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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Gamestrider09 on 2025-10-22 03:48:57+00:00.

The skies of Earth were on fire.

Not literally, mind you. This fire was different, and far, far more beautiful. Humanity’s great and mighty star, Sol, in his last act before being swallowed by the edge of the horizon, ignited the clouds in his gaze with orange and purple, arranged in an elaborate blazing tapestry.

I watched as the grand act of cosmic creation sunk lower and lower, out of sight, coating my face in a fading warmth before he was drowned by the glittering ocean that stretched out endlessly beyond. Put to slumber by the Gods, Sol would abdicate his dominance over the Terran skies but for a night. In his sleep, Sol’s sister, Luna, scarred and pale but unwavering, appears, taking her brother’s power and shining in a silent but brilliant defiance. She would give the other stars the bravery to shine with her, even if just for a few precious and beautiful hours.

The next day, as Sol is reborn again and rises from the mountains in the East, the stars would retreat, back into the abyss of space, hiding from his light in fear it may smite their own. This story of bravery and fear repeated itself every day, playing itself out across the heavens for all of Gaia’s children to witness. As it had been for a thousand millennia, and as it would be for a thousand millennia after.

This tale would play out until the end of time, when Sol would surrender himself to death and drag his domain and his sister down with him, making true every Human religion’s depiction of the apocalypse as the cradle of their race was ripped apart beneath them.

Either in joy or in sadness, it was enough to make me shed a tear. I let it run down to my chin before wiping it away and blinking. I bid the sun goodbye and turned around, back towards the city behind me.

Back towards the raging fires inside it. Back towards the war.

Humans had a name for this city that I could not pronounce, but the name was irrelevant. It had once been beautiful. It had played host to art and culture unmatched in this part of the planet. Marvelous towers of simple but gorgeous architecture reached up like outstretched fingers trying to grasp at the clouds. They had been nothing like ours, our large spires of metal reaching so far up that the richest blue sky could be seen from its peaks. No, these were humble, with their patterned, shingled roofs and short, wide layers. They were unique, and even on this planet they were uncommon, save for this single island.

Human cities were flawed in many ways, but there was no denying they were a pleasant sight. Regrettably, like too many other cities on this world, my people had brought war to it.

Our crescent-shaped vessel, the Storm-Splitter, glistened in Luna’s chilling light, decorating it with a beauty it was undeserving of as it rained rockets down on the city below, which illuminated its underbelly in a different, far less comforting orange than Sol gifted. The sight saddened me. All the toil men untold had poured into building this marvel, torn down in one single night. By morning, there would not be anything left. Only ash-coated foundations and charred, twisted wood piles where buildings and homes had once stood. Blue flashes whipped about between the buildings as my kin clashed with simple Human blades. It had reached the courtyards and patterned gravel gardens outside the tallest building, the palace.

I could see them, you know, even at this distance. Their short but ferocious figures shouting battle cries in a language I did not speak, clad in elegant woven armor instead of fiber and steel plate. Weak, but cultured. My brothers and sisters-in-arms towered over them, their twin-pronged blades easily searing through weave and flesh and bone. Man’s own weapons shattered, warped, and simply blunted against our own protections. These Human warriors cried out in agony and fury, refusing to show any fear even as they faced down death. I couldn’t tell if they were brave for not showing it or foolish for refusing to run and dying dishonest to themselves, but it wouldn’t matter anyway. They still died screaming.

My people always prided themselves on seeking glory and giving honor in battle, but there was no glory in this. This was slaughter, with no exception. No risk. Hardly any of our blood mixed into a purplish hue with the ocean of their own red we had spilled. Honor was not burning their homes. Honor was not killing their men and sending the rest screaming into the night, running from silver demons they didn’t understand and couldn’t kill.

I was not sure of the reason, the motivation, that justified this purge of life. Earth, with its primitive technologies and closed-minded peoples, was of no threat or consequence to us, and yet we were here anyway. We were many, and they were few. They killed one of ours in a fair battle, and we kill a generation of them in cold blood. It was unfair. It was cruel.

And I was a part of it.

I lowered my head from the light and began making my way down off my perch, towards the burning city and its crumbling stone walls. Women with faces reddened by tears ran past me in the other direction, dragging screaming children with youthful, plump faces behind them. They cried and held up wooden religious effigies as I bounded past them, some tripping and falling into the wet trenches of their crop fields trying to flee.

I pressed a button on my chestpiece and my helmet rose up, sealing around me and obscuring my face to the terrified defenders of this doomed city. I made no effort to cut down the fleeing peasants and simply kept my stride. Arrows came flying over the walls at me as my pace quickened. These simply fashioned projectiles, which I had only ever seen in relic houses as a child, bounced harmlessly off the second skin protecting me.

The arched gateway leading into the defiled village had already been savaged by my kin, who had simply charged through the door and shattered it. The defenders on the other side of it laid in decaying heaps, their spears snapped and blunted. Only two of them had managed to puncture the armor, and our oxidized blood anointed the tips of their spearheads.

The blazing archway of wood and simple plaster collapsed on me as I marched through. I grunted and shoved off the beams of wood before continuing. The screams of the terrified and dying warriors of Man pierced through my helmet, and my face twitched at the sounds as I continued running. Buildings around me were obliterated by fire from our ship, showering me in splinters that felt no more painful than raindrops. Still, my heart quickened, and I could feel my ears throbbing as I closed on the last dying sounds of battle.

I slowed to a halt as I reached the courtyard, the fighting since ended and a mass grave in its place. My fellow warriors moved among the bodies like wraiths, inspecting every limp form on the ground to make sure they would not raise themselves up to fight us again. An extra crushing of every neck. An extra puncture through each fragile skull.

I took the moment to draw my own blade and ready it. The hilt fit comfortably into my gloved grip as I flipped a switch under the guard. At once, a pronged steel blade sprung from the weapons blade, the perfect blue glow of the Sibal steel made even more brilliant under Luna’s gaze. A weapon so brilliant, so cultured… so unfitting a tool of crude murder.

Shingles of the palace started falling off in waves as flames greedily snaked their way up the walls and through the windows in an all-consuming destruction. It was a miracle the towering structure hadn’t already collapsed. I found it hard to believe their leader, their Daimyo, as they called him, was still in there, but he was.

There was a moment we all stood in silence, among the mounds of corpses, and stared at each other. We could have waited for the building to crumble, could have summoned a torrent of fire from the Storm-Splitter, our silver stain on the night sky, to instantly shatter the fragile monument, or could have simply sliced out its already strained supports and watch the building crumple down on itself and leave an indent in the ground where its foundation had been. Made him come to us. Forced him to come out or die, in which case he would die by our swords instead of his own home.

But we didn’t have to wait. He came to us.

A dozen men, some staggering, some walking upright like the inferno hadn’t kissed the edges of their armor, emerged from the dark orange of the front entrance, blades drawn. Their eyes, watering as they choked on smoke and ash, glared at us with pure hatred, and our helmets did not give them the ability of meeting our own, emotionless gazes. The last one to emerge wore a mask himself, made of wood and covering his lower face with the visage of a snarling demon carved into it. His eyes regarded my kin like a tactician, assessing our armor silently behind his mask’s barred fangs. His armor was decorated with ropes and knots, and two large gleaming metal horns jutted out from his helmet. He locked his gaze on me, and his eyes carried with them wrinkles of age, stress, and previous battles that we knew nothing of. There was no doubt, this man was the Daimyo.

We ceded some ground to the Humans, backing up further into the courtyard as they filed down the stairs and made a wall with the Daimyo at the formation’s center. The palace moaned in protest with its final labored breaths, and its previously formidable wooden pillars …

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