In a world where darkness threatens to consume all, two unlikely heroes must unite across time to save humanity.
Lady Allison, an ancient vampire with a conscience, has slumbered for centuries, waiting for the moment when she would be needed most. N...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The transition was... indescribable.
The Warrior felt as though he was being unmade, his very atoms pulled apart and reassembled a trillion times in the span of a heartbeat. His cybernetic systems, pushed far beyond their limits, screamed in silent agony.
And through it all, he saw... everything.
The rise and fall of civilizations. The birth and death of stars. The slow dance of galaxies across the cosmic stage. All of time and space laid bare before him in a single, eternal instant.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
* * *
The Warrior crashed to the ground, his armored form carving a furrow in the soft earth. For several long moments, he lay still, his systems rebooting one by one. Warnings flashed across his vision, alerting him to damaged components and depleted power reserves. But he was alive. And more importantly, he had made it.
Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. His optics flickered, adjusting to the unfamiliar light. And what he saw took his breath away.
Green. Everywhere he looked, there was green. Trees stretched towards a sky so blue it hurt to look at. The air, free from the toxic miasma of his time, filled his lungs with a sweetness he had never known.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, the Warrior felt something stir in his chest. A flicker of an emotion he had thought long dead. Hope.
But sentiment was a luxury he couldn't afford. He had a mission. Activating his geographical positioning system, he attempted to determine his location. The results were... confusing.
"GPS signal not found," his system reported. "Reverting to celestial navigation."
Of course. He was too far in the past for satellite navigation. The Warrior's lips twisted in a grimace beneath his mask. This mission was going to be more challenging than he had anticipated.
A sound caught his attention – the rumble of an engine. Primitive by his standards, but unmistakable. Civilization. He moved towards it, his damaged systems protesting with every step.
As he crested a hill, he saw it. A road. And on that road, a vehicle that looked like something out of a historical archive. The occupants, a family by the looks of it, stared at him with wide eyes as they passed.
The Warrior realized how he must appear to them – a figure out of nightmare, more machine than man, standing at the edge of a peaceful country road. He needed to blend in, to gather information without causing panic.
With a thought, he activated his adaptive camouflage. Nanites flowed across his armor, reshaping it into something less conspicuous – a long coat, boots, gloves. His mask reconfigured into a pair of dark sunglasses and a high collar that obscured the lower half of his face.
Thus disguised, he made his way towards the nearest settlement. According to his celestial navigation, he was somewhere in what used to be eastern France. A good starting point for his search.
As he walked, the Warrior's mind raced. How far back had he traveled? Was this before Heidenreich's rise to power? Before the world fell into darkness? And most importantly, how would he find Lady Allison?
The answers, he knew, lay in the world he was about to enter. A world of peace and plenty, ignorant of the horrors that awaited it in the future. A world he had sworn to save.
