of the other of the sword-wielders, using her own sword – a pitch-black blade, seemingly absorbing all light. The body of the soldier disintegrated into a fine dust. Retreating, she fired one shot, and the last soldier was downed. The soldier looked up, she saw full-plated white spaceships. She started to run, yet again, trying to escape their sights.
Maybe she could take 6 of those soldiers, maybe she could take 100, but she wouldn’t be able to take a whole fleet of them. Even she wasn’t that strong. However, as she ran, some more white-armored soldiers pursued her.
She had now run for dozens of miles, passing the plains and finding herself in a great maze of rocky spires. She couldn’t stop to see the scenery, however, and promptly came across a dead end. Mountains stopped her way, and a whole armada was chasing her. So, this was the end? This was going to be her end? After everything, I had sacrificed to become the Champion of my race? Right before the white-armored soldiers began to charge, the soldier yelled to them; “You know, you’ll end up just like us! Right?”
The white-armored soldiers said nothing in response and advanced to surround her. But yet, she had one last trick up her sleeve. For her and for the freedom of her people, she was not going to die out so easily. So, as a last resort, she looked the white-armored soldiers in the eyes. Her eyes suddenly started to flash in red, the mode of last resort, ending in certain death. She simply did not care if she’d die or not.
The rage boiling inside her just made her want to slaughter all of them. No matter how much, the rage inside her wanted her to kill as many as she could. To show no mercy.
With a cry of battle, she yelled and screamed as loud as she could, her eyes turning bloodshot. And without a sword, she attacked the soldiers with claws. The White-armored soldiers didn’t care – they attacked. But yet, the soldier kept dodging and dodging their attacks, as if she saw the future and knew their attacks. She cut their limbs, she slaughtered them. It didn’t matter how much time they shot or cut her, the anger and rage inside her were unending. She didn’t do anything now; her body was simply moving by itself.
A graceful dance. A dance of blood, death, and violence.
After hours, she had slaughtered hundreds and thousands of them. But even in this berserk state, she was growing tired of all this fighting and violence. With one last sigh, she knelt down in the night, the moon of the planet illuminating her. Her metabolism was running in overdrive, all her body’s resources had been drained in order to keep her body running. But no more.
She had to rest. She was injured so much that even she could see her blood splattered on the battlefield – a deep violet in sharp contrast to the pale white of the enemy. Her rage started to fade away, and the rage started to become hope. The hope for the future.
She was hopeful for other races, fighting their own false gods for their freedom.
Right before she closed her eyes and began to sink into eternal sleep, she thought. She thought of the day that they slaughtered her friends, family, and even her enemies just for speaking against the war. She only wanted some peace, but while she tried to find peace, she just found more violence and more death. How ironic.
The even more ironic thing was that she was one of the best warriors. But even the best of the best grow tired over time, and so did she. She wanted peace now. She wanted to rest now.
Now she slowly closed her eyes, looking at the stars for one last time. She mumbled to herself:
“This is only the beginning. I know it.”
She mumbled for one last time, as she closed her eyes, and fell into a deep, blissful sleep that she would never wake up from.
Some called it death. But right before she died, she felt comfortable. She felt an epiphany, the transition between life and death. Liminality? She felt complete. She felt no fear of death. But…
But now? It didn’t matter.
What had driven her this way? Not her, but what had driven them? What had started this unspeakable war?
It was a couple million years ago. The same soldier, wandering in the streets of this planet. Brainwashed, thinking that they had a god. A grand creator. They thought their purpose was to only serve, and that all other things were meaningless.
Until that day… until she found out everything. And started this silly cycle of death and destruction. She questioned their god.
That God gave them everything, was but a god who invaded and subjugated them. The Lord of Apparatus. A member of the Children of the Empyrean Sea who enjoyed nothing but the suffering of other things and beings.
In the frustration and anger of spending her life serving their traitors and bad actors, she instead wanted to die while fighting for a truth.
In the aftermath, none of them gave up. And the races that the Lord of Apparatus had subjugated rebelled against it. Unexpectedly, the rebellion was successful.
The winners were the client races – they banished the Lord to find other races to corrupt. But not them. Not anymore.
As they proved their power, most of them started to rebuild, and live a better, freer life. They were not going to believe any of those eldritch Children ever again, and if they ever came back again… they knew what to do.
Now, after this rebellion was successful, the Soldier rested in peace, atop that battered battlefield. Hundreds of years passed, and a magenta tree grew at where her body lay. One day, a few children of her race ran towards the tree – and suddenly, they spotted something.
The children stared, wondering what they had stumbled upon. The kids grouped up and gathered around the tree, and pulled out a rifle and a flag, half-buried under the dirt.
And a sword. Made out of hardened crystal, the sunlight scattered off the iridescent, onyx-gem blade, illuminating the faces of the children whose future the Soldier sacrificed her life for.
And within the tree, the unburied hand of the Soldier pointed upwards, towards the stars.
