The Fall
I was born a proud warrior in a nation of proud warriors.
Do not think us savages, like the Stevenites. We had honor. We kept our promises or died trying. We never raised our hands against civilians. We allowed enemy nations to surrender, and were merciful when they did. We even allowed individual warriors to surrender, though we thought less of them if they chose to do so.
I was far from the strongest of my generation, but I was among the cleverist, and was soon taken for officer training. I studied greedily: the wars of the past, the weapons and other war-gear of the present, the diplomacy that would shape the future. And all too soon, we were at war.
It was nearly forty years since the incursion began. Forty years with neither aid nor leadership from the gods. Forty years in which our allies' magic failed. Forty years of severed trade routes making advanced technology difficult. (Did you know that microelectronics require boron? Do you know where the nearest viable boron mine is? Did you know that we lost ten thousand soldiers, including my personal mentor, trying to hold a railway line to there?)
After forty years of slow but unceasing losses, we did the unthinkable. We bent knee.
We joined with Steve. We thought him closer to our ways than Lily. But that wasn't saying much.
From the day the treaty was signed, we dreamed of rebellion.
Steve sent an agent to live among us and command us. A wholly-controlled being. We called it an avatar. We presented the avatar with a uniform in our military's style, with the highest possible rank insignia. It accepted the uniform and wore it gladly, unaware (or uncaring?) that it was lined with explosives and a great many of us had detonators.
Steve “blessed” many of our best warriors with spirals. We saw the insanity first-hand. (In hindsight, this is why I relinquished my spiral so willingly. Aaron didn't teach me about the madness; he reminded me.)
Steve's many talents do not include accounting. Every supply shipment, be it weapons or computers, was shaved for the resistance. All intelligence was copied. The resistance grew stronger. Yet the dream of Revolution still lingered in the tantalizing distance of the indefinite future.
Meanwhile, under Steve's Avatar's command, we fought many battles against the Lilim, and often won. Under that command I used stealth and trickery. I broke my word of honor. I killed innocents.
All in the desperate hope for Revolution.
Our best hope was in the creation of our own Media. Technological ones that didn't drive the users mad. Our tinkers thought they were close. For the last five years I can remember, it was one year away.
Our second best hope was that the monsters themselves might resent Steve and Lily's rule over them, and might be willing to join us if freed. (In hindsight, this is why I accepted Citrine with so little evidence – she was an old dream come to life.)
And our most desperate hope was a story, confirmed by multiple spies, that the incursion began with a chunk of warp-crystal. Perhaps, if we could seize that warp-crystal, we could reverse the whole thing. We never got any actionable intel on where it might be.
Matters came to a head when the Lilim broke our lines at Breaker Beach. A large detachment marched for our capital city. Our city's defenses were weak – too dependent on a force field that no longer functioned. The Avatar looked at the tactical situation and ordered us to abandon the city. Evacuate the people, grab what we could, burn the rest, and fall back to the Grey Mountains, which were more defensible.
It was a good plan, except that our capital held the Medium Research Lab, which could not be taken on such a trip.
I told the Avatar that we would never yield our homes, nor the sacred graves of our forefathers. I hope Steve believed that was my real motivation. Because then I blew the Avatar up.
We gathered what defense we could at the capital. We were badly outnumbered, and our fortifications were ineffective against flying or teleporting enemies. There were re-inforcements on the way, but several days out. I ordered all artillery to watch the skies. And then I slipped out the sally port under cover of darkness with a small special forces unit to see what I could sabotage.
We had laced their spare mon storage with c4 and were starting on their resetters when we were caught. I ordered the others to keep setting the charges, while I held the enemies' attention.
I uttered no coherent battle cry. I am unworthy of one. I merely screamed. With a laspistol in my left hand and a phase sword in my right, I slew many. I formed the heap of bodies into primitive cover. Then a great blow rent my helmet. And a second blow left me in darkness.
I don't know how long I slept. Or how many times I died in Lily's maze.
I awoke to find the Revolution had triumphed, albeit in an oddly quiet way that no one quite seems to want to talk about. Did my desperate effort to protect the Medium Research Lab contribute to that? I will likely never know.
But the triumph is not complete. The constant pressure and threat from Steve and Lily continue to dominate the world.
One day, humans will truly be free to write our own destiny.
One day, the gods will return.
One day, the old battle-cry will sound again:
Blood for the blood god!