Episode one my friends so I'll keep it brief. I'd like to say, to whoever may concern, thank you for giving this slightly insane premise a try. I don't know how this will turn out but at the very least, even if this ends earlier than intended due to the whims of my demented brain, it's gonna be a wild ride getting to whatever point this ends at. Whether that be according to my plans, or just inspiration dying on me at an inopportune time.
But enough of all that, I present to all of you, Episode 1 of 'The Long War'
Adora awoke in a cold sweat, ruminating in the afterglow of another night-terror. It has been nearly a week since the Battle of Bright Moon, and while most were celebrating, Adora was stewing in regrets. It didn't help that for the past few days, night terrors have become a daily occurrence.
"Mmhh... Not again." She arose from her stupidly plush bed and wandered out of her room to the only place she could think of to soothe her mind, the balcony. As she stepped out of the building, she looked up to the starless sky of Etheira, dimly lit by her twelve moons. All she could do was reflect on everything that has led up to this point, from finding the Sword of Power to leaving the horde behind, along with her now estranged friend Catra. It was starting to weigh heavy on her mind, and with the night-terrors, it was becoming unbearable.
"Adora, what are you doing up?"
She turned to find the first person she met after finding the Sword, Glimmer, also up absurdly late.
"sigh...I think you already know the answer."
"Bad dreams again?"
Adora could only respond with a defeated nod as Glimmer walked up to the balcony edge where she stood, the multiple days' worth of missed sleep abundantly clear on her face. She continued to stare at the starless sky as if doing it for long enough might answer something, or at the very least something, anything would change.
"What was this one about?"
It helped somewhat that Glimmer was concerned about this recent issue. It was a relatively small problem in the grand scheme of things. But knowing that someone had her back eased the pain somewhat.
"Where to start, fire, brimstone, general destruction, it was awful."
"Sounds pretty rough."
"You don't know the half of it."
The Night terrors have gotten increasingly severe for a few days. At first, it was just a nightmare here and there, distressing but not concerning. Then about five or so days ago, they progressed into more graphic, more painful, and much more realistic scenes of destruction, death, and at the head of it all, the setting for every dream, a burned-out, abandoned city, mired in corpses. The nightmares only got more intense from there. There's only so much a supposed "Hero of the Rebellion" can handle before they snap, and Adora was at her breaking point.
"Hey, What's that?"
"What's what?"
"There." Glimmer pointed to the night sky. At first, Adora couldn't see anything, just some clouds. But after a while, it became apparent, a soft orange glow amid the clouds, flickering like an open fire. Before she could answer Glimmer's question of what she thought it was, a loud bang rang across the land, illuminating the object more as it turned into a fireball and started to plummet. Before she could process what just occurred, something lunched out of the now burning mass. It was only illuminated for a brief second as it flew before something unfolded from it and slowed its' descent. As the burning hulk landed somewhere in the Whispering Woods, the thing that exited from it slowly floated downwards, eventually landing not too far away from the smokestack that emanated from the crash site.
"By the First Ones, what was that?"
"Don't know, but I'm going to find out."
"What, Adora, it's the middle of the night!"
"What if someone's hurt? They can't wait for six hours."
Glimmer was at an impasse, yes it was the middle of the night, and it would be safer and more manageable to investigate what crashed in the morning. But something came out of that flying thing, and if whoever was in it was hurt and they ended up dying from exposure because of it. She wouldn't be able to live with herself.
"Uuugh, Fine! But I'm coming with you."
...
...
...
"*Cough* *Cough* *Cough* ...Блядь, Что случилось?" (Fuck, what happened?)
The man woke up in his ejector seat, bathed in the glow of his, now faintly, burning plane, the ever-present smell of ozone burning his now-broken nose. He strained against the straps of his chair as he attempted to assess the situation.
"Черт возьми, только не снова!" (Damn it, not again!)
He yelled to himself in a strange tongue, something that only he understood. As he struggled to unhook the seat's stranglehold on his body, he continued to utter words in this exotic tongue, most of which were unlikely to be friendly. Straining at the confines of the ejection seat until, finally, he unhooked the belts holding him in his chair.
CRACK!
"Трахни меня, это больно!" (Fuck me, it hurts!)
His world erupted in pain as he hit the ground, bruising his already abused ribcage. The man grimaced in pain as he slowly dragged himself to his feet, and with a loud pop, put his broken nose back in place. Surveying his surroundings, attempting to determine where he is, he looked up to his former prison.
"Блин, парашют зацепился за дерево."
He continued to stare at the seat, now empty and suspended about three meters in the air. He noticed that something was missing from the chair, something his life depended on, his backpack.
"Дерьмо! Где мои вещи?" (Shit! Where's my stuff?)
He frantically searched the ground, the trees, the plane, anywhere his bag might have fallen during the crash. He desperately eeked out any light source he could find to assist in his search until The man heard a sour note hum from his boot. Looking down, he saw his bag, his guitar, his journals, right at his feet, mere centimeters away from the ejection seat.
"О, слава Императору! Я там волновался." (Oh, thank the Emperor! I was worried there.)
He picked up his equipment, swiftly examining the pieces he could see to make sure the crash didn't damage them too much. He soon looked at the crashed plane. The numerous fires from the, whatever the hell brought the old girl down, have started to sputter out. The trees have been kind with the old girl, aside from burned metal, scuffed paint, and a totaled engine. The plane was perfectly salvageable, but that was for the future. Right now, all he could do is retrieve anything that was left in it when he launched the ejector seat. The plane's left-wing almost touched the ground, and the man used it to get to the now-empty cockpit.
He looked into the now chair-less cockpit and found a couple of guns. One semi-automatic rifle and a compact revolver with a pair of brass knuckles integrated into the grip.
"Ах, хорошо знать, что я не потерял вас двоих." (Ah, it's good to know that I haven't lost you two.)
He smiled as if he found a long-lost friend. Nothing brought more comfort to the man than a well-made firearm. He clambered down from the crashed plane and headed off into the woods.
"Будем надеяться, что я найду место для ночлега." (Let's hope I find a place to bed down tonight.)
...
...
...
Adora made her way through the frost burnt woodland, with only a lantern and the sword on her person. All the while, never letting the collum of smoke leave her sight. Glimmer, not far behind, attempted to keep up with her frantic pace.
"Adora, you know how the Whispering Woods is! How do you know if you're even going in the right direction?" She injected, with only growing concern for her friend as the pursuit for the once falling, now exploding object became more obsessive as time went on.
"We can't stop now. I know we're getting closer! It's starting to smell like something's burning."
Though painful to admit, Adora was right. As the duo continued to make their way towards the object in question, the distinct smell of fire and brimstone became stronger. The scarred forest seemed to be endless, while the scent of brimstone never seemed to get closer. They just kept running towards something that seemed never came. She couldn't keep up as Adora continued further into the winding maze that was the Whispering Wood until suddenly, she stopped.
"Whoa..."
"Adora, why did you..."
There was nothing she could say. She didn't even notice that they were there at first. It took a moment before the smell of brimstone assaulted her nose again, now the strongest it has ever been on their frantic trek to the crash site. At first, she was unsure why it was so strong. But it became clear as the tunnel vision wore off, what she saw was an image of nothing more than unfettered destruction. The thing that fell from the sky was still burning, even though it seemed to be made entirely of metals. It was held aloft by the trees, and even then only bearly, and hanging from a nearby tree was a chair covered in belts and buckles.
"Whoa..." She was speechless. The only thing similar to this was the remains of villages and towns razed by The Horde. How could anything cause this level of destruction in such a short period?
"Well, no point in standing around. Let's see what happened."
Adora ventured into the crash site, maneuvering around the dimming flames. She clambered onto the hunk of burned metal that came out of the sky, and it was odd. It could fly, that was certain, but it was almost wholly unique from Horde skiffs. Though its wings, if a fair bit thicker than what she was used to, could theoretically function similarly to what she was familiar with, there were no visible hover-modules on it, nor jet engines. From what she could tell, it was supposed to be dragged by the propeller on the nose. There was an inside, of you could call it that, that only seemed large enough to fit the chair that's now hanging aloft and a series dials, buttons, levers, and who knows what at the front.
"Adora, I think I know where they went."
She turned from the empty cockpit of the downed craft.
"What gives you that idea?"
Glimmer gestured towards the ground next to the chair, still hanging aloft. At first, Adora couldn't see what her friend was referring to, as soon as she clambered down from the downed craft, the heavy bootprints of the assumed pilot became dreadfully obvious. Leading from the chair to the crash, then finally into the woods themselves, with seemingly no direction in mind, just away from here.
"What kind of person just walks away from this?"
...
...
...
The man continued to wander through the half-frozen forest. It was puzzling the weather so far indicated a reasonably mild climate. Yet this idyllic, if somewhat intimidating, European forest was half-frozen as if it just survived some freak climatological event. Though "Idyllic European Forest" was stretching it by a wide margin, the woods seemed knarled and warped long before this happened, whatever THIS is.
"Господи, может ли этот лес стать толще?" (Good Lord, can this forest get any thicker?)
He continued to mutter to himself in strange tounges as he deftly chopped his way through the woodland with a long knife. The woods wound and twisted like a labyrinth, never seeming to stay consistent for more than a few minutes. He was sure that he has gone in circles at least eight times, though with only an old broken flashlight to light the way it could have been that the shadows were getting to him.
"Да ладно, должно быть что-то." (Come on, there must be something.)
With every passing minute, the forest seemed to get thicker. It was almost as if it wanted The man to stay away.
"Черт побери, эта проклятая чаща бесконечна!" (Bloody Hell, this damn thicket is endless!)
It was just like that damned forest back in Poland, dark, endless, and seemingly sentient. If it weren't for the deafening silence that filled this hole, old PTSD might have started rearing its ugly head again. Though, it was debatable whether the silence was better. He continued to chip away at the underbrush, the motions now robotic from repetition.
"Ugh...Трахни меня! Что за сизифова задача у меня..." (Ugh...Fuck me! What a Sisyphean task I have...)
Before he could finish his sentence, the man saw something glow from out of the endless brush, a short, faint, blue light that disappeared as abruptly as it appeared.
"Что за хрень?" (What the hell?)
He abandoned his previous path, heading towards where the light appeared. Unbeknownst to him, as he made his way towards the source of the radiation, the brambles and brush cleared, almost as if the woods he found himself in were clearing the way for its mysterious visitor. Almost as if they wanted him to travel this path. Before he knew it, the brush cleared, and he stood in a small clearing in the woods, at the foot of a ruin of a long-dead civilization.
"Бля, что у нас здесь?" (What the fuck do we have here?)
He had seen ruins before, but this one was peculiar to the man. A bizarre combination of stonework, metal, electric cabling, and...
"Это компьютерные схемы?" (Are those computer circuits?)
The questions only seemed to mount as he observed. Stone pillars and steel beams are all connected within a network of circuit-like symbols. There was only one thing that came to mind as he stared at the ancient structure.
"Может быть, Некроны? Структура похожа, но не похожа ни на что, что они построили. Несмотря на сходство." (Maybe the Necrons? The structure is similar, but not like anything they've built. Despite the similarities.)
He approached the ruin. To him, it seemed dead enough, but experience showed the folly in the logic he now employs. It didn't take long for him to find an entrance into the structure.
"Это будет работать достаточно хорошо." (This will work well enough.)
Though it only opened up to a short hallway, the space was open enough to set up camp in. He immediately went to work setting up a small lean-to tent against one of the walls. All the while trying to ignore the series of hieroglyphs that lined them.
"Да, пока работает. Так что твоя история?" (Yes, while it works. So what's your story?)
He turned away from his half-finished campsite to observe the myriad of symbols that adorned the walls of his temporary shelter. All of them had an odd similarity to circuitry, but they seemed to have some rhyme to them. Unsure of what they could entail, The Man pulled out one of his journals and started writing down as many of the symbols as he could.
"Какие секреты вы могли бы сохранить?" (What secrets could you keep?) He paused, looking back at his unfinished campsite.
"Сейчас не время играть за археолога, мне нужно начать расставлять ловушки. Бог знает, что здесь может быть." (Now is not the time to play archaeologist, I need to start setting traps. God knows what might be here.)
He sighed as he got up from the floor, as the air came alive with his working, the clinking of pots & pans, rope pulled and stretched, and the sound of an ax on wood.
...
...
...
The trail seemed to become more fragmented as Adora continued, slowly devolving into a mess of ragged footprints, directionless walking, and a seemingly endless amount of branches. Suddenly, without warning, the trail stopped dead.
"Guess it's the end of the line."
Glimmer quickly caught up, now that the frantic trek had paused, if only for a moment, she could finally take the time to assess what just happened. An unknown fallen object and it's single pilot couldn't be from the Horde as it looked nothing like anything they made before now. Not to mention it didn't have any of the Horde's icons painted on its hull, but there was one that stuck out in her mind.
"Hey, Adora...You know what that symbol was?"
"What symbol?" Adora just blankly stared, unsure of what her friend was referring, and desperately hoping that the stress hasn't gone to her head.
"You know, that symbol on the hull of...that thing. A big blue circle with a big star in the middle and a white bar coming out of it, it was there on a few places."
Adora thought back to the craft, and the massive wing she climbed onto, while mostly silver, did have some more matted areas including.
"Now that you mention, I do remember something like that."
At long last, finally, this seemingly endless string of questions had a lead. Glimmer thought to herself.
"Recognise it anywhere?"
Adora shrugged. "I've never seen it before in my life, looks nothing like anything I remember from the Horde unless they had an extensive redesign I was unaware of"
And there went any hope of this mess having any easy answers, something that was quickly becoming a precious commodity as the night continued.
"This doesn't make sense nothing just disappears!"
Adora was stumped, though the trail seemed to end where she stood, there was nothing to indicate that this mystery pilot was anywhere nearby. The bootprints just stopped, no fade-out, no break, nothing that meant they couldn't continue, and no clear sign of injury, just dead stop. She wondered if the Whispering Woods was playing tricks on her mind. Maybe there never was a trail, to begin with, which wouldn't be surprising given its nature. As Adora stewed in doubt, Glimmer noticed something sticking out of the underbrush, a neon yellow cord hidden just behind some of the bushes. Bright enough for a woodsman to notice, but hidden just enough for some animal or, First Ones forbid, some absent-minded person to trip over.
"Hey, Adora, I think I found something!"
"Really? what is it?"
Adora stepped to where Glimmer was crouching, joining her in a squat to see what she found.
"Is that a rope?" She continued to stare at the partially hidden cord, it being another thing to add to the list of "weird things found after something exploded and fell out of the sky." Glimmer prodded at it all the while.
"Probably, feels pretty taught."
She kept giving the brightly colored cord small tugs, testing its strength until it suddenly went loose. She barely had time to react as she noticed a tree falling in her direction.
"Adora!"
She grabbed onto her friend in panic and teleported away as soon as her body would let her, reappearing mere inches away from the fallen tree.
"Gah, What was that!"
"I don't know! I was pulling on a string, and a tree fell on me!"
Adora barely recovered before she noticed something off about the log that nearly crushed them. There were large sticks artificially attached throughout, sticking out in a way that they would catch anything that tried to escape under normal means. Whoever set it up arranged it in a way that would make most think it was just a dead tree, unless looking directly at it or after the trap was sprung.
"Wait a second, that's a Deadfall trap."
"Wait, what? Who would make a deadfall trap out of an entire tree?" Glimmer asked in confusion, still recovering from the apparent near-death experience. Adora looked at her friend with concern.
"The same person who walks away from a crash no worse for wear."
As the two got off the ground, they noticed a trail leading beyond the trap. Carefully maneuvering through the woods, lest they spring another man-stopper, they find a small clearing with an ancient First One's ruin nestled in the middle.
...
...
...
"Run, run, run." The words kept repeating as the man frantically scrambled through the black trees and dry grass of an old forest, the canopy so thick the moonlight couldn't penetrate. His union infantry cap dull with age and stained with, let's call it blood, as the tattered brown overcoat flew behind him as his frenzied pace took him beyond whatever limits his body was supposed to have. Desperation took hold as he held an old rusted candle lantern aloft.
"As long as you stay in the light, you'll be safe." he lied to himself as he desperately made his way to anything that could serve as shelter now that night has come. His pace growing ever more desperate as the creeks and caws of the horrors that hounded after him gained, they knew no fatigue, they knew no respite, they knew only bloodshed and madness. In the distance, he could see the faint gleam of electric lights.
"Hope, hope at last!"
He charged at the lights, every second in the open being another second closer to a grisly death, the lights coming ever closer as he ran, as are the crawling horrors that continued to gain on him. Adrenaline being the only thing that kept him going while the horrors that pursued him gained.
The cabin came ever closer as he ran until he finally caught sight of one of the windows and, without any hesitation or thought, jumped through with the force of a patriot missile, slamming into the rotted wood log walls of the ancient building and scattering shards of glass throughout the room. Deftly, he picked himself up, the awful scent of the Elixir that protected the structure wafting throughout the room, and by extension, the rest of the building. Nary a thought went through his mind as he rapidly pushed whatever he could in front of the hole that now encompassed the window. Right as he shoved something in front of the window, a shadow-bound horror burst through it, its gnashing teeth and horrid scream permeating the very atoms of the cabin. It charged, chomping its torso-mouth with ravenous hunger or madness induced rage, slamming into the man as he grabbed onto its fangs, narrowly avoiding the things life-ending bite, and wrestled with the horror for dear life. Spotting a crowbar on the far side of the room, he threw the creature into the pile of furniture that once was his makeshift barricade. He bolted to the other side of the room while the horror was dazed, picking up the blunt instrument as he heard a soul-rending scream charge toward him, slamming him into the wall, using its vestigial arms to hold him down as it sought to tear his belly open. A boot to the kneecap prevented such fate as the man wildly swung his crowbar at the blackened horror, his terror and rage-fueled roar drowning out the horrors of the night as he beat the creature into a bloody pulp and didn't stop until it stopped twitching.
...
...
...
The two friends entered the dilapidated ruin, scarcely avoiding the myriad of traps set up by its current occupant. The campsite was a semi-dilapidated and hastily thrown together mess, with canvas tarps strewed about surrounding a wood-framed lean-to, in which the pilot slept, built next to a freshly put out campfire and a stack of pots and pans. Adora wasn't sure what she was expecting from the pilot, but it wasn't what laid before her. Though they couldn't make out all of the details in the lack of light, they could make out that the man was deathly pale, almost sickly in appearance, his bearded face covered in scars from who knows how many encounters with wildlife, or potentially, other people. He wore a worn olive coat that reached his ankles, a yellowing bone-white button-up shirt, and tough-looking blue pants. They would have assumed that the man was dead because of how much wear and tear he and his wardrobe seemed to have the only thing that told them otherwise was his barely noticeable shivering. Both cautiously approached Glimmer only gave Adora a concerned and inquiring glare.
"Did something find him before we did?"
"I'm not sure, but he doesn't look wounded. At least, not recently."
Adora took a few cautious steps closer. There were no visible wounds, nothing to indicate something had stalked him or that there was a present danger nearby. Knowing nothing would come of just staring at him, both hesitantly approached, getting a better look at his wizened and battered features, which did not ease their tensions. Tentatively, Glimmer reached a hand to his shoulder and shook it slightly, almost immediately after, the man shot awake.
...
...
...
Something is here, he didn't know what it was or how it got here, but every instinct told him that it no longer mattered. His head flew in every direction, trying to find this intruder before it did whatever the hell lurked in these godforsaken woods did, but missing an eye and night blindness was not helping the matters at hand. But amidst the blur and darkness, He could make out two humanoid shapes, both of which dangerously close to him.
"Что ты, черт возьми, такое!" (What the hell are you!)
He barked obscenities in strange tongues to the figures that stood before him, the night blindness not giving any hints at what disturbed him.
"Um, hello, who are you?"
"Назад! Назад!" (Back! Back!)
He crawled backward away from the figures that stood above him, the night blindness finally giving way as his one good-eye adjusted to the black. The humanoid figures remained, yet something stood out on one of them, something seemed to jut out of its skull, almost like...
"Рога." (Horns.)
"Pardon?"
He continued to back away from the things that stood there, it couldn't be, He left those things behind, yet, here they stood, mimicking human voices, crudely disguising the horrors that they were. They still haven't torn him apart, and he sure as hell wouldn't give them the opportunity!
"Рога. Рога! РОГА!" (Horns. Horns! HORNS!)
Without a second thought, he threw his coat open and revealed the holstered pistol underneath. Pulling the pistol and pointing it in the general direction of the savages before him. Without a moment to lose, he pulled the trigger, and the pistol fired with a blinding flash and a deafening crack.
...
...
...
Glimmer and Adora jumped, glancing over their shoulders back at whatever whizzed by them, burying itself into the branch it had struck, leaving a golfball-sized hole in the wood. Momentarily the two were frozen in shock at the sight of the wound they nearly sustained but quickly snapped back to reality, as they knew the man wouldn't delay taking another shot at them.
Adora began to duck as she saw the weapon trained to her, thankfully Glimmer was a step ahead of the man. In a flash of magenta sparkles, she had vanished out of thin air, while the man reared his head trying to grasp what had just happened. She reappeared directly behind him, clasping her arms over his shoulders from beneath his arms in a bid to subdue him. Hearing the two thrash in the commencing struggle prompted Adora to look up, taken by surprise the man dropping his weapon, and realizing what Glimmer had done, gave a swift elbow to her face, sending her reeling back while he staggered forward.
"ВЫБИРАЙСЯ ОТ МЕНЯ ЖИВОТ!" (GET OFF OF ME ABOMINATION!)
The man barked like some mad dog as he tried to make his way to his awful weapon, Adora wasted no time in trying to kick the thing away from their terrified attacker. She didn't have a chance to think before he grabbed the weapon, she expected him to take another shot only to be greeted with the brass handguard of the weapon colliding into her jaw, causing her to fly off her feet from the sheer force of the blow, a miracle it was that it didn't break her jaw.
"АНТЛЕРЫ! АНТЛЕРЫ! АНТЛЕРЫ! У них ЕБАНЫЕ АНТЛЕРЫ!" (ANTLERS! ANTLERS! ANTLERS! They've got FUCKING ANTLERS!)
Adora couldn't comprehend what their attacker was saying, it was nothing like anything she ever heard spoken, even the First One's text she had read on a near-daily basis felt simple when compared to whatever this person was screaming in pure abject terror. The man only stood atop her as he aimed the weapon at her head, still screaming in that unnatural tongue.
"ОНИ ЕСТЬ АНТЛЕРЫ! ОНИ ЕСТЬ АНТЛЕРЫ! ОНИ ИМЕЮТ..." (THEY HAVE ANTLERS! THEY HAVE ANTLERS! THEY HAVE...)
CRASH!
It took a moment before Adora knew what happened, as her attacker collapsed to the side with Glimmer standing behind him with a large pan in her hands.
"Glimmer."
"Yeah?"
"What the Heck Just Happened?"