Aster struggled to breathe against Lelesia’s tight grip around his throat, his legs dangling just barely off the ground as she held him up with her claw. The chtin of Lelesia’s claws pressed down on his neck, and through it, he could feel the cold flames of her anger.

  Lelesia’s many pairs of crimson eyes stared into him. He could see his reflection bounce off her spider-like eyes back at him as she looked down into those inscrutable eyes.

  Fia tried to rise from the ground despite her injuries. She attempted to strike Lelesia with a swipe of her claws from below. Lelesia didn’t bother to look at her as she swiftly kicked her back to the ground, stunning her.

  Lelesia never broke her stare with Aster. “...Do you like stories about heroes?”

  “W-what?” Aster said.

  “Do you like stories about heroes?” Lelesia said as she tightened her grip.

  “I…” Aster said as he tried to pry off her claws with his good arm. His broken arm dangled by his side.

  What was Lelesia saying? Now of all times?

  Astar stared. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t like them.

  “I like stories about heroes,” Aster said, forcing it out, despite his lack of air.

  “Good!” Lelesia said, a fake cheerfulness interjected into her voice. “I like stories about heroes too. Then how about I tell you, no, both of you a story.”

  Lelesia shot silk strings from her other claw, wrapping them around Fia as she struggled back up again. Her strings tied Fia up as they bound her arm-wings against her body.

  Lelesia began walking to a nearby tree as she tossed the Fia against it. She held Aster by the throat as she walked towards the tree, still clenching him by the throat while doing so.

  Lelesia held up a sharp finger in her free claw as if to give a lesson in a lecture.

  “Once upon a time, a long time ago,” Lelesia began. “There was a little spider girl and a little human boy. A chance meeting. A fated encounter. Whatever you brats call it nowadays.” Lelesia chuckled. “If you remember your history lessons from the academies, then you’d remember that at the time, the Kingdom of Ravenna was nearly entirely populated by humans. And likewise, Velzelia by arachnids. But that isn’t surprising considering that Ravenna and Velzelia had always been at each other’s throats, fighting in endless conflicts over the centuries. So it should be no surprise that both would be wary and hostile of outsiders.”

  Lelesia stopped by the tree where Fia lay, who was busy trying to undo her string bindings futilely.

  Lelesia continued, “And from that chance meeting, would everything change. For Ravenna. For Velzelia. For the world. For both these young children would eventually grow up and cast down the old systems. The old hate. All that which had caused so much pain and suffering. Even if they had to drag everyone around them with them while kicking and screaming.” She paused for a moment. “My mother and father, the heroes Serenoa and Amoria, went on to found the Gaia Sphere Federation with so many others.”

  Aster sweated at the darkness in all of Lelesia’s crimson eyes, which seemed to swirl in them. He could feel the pain in his head rising.

  There was a bitterness in Lelesia’s voice as she continued to speak. “My parents. The others. They sacrificed so much for everyone, even when the world was against them. A lot like your parents, Leticia and Excellion, the Sovereigns of the Lethea Labyrinth.” Aster felt a tinge of sadness enter her voice. “But words fail to capture the enormity of the sacrifices made. The severity of the crimes committed by those who spat on all the hope and dreams of the Federation.”

  Lelesia glanced at Fia and then back to Aster. It was like she had some kind of… expectation about him? What was she thinking?

  The pain in his head reached a crescendo. It was strange. It was painful, and yet it was not. This whole time, it was like he had some kind of reaction while fighting her. But what was it? And why?

  His eyes widened as the black-hole of anger and hate from Lelesia grew outward as if it was going to swallow everything up. The darkness from Lelesia seemed to overtake the world around him. It swallowed up everything. All light and the world around seemed to vanish, and a black emptiness overtook everything.

  Then.

  Stars.

  So many stars.

  The world.

  No.

  The universe lit up in stars in silvery-white and bright blues.

  The cosmos of the universe appeared around him, galaxies and nebulae washing over the empty darkness in bright color.

  Aster realized he was floating in space. He stared down at his hands. Then the rest of his body. His entire being looked ghostly and ethereal, glowing with an emerald light. The pain in his head was gone.

  What was this? Why was this happening?

  Then, massive beams of harsh crimson light shot past him at mind-numbing speed, countless waves of them. Purple beams of light went by him in the other direction.

  Those were particle beams!

  Waves of missiles and kinetic projectiles followed not long after that, crisscrossing each other.

  Then massive shapes materalized into form, large and small. As they passed by him, he realized they were starships, long, blocky, and angular. They continued to fire their weapons on the move, even as they dodged and were damaged by opposing enemy fire.

  Following around them came smaller machines of different shapes and configurations. Many were humanoid, bipedal. They blasted off at high speed, their powerful, bright blue thrusters making them appear like little stars as they disappeared quickly from his sight.

  There were thousands—No. Tens of thousands of them went by him.

  Those are...

  Mobile frames!

  His eyes widened as he realized the scale and the chaos of what he was witnessing. Vast fleets of thousands of vessels, some a mile long, and some longer still, fired at each other. Countless machines of war struggled furiously against one another, individually and in groups. Particle beams, missiles, and kinetic projectiles blew up through ships and machines.

  The war extended farther than he could see from here. Farther than he could comprehend. For thousands of miles. No. Even more. It was everywhere.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then they were there. The planet Gaia itself, in all of its green and blue glory below him, and the silver white of the Triplet Moons in the distance.

  And then he saw them…

  The vast cylindrical colonies, miles long and several wide, the blue light of massive thrusters pushing hundreds of them down from space to Gaia, the burning red-orange light of atmospheric friction making them stand out even among everything else. Even one was a makeshift weapon of unimaginably vast destruction.

  This was…

  The End War!

  It was an endless chorus of war around him that shook the very stars themselves.

  It was chaos. The two opposing forces were heavily intermingled. It was hard to see where things began and ended. Ships and war machines were oriented in space in every direction, as whatever battle lines there were were nonexistent—Perpendicular, parallel, reversed, it was a chaotic situation in a 360-degree sphere as Aster looked up, down, and side to side. And the chaos was growing in intensity as every second passed.

  As the colonies fell on Gaia, millions—

  No.

  Billions were dying.

  In this moment, Aster could feel it. Everyone screaming in anger, raging in hate, struggling in despair. He grimaced as he sensed that people were still alive on those dropping colonies, even though so many were already dead on them.

  Aster looked at Gaia, the sophisticated development of its metropolises and cities, the spaceports, and all the grand efforts of the Gaia Sphere Federation across its surface. And over the horizon, where the light of the sun didn’t reach, he could see the vast network of light that shone from the dark side of the planet where night reigned.

  This was supposed to be a war?

  Who exactly was winning?

  Everyone was losing.

  It was…

  It was madness.

  How had things reached this point?

  What could cause people to do such things?

  Everyone was going to die. Everyone did die, didn’t they?

  Aster felt a chill go down his spine. How many people had died in this final crescendo of ultra-violence?

  Aster held both of his hands to his head as the feelings and emotions of those around him washed over him. There were countless roars of hate and anger. The screams of dying curses. The tearful regrets and sorrow of despair.

  It was too much. He gripped his head in a tight grip in a futile attempt to bear the pain.

  How could he, how could anyone—

  “Are you a Protogen boy?” Lelesia said, her voice coming from all around him, as if she were speaking directly into his mind.

  Lelesia? Where was she? Aster turned his head all around him, unable to spot her in the chaos surrounding him.

  “A Protogen? What is that?” Aster said, his voice just like Lelesia's.

  Was all of this Lelesia’s doing? How was she doing this?

  A melodic chuckle met him.

  “I see the academies have gotten worse since I was there,” Lelesia said.

  “Answer me! What is this?” Aster said.

  “A vision of the past. Of the End War,” Lelesia replied.

  “I can see that. But that doesn’t explain anything!” Aster ground out.

  Lelesia merely chuckled again at him. “Why should I bother to educate an ignorant child like you?”

  “How can anyone understand anything if no one ever bothers to try and help someone else understand?”

  Lelesia laughed mockingly at him. “And what? Do you think that if people talk to one another, things would be solved so easily? So neatly? Have you ever wondered what would happen if everyone did understand each other? What would come after that?”

  “What do you mean?” Aster said.

  “What do you think the Gaia Sphere Federation was?” The mirthless laughter of Lelesia came from around him. “The End War? Despite peole coming to understand one another. It still happened anyway.”

  “That…” Aster began. The flashes of light grew in intensity around him. The colorful explosions marked death and destruction for so many. “I won't pretend to understand. I can’t. I wasn’t there.” Even if he wanted to shut his eyes, he couldn’t break away his eyes from his view of the colonies slowly making their way towards the surface of Gaia. “But even so, I want to understand. And it’s not fair. Selenia had nothing to do with this. Neither did so many others who were born after this. None of us was there. The descendants of those who were involved in this shouldn’t have to pay for the crimes of their ancestors. We should be working together to move past this. With the Selenar Union. With the Settlement Front Alliance.”

  “What meaningless platitudes. What was done cannot be undone, for it is forevermore. Say that to all those dying in front of you. Do you think you’re the first to think such things? The last?”

  “Didn't you use to be the same once?” Aster said. Hasn’t Lelesia been someone like them once? Like himself? Like so many others? The hero, the Smiling Scythe, who had fought for the hopes and dreams of the Gaia Sphere Federation?

  Then Lelesia was there, in front of him, also in a faint emerald glow as a ghostly apparition. She floated comfortably here, weightless and unbound by gravity as if she were in her natural environment.

  “That’s why I know just how foolish you are brat,” Lelesia said. “And why the idealistic notions that you have are ultimately futile.”

  Then, the first colony impacted the surface of Gaia as if to punctuate Lelesia’s point. A massive flash of white light erupted from the spot of impact. One of Gaia’s cities had been at the impact spot. How many millions, tens of millions had died from that impact alone?

  Aster could sense the desperation and despair of those fighting grow. He grimaced as more of those massive colonies descended to Gaia. The anger and hate, the pain and agony, the sorrow and despair, grew with every impact.

  Then another colony impacted..

  Then another.

  And another.

  It was pure annihilation. Every impact was a white fireball of unimaginable heat. Everything and everyone was vaporized on contact. Massive plumes of rock, dust, and gas rose upward. Fiery shockwaves radiated outward. Secondary effects of earthquakes, tsunamis, and ignited fires would cause even more death and destruction long afterwards.

  There were still hundreds more yet to impact.

  Then, in the far-off distance, he saw great flashes of light, brighter than the others, where the rest of the colonies in the Settlement Front Alliance were and on the Triplet Moons. Great and powerful weapons were used in retribution and retaliation by the Gaia Sphere Federation due to the colony drops.

  Aster trembled in shock as the feelings and emotions of those around him assaulted him.

  The cries of children, their parents, hugging each other before being annihilated by the colonies dropping to Gaia.

  Countless people on death’s door, filled with tearful regret and angry loathing, in any of the endless number of starships and war machines.

  An endless number of people filled with desperation, whose last remaining drops of hope were being wiped away.

  Everyone’s life was fading from the universe before him.

  And all he could do was stare wordlessly at it.

  Lelesia was also silently watching everything unfold as she stood by him.

  Then, off in the distance, he saw a starship escorted by others. It stood out from the rest. It was large, sleek, and deadly. It looked like an obsidian wedge.

  From its belly departed a machine, massive and monstrous compared to the ones surrounding it. It was sharp and angular with multiple limbs, claws, and tails. It bristled with countless weapons. A moment passed as it drifted from the starships, then it shot forward with an amazing acceleration as its massive thrusters blasted bright blue.

  “How nostalgic,” Lelesia said.

  He turned to glance at Lelesia. She had a melancholic look.

  Was that Lelesia piloting that monstrous machine?