Iron Cavalry Against the Scourge

The Swarm that once blotted out the whole sky turned to ash in a sea of fire, and silver white snowflakes drifted through the deep void, reflecting the faint light of the fixed star. In this moment, the ceaseless beating of wings still rang beside her ear, and the orders on the comms channel at last fell silent.

The Swarm attacking the “Empire” had not yet been wiped out completely, and as always, after a brief lull, the next sortie order sounded again.

The Iron Cavalry of the “Empire” felt the sensations of the outside world carried to her through signals deep in her spinal cord. She recalled her experience the last time she left the cockpit, hot wind stirring her long hair, sweltering air soaking the nape of her neck, sweat sticking to her skin. She did not hate that feeling at all, it was a hundred times more vivid than a simulated signal. The armor synchronizes deeply with the senses of its pilot, and although this adds to the agony of Entropy loss, in order to defeat the insects the Iron Cavalry long ago ran out of any other choice.

Article 43 of the Glamoth military code, a surviving Iron Cavalry must return to the formation of her own accord...

Only when the Iron Cavalry saw the silver helm with its head severed did she realize that the armor's sensory signals had deceived her... The next sortie order would never sound again, and that fleeting moment of rest was cruel.

The Glamoth Iron Cavalry clenched her wristguard, cracking open the filthy hard wings of the insects, letting the corrosive fluid in their bellies lose pressure and spray everywhere. When the insect fluid touched the silver armor it evaporated at once, leaving only a dirty bloodstain.

Fragments of armor and insect limbs lay scattered like debris across the deep void, wrapped around Glamoth's “River of Death” that drifted quietly under the pull of gravity. The bloody battle was finally coming to its end.

The leaders of the council debated the postwar order, and passed judgment on Titania, one who had never held real power, because she held command of an Iron Cavalry force whose strength matched the Swarm's. Her existence was the most dangerous threat to the survival of the Republic Empire... Everyone rang the bells of peace and announced to the people that the Swarm had been dispersed, that the blue sky had once again returned to the hands of the Republic Empire.

If the restraints upon the “Queen” were not tightened, then who else could control these weapons?

In their short lives, the Iron Cavalry endlessly honed the power of their iron fists, but they could never have guessed... that those withered, pallid arms raised high in that council held the power to change the fate of Glamoth.

Violent arcs of fire swept across the night sky, crossing the horizon where dawn was breaking, heading for the different regions of Glamoth, that was the cycle most familiar and also most terrifying to the citizens of the Republic Empire.

The silver armors shot through the sky, racing against time to reach the merciless battlefields, without even the time to look upon the scenery they defended with all their strength, by day and by night.

The orders of the Queen could not be defied. Soldiers with identical faces, born from the Cultivation Chambers, swore loyalty to the Queen and resolved to take back the sky of Glamoth. The Iron Cavalry cut through mountains of bone and seas of blood left by the buzzing insects, burned away the remnants of piled insect shells, and crushed the wreckage of giant mandibles and heaps of sharp teeth... The fate of the Glamoth Iron Cavalry is to endure the slow disintegration of Entropy, to burn fiercely on the boundary between life and death.

Until the fire is completely extinguished, until the swarm that hid the sky becomes ash upon the ground, until no one is left alive to return... Days like this will still go on...

What is life? When the armor accelerates and clamps tight upon their chests, when the numbing, piercing pain of Entropy loss passes through their bodies, only then do they taste a little of the flavor of “life”.

Violent arcs of fire swept across the night sky, crossing the horizon where dawn was breaking, heading for the different regions of Glamoth, that was the cycle most familiar and also most terrifying to the citizens of the Republic Empire.

The silver armors shot through the sky, racing against time to reach the merciless battlefields, without even the time to look upon the scenery they defended with all their strength, by day and by night.

The orders of the Queen could not be defied. Soldiers with identical faces, born from the Cultivation Chambers, swore loyalty to the Queen and resolved to take back the sky of Glamoth. The Iron Cavalry cut through mountains of bone and seas of blood left by the buzzing insects, burned away the remnants of piled insect shells, and crushed the wreckage of giant mandibles and heaps of sharp teeth... The fate of the Glamoth Iron Cavalry is to endure the slow disintegration of Entropy, to burn fiercely on the boundary between life and death.

Until the fire is completely extinguished, until the swarm that hid the sky becomes ash upon the ground, until no one is left alive to return... Days like this will still go on...

What is life? When the armor accelerates and clamps tight upon their chests, when the numbing, piercing pain of Entropy loss passes through their bodies, only then do they taste a little of the flavor of “life”.