Disclaimer: I do not own Storm Hawks (but one can dream of someday.)
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -Plato
The grating voice of a crow cut through the bitter, smoky air. Little enough light filtered through the thick clouds, but the bird's iridescent feathers still gleamed, obsidian, in the fiery glow of a muffled sunset. A deadly intelligence glittered in those dark eyes. The bird threw back its head and called again. Laughing… it was laughing at them all, at their foolishness, laughing for joy, for only one group had been victorious here: the carrion birds. The vultures support everyone's troops.
The wastelands lived up to their name. Sparks shot from shorted-out circuits, these circuits often shredded scraps from downed skimmers. Crystal shards caught the light of the dying day. They were almost beautiful, cast in their haphazard patterns upon the cursed ground. The pungent, iron scent of blood melded with the nauseating stench of fuel-fires, the scent of destruction. Somewhere in the distance a scream broke out, an inhuman cry of agony that no mortal voice ought to sing, and the low crackle of fires added a second line to the deathly symphony, the heavy accents of explosions taking the place of percussion. The crow raised his tapered wing and tossed his head back; it seemed he played the part of conductor.
Blood soaked through the coarse dirt, almost like lava creeping up through the ground. The dead one's armor had been torn to tatters. A seeping river of red rolled down her pale throat, dripped slowly down her side, returned to the earth. The silky blue color had already begun to fade from her eyes as the fog of death closed over them. There was no horrifying look of misery upon her features, no agonized twist, no hope for salvation, nothing at all. Those features lay as empty as those eyes, empty and meaningless. What a long fall she had taken to break her bones that way. Ribs ought to stay inside the chest. It seemed a violation of purity to see the white of bone exposed to open air. She couldn't have been older than twenty, too young, "But life is only borrowed in the end, and the reapers reclaim it by force if necessary," he mused darkly.
Everywhere he turned they lay, dead or dying, scattered like so many pieces of straw to the wind. Parachutes, a dozen different emblems, covered the bodies of those who had found the strength and presence of mind to pull the ripcords. The only things they gained from their doomed endeavors were built in burial shrouds, shrouds to be soaked in red, and later soaked in tears.
Another shriek echoed down from the distant sky. The sunset lit them up, the chuckling vultures, their steely black feathers becoming fiery, demonic cloaks. So the war made not just men and women into fiends, but birds as well. Lazily they circled, casual. This was all business to them. They cared nothing for the emblems on those make-shift shrouds, nothing for the emblems on the armor. Cyclonia, Atmosia, it was all the same to them.
He turned away, the slight whisper of feathers in the wind a haunting tone, and stared into a pair of emerald eyes a bit too familiar, and the dead warrior wore the same emblem he wore, the same clothes… and those were the same eyes he saw in the mirror each day.
Cackling like the banshee it was, the crow cried out, most unexpectedly, in a human voice, "You shall see the end of war!"
Aerrow snapped his eyes open, staring mutely at the ceiling. Nothing and no one stirred. It must be very early, perhaps three in the morning? Nightmares were nothing new. One learned to ignore them… most of the time.
Sliding to his feet, the Storm Hawk paced along the wall, trying to shake the taste of death from his tongue, the shrieks of the vultures from his mind. "You shall see the end of war," he muttered, surprising himself with the darkness in his voice. The Guardians had said as much. No, they hadn't said outright that he would die, but it had been implied clearly enough. Maybe they meant something else? No. Aerrow shook his head. What else could they have meant?
Some mixture of bitterness and anger drove the Sky Knight to clench a fist in fury. Why did those fiends have to start the stupid war in the first place? Why did he have to die? He wasn't old enough to rent a hotel room on some Terras, wasn't old enough to drink, yet was somehow old enough to die in battle. "Shut up," Aerrow told himself, "It's not as if you're special! How many Talons have you sent to the wastelands? How many of the Interceptors gave their lives in defense of what they loved? Why shouldn't you join them? You are nothing but another soldier, nothing but another name on the very long list that they'll carve on the memorial someday, someday when the war is over and it's time to rebuild."
A promise of death can be interpreted a number of ways. To some it is a ticket to carelessness. "What have I to lose? I'm doomed anyway; I'll do whatever I want with no regard for the consequences!" The reckless ones are self-fulfilling prophecies. Others find the knowledge crushing and collapse under the weight of despair. "What is the point in doing anything? None of it matters; I'm doomed anyway." They will die in sorrow, having wasted their potential. Aerrow was nothing like either of these.
In the face of the deadly promise, it dawned on Aerrow, he had nothing to lose, for his life was already forfeit, but he had everything to gain. The fact that his fate was sealed did not mean that he could not seal the fates of others, face and defeat his enemies, save the things and people he loved. All the promise meant was that he need fear nothing. "The source of fear is conflict, conflict between life and death," he mused, feeling oddly philosophical at that unholy hour of the night. "One fears a knife because it could slit veins and steal one's life, and life is what one most dearly wishes to cling to, but when one's death is assured, the knife can no longer bring terror. When death is assured, death becomes irrelevant."
"Fear is uncertainty," the Storm Hawk muttered to himself. He would be a whirlwind across the battlefields; he would live up to every bit of the shadowy "destiny" that had been promised him along with his fate. He would bring his enemies to their knees. He would take the Dark Ace to the grave with him if need be. "They won't get anyone else," he promised the darkness. "I'll see to it that I'm the only Hawk they get."
That would be enough for him. He rolled back into bed, having, he hoped, come to terms with his sealed fate. War is monstrous. He would end this one. That would be enough. He could die in peace then, but he wouldn't tell the others. They wouldn't see it like this. They would fret, try to cheat the reapers. Reapers will not be cheated, and who knew what might be the result of the mad stunts his friends would pull to try to save him? Further, he couldn't stand the idea of the bleak looks they would give him, empty, sorrowful looks one gives to a ghost. No. They could mourn him after he died, not before. He would keep this to himself.
It would be alright. His life's work would be done. It was fulfilling work, after all. "And what's so bad about it?" the doomed Sky Knight mused to himself, drifting off to sleep, "About seeing the end of war? I know scores of people who dream of seeing that day…"
Philosophies of thoughts often have little effect on deeper emotions, the sort that lie dormant in the subconscious. He stood again amidst the aftermath, grinding crystal shards into the dirt with his boots, listening to that symphony of agony. The obsidian-cloaked conductor eyed him contemptuously, impartial in his role as a judge of mortals, holding ubiquitous scorn for all the fools caught up in the twisted tides of war. The black feathers shone and the voice cried out again, "You shall see the end of war."