The days of fighting blurred together long ago. No more glorious offensives. No more lazy training days firing warning shots at baby combat mages, to put their heads on a swivel. Her bid to retire back to a training formation was rejected long ago, with everything needed on the front.
So now it's just brutal war, flying over the Rhine front. No matter how many nations ally against them or how much force they throw at the front... The Francois, the Commonwealth, and even the Unified States now! The Empire holds on, ground down and pushed back as the whole land turns to a sea of mud and smoke, constant fire missions to identify and destroy allied artillery positions, to spot developing assaults and obliterate them from the air, to run close air patrol and cut down the endless swarms of fireflies, enemy mages, that constantly harass the Empire's infantry from the air...
Today is a bad day. She's been injured, fairly badly. Her ears ring, and her head throbs, her body aching in that way that means she held the analgesic formula for far too long and is now paying for it. She's on the ground, rocky rubble all around her. Weapon, orb, boot, she reflexively feels for, and they're present.
What even happened? She doesn't remember. There was a company of Unified States mages, a large bomb of some sort, and-
-Some instinct tells her to raise her Active Shell, pulling on the computation orb to do so.