The city crumbled in flames, buildings which might have looked immortal fell like cards to weapons that no one could have dreamed up. Which city was it? That was irrelevant. It was one of the many sprawling cities that came with the Golden Age of humanity. The Golden Age was thought to be the event which would propel humanity into permanent state of prosperity. The Traveler gave humanity that Golden Age and there didn't seem to be a price in the beginning. That ominous being gave us knowledge eons ahead of our time, and with it we claimed the entirety of our solar system. Though, as benevolent a being as it may have seemed, it did not warn us of the Darkness. In the infinite knowledge it shared, not once was there mention of the pure evil following it through the void. And when The Traveler's ancient enemy found it, we suffered with it.
Perhaps that Darkness was bound to cross our path regardless of The Traveler's arrival and it tried its best to prepare us. Either way, it wasn't called The Collapse for no reason. Whole cities were leveled in what was moments compared to the time it took to erect. It was an apocalypse in purest definition.
And that's how I found myself in a city which I could not remember the name of, fighting an enemy which I never knew the name of. I knew the planet well enough, though that was not saying much, and it was certainly no comfort. Venus was nice enough place in its prime and there was a certain charm that came from the neon cities embedded like gems in the surrounding jungles. Now, they were dark and smoldering, the only light coming from open flames and military flood-lights.
The plaza I currently stood in looked like it had been popular at a time. There were large kiosks with different sorts of merchandise, mostly stripped of what had lined their shelves. Empty or not, the large cement structures made for decent cover in what had been our makeshift checkpoint for the last week or so. Our checkpoint had originally started as a med-vac point with how far it fell from the front-lines but in a week's time that front was nearly on top of us.
Now we had to stay under cover or indoors if we didn't want to get cut down from the nimble sharpshooters that crawled around the buildings towering above us. Once again, the kiosks proved useful for that same effect and I sat in one near our forward facing gate, allowing my rifle to lay next to me on the moist ground. It was a loud night. The thundering boom of explosions caused by our enemy was easily audible in the Checkpoint by now and we knew we'd have to make our stand soon, just as every other camp of soldiers did. There was no retreating anymore. There was no place left in the city to fall back to, and if the enemy didn't kill us, the trek through the jungle would.
I looked across the space within the kiosk to another. He was older than me by a mile. At least forty, I thought to myself. He was no more a veteran in this war than me. There were no veterans among us. An encounter with The Fallen was almost always a story of complete casualty. That man was the first among us to die that night, and he died quietly. He stood up slowly and despite my questioning expression he walked clear out of the kiosk, into open air. As slowly as he was moving, I expected a bolt of energy to come down like lightning and strike him from existence. But instead, what took his life was far closer.
I had to crane my head around the side of kiosk entrance to see him once he exited, and I was confused and terrified as I watched his form leave the ground, convulsing as a wound seemed to simply open in his chest, shredding the ballistic armor which he wore. I only understood once the blood that flowed from his wound revealed the very edges of an outline which I grew to fear. My mind was
instantly racing as I furiously thought of how to handle the situation. Shout and alert the rest, but reveal my position? Simply open fire? Hide? Keeping all paths available, I slid back slowly towards my rifle picking it up as quietly as I possibly could. I pulled the weapon close to my chest and simply tried to breath. Did they already know where I was? They had to, they would have been watching our movements for days, I thought. So finally, with not even cowardice as an option, I screamed as much as the fear in my body would allow: "They're cloaked!"
With adrenaline replacing fear, I transitioned to a kneeling position and leaned around the entrance to the kiosk again, haphazardly firing bullets from my semi-automatic rifle to where I had last seen the enemy. My bullets found some mark or another, and they tore into the rapidly shimmering figure. After three successive hits on the target, I watched as his cloak faded away to reveal a being which must have been twice my height. The bullets had quite thankfully tore through the enemy's midsection and they only stood for a few more moment before toppling over from their own weight.
Following my own first engagement, the whole camp exploded into frenzied gunfire from both sides. While it was better than not knowing they were there at all, we had no idea where they really were. We fought in panic as bolts of energy materialized from thin air only to burn a whole through someone's chest. I focused on any target I could actually see, pulling the trigger on my rifle almost mechanically until it ran empty. I probably pulled the trigger several more times before I realized the rifle was empty and I simply tossed it away. Sure, I could I have reloaded, but with every buzz and hum of an energy rifle, I knew another one of us was dead. And I ran.
I moved out of kiosk and made for a door in the nearest building. I probably didn't make it 3 yards before I felt like I'd been hit by a truck. I was on the ground before I realized that I'd even been hit and everything seemed to fade away rapidly. All the color, sound, and light of my senses blurred and I anxiously brought a hand to the wound, managing a cringe at the charred skin and burnt armor. Finally, as the metallic taste of blood worked its way to my mouth, I faded away into what seemed like the most peaceful darkness, and I died.