The Fall of a World

“ALL FORMATIONS FALL BACK! ALL FORMATIONS FALL BACK!”

“SQUADRON 32 HAS FALLEN!”

“THIS IS SQUADRON 30, REQUESTING ASSISTANCE ON THE WEST FLANK!”

“Marigold… Marigold… no…” a lone soldier whimpers from somewhere across the trench.

“SQUADRON 29 HAS—”

“SQUADRON 35—”

“SQUADRON 30 HAS FALLEN! WEST FLANK HAS COLLAPSED! WE ARE BEING SURROUNDED! I REPEAT WE ARE BEING SURROUNDED!”

“Captain Azalea… what do we do?” a male soldier asks next to me, “Daphne… she…”

I silently stare at the wounds that seem to blanket the body of my fellow comrade.

Shit, I thought, not her too…

Before deciding what to do next, I stepped onto a plank in order to assess the situation on the battlefield.

Dark clouds of smoke billowed out from the fires on the ground, painting the reddened sky in a dark murky color and making the air harder to breathe. The battlefield was filled with the sounds of gunfire, explosions, and screams of anguish from both humans and alien creatures alike—a horrific symphony of war—relentless and deafening.

“Aza..lea… Ast..er…” Daphne croaks out, “just… leave me here… I won’t… make it far… anyway…”

“No, Daphne!” Aster shouts, “I’m not leaving you here! I’m sure that Azalea can figure something out, we just… we just need more—”

“...time” Daphne gasps out, “time that neither of you have… you heard the radio… our west flank has been breached… if you don’t leave… now… we’ll… all…”

Her voice trails off.

“Daphne…? Daphne! Captain! She’s losing too much blood! We need to do something!”

I tightly clenched my fists, deciding to make a rash decision.

“Wrap up her stomach, we’ll carry her through the battlefield and into the next line of trenches… whether we make it or not… that’s not what’s important. We’ll fall back together no matter what.”

After countless hours of sustained fighting, we were on the last of our trenches on the frontline, and the next closest set was at least a couple hundred meters behind us. It was dangerous to make the run—I knew that very well—but what I was afraid of more was losing another squadmate.

Besides, it wasn’t like we had many options left anyway. With the west flank collapsing the only options we had left were to head east and be surrounded alongside them or make a desperate run back towards allied territory.

As Aster begins to wrap up Daphne’s wounds, I peer into the battlefield once more, checking the situation one last time to deduce the right moment to make the run.

Hundreds of corpses of what humanity called the ‘Wilted’—named after their appearance—were strewn across the battlefield. Their faces looked like an amalgamation of twisted folds that drooped like wilted flowers, and their humanoid bodies with blackened skin that looked as if it was decaying, had guns and weapons fused into them that they used to fight.

Above us, two enormous battleships towered over the warzone. I could barely make out their silhouettes through the smoke and debris in the sky as they continuously fired down hundreds of capsules that deployed entire squadrons of the Wilted onto the battlefield.

As one of the capsules lands near us, I pull out my assault rifle, infusing the bullets with my aether before firing at them, taking them out one by one before they could even properly deploy.

Aether-infused weapons—the only things that seemed to directly damage the Wilted—something humanity figured out after countless of early losses. It was why Espers like me and the rest of the soldiers fighting on the battlefield were drafted into the war, because we were the only ones who were capable of such infusions.

“Are you done yet, Aster?!” I yell, pulling out a smoke grenade from my pocket, “we need to get moving before we get encircled!”

Aster hauls Daphne’s body over his back and nods his head as I toss the grenade in front of us, providing a temporary cover for us to retreat into the next set of trenches. Next to me, I notice the remaining squadrons of fellow Espers quickly follow suit, tossing their own smoke grenades and climbing their way out of the trenches as the Wilted begin blindly firing through the smoke.

As we make the desperate charge through the collapsing ally territory, I allow Aster to run ahead of me as I carefully watch our back, preparing to fire at any enemies that appear through the smoke. However, to my surprise, the sound of the enemy gunfire momentarily stops, and was instead replaced by a terrifying CRACK! followed by the loud whistling of artillery shells being launched through the skies.

“WATCH OUT!” an unnamed female soldier from another squadron shouts, rushing to shove me out of the way of a blast as countless explosions rain down upon us, ripping through the battlefield with a devastating amount of force and filling the air with more dirt and debris.

After the first wave of artillery subsided, I looked around the place for Aster and Daphne, before freezing upon seeing their bodies crumpled on the ground a few feet away from me.

“Aza…le…a…” Aster manages to make out, “run… away… before… the next…”

Another round of loud cracks echo across the battlefield, signaling the next wave of artillery being fired as I clench my fist in frustration. It wasn’t the first time I saw something like this but that didn’t make it any easier on me.

Without giving me a chance to grieve however, the loud whistling of the artillery wakes me up from the temporary melancholy as I quietly murmur, “...I’m sorry Aster.”

Despite everything, he manages to make out a smile as he quietly breathes out, “at least… say our real names… captain Mitra… not our code… names…”

Mitra…? I wondered, ah… I haven’t been called that in so long that I nearly forgot…

“Come on, let's go!” the girl from earlier shouts, pulling me away before the next set of explosions begin to rain down.

After narrowly dodging the following artillery shells and running over the bodies of fellow Espers as they fell, we safely manage to make it into the next set of ally trenches, collapsing into them with our exhausted bodies.

Once we made it inside, I slumped next to a wall, completely out of breath, as I tried not to break down from everything that happened so far. Reinforcement soldiers spilled past me through the tunnels of the communication trenches, taking their positions as they carefully watched over the territory we had just lost.

Meanwhile, the girl from before walks up and slumps down next to the dirt wall beside me.

“Hey,” she said, “are you okay?”

I turned towards her, and for the first time, I was able to get a proper view of how she looked. She had long white hair with streaks of light magenta through them, and on her back was what looked to be a pair of dove wings—her Esper infusion, I assumed.

“Yeah…” I replied, my voice quiet and murmured, as I realized I forgot to thank her, “thanks for saving me earlier…”

She lets out a small huff as a solemn expression forms on her face.

“To be honest… I should be the one thanking you,” she said, “back in the other trenches, I wasn’t sure of what to do when I heard that the west flank fell. My only thoughts were that I was going to die… and for a second, a troublesome thought appeared in my mind that said that maybe my time had come… but when I saw you pulling out the smoke grenade and making a bold decision to retreat despite the circumstances, you almost reminded me of my squadron leader… Because of you, I was able to pull myself together and get out of the trench.”

A small smile manages to form on my mouth, as I thought, I remind her of her leader huh? Well she reminds me of Daphne…

“What’s your name, girl?” I asked.

“Lily,” she answered.

“I mean your real name.”

“Oddly enough… also Lily,” she replied.

I gave her a weird look and said, “well that just kind of makes the code name useless doesn’t it?”

Lily smiled. “I suppose it does,” she shrugged, “but you’re not the first person to say that.”

“Let me guess, your squadron?” I asked, “which… seeing as you’re alone as well—”

“Yeah…” she softly murmured, “they all died in the skirmishes along the way here… fortunately enough. I never wished for them to see the horrors of the southern front anyway.”

Suddenly, the soldiers around us began to shout and point at the sky as the two of us looked over to see what the commotion was about.

There, in the sky, was what looked to be a giant capsule about the size of two modern tanks being launched down from one of the battleships. Suspecting it was a large army or a machine of war of some sort, the soldiers began firing at it, however none of their bullets seemed to damage it.

As it descended closer to the ground, its shape became much more apparent—it was a large black drill decorated with what looked to be wilted flowers and had four appendages sticking out from its sides. Upon landing, the appendages immediately latch onto the ground and the machine begins to rapidly start drilling into the earth.

“KEEP FIRING AT IT!” one of the soldiers yells as some of them start lobbing grenades towards it, “whatever it is, it looks dangerous—we can’t let that thing continue drilling!”

However, even after a few minutes of sustained fire, the machine doesn’t look the slightest bit damaged. Suddenly, it comes to a stop before a loud whirring sound followed by a bright green light flashed from the machine, injecting something into the ground.

“TAKE COVER!” somebody yells as everyone ducks, anticipating an explosion, however, after a few seconds of nothing happening, they all looked around confused.

Suddenly, a loud voice booms over the battlefield as everyone looks up at the sky to see one of the battleships now clearly looming over us through the smoke.

“Alien species of the planet named Flos. We ask to speak to your leaders. We find it reasonable that this senseless fighting stops, for you have already lost.”