The smell of battle lingered still in the old soldier's nostrils. The sharp copper of blood and the cold ozone smell of discharged power weapons, and always the din of metal on metal rang still in the silence after the storm. Paladin remembered, and he felt the comforting weight of his sword resting on his chest, for now he felt at rest.

I suppose I should get up and wake the others, thought Paladin with the sleepy logic of one just waking. They will likely be wondering why I let them sleep so long. But as he tried to get up, it seemed that there was no will left in his limbs, nor in any part of his body, and quite abruptly, like the weight of guilt at the blood of the slain, the weight of the straight double-edged blade felt heavy on the reclining Paladin.

Is it possible? he thought, a small note of alarm awaking in his normally placid and stoic demeanor. With a struggle Paladin tried to open his eyes, to move his hands and wipe the sleep dust from the corners. He could not, frozen as surely as if he had been trodden under by a glacier. Upon this discovery the stoic calm returned.

So, I am dead, came another thought, and yet the equine in shadows scarcely believed it, for he could think, his mind was still free of any pull to the other side. He had felt this pull many times, facing death in the eyes and then pulling away at the last moment, cheating the relentless hunter of its prey. All he felt now was a calm, and somewhere deep in his mind and heart a drive, an urge, a summons that he could not deny. His strength of body having failed, Paladin turned his mind inward, to seek out that deeply buried cluster of memory and emotion that housed his last conscious thoughts.

A battle, was it not? Paladin mused, and the memory came to him in full. The East had rebelled, he knew most assuredly, and they clamored for freedom from the reign of King Acorn. King Acorn was the best ruler that Mobius had ever had, a fair and just male, honorable and skilled in tactics and in diplomacy. His people loved him, and yet there were many who were far from the Western Realm who felt things could be better. So far away, they were sometimes forgotten, and their mostly agricultural society made them somehow unable to fit in with the mostly industrialized West. A charismatic leader had arisen, and soon a bloody civil war began, the Great War as it was to be called, for it would change the world, though not in any way foreseen by those who waged it. Paladin had fought for the West. He was sworn to the greater good of Mobius, and especially to the Throne of Acorn. Paladin did not stand alone in his call as a warrior to the Crown, for he was part of the Last Legion. Basilisk, the deadly Cockatrice; Drake, the mighty Manticore; Shrike, the savage Gryphon; Oracle, the wise Owl; and Paladin, the noble Unicorn, was given the charge of this small band. These were the Last Legion, their name taken from a time in the far past of Mobius, when the entire world was threatened by some unknown cataclysm, so ancient that all but Oracle had forgotten it in the mists of time. To stave off this unknown doom the greatest of the wielders of magic and science joined their forces to create the last hope for their world. Since that time the members of the Legion had been hand-picked and specially trained, imbued with power both mystic and mundane, power passed down from long generations past. They had stood by the noble and the just through the ages, and the house of Acorn rose to the throne with their backing, for the house of Acorn was devoted to honor and served the greater good well. Battling in the Great War was only a part of their oath to defend the power and greater good of Mobius.

Paladin remembered now how it came to be that he had fallen in battle. General Julian Ivo Robotnik's mechanical soldiers had been a great aid in the war, and the relentless mechanical genius had made troops in such number and strength that the Eastern Realm could not withstand for long, and soon peace was on the horizon. A rare spark of anger lit in Paladin's single-horned head, for he remembered the last mission he went on, leading the Legion at the head of the robot hordes towards the Eastern capital. The battle had been decisive, and bodies lay all about, soldiers in powered armor and in purple uniforms now stained red. Singed fur and burnt flesh filled the air with a noxious reek, and Paladin rested on his long double-edged sword, hitching his shield over one shoulder. Only a moment to rest he had thought then, and his comrades had thought the same, each relaxing just a little. All save Oracle, who seemed intent on the SWATbots that waited all around. Treachery never occurred to Paladin, for the robots had served quite well for all the time he had been around them. Realization hit him abruptly when he heard the sound of force weapons powering up, and Paladin looked around suddenly to see the whole host of the mechanical horrors aiming their weapons at his friends and at himself.

"Treachery!" he had shouted, dropping to a crouch as a bolt of energy knocked his shield from his back. Taking sword in hand Paladin swung and hewed about himself mightily, and saw Drake doing the same with his huge mace of twisted and shaped red metal, the light of the setting sun turning his metal body as red as blood as his eyes glowed with a fierce inner rage. Shrike screamed from above as she gained the air with a single mighty leap, swooping with her long, deadly pike while Oracle also took to the air. Realizing the need of his comrade, Paladin called out to Basilisk and Shrike. "Defend Oracle. She is no match for these monsters now."

Basilisk's lean scaled form darted amid the robots, long claws rending metal while his eyes blazed, horrible beams of death lashing out to strike those SWATbots who took aim at the retreating Owl. Oracle was no close-quarter fighter. Her powers lay in the mystic power she possessed, and she had spent much of it in their last fight.

Though vastly outnumbered and battle-weary, the Last Legion were as good as their reputation, and they seemed almost more than a match for the slow and unwieldy androids that advanced on them, firing their energy weapons. Metal was shredded and circuits exploded as the terrible fury of the Legion was unleashed on their betrayers, and after a short time the machines began to fall back, seemingly overmatched. Oracle landed a fair distance behind the other Legion members, her wings tired from the effort of flight. Shrike held to the air while the rest of the Legion made a spearhead position to charge their metal foes. And it was then that the great shadow fell over them all. Paladin looked up and in disbelief saw one of the Western Realm's airships, now belching a black smoke from its exhaust vents where once it had been a clean-burning engine. A menacing light glinted in each SWATbot's visor as they looked upward at their reinforcements, and then began to arrange themselves in ranks, a single spearhead marching down the center at the Last Legion while two flanks began a pincer movement on either side to close the Legion in and prevent their escape. Looking up, Paladin quickly decided to amend the problem.

"Drake, Shrike, take out their command center."

The Gryphon and Manticore were only too happy to comply. Shrike lashed her leonine tail in midair and launched herself up through the stratosphere with a scream of challenge. Drake crouched low, his heavily armored metal body glowing with energy, his spiked scorpion tail twitching as he looked upward with his lion's head, two great golden wings spreading from his broad back as jet boosters on his feet and between his shoulders fired off, pushing him upwards towards the looming airship, though not nearly as rapidly as the nimble Gryphon above him. Paladin and Basilisk faced their ground-based foes, each glowing from the power that flowed in their ancient veins. And yet their foes did not advance, but only waited at a distance, regarding the trio on the ground with a cold green gaze.

"Oracle," called the Unicorn, "retreat, return to the King. He must have word of this treachery, and you can do no good here."

"Agreed, noble Paladin," said Oracle, her voice haunting and beautiful. But then she looked up. "I fear that I cannot retreat by air."

They all looked up, and saw the sky turned red with more than the glow of the setting sun as it sunk in the final throes of a dying day. Force bolts filled the sky with deadly energy, and though Shrike still darted nimbly about among the flying machines Drake was smoking, having taken many hits from the innumerable hordes, his own energy weapon mounted on his tail answering shot for shot until it had overheated and fell silent. Drake roared in frustration, and grappled with one of the flying craft that filled the air around him, rending its metal like tissue paper as blast after blast from a thousand sources fell across his broad shoulders. And then with a loud explosion that rent the evening air even further, a turret on the airship plucked the Manticore from the sky in a horrible maelstrom of sound and fury, sending several nearby aircraft down in flames as well.

Oracle watched the fall of Drake, the mighty Manticore, and her large, deep-seeking eyes glowed with a blue light. She seemed to grow larger somehow as the huge metal warrior struck the ground in a tangled wreck, the dark robes she wore billowing around her.

"This battle is lost to us, noble Paladin," she said, sadness touching her resonant voice, tugging at the heart of all who heard. "We must start again, and so I must leave you."

"King Acorn must be warned soon, Oracle, and only you can do it," said Paladin softly, tears kept in restraint by sheer will alone as he saw the death of his dearest friend.

"I shall not go to the King, Paladin, for he cannot help us now," she replied. "The Last Legion is still the last hope for Mobius, and it is my sworn duty to ensure our survival."

"What are you talking about?" asked Paladin, his eternally youthful white brow wrinkling in confusion and anger. "Our first duty is to the King, to ensuring that the throne and what it stands for is protected."

"You are wrong, warrior," replied Oracle, her voice and face going stony. "Our first duty is to the greater good of Mobius. For such were we prepared, and for such we must stand ready. And someone must prepare the funeral cairn for your rest."

Paladin shook his head, not understanding. But his thoughts were interrupted by a sharp hiss from Basilisk, one of the few sounds the enigmatic reptile ever made. The SWATbots were moving forward, charging at a full run and closing rapidly. Their blasters were aimed, and the air was suddenly alive with crackling energy. Basilisk moved his serpentine body as only a Cockatrice could, weaving and twisting away from each killing beam with impossible agility, gliding fluidly into the middle of the adversary, his reptilian clawed hands dismembering the robots with deadly serpentine grace. Paladin blocked the bolts of energy with his sword, his mastery of the blade evident along with his stunning reflexes. Despite this, some of the shots still struck his shining armor, and the Unicorn knew he couldn't move fast enough, couldn't destroy every one of the foes before him. He leapt into the air with all the strength of his powerful equine unguligrade legs. In the air he felt more than heard the death of Shrike as the feathers of her Eagle front caught fire, and on the edge of his consciousness he could hear her screaming as she went berserk, entering a rage of destruction that left the air filled with the shredded metal and blasted parts of her attackers that ended only when her life did, a blaze of glory that had burned only too short. Paladin landed in the middle of the robots and swung with all his might, leaving a path of destruction where his sword passed. He looked for his shield, and saw it in the arms of Oracle, so far away it might have been another world. Basilisk cried out with a scream of pain the Unicorn could hear echoing to every point of his being as the machines closed in on the lithe reptile, his speed not enough for their numbers as they crowded him and pulled the Cockatrice down. Paladin felt the heat of energy blasts on his armor, and felt the blows of countless metal fists. All around he saw scraps of metal and pieces of glass or wire fall, mangled remnants of the foe in a hopeless battle. And all had gone red and then closed into darkness. The last thing Paladin saw was Oracle, standing on the edge of the field of battle, wreathed in a blue nimbus of mystic power.

* * *

So, he was dead, and yet he could remember and could still feel ties to the world of the living. Paladin had never feared death, and yet the idea of years trapped in his body was a horrible thought to him. Why am I still here? he thought. Should I not have departed to the realm of the dead? It was then that he remembered the words of Oracle, the Owl Sorceress. And along with this thought came a memory, half-suppressed and faintly tugging at the edge of his dream-filled mind.

So, we are to be preserved, thought Paladin. I pity the heirs who will take up this mantle.