R- rated but not for sexual content

I swear, I’ve never written so many words without sex in them as I have lately. And I’m really enjoying it

fandom; The Principle Of Moments
warning; violence and pain of the battlefield type, death and angst

He’s sitting flat on the ground. His head is empty. His allies have fled, blown towards safety on the magnetic wind he made for them, and he hasn’t felt this alone in months.

Honey and machine-oil precede the division of mindless once-men chittering in frequencies he no longer hears– his hand comes up to finger the bloodied side of his head where ragged flaps of his ear still cling.

his hand reloading his guns slips in his blood, smearing the gunmetal. The transport vehicle lies at a crazy angle, half of its turret blown clean off– where are your extermination codes now, stupid American? and half of someone who was his comrade hanging out of the part still attached. There’s no button to push. The insanely over-complicated bugs, modified at horrendous expense and trouble and so very fragile in the field– they are winning, in the same way ants and wasps and termites always win– by throwing more and more of themselves at their goal, without qualms or thoughts of the waste, the expense. The poppy fields down the slope are the same color as this battlefield, green ichor and red blood. this field will grow beautiful crops next year, blooms redder than blood, pods oozing their bounty.

He turns his weapon towards the glittering beetle-thing and pulls the trigger as soon as it’s within range.  A lateral twitch is all it takes to stitch the glass bead projectiles across the thing’s abdomen, cutting it in half. The next one goes down right next to it.

Something that looks like a mantis unfurls itself, raising tall amongst the shorter bugs. Drin swears, scrabbles, swings his gun towards the thing, knowing it’s beyond his range– the folded claws open up and fire launches itself at him. the blast catches him along his right side, and he’s grateful that he’d swung the gun wide and to the left– but then the pain hits, and he can’t remember what to do with the thing, watching his own body sear and self-destruct. if he screams, he can’t hear it. If he could call the bees back he would, to his everlasting shame.

In all of the unbearable noise something louder makes itself known. something rhythmic, like a helicopter. Drin sees the halo of its propellers, and something silver tumbling out of the side hatch. his eyes are not a part of his body, which is made of pain and nothing else, but his eyes, separate from that, track the unfurling streamers and ethereally gleaming tail of a Naga.

Fire rains down from the sky, washing the bugs away. The Naga lands, seconds later. Drin knows he’s screaming when it scoops him up, arms equally tight around his whole left side and his flayed right, and drags him up into the sky.