madam data

A soldier came to us from the army of the Pretender, a deserter - "follow me", it said - "and I will show you where he bleeds"

but in the purple light of the heavy star a blow was struck, and we cursed our hands as they grew into talons, and sang out regret as we choked our enemies with our own entrails

we followed: as centuries passed, our guns became curse-rifles and our ships turned into demons, yet we turned our backs on war

Alongside the battle, those in the twilight nebula sat, watching and biding their time. They were farmers and machinists, midwives and poets; they too knew Death.

and the grief of civilisations rang out into the depths of time

It came to be called the War of Accretion; and its violence tore asunder the laws of Gravity itself

We pursued him on a gossamer thread of stars, through the heart of the dark galaxy, and there impaled him on a spire of crystallized time

Flowers grew along the paths where the bodies of the fallen had sprouted vines to tear apart their enemies

We brooked no heroes, yet they whispered of the Saint who massacred a trillion soldiers on the cusp of Orion

In the emptiness beyond emptinesses, between the galaxies, between the Weight and the Light, the last hunter writes into the ultraviolet rings of the final supernovae: