The flow of the Legion was relentless. They do not tire, nor feel any pain. They will keep ramming a wall until it breaks or they die, sometimes getting trampled as a ladder for others to climb over. Furthermore, they may look like grotesque and disfigured monsters, but their design is efficient and well adapted for their current task at hand.

And adapt they will. Forget comparing them to evolution on fast-forward, they just keep evolving into ever new 'final forms'. Upon first contact just a few decades ago, they were just mostly composed of mindless horned quadrupeds with claws that could slice through armor and teeth strong enough to rag doll light vehicles. When we bombarded them from the air, they would grow wings. When we used phasers against them en masse, they would soon adapt their carapace to deflect them no matter what frequency we use. You could say that their diverse forms and abilities are our fault:

From the dizzying heights of science: dark matter beams, transphasic neutron bombs, temporal-quantum torpedoes, subspace munitions. To the forbidden depths of magic: 9th-circle unstable frequencies, omega-class flares, Law of the Almighty, Omnia Vita Omnia Mors. We've tried them all.

The more 'natural' approach? Done that: carbon extermination pulses, curses, mycelium, bacteria, and viruses; it was all for naught. It killed more of us as they adapted to those much faster than we ever could.

We've even tried ancient Third Age weaponry: ballistics, thermonuclear warheads, and orbital kinetic bombardment of colossal tungsten alloy rods. We managed to slaughter billions of them, but they just got tougher and adapted as well. Some controversial researchers likened their internal systems to a cross between an impossibly large tardigrade and viruses.

When someone is killed by the Legion, either they survive long enough to morph into one of them; or have their biomass be consumed by the swarm to produce even more. Sometimes, when they devour high-ranking commanders, they would gain insight and knowledge about our plans and tactics. Even worse, some special Legions could mimic dead soldiers or control half-dead ones. Ever since then, our leaders would take extreme measures of having their brain matter destroyed when surrounded. We have sacrificed a lot to avoid leaking confidential information, and It was particularly devastating for our psionic forces.

But those rapid changes gave us a glimmer of hope. Shortly thereafter, we've learned that colonies several thousands of light years away weren't fighting the adapted, stronger variants of the Legion. Was it a regional evolution with a theoretical Overmind? Does the information transfer of the swarm have a specific range? Either way, humanity launched a last ditch plan. To keep running on self-contained, self-sufficient colonies: The Spacefarer Arks.

By the time we were playing defense, delaying their advance as we could; we only managed to build seven arks. Two were destroyed as we were taking off, one sacrificed itself to give the others a chance. The remaining four managed to run for a few years until two were destroyed from within. Shockingly, the Legion doesn't only have the ability to inject parasitic embryos through wounds: somehow they can very slowly re-form DNA through viral contamination. We were horrified to discover that these didn't show up in all our previous screenings. We tried to salvage what we could, fighting them now with full airtight protective suits; still we lost everyone from the two infected ships.

Morale has been low on the last two arks: The Evernorth and Serendipity. Since they were hastily built, there has been a constant stream of repairs and patchwork modifications. The supposed self-reliance of the arks have been consistently come into question. Soon after, it was clear that the two ships would be unable to continue for long, and something drastic had to be done. After a contentious assembly; it was decided that Serendipity was to be stripped of most of its parts so that the Evernorth may continue. There were already tired and resigned colonists that wanted to try settling down in one of the barely-habitable moons in the shadows of enormous gravitational anomalies, hoping that the Legion would not find them.

Now limping and mostly scavenged, with a barely functioning life support; Serendipity slowly descended to what might possibly be its last resting place. Since the Evernorth couldn't feed survivors from both arks, a lottery was held on who were to join the thousand brave souls that would try to colonize that desolate moon. While scans for underground resources were promising, they were only given just enough supplies and tools for a few months and nothing more. Either they would manage to be self-sufficient before they consume all their reserves or perish.

Now with better functioning utilities, the Evernorth journeyed toward uncharted space, hoping to find systems yet untainted by the Legion. While burst communication was already extremely hard with the survivors from Serendipity (because of the gravitational anomalies), it was a morale boost when we would get transmission data from them sporadically. Everyone was hopeful and praying that both colonies would survive. But as we were reaching the limits of our communication range; the latest transmission only contained desperate, unintelligible screams… and that was the last time we heard from Serendipity.

Feeling truly alone in the vast endless space, the atmosphere on the Evernorth was cautious yet determined. Somehow, there were a few times when gargantuan Legion biomass ships would warp just a few clicks behind us. How they managed to keep finding us still a mystery. Still, calling them 'ships' would be generous. Large clusters of the Legion would clump up and form meteorite like structures that could open warp gates to find new places to consume. However, that in itself is a small blessing: after warping, they are unable to move for a couple of hours or days, even longer before they could divide and reform themselves as Skyfire upon atmospheric re-entry.

We thought that combined parts of the Serendipity and Evernorth were truly enough to complete our self-reliance systems. We even had excess harvests from our aquaponic and mycelial farms for the first time. Everything was functioning smoothly until they weren't. Some say it was a coding error that caused the disastrous fire, some say it was a careless intern with their new duties. Either way, even though it was contained in several compartments; the damage was unfortunate. With dwindling supplies and lacking materials to repair her any longer, the Evernorth was now crawling to the edges of charted space, to the planet of Vigrrido…

What a terrible planet to die in; the remaining survivors must have mused at themselves. We should be thankful that the bastards that found us hasn't been quite as evolved yet, with only a few flyers that we're barely managing to stave off. At the ever-thinning front lines, Lunia's clones and a few survivors can be seen admirably holding back the Legion waves as best they could. Allen just was a tiny speck compared to the gigantic warp discs that were protecting us all from the Skyfire above.

One would think, “Why are we still doing this anymore ?” Allen already lost the ability to warp to other faraway places, and all those locations we've been before have already fallen. Indeed, his current warp discs could only transmit the falling Skyfire jut a few kilometers away from the mountains; where they would crash and divide back into separate organisms. Lunia's clones were ever-reducing in number; now desperately defending from all sides as a few have already managed to climb up the steep face of the mountain. And while we still had a few valiant elite androids, mages, and psionics left; they looked like supports compared to the two. Most weren't even fighters; but rather engineers, scientists, and craftsmen with firearms. What was this seemingly futile act of defiance for? Maybe we were all just hoping for a miracle would come and save us.

But it never did.

Allen felt a sharp pain, then an oddly-relaxing sensation of heat, which must have been a nice reprieve from the cold of the rain. Then it quickly turned cold again, as he realized his blood was seeping out of his abdomen; impaled by a Legionnaire. 'Oh, they finally got me' was his tired, nonchalant thought.

From the periphery of his vision, he could barely see Lunia screaming as she was running towards him. It felt like the world was slowing down, as flashes of his memory glimpsed him by. He wanted to hear what she was saying as he was falling down, but his vision was already dimming and his ears couldn't hear anymore. He wanted to say to her at how surprised he was. They have been through hell together and lost a lot of precious friends along the way, but this was the first time he saw her crying like this. She kneeled to the ground, cradling his body in her arms; her last few clones were buying what precious final seconds they could muster. He wanted to assure her, and say a lot more things he should have… but he can't even speak anymore as blood spurted from his mouth. He wanted to raise up his hands if he could, and point at the barreling Skyfire raining towards them from the sky…

Crash~!

An impressive thud jolted his entire body. “Lunia!”, Allen shouted his first thought. His eyes were slowly coming into focus, trying to remember what happened.

A cold shiver ran down his spine. The Evernorth, Viggrido, Skyfire. Countless fragments of memories are flooding his thoughts, his head felt like it was going to explode. Instinctively, his hand reached for his head, trying to massage his temples. But there was something wrong, very wrong. He felt it as soon as he was trying to move. It felt odd, weird… unnatural; as if he was controlling another person's body. With his vision finally cleared, he saw his hands stretched out in front of him. They weren't his hands, they were tiny. The Skyfire he last saw from above was replaced by a decorated ceiling in a luxurious room. It seems he had fallen off from his bed.

“What the… ?”