The Headless Reapers Icy Interlude
17 – 12 – 2144
Fresh snow falls in sheets on the ruins of the city where Miles has taken refuge. The streets are silent, lined with the hollowed-out shells of buildings, their walls shattered and windows empty. Cars lie abandoned, rusting where they crashed, and the remnants of once-bustling life are now buried beneath layers of ash and snow. The city is a ghost, long dead and forgotten.
Miles’ squadron is gone, annihilated, leaving him alone once again.
He bleakly trudges through the thick carpet of snow, the cold steel of his assault rifle slung over his shoulder as he approaches an abandoned library. Miles climbs the snowy steps, stepping into the ransacked interior, seeking shelter from both the Legion and the cold. He leaves the battered frame of his SP/DR, a scarred and weathered machine, concealed outside.
Miles inspects the once grand interior with an icy gaze. Books scattered on the floor, shelves toppled over or leaning against one another and a shattered chandelier in the centre. It will have to do.
At twelve years old, Miles battles the freezing temperatures with a stoic resilience in contrast to his age. The library’s intact walls shield him from the wind, but the air is heavy with the musty scent of decay and dust. Wearily settling into a windowless archive deep within the building, he huddles under a thin blanket, his small figure dwarfed by the desolation around him.
The OCTO-Legion loitering around outside begin to retreat as their energy reserves wane. Once dawn breaks, he'll be able to return to base. Though he has a feeling that Spi-do might show up long before then.
Suddenly, he feels as if someone has called him. It isn’t the spectral silence of the ghosts he’s heard since his first death two years ago. This is different, yet familiar. It’s not a sound but a presence, like someone calling out to him. A voice he'd lost once before and thought he'd never hear again. What is it?
Drawn by the strange sensation, he steps outside into the frigid, waning afternoon. The city, once dominated by iron and stone, is now a crumbling wasteland draped in white. The snowfall is thick and unrelenting, swallowing up debris, shadows, and the night’s darkness in its cold, oppressive silence. The beauty of it threatens to bleach Miles’ very soul.
Crossing the debris-strewn main street, now buried under snow, Miles finds himself in a plaza at the city’s centre. At its edge stand two spires, belonging to the ruins of a church, its walls shattered, and roof collapsed. Partially hidden under a veil of snow and darkness, a massive machine’s corpse lords over the place solemnly, illuminated by a strange, almost blessed, ray of sunlight.
A shattered SP/DR lies toppled like a broken skeleton. Its canopy is nowhere to be seen, likely having been blown off much earlier.
On its bent, warped, black, purple and green armour, weathered by wind, rain and battle, Miles can still make out the faint traces of a personal mark, a headless knight. Miles trudges closer, tossing his purple scarf to the side, exposing his hideous, rounded scar to the elements, like he’d been decapitated by a guillotine, as his boots sink into the snow with each step. He peers into the exposed cockpit like he has done so many times already.
“…Uncle.”
If asked how he knows, Miles wouldn’t be able to explain it. He just does. It’s an unshakable truth, a certainty beyond logic, reason or comprehension.
Resting inside Prowler’s ruined cockpit lies Aaron’s remains. His headless, skeletal body to be forever entombed in that frozen, crumpled machine and draped in a shroud of snow.
This is the only blanket it will ever have.