Here I sit, alone on a cliff, my feet hanging over the edge. Flakes of soot, in place of snow, drift from the powdery sky. It used to be blue, and all that came down was water, not ash. But that was a different time. Now it's all as dead as the empty winds that brush over the hammered plains. A shuttle sits quietly far across the fields of gray. It readies for takeoff, engines glowing white, blurry in a haze that chokes the air. It's the last flight off this barren rock.
The shuttle thrusts from the ground, tipping up for the sky as its engines blast against the ash. With one enormous pulse it races away, blazing through the haze like a second sun. The engines weep as we grow distant, their tears of smoke trailing woefully behind. The more their whimpers dwindle, the harder they plead my heart to chase their dying light. With one arm holding back, the other reaching out, the longing call draws the cliff's edge nearer. Right on the brink, the only power I have left is to watch, to keep that last light of hope in view until it is gone. Gone from this world. Destined for our home fleet, with all aboard... Except me.
Now, I am all that remains.
The world wasn't always like this; just days ago, the ground was fertile and soft. Rain kept us soaked for months, it never stopped pouring on our heads. A rose that I picked still glows a pallid burgundy. This was supposed to be our new home, my new home. I waited my whole life to finally get off that blasted colony ship. All those years spent dreaming of waking up to singing birds, to a tender morning sun, in a bed of my own. It's all been wasted. All that hope burned away the second we turned this planet into a giant torch.
Everything was going so well - casualties were dropping everyday. Once we learned how to overcome their magic, we stomped across the continents faster than the enemy could fathom. I'll give them credit; the magical creatures that used to call this home put up a hell of a fight. They were centuries behind us in tech, not even possessing projectile weapons yet. But they used everything they had to perfection. The Unicorns, the Pegasi, even the unarmed and powerless fought us fiercely until their last breaths abandoned them. It was all over once the hordes of tanks, and swarms of aircraft were launched from the home fleet. But somehow both of us would lose in the end.
We left as swiftly as we conquered. As the genocide progressed, we began to notice everything was dying, not just the natives. Flowers wilted in perfect soil, trees shed their crumbling leaves - it was as if our very presence sucked the planet dry of living force. Our Stavka High Command was in the middle of solving the dilemma, trying reverse the phantom plague. With no warning, when we were on the last stretch to victory, they ordered a full retreat. There were 80 million of us on this continent alone. We were gone within hours, and none of us knew why. The most heinous act we humans could ever commit began shortly thereafter. We set the world on fire, and watched it burn as we hid safely in orbit. The embers of that image still flicker in my mind - a gorgeous blue pearl, wrapped in streaks of cotton over bounties of emerald green, hanging in a silent void. We slowly turned it dark, rays of amber gleaming under swirling, suffocating veils as black as space. The storm would rage until the jewel of our dreams became nothing but a pale husk beyond our windows. It was a mirror of the Earth we had abandoned.
But that wasn't the end. Several discreet shuttle landings would follow. Why our Stavka still had interest in the world was never brought to light. All I knew at the time was, I had to get on one of those shuttles.
And now here I am.
I'll never know what pushed me to follow through. What I do know is, I must endure. This was my choice, after all. I won't last long, but somehow I have better chances here than in the fleet. Hardship and suffering is all that's ahead to greet me. But that's what I was bred for.
What lies before me now? What relics of a once rich history lay buried in the ash? A history lost forever in a gale of fire. Every record gone, on nothing but a strangled world, with every last bit of it turned... Into Ashes.