Resurrection

The crushing weight of the tons of rubble that cloaked Aerrion’s chassis felt distant now. The sensation had been fading steadily over the past days. Just like all the rest of his chassis’, the automated senses were failing, slowly but surely. The only surprise was that they weren’t fading faster. He had been under the rubble for 86 hours according to his chronometer and even before then, the damage done to it by the Insurrectionists had been severe. His left arm had been shattered by a krak missile, reducing him to firing his plasma cannon point blank. The lower right side of his chassis had been all but obliterated by a plasma cannon and one of his ocular lenses had been smashed, by what he did not know, and his leg motors had been damaged so severely he could barely move. Nonetheless he had fought, just as he had in the old days, when his limbs had been flesh and blood, not cogs and gears.

*I can feel the wind again*. It was a bemusing thought. He had been in his metal cage for so long he had almost forgotten what it felt like to feel the wind against his skin. That he felt the wind at all meant something was badly wrong with his chassis. According to his remaining lense, his amniotic tank had been compromised. That his chassis was still functioning and attempting to keep him alive was impressive, Aerrion had to admit. Even for as much as he hated the cage that he’d been locked in for near two centuries, the skill of the craftsmen who had hand forged it was evident in how long it had kept him alive, even after the damage it had endured.

Then, the gloom in which Aerrion had endured for days was penetrated by a single golden-red beam of light. *Dawn* he thought, a cracked and broken smile crossing his face for the first time in years. One of his few childhood memories was running across the fields with another child, who it was, he couldn’t remember, that lay outside the hive of Jurfik and seeing the dawn’s light reflected off the sparkling waters of the Derwynt river. Of course, he had since been to other worlds and seen just how pathetic the irradiated fields and rivers of Terra were, with their short, dark green verging on black grass in comparison. But the memory had stayed sweet in spite of the bitter reality. And now, once more upon the world of his birth he was dying. Slowly but surely. He knew that. So too did the shadows, who had kept him company the past days. He knew them. Each and every one had had a face, a past long and glorious, filled with triumphs until they had met their match and fallen with honour. They now waited for him, waited for him to join them. *Soon brothers* he thought *soon.*

Then, far away, he heard a voice. “I have found the ancient. He lives”.

*No.* Aerrion attempted to say, only to realise his vocalisers no longer functioned. *I have already been resurrected once. I have spent nigh 200 years in this prison you locked me in and endured out of duty and honour. You can’t lock me up again! No more!* He desperately tried to sink further in the earth, away from the voice. Yet the voice drew ever nearer, the light clearer and the shadows who had waited so long for him to join them vanished, gone once more onto the otherworldly plain upon which they resided. *Why won’t you jackals leave me. I can’t, not more…no more…*