Scorched

The Empire is nigh.

Soon enough we’ll join this place in becoming dust. So long we’ve yearned for independence. So far we’ve gone to achieve it. So little it lasted.

I remember it as if it were yesterday – the blue skies and clear valleys, the green hills and the rivers flowing through them as though it will all be forever. As though nothing could ever ruin it. As though humans didn’t exist.

We’re a pest. We’re running from our own and bringing chaos wherever we find ourselves; while we’re busy chasing our own tail we’re massacring every place and being in our path.

Maybe we deserve it – maybe we deserve the misery, the anguish, and the death. Maybe we need punishment for our utterly selfish ways. I don’t regret it, though… attempting to flee from the Empire, I mean. I don’t think any of us do. It was a worthy cause – at least as worthy as a human cause can be. But at the same time… we should’ve known. We should’ve known they’d take it as a challenge and come after us, even though we’re no threat to them. Even though we merely seek peace and independence. And not independence in the way our ancestors understood it – but being free range humans, once more. Embracing our roots – our gift. Living not for the purpose of conquering others, nor for the dozens of other selfish reasons we’ve done it thus far, but living for knowledge and understanding. Living for life. For love.

The sky alone kept its beauty out of all there was; however, among its many celestial bodies, the flashing dot grows bigger daily. What we thought was a meteor turned out to be the Empire’s elite fleet. And they’re dragging a whole star after them, which they use to power their ships and weapons. They want to make sure none of us get away this time.

They’ve been blocking our comms for months now. We don’t know what the other settlements are doing, especially after the radiation of the two nukes dropped three weeks ago engulfed our region like a blanket of scorching death. Our skin hasn’t felt the sun since then. Empire ground troops will probably be here by next Thursday if not sooner.

Our final moments are nigh and I… I don’t know if I’m ready. There really isn’t anything to prepare and yet… I don’t feel ready. It’s not that I haven’t accepted my own mortality – I have. It’s just – I just wish it were anyone other than the Empire doing it. I just wish we weren’t just another easy victory for them. Another number they could add to their statistics. I just wish… It would’ve been different.

My family – my ancestors – we’ve been Scribes for millennia. It’s only fitting that the last remnant of me in this existence will be the words I’m currently writing. We’ve signed our works under many different names throughout history; at first, Scribes, then Travelers, and now, since the dawn of the Empire’s obsession with ending our bloodline – Deserters. Sometimes its freeing to embrace what others think of you; if not for sanity, at least for the bliss of knowing that the very thing they’re labeling you as might be their worst nightmare.

“And yet, the abyss will not relent till its hunger has been satisfied. Till the last of our words have been consumed and turned back into primordial chaos. It shan’t cease till the old and the new may fuse once more, at the end of time.”

– Memento Mori – Notes of a Deserter, 3026 Anno Domini.