Death Had Finally Found Me

Death had finally found me. As I stared out across the decimated cityscape beneath me, I could make out the shapes of hundreds of thousands of them as they swept through the broken buildings like an avalanche.

Above me, the night sky erupted with the explosions of capital ships that were arrayed in high orbit above our world. They had been there for months, desperately trying to hold back the invasion fleets of these creatures to no avail. The blues and greens of their void engines erupting against the blackness of space were almost beautiful, were it not for the fact that each explosion heralded the death of over a thousand souls. This macabre light show had been going on for days.

When the war first reached our world, we numbered over a hundred thousand, each of us filled with zeal and fervor that we thought to be unbreakable. The bishops had prepared us for war; our days in the proving fields were filled with the sermons of battle and victory as we were transformed from eager children into seasoned warriors. No foe could stand against us, no enemy could breach our shield world that had stood vigilant at the edge of known space for over six millennia. We knew that if we kept faith and trusted in each other that we could not be defeated.

We were wrong.

The deafening shriek of a servomotor and the metallic taste of scorched metal and radiation snapped me out of my reminiscence. One of the great cannons beneath the battlements that our squad was stationed on had fired well beyond its limitations and had exploded. Leaving our walls defenseless against the endless hordes that were surging towards us through the city’s broken corpse.

“Steel yourselves boys, this is what we were bred for!”

Captain Darius’s words echoed through the communication system in my helmet, reminding me of the oaths that we had taken to fight until our last breath. A cheer broke out amongst the squad, and I snapped a new battery cartridge into the receiver of my rifle, charging the weapon for whatever misbegotten beast climbed over the edge of the battlement first.

As the creature emerged over the edge of the broken battlement, I was met with a sight that would forever be transfixed into my memory. Its obsidian scales glistened, reflecting the lights of the thousands of souls being extinguished in the darkness above us as the black pits of its six eyes stared directly at me, as if the creature had crossed the vast oceans of space to destroy me and me alone. It walked on all fours like a beast, standing taller than a fully armored warrior at its shoulder.

My finger instinctively pulled the trigger as the beast began to barrel towards me, releasing a torrent of energy that cut through the acrid air like a lightning bolt as the superheated plasma slammed into the creature. Its roar was deafening, drowning out the sounds of the screams and explosions that whirled around me as the plasma collided with the beast’s chest, melting away the scales like dripping, black butter as all manner of unknown organs fell from the steaming wound where the creature’s chest once was.

The monster did not stop its assault, slipping in its own steaming viscera as it crashed into me. Immediately the wind was forced from my lungs as I slammed to the metal grate of the battlement beneath the creature. I drove the serrated alloy of my bayonet up into the creature’s throat just beneath its jaw as it attempted to devour me. I never noticed that the screaming I heard echoing through my communication system was my own as I looked up into the creature’s feral eyes through the fogged visor of my helmet. Its jaws snapped over and over, and my muscles burned as I attempted to hold the creature’s full weight up with my rifle. For what felt like an eternity the monster slowly bore down on me, its snapping jaws opening and shutting slower and slower until it finally collapsed on top of me. I could feel the steaming wetness of the gaping void in its chest as what was left of its entrails evacuated onto me, coating me in the thick, oozing purple of its blood.

“Aurelian!”

My name sounded like a dull whisper in my ringing ears as I lay beneath the corpse of the horrific beast that had nearly destroyed me.

“Aurelian! Get the hell up!”

I snapped my attention to the sound of Jarrek’s voice as he yelled my name even louder, kicking my helmet to get my attention as he shoved the broken husk of the creature off me. I must not have realized that I had passed out from exhaustion or the withdrawal of adrenaline as I tried to pull myself out from under the beast’s immense weight.

As the creature crumpled beside me, I felt the vice-like grip of Jarrek’s gauntleted hand grip my forearm as he hoisted me to my feet. He was a monster of a man, standing a full head taller than most of us even when unarmored. His armor was battered and broken, exposing the left side of his bruised and lacerated chest where another of these creatures had surely tried to take his life. Judging by the amount of violet gore that was covering his gauntleted hands, it was safe to assume that the creature had paid dearly for its attempt.

All around us were the mangled corpses of our brothers and the broken bodies of countless creatures that had tried to cross over the battlements. The cries of the dying were so pervasive in the communication channel that I tore my helmet from my head and cast it aside to preserve what little was left of my nerves. How long had I been beneath that creature’s body? In one moment, I was standing beside my brothers, ready to hold the battlement and the next I was being hoisted to my feet by Jarrek. Absolutely nothing we learned in the proving fields could even begin to prepare me for the horrors of a battle such as this.

“Jarrek! Aurelian! Get out of there while you can! More are coming!”

Captain Darius yelled to us from further down the line where he and six remaining men had managed to barricade themselves behind a pile of dead bodies that they had stacked into a make-shift bunker. I could make out the frantic waving of the men for us to run to them while we still could. There were only moments before the next wave of these beasts would finish climbing over the broken walls to continue their assault.

“Get moving Aurelian, we can kill far more of these bastards from behind that barric...”

Jarrek’s words were cut short as a spike made of bone pierced him from behind, bursting from his throat like a nail being driven through wood. His eyes looked at me widely through his visor as he fell to his knees, clutching at his throat as sickly, wet gurgles bubbled from his neck. Thirty yards behind him was another creature unlike the ones that had hammered us before. This creature stood on two legs, with the same black scaled carapace and soulless eyes as its lesser brethren. In its arms it held what looked like a firearm that was made of bone and bleeding from its barrel with the same violet blood as the creature I had killed. The weapon itself was heaving as if it was alive and breathing.

I backed away from Jarrek in horror and turned to run as the creature was upon him, tearing his head from his shoulders with a sickly pop as he knelt dying before it. The screaming sounds of plasma cutting through the air whizzed past my ears as the remaining men in squad fired upon the creature to cover my retreat as I ran towards them. My legs burned as I ran over the bodies of friend and foe alike, desperate to reach Darius and the men as I fired my rifle blindly at the horrors behind me. I would make it to them. I had to make it to them.

“Our shield world has stood for over six millennia and it would not fall today!”

Those were the words that I was repeating to myself when an explosion erased the section of wall where Darius and the men were barricaded. In one moment, they were there, covering me and yelling for me to make it to them; in the next, they were just gone. I stopped in shock, aghast as I slowly turned around to see what was behind me. Before I could raise my rifle, a white-hot pain seared through my abdomen as I looked into the black eyes of the creature not three feet in front of me. The guttural clicking noises that came from its jaws almost sounded like a laugh as it approached me. I gripped the bone spike that had pierced my stomach and felt my legs give out from under me as I collapsed onto my back. The creature stood over me, looking down at me for a long moment before kneeling to slide a long, bladed fingernail in between my ribs and up into my heart.

I felt warm, my body relaxed, and I remembered how it used to feel when my mother would lower me into a relaxing warm bath as a child. The black void of the creature’s eyes slowly enveloped my vision completely.

Death had finally found me.