The End War was something that even the youngest children learned about at a young age.

  In the academies of the Despar Dominion, a component state of the Gaia Sphere Federation, the End War was a historical topic covered by the state-provided education that was mandatory for its citizens. Though taught to even children, much was omitted until later in life. And even then, there was much that was still left out, unsaid, and omitted. Aster could surmise that much. Those who knew more about it had generally been reluctant to talk too much in detail about it.

  The Settlement Fronts, the orbital and lunar colonies that had been grouped into the Lagrange points around Gaia’s orbit, had broken away, determined to seek their independence from the Gaia Sphere Federation, even if it meant armed conflict to do so. In response, the Gaia Sphere Federation responded in kind.

  The total war that had followed between the political entities, the Gaia Sphere Federation and the Settlement Front Alliance. It had been a brutal, grinding war that spiraled out of control, though it had started innocuously enough.

  A difference of opinion here.

  A dispute there.

  A war of words, of dialogue and diplomacy.

  Until violence had broken out.

  Then everything spiraled out of control beyond anyone’s ability to stop. What had started as skirmishes became battles. Battles into campaigns. Campaigns into war.

  A war of a kind that Gaia had never seen in its history—on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. It had been a war that had touched virtually everyone and everything, from the most remote parts of Gaia above and below its surface to the farthest reaches of space yet traveled. It had been believed and hoped that the war could be ended quickly through short, decisive battles and campaigns. What resulted was a multi-year stalemate and quagmire that escalated beyond the expectations of everyone, despite whatever futile attempts at diplomacy that had occurred.

  In that deadlock, both the Settlement Fronts and the Federation had attempted to produce weapons that could win the war.

  Weapons like the massive and monstrous machine that made its way before him, its thrusters bright blue and emitting a long, fiery trail behind it that made it stand out even amongst the countless lights and explosions in the vastness of space of the war that raged around it.

  Aster felt uneasy at the sight of it. Though he doubted his ghostly emerald body could be harmed in his current state, it still sent a shiver down his spine.

  The machine looked beyond deadly as a creation during a time of total war, when what mattered was winning the war, regardless of the consequences. It looked like a legless predatory bird, sharp and angular, with equal parts blockiness and curves. It had an industrial look, painted abyssal black with red highlights. Its head was full of crimson eyes, much like Lelesia’s own, that seemed to pulse and glow as it passed by him.

  Despite its massive size, approaching that of small starships, its thrusters accelerated it at heavy burn, shooting past him at a speed that nothing that big had any right to move at. Even the mobile frames that fought each other around it, whose height towered over small buildings several stories tall and could crush multiple people with a single clench of their mechanical hands, were dwarfed by it.

  The machine moved ahead of its allies to its rear against the large enemy force before it. It was an entire fleet, comprised of several dozen starships that had begun firing an endless barrage of dark purple particle beams, missiles, and kinetic projectiles against the oncoming machine.

  Then the machine moved with a grace and agility that seemed impossible for a machine that size, as it accelerated even further, its thrusters and verniers outputting even more force as it moved in patterns that he couldn’t believe, as it moved in sharp turns and looped in ways that made a mockery of the deadly wall of weapon fire sent against it.

  Aster tried to imagine the crush of the G-forces that would crush and paste a normal person. How much was it? Dozens? Hundreds? The machine moved one way, then, before you could blink, it was accelerating in the opposite direction at high speed.

  Aster couldn’t help but gape in awe at the display.

  Despite its monstrousness, it had a kind of beauty.

  Like a monster from the myths and legends of Gaia.

  No…

  Not like them. One to surpass them.

  A monster born of the advanced technological and arcanological might of the Gaia Sphere Federation.

  As the machine closed the distance quickly, the mobile frames of the Settlement Front Alliance surged forward by the hundreds, moving to engage it to stop its advance. The humanoid dark blue and purple machines spread out and encircled it from all directions, firing dark purple particle beams from their particle rifles. The machine avoided it with ease as it danced around the mobile frames surrounding it.

  Then, dozens of sharp fins began to detach from the machine, bright blue thrust sending them in all directions around it. The detached fins began firing red particle beams, cutting through the enemy machines and lighting the space around with a wave of explosions. The remote weapons danced around the helpless enemy machines before them. The fins practically teleported with the speed at which they moved, as if controlled by the mind itself.

  Then, the machine stopped next to an enemy mobile frame that moved about in a panicked fashion. The enemy machine stopped at the sight of the monster before it, as if in shock. It raised a mechanical hand as if to plead for mercy. Aster could sense the fear coming from the machine’s pilot as a massive claw gripped it in its grasp, then was crushed in one swift movement, an explosion spelling its death.

  More enemy mobile frames made to attack the machine, but before they could even fire, they were sliced apart by nearly invisible razor whips that were dark and practically invisible against the darkness of space. Every time the starlight shimmered on it, it seemed to form a sudden glimpse of a smile as the starlight twinkled off in reflection. Again and again, those razor whips hacked and sliced, moving at mind-numbing speeds that made the enemy machines around it look like they were standing still.

  The Smiling Scythe.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  For some reason, he could sense it. Lelesia was piloting that machine. Smiling Scythe Lelesia, one of the many aces of the End War. As the multiple tendrils whipped and waved in space in such fast, fluid, sharp motion that few of the machines that Lelesia struck against could dodge in time, he could see how fitting the nickname was.

  Lelesia was unstoppable as she continued her advance forward. Then, before the enemy could blink, Lelesia’s machine had broken through the enemy mobile frames, and she began to crush starship after starship, sending her own dark red particle beams into them, gutting and destroying them in fiery explosions. The remote weapons and scything whips also went to work as she weaved in and around the enemy starships.

  Aster turned to glance at Lelesia, her own ghostly emerald self standing gracefully and comfortably beside him, watching in silence her own handiwork of the past.

  “What was that you piloting that machine?” Aster said, unused to the sound of his ghostly, ethereal voice that seemed as if it came from all directions.

  “How did you know?” Lelesia said, her own voice echoing around them.

  “I just had a feeling,” Aster replied.

  Lelesia chuckled beside him. “A feeling, huh.” She looked over the machine. “The Azu Azu. What a nostalgic machine.”

  “The Azu Azu? Is that the machine’s name?”

  Lelesia laughed. “No, it isn’t. Its actual name is the Azul Azuvelzeia. We just called it the Azu Azu because it was something fun we wanted to call it as children.” Lelesia paused for a moment. “Because we really were just children. All of us were. When the war started, we were simply children. We were born in a time of relative peace. The Gaia Sphere Federation had, through the blood and sacrifice of our parents and their parents, and everyone else, managed to unify the planet through diplomacy in one claw and the sword in the other, through blood and iron in the other.” Lelesia watched as her younger self wreaked havoc before her. “And yet, despite it all, the war became such that even we children had little choice but to fight it as well.”

  The Azul Azuvelzeia had gotten within the defensive overlapping fire of the enemy starships that moved about desperately as the fighting became a slaughter. The enemy was helpful before the machine that continued to move as if dancing amongst the stars despite the hail of weapon fire against it, deftly dodging, weaving, and banking at insane accelerations.

  Then, it reached its true intended target, the flagship of the enemy fleet, a mile-long behemoth, a battleship-carrier. Energy built up on the Azul Azuvelzeia, motes of dark red energy gathering at its stomach, then a huge, continuous dark red beam shot from it, drilling into the flagship as it moved across the starship horizontally, causing a massive, bright-red explosion that sent debris and wreckage all around.

  “How do you like the Azu Azu child?” Lelesia asked.

  “It’s terrifying,” Aster replied.

  “As it should be,” Lelesia said. “It’s one of the cumulations of the Gaia Sphere’s Federation’s technological and arcanological prowess. A supreme weapon of war of death and destruction. A fleet killer that had been created as a means to win the war with those Settlement Front Alliance rebels. Pity it didn’t actually make much of a difference in the end.”

  Aster could scarcely imagine it. A war so large and intense that even machines like that couldn’t make much of a difference in the end.

  Lelesia continued, “Look and see for yourself. What did you think the End War was? Some little playground dispute we all had with each other?”

  Then Lelesia pointed off in the distance.

  Aster followed where she pointed. Then, he saw it.

  A massive asteroid, one so large that it could be a small moon.

  His eyes widened at the sight of it.

  The war in space began to converge around the asteroid as it made its way towards Gaia. The accompanying fleet of the Settlement Front Alliance, hundreds strong, protected it as the massive thrusters on the asteroids flared an enormous plume of bright blue. The light was so intense that it was like a miniature star. One that was on a collision course with Gaia.

  Aster could only imagine what would happen if such a mass thing Gaia at speed. Would the planet itself crack in two?

  Every starship and every machine began to converge around it.

  How could it come to this?

  How could people even think to do such things?

  If that asteroid hit Gaia, the planet wouldn’t survive it. Everything would truly end.

  He watched in silence as the death of Gaia streaked towards it with unstoppable trajectory and momentum. Its mass and size were such that the weapon fire against it did little more than chip away at it.

  “...Perhaps what this world needs is for the anger and hate to grow vast enough that it wipes it away.”

  Aster looked towards Lelesia as she stared unflinching at that asteroid.

  “Lelesia, what are you-”

  “This world already tried to save itself through kindness and love…” Lelesia chuckled grimly. “If this world cannot be saved by kindness and love, then all that remains is to save it through anger and hate.”

  Aster stared wordlessly at her, unsure of what to say to that. Beyond the anger and hate that seemed to pour off of her, he felt something else. But what?

  Lelesia looked at him, then pointed again to look in front of them, and Aster turned his head.

  The Gaia Sphere Federation fleet that had been in the distance had caught up and moved past them, mopping up the remnants of the broken Settlement Front Alliance fleet that Lelesia had destroyed as it did so, which was either retreating or fighting to the last. The obsidian starship that Lelesia’s machine, the Azul Azuvelzeia, had departed from was in front of them.

  From the starship, long and thin launching platforms extended from the large obsidian wedge starship from both sides of it. Massive hatches retracted, and mobile frames began launching from it, accelerating from the linear catapults and soaring off like little stars into the distance at the growing battle around the asteroid before it.

  Then Aster saw it.

  A machine on the linear catapult in front of him, preparing to launch.

  One that was unlike the rest, even Lelesia’s Azul Azuvelzeia.

  Something about it felt like it was pulling him towards it, as if he had a resonance with it. But why?

  The machine was humanoid and much like the Azul Azuvelzeia, it had a presence to it. But this one was different. In contrast to the terrifying deadliness of Lelesia’s machine, he felt a kind of comforting reassurance from it, as if this machine were a savior of the battlefield, rather than a grim reaper of it.

  A flash went through him, and a word popped into his mind. No. A name.

  A singular word.

  Gaiadan.