I had done it. I survived. I survived an encounter with a Greater Holy Fleet, and my soul hadn’t been torn from my body and consumed by those from across the veil. After a nail biting ten minutes, I was well outside their usual strike range, with only four fighters tailing me. As the minutes dragged on by at an excruciatingly slow pace, I managed to whittle down their numbers. There were now three ships. With an expertly timed blast, now there were two; and now, with a desperate barrage of missiles, there was only one.

This one however, was tenacious. Extremely so. It somehow managed to avoid the majority of my weapons fire, and worse still, it was dealing significant damage to my Sparrow. Evidently, the only way I could defeat it was to turn the ship around, face the bastard directly and shoot it with every weapon and non-weapon I had. To my credit, it worked.

It’s too bad that he took me down with him.

I should have seen it. I honestly should have fuckin seen it coming clear as day. Corner an animal and that’s when its most dangerous, and this bastard was determined to prove it to me. He came at me directly, firing everything he had with a fanatical zeal. Klaxons blared around me, as I felt the ship shudder with every shot he threw. Once he was around fifty metres away, he detonated the engines, releasing an astounding amount of energy that seemingly rivalled a supernova, sending ripples through spacetime itself. That blast should have killed me. It had to have killed me.

So why the fuck did I wake up in a barn?

I lay down next to goats, taking a short break from a long day of backbreaking work. Day after day I toiled away at the field; tilling the ground, watering the fields and caring for the livestock was a small part of what is a regular day for me. However, it would all be worth it soon. I had been working like this for three years straight, with only two goals in mind.

“Milo, could you come here please?”, I heard my mother shout out. Well, more like wheezed out. Mother has not been well for as long as I could remember, her frail constitution often giving out on her which resulted in her spending the next few days in bed. She had been getting worse recently, which had to be because of the air from the swamp nearby. In the past month, she had been able to spend 10 days out of bed, which seemed to be a slight improvement, but I knew that it wouldn’t last for long.

I got up and made my way to our home. It was a dilapidated old hut, with parts of the wood having rotted away and the former thatch roof mostly gone. I had repaired it the best that I could by filling the gaps in the walls with mud and stones. I had also done the same to the roof, filling in the gaps with fresh straw. Even though it didn’t look the best, it did its job. Me and mother lived as comfortably as we could in the given situation, plus the hut had a rustic feel which I had come to love.

As I walked inside, I set my eyes on Mother, who was up and about for the first time in a few days. “Mother, what are you doing?” I cried out; the alarm clearly evident in my voice. She turned to look at me with a warm smile gracing her gaunt face. Even though she had gotten thinner over the past few years, that was one thing that remained constant about her. “Now be quiet young man. We can’t have you shouting at your mother now, can we?” she chuckled. “Have you forgotten what day this is?”, she shot back at me, her eyes narrowing in amusement. I hummed and hawed for a few seconds. Any idea of what today is totally escaped me, which seemed to entertain her. “Why are you in such a good mood today?” I queried with my confusion evident. This just seemed to make her laugh even more.

“Milo, today is your thirteenth birthday. In a months’ time, you will have to visit the town in order to be blessed by Lord Urbanos. Can you believe it? Soon enough you could be using magic. You have so much potential, so I know you will have a worthy skill. A skill that would make your father proud”.

“Why should I make that bastard proud? He chose the Lord and the high life over us, and look where we are now! Stuck in what would have been the wilderness had it not been for my work, and twenty miles from the nearest town! And now you’re frailer than ever, all because that dog had it out for you!”. I could feel my tears welling up alongside my anger and turned away, in order to hide this shameful sight from my mother.

“Honey, I know how you feel. I have felt this way before, but you can’t go around insulting the Lord or your father in this manner, especially not when you visit the town. Besides, it’ll be a chance for you to sell this years Emerald Apples, and I know that you’ve been saving up money for a while now. You should spend it on yourself, I’ll be fine”, she remarked, her voice soothing me while she simultaneously ran her hand through my hair. “You know that the money is for you, Mother. I need to buy you medicine from the capital, especially since you’ve gotten worse recently. If everything goes right, I should be able to afford it soon”, I replied, the anger slowly seeping out of my voice.

“I love you Milo”, she expressed wholeheartedly, as she embraced me. “You do so much for me Milo. Once I’m better I promise to pay you back somehow. But you have to remember to be on your best behaviour when it comes to your blessing, and you have to wear your best clothes”. She stepped away from the hug and to my confusion, sniffed the air. “And you’d better have a bath before you go there, you reek!”, she playfully quipped, much to my embarrassment. “Ok Mother, I definitely will”, I replied defeatedly, which managed to get a rise out of her. “I’ll be getting back to my work now. Tell me if you need anything!”. I headed towards the door, determined to get back to my work. The harder I worked, the harder I could repay the debt, and the sooner I could leave this place.

The rest of the day had passed by uneventfully. The goats grazed on the field, which had become verdant through my backbreaking labour, and I had ensured that the storehouse has free of pests; along with checking on the Emerald Apples to ensure that they were healthy. Today would be the first day in a long time that I had an evening free, and I used it to hone my swordsmanship. Or my stickmanship, if I were to be honest.

Once Mother went to sleep, I chose to lay outside. With my hands behind my head, I looked up towards the heaven. Stargazing was one of the few joys I had in life, so I chose to partake in it any chance I could. I enjoyed seeing falling stars, and I especially loved to track them as they fell. I knew exactly how they looked, down to the last step, which I happened to take a rather large amount of pride in. The heavens never tended to change, not drastically at the very least.

So, I was definitely surprised to see a rather bright falling star. I was even more surprised to see it split into two! As one of the pieces got brighter and brighter, my awe was replaced by a rising wave of fear. The falling star was headed towards me! I am ashamed to say that I lay there frozen, contemplating my life and everything I had done wrong. Was I too harsh on mother? Did I treat her right? What could I have done differently? Could I have saved Amara some other way? Was I too meek?

To my immense relief, the falling star landed in the nearby forest below the hill where it ploughed through everything in its path, creating a path of destruction and fire the likes of which I had never seen. I leapt up and checked on Mother to see if she was fine. Seeing that she somehow managed to sleep through that massive blast, I decided that it was best to let her sleep. She needed all of the strength her frail body could muster. I decided that the best course of action to take would be to see what had fallen from the heavens and decided to grace me with a visit, so I took off running towards the forest.

I didn’t need a torch to see where I was going, with all of the fires raging around me as I weaved between the trees. There was smoke rising from behind a nearby crest, any trees that were once nearby completely obliterated. I slowly slinked up the crest, so that whatever, or whoever fell from the heavens wouldn’t potentially see me. I peeked over the crest, and to my complete shock, there was a person lying in the crater! Yes, they were surrounded by debris and lying next to what looked like a large metal… wagon, but that was definitely a person. Since they were lying there unconscious, it looked like they needed my help.

I gingerly stepped down the crest and into the crater, making sure to avoid any smouldering pockets of earth. I walked into the centre of it all, careful to take in my surroundings. The wagon looking thing was extremely strange, its walls made of a metal that I had never seen before. Even though it had fallen from the heavens, besides the one side that had a rather large hole in it, it had only a few blackened spots and marks; furthermore, the side of it had the symbols CSS SPARROW emblazoned on it clear as day. There was a bluish light coming from the inside, which I chose to avoid because I frankly had no idea what it was. I chose to focus on the man that lay on the floor in front of me. Well, at least I think he looks like a man. In truth, he was darker than any man I had ever seen, and taller too, easily approaching seven feet tall. His looked to be in his late twenties, with a few faint frown lines visible. He also seemed to be well groomed, with a short, well kept beard and a neat haircut; moreover, his hair was the curliest I had ever seen. If I were to guess, he resembled a person from one of the Sefu kingdoms from across The Broken Sea to the south, which I heard about in the town market.

I bent down to check if he was alive by putting my ear to his chest, in order to hear his breath or heartbeat. Instead, I heard a strange whirring sound coming from deep within the sky man’s chest. “The fuck is going on”, I muttered to myself as looked for any injuries, thoroughly examining his body. Even though I couldn’t find any injuries, I could confirm one thing, and that was that this man was dense. Extremely fuckin dense. I could barely move the thick bastard, that’s how heavy he was. “I should just leave him here”, I thought out loud, a pang of guilt quickly washing over me. “Fine, I’ll drag him back to the barn. At least he’ll have some shelter”. I proceeded to fasten a rope around my waist and shoulders then tied him to the end of it, dragging him all the way to the barn like some sort of draft horse.

I’d explain everything to Mother after she woke up.