Amelia grinned darkly. It unsettled the men and women around her, and the Krystillians, and the Garderitryjkes. It wasn't a smile many could see twice outside of the military. It was a strained smile that held back a dark melody, of death. It fit nicely with the screams and fires that surrounded her.
Amelia was a Berserkr. She was a soldier. She was a fighter and a killer. She existed solely to help the Vinlandic military regain its momentum against the swarm. Like all Berserkrs, her hair was a blood red, and her eyes were a multihued mess of colors from across the rainbow. Her breathing was deep and heavier than any regular humans, her ears were slightly pointed and could turn like a cats, and her bones were a organic steel that could withstand insane falls. She wasn't born this way, but she would likely die this way. Possibly from the same thing the screaming soldiers were dieing from.
She was a monster. You couldn't tell it if you met her alone, but burried in her was the under sound. She could hear every song sang or played since the beginning of time, and in that storm of sound was a single melody or minute of music that unlocked things inside herself that humans had lost in the birth of civilization. No one knew her song but her. It was her last secret, but secrets mattered little in the face of death.
Berserkrs were volunteers, those who gave everything to fight harder faster stronger. They gave up all their secrets upon acceptance to the program. They were totally exposed until they found their sound. Then the song became their everything. It was something totally unique to them, theirs. The Princessa Immortal had declared that secret to be sacred. No one could take it, it could only been given. Unlike her life.
Amelia had always been a loner. It's why she volunteered. She had never shared her last secret, only hoarded it. It haunted her, scared her. She was hurting. This battle would be her last. The blood pouring from her body made that pretty certain.
Amelia knew it deep inside, she was going to die. A berserkr could overcome any pain, any challenge, but themselves. She knew that the minute she could feel pain again she was mortal, and the battlefields were filled with swarmlings who ate mortals. Mortals who bled.
She knew that her emotional pain would kill her, but she couldn't ignore it anymore. Unlike the pain of being filled with venemous quills, which she pointedly was ignoring.
Amelia stared up at the monster as it bore down on her one last time. In her right hand was her broken rifle. In her left hand was a large bearded axe, blood red in appearance. The monster was a sickly blend of greens, and it's limbs ended in fierce blades/claws.
Surrounding Amelia was the remains of her squad, and the corpses of the fallen, burning corpses to be exact. Amelia couldn't recall why they were burning. She couldn't recall how her rifle had broken either, but she clearly recalled the text that she was supposed to be killing something. That fact stayed afloat in a sea of red. She looked up again and saw the thing bearing down in her. It looked like a fine target.
She didn't wait for it to come to her. She felt her legs moving, and suddenly the monster was approaching faster. It joyed her to see that blood would be readily available in just a second or two sooner than before. That joy proliferated as her axe bit deep into the monster. She giggled as its gross chitin cracked and split and bled. She danced as she drew her dripping red axe back, and flipped as the axe came back down again and again, but to her consternation the bug refused to die! It rudely refused to give up all its glorious red bath, even with the hacking.
Amelia became quite incensed. She started swinging faster. The cracked chitin became a fractured soup of mucus and bug-blood. It turned to mush under her dully flashing axe. Finally the thing stopped moving. Amelia cheered hoarsely and dove face first into the mess. It wasn't rhyme or reason, but for one last time, Amelia was a beserkr.
Then, as the music faded and horror replaced it, Amelia died screaming in fear and bleeding over the corpse of the hivemind's avatar. They attempted to rescucitate her, and failed. She was hailed a hero to be remembered, and then she was quietly buried.
A azure expanse stretched as far as the sky could see. Below it was a verdant green, and filling it was a few whispy wishful clouds. It was beautiful, a perfect Valhalla for a perfect soul. It was far too good for Amelia, and she knew it. She was a monster, and an atheist. Hel's domain should have been the best If have recieved.
She closed her eyes, and opened them again to the same blue sky. It scared her. It was scary being wrong about the afterlife, and twice as horrifying that someone like her was given this. She cried because she had killed things better than herself that would torture her slowly for years, and she was unarmed.
No, wait. Something was in each of her hands. Why hadn't she noticed that before? There were heavy whatever they were. And she was clothed too. The fabric breathed like the underlay for her flak-jacket. It was wonderfully form fitting. Almost got her a date once, kinda.
Amelia turned her head back to the sky above her, and then she sat up. The beserkr wasn't sure what injuries she had gained during her blood rage, but she felt better than new. She looked down, and was stunned to discover she was wearing her flak jacket, and holding her weapons, and alive, or at least she looked alive.
Was this a coma dream then? A long but not eternal dream? Would Amelia wake up ten years from now to a changed world? Twenty?
Amelia wasn't sure. She'd been avowedly atheist for years. She didn't know about the latest discoveries religion wise, and she knew even less about coma dreams.
Maybe she was in another dimension? She wasn't sure how her rifle could have survived such a cataclysmic system failure, but she'd read a story about something similar happening to a marine. It had been marked fiction, but rifles had interdimensional transporter tech in them, and Amelia guessed that it might be possible that she'd been transported somehow, but that didn't explain the healing or the unbroken rifle.
Amelia trudged down the hill slowly. She'd tucked the axe into its holster, and slung the rifle. She wasn't sure when she'd started walking, but she'd seen a pink creature off in the distance. She hadn't awaken with a helmet on her head or nearby, so she'd been forced to stick with her eyes, and that pink blue had only been seen as a pink blue.