Some­times days were like that. They were just shit.

Rook sat with sunken shoul­ders as a tinge of depres­sion bound his nos­tal­gia in a coil. He sat before a dirty counter in a dirty diner and stirred his cof­fee point­lessly. Adding a third spoon­ful of sugar, he glanced back as some­one at a table knocked a plate on the floor.

The crash cat­a­pulted him back in time; back to that shitty brown real­ity he’d known a cen­tury ago.

- — -

A dozen sol­diers – troops of the 3rd Van­guard – let their heads hang as Bishop repeated the words of the Holy Book. A verse was spo­ken: some­thing to make them super­hu­man in this time, and they were. To be super­hu­man was surely some kin to mad­ness, and no man of even san­ity could face what they were about to face.

“…And they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” The holy man raised a hand to feel the spirit of God before low­er­ing it and touch­ing the hel­mets of each sol­dier as he preached, and paced up and down the drop bay of the Angel Hawk.

Finally Bishop stopped and the sol­diers looked up – six lined each side of the car­rier as it bucked in the tur­bu­lent skies of Arbi­ture. “Amen,” he spoke. The troops fol­lowed suit, and ended the prayer together.

A shud­der made Bishop fall back: his face a painted hor­ror as his body dis­ap­peared into the clouds below. Arms reached out – Rook’s the clos­est – but he fell and tum­bled into the light­en­ing cracks of the battlefield.

“Deploy, deploy, deploy!” A crack­led voice echoed from the speak­ers of the Angel Hawk. The twelve sol­diers loosed their restraints and felt free. Sud­denly the car­rier swooped sharply to evade incom­ing mis­siles and landed harshly in the heat of fire.

Rook buck­led. His knee hit the hull with a thick, metal­lic clunk and nar­rowed eyes betrayed his calm. “For the Fallen!” Called King, Prime of the twelve. They charged behind him and lay metal boots to sunken ground as weapons open fired and chunks of ruins exploded into dust clouds.

The onslaught was vicious and vis­ceral. Noth­ing felt phan­tom; noth­ing seemed illu­sion­ary. The Angelus flew their dread­naught tanks over the baron waste­land of Arbi­ture – what once stood tall and wide as a sym­bol for great­ness in their time, now fell short in every regard. Raised to rub­ble and left for dead, the world between both sides was noth­ing but a stage for the the­atre of battle.

The skies ran black and Rook was lost in the thick of it. The 3rd Van­guard tried to hedge for­ward and run their enemy back, but the Angelus’ were too strong for the twelve war­riors. “Knight up!” Called Rook, slam­ming his large body of armour against a ruined wall.

Knight – the rear­most of the twelve – raised his sword in under­stand­ing. He van­ished for a time before reap­pear­ing with a tube-launcher on his shoul­der. Swing­ing his bulky form to face the approach­ing Angelus tanks, he fired. A rocket tailed in crim­son burnt its way across the field like a wind­ing snake. Smash­ing into a steel hull, it exploded and took the tank with it.

A raised sword from the front sig­nalled King’s order to advance with a bar­rage of rock­ets. Knight fired again and the skies crack­led with light­en­ing. Under­stood as a whis­per from above, the twelve looked to the heav­ens and felt rain fall upon them.

The Angelus tanks slowed, and Rook took notice. He knew this move on the board they played their game on. No retreat was forth­com­ing and amongst the grey clouds, the change he expected began. Descend­ing on them, winged sol­diers swung into view as the sky snapped behind them. They fired errat­i­cally at the twelve and hit the ground like a giant’s steps.

Rook turned, instinc­tively duck­ing to evade a swing­ing blade. Time paused for a sec­ond; a sick allowance for a sol­dier about to die, and he blinked in the rain to look upon his enemy. This crea­ture was once his brother – they were all broth­ers – but now a dif­fer­ence as large as the space between their worlds kept them divided. The scarred lines where once his wings hung were tes­ta­ment to the divi­sion, to the beliefs, to why the war was so.

The Angelus war­rior took no time to sum him up, but raised his gun and fired. Before Rook hit the sod­den ground, the sol­dier widened his wings and took flight once more.

- — -

A wait­ress swept up what remained of the bro­ken plate and Rook’s mind returned to the present. A man besides him sat with his own cof­fee and looked across. “You seemed lost some­where. Mem­o­ries, eh?”

Rook sim­ply raised his cup and sighed. Some­times, days were like this…