To anyone bothering to read this...
The framework:
This story is based on the Movieverse, with the most recent film being Age of Extinction. However, I am combining this with the Aligned and IDW continuities, so it will a little different from the norm. Most of the characters will be those you've seen already, though their appearances and personalities may be different (this is Movieverse, after all). Also, the beginning of the story will be taking place before the Transformers first arrive on Earth.
Feel free to leave any feedback you want!
(Also, sorry about the lengths of the next few chapters. I'll try to shorten future uploads).
Prologue
Upon the still plain of stone, nothing moves. Only hollow echoes answer the calls of the cruel wind, borne of the north. Nothing living ever comes here, either by day or by night. And by night, no light can ever cast back the shadowy veil, and cast forth into knowledge all things, great and terrible, that dwell there. The stars twinkle with adamantine distance, shining with a cold knowledge in the sky.
Eternity sleeps. Death haunts this consecrated ground, rejoicing in its spoils.
Bones, like ages-old relics, poke out of the soil, their shambles creating a wasteland of forgotten horror. Like old seers of the truth, their skulls stare blindly into the wastes. They are silent. They do not forget.
Hidden away in this land of silence, a monolithic fortress erupts from the shadows, its walls tipped with nightmares of suffering and dreams of steel. Empty skeletons lean upon the ramparts, still clutching the swords and shields they once wielded in life.
They no longer reign. They have ceded their vigil to a more watchful entity.
The shadows mutter in their silent tongue, sleepless and wary. Something is stirring where it should not.
At the gate, carved stone reflects horrors of a battle long ended, telling what the corpses could not. Its silver spikes leave the way open, beckoning. The path is no longer shut. Here the bones end, giving way to a featureless, grey dust. It could once have been ash.
Past the barrier, nightmares spring to life. Corridors wind and turn, no longer regarding any rule of sanity. Old treasures lie inside dark rooms, rusting in their place. They, too, have been lost to the ravages of time.
A dead wind slumbers, burdened with knowledge. It cannot tell, but it can show. Howling, it runs through the emptiness, a voice of ghouls past. It leads on and on, past sunken crypts leaden with desiccated remains, past iron swords blunted by time and crumbling pillars of stone. As it reaches deeper, mists begin to form, lending unlikely shape to hidden terrors that once roamed the night. They hiss and screech, once more on the prowl.
Inside the inner reaches of the depths, there is only one force in power. The darkness sanctifies its very ground, consecrates its stones. It muddles the water and deepens the cracks, yielding nothing. All at once and forever, it is compelled to obey, compelled to disobey. Nothing knows yet, but it has a master, one reviled by even eternity itself.
At the heart of the shadows, a throne leers out of the dark, wicked and cruel. Spikes thrust upwards, growing like roots towards the arched ceiling high above. Shining gold draws lines of liquid light upon the edifice, rebelling against the omnipotent gloom.
The figure seated upon the throne is ancient, its bones far older than the fortress itself. Its sunken sockets, gaping like black holes in its skull, once beheld the coming of Time, witnessed the birth of this universe, and saw its inevitable end.
And in it, it saw itself, the darkness that had existed for eons before Time, which had once existed and now exists and will exist.
It saw the end. And it spoke.
Through a voice that creaked and groaned with senescence, three words were whispered into the air, only to be snatched away by the mocking wind.
I will return.