...
Darkness filled your eyes, they had been filled in blackness for who knows how long, you didn't know how long either... But honestly you couldn't tell the difference, for it felt as though all you've ever seen was black, eternal darkness for your entire life...
Who were you anyway? What were you? what is 'you'? What is 'what'?
Your mind filled itself with questions which devolved into questioning the universe, questions with words you would've paused at where among them, but none of them could be answered by you. Or just doing nothing in fact...
You didn't know what you felt against your skin and scales, on one hand it felt like semi-hard, wrinkly material and on the other it felt like cushiony, tickly... Strands? Your body felt heavy, you even felt slightly tired, yet something tugged at your mind, bothered you with something you couldn't understand, couldn't remember, a silent urge that had once been dominating but now was but a silent, almost unnoticable whisper to get going...
Something of note if you could've remembered how to tell the difference between ground that's been left alone and ground thats been laid on for a long time you would've noticed how that which you lay upon felt like the same temperature as your skin and scales in comparison to the soft breeze that had cooled down your back, something which would've made you feel cold but due to your awakening to the chill, your mind had interpreted the coldness as having always been there despite the simple fact it had not been there last you'd been awake... But your complete lack of memories had caused that misinterpretation.
Eventually your mind came to the decision of arising from your slumber, pushed on by the silent whisper quietly pushing your body and mind into action.
And so, groggily you opened your eyes, the heavy eyelids slowly moving as your eyes slowly adjusted, the absence of unnatural light being a particular factor, from what you saw, small beams of moonlight shone through somewhere, you couldn't see where but you could see the rather obvious difference between the slightly cyan-tinted beams of light and the dark shadows which bathed the rest of whatever sort of enclosure you were in. Your eyes focused on seeing what they could for now, your body was still a bit too heavy for you to move, the surface you lay upon seemed to be... Planks? Yeah... You didn't know why you knew a word that felt so right about the long plates of brown... Surface, between the planks rose tufts of green... Grass? There were even some small flowers among some of the grassy tufts. The walls were of planks as well, although they looked like they had been in a better shape once, some were missing, either laying on the floor or, somewhere else.
You slowly began wrestling your body out of an unknown exhaustion, had you known you were both severely hungry and tired you would have understood the exhaustion or stiffness that made itself apparent once you began struggling to move your body, firstly attempting to lift yourself up to stand, but your arms were unable to lift your body that much, much thanks to the stiffness in your muscles, but you were able to get a good view of the roof of the room you were in, it didn't look that stable anymore, stripped tree trunks formed the first layer of support beams which stretched from one side of the sizable two-story room to the other, one of the large trunks had freed itself and had brought with it a chunk of the roof, creating the largest hole in the ceiling where much moonlight seeped through, the streaks of moonlit beams also seeped through numerous other holes in the ceiling, you couldn't figure out if the holes were natural or not, but that wasn't something you cared to find out.
The sudden exhaustion of your body had taken a slight toll on your mind as well, wondering if the massive feeling of hunger meant you couldn't rest for a day or two. The whispering urge pushing your mind into forcing your body up, to ignore the exhaustion and stiffness, but as much as you tried the exhaustion was too much and the stiffness made forcing yourself up unbearable, so your mind relented and closed your eyes, your mind falling into rest as your body fell back to the first position you had woken up in.
The whispering urge relenting as it unnoticably disappeared from your mind, a faint buzzing sound barely reaching your mind but quickly disregarded...
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High above the abandoned farm and the titanic forest which partly surrounded the farm, a large, bulky aircraft raced through the sky, plumes of smoke trailing out from the numerous small and the two twin airbreathing engines that gave the craft it's respectable speed. Inside the crafts offcentred cockpit, two pilots wearing boxy, resilient-looking flight suits controlled the craft, the front pilot controlled the craft itself while the second pilot controlled the crafts subsystems and it's sizable array of hidden missiles and chainguns. The craft was a so-called 'heavy dropship'. the co-pilot was looking at numerous screens, all of which were hooked up to numerous cameras mounted on the ship, the cameras being pointed towards different areas on the ground, looking for some'thing', or some'one'.
In the dropships rear sat numerous, heavily armed soldiers wearing boxy, yet presumably quite protective exosuits, the soldiers all sat in the seats which lined the inside of the dropship at the end of each row of seats, two very large humanoid robots stood, armed to the teeth with various weapons, these units were normally nicked 'maxsuits' or as their classification names them, 'Superheavy Goliath Powered-Armour'. Between the two rows of soldiers stood a singular IFV with it's large 60mm autocannon and secondary anti-tank missile launchers. Along the wall which seperated the dropships rear from the dropships weapon compartment and cockpit sat 4 additional seats, on those seats sat 4 additional people, on the left-most seat sat an individual with glass and a labcoat, presumably a scientist, his short-cut hair was an auburn brown and behind the thick glasses sat two hazy brown-green eyes, on the other 3 seats sat two soldiers in their boxy exosuits and between them sat a masked man who subtly reeked of authority.
The boss man sat with a black, artificial tophat with several feathers sticking out from under the crimson band of woven silk which sat at the tophats base. The mans mask was blank save for one black eye, despite the absence of viewingholes the mask most likely featured a full camera system which supplied the wearer with unobstructed view, just like if the mask wasn't even there. the inhabitants of the dropships rear mostly stayed silent but some of the soldiers had periodic chitchats to pass the time. The scientist was the only one in the dropship without some kind of suit, which made it impossible for him to hide his nervous face, and most notably his twirling thumbs, the dropship had been in the air for a long while now and the scientist wanted to be back at the lab continuing his research, the most valuable subjects escape shouldn't have anything to do with him as all he did was administer it amnesia, everything was fine, he had recieved the go ahead from everyone in charge of the facility and now he's being dragged along in search missions for the inhuman thing.
For what felt like the thousandth time he released yet another sigh. a sigh which invoked a reply from the boss.
''ƧŦĪĿĿ ǤṜŪMPȲ?'' The distorted voice crackled, the other soldiers chitchats had died down.
'Most likely chatting through their comms.' The scientist thought. ''Yes. Quite obvious is it not?'' He responds.
''ĦŌฬ ĿŌ₦Ǥ ฬĀƧ ĪŦ ȲŌŪ ƧĀĪƉ ŦĦĀŦ ƧĒṜŪM Ō₣ ȲŌŪṜƧ ₦ĒĒƉĒƉ ŦŌ ₣Ī₦ĪƧĦ?'' The boss crackled again. The scientist suppressed his urge to sigh again, despite how many times he's been asked that by the boss, it had become ever more sensible for the scientist to believe the boss had puppets to remotely control, there was no way someone as elusive and mysterious as the boss would be here aboard a dropship on a search and retrieve mission with some random scientist which could on the very paranoid side of things have a bomb planted inside of themself.
''Only 1 day, if the subjects anatomy doesn't somehow hinder it from disrupting the brains neurons.'' He answered. The boss didn't reply immediately.
''ฬĦĀŦ ƉŌ ȲŌŪ ŦĦĪ₦₭ MĀƉĒ ŦĦĒ ƧŪ乃JĒĊŦ ฬĀ₦Ŧ ŦŌ ĒƧĊĀPĒ?'' The boss asked. This question made the scientist have to think, it definitely wasn't asked before by the boss.
''Well, im not all that sure, could be that the amnesia immediately took effect, wiping memories, and the first memories that faded could've been the reason why it didn't attempt to escape.'' He answered, he could see the boss's head nod, not saying anything more. Eventually the other soldiers unmuted their chitchat. 'Honestly prefer it to be silent.' The scientist pondered before he went back to fondling his thumbs.
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You reawakened, immediately noticing the effect your little nap or however long it took had on your body, the tiring stiffness in your muscles were gone and the exhaustion had died away, leaving a refreshed half-dragon girl that stretched out, a slight stiffness in skin and scales quickly subsided together with the reawakening of your muscles, eyes open as you finally rise up upon two digitigrade legs. You noticed how you had an odd feeling of Déjà Vu, but you couldn't remember ever dreaming about something real, your dreams so far had been questions, and, answers? No not true ones, false ones.
In front of you lay the missing support beam, together with much of the walls, creating a large pile of broken planks, you looked around some more, noticing an odd familiarity about this place, was it a foyer? How did you know that? You couldn't remember ever being here. Well, you were here now and when you were exhausted. Thinking of exhaustion, you couldn't help but shiver, not because you were cold but, while your muscles felt reinvigorated, when you moved them it felt like you weren't invigorated in any way. You couldn't put a claw on the correct feeling, but it felt as though your sudden energy was false. Not that you could bring your mind to care all that much as it was pushed by a familiar urge, one that once again whispered inside of your mind.
You looked down at your body, you felt sort of strange, like if something was different, but from just looking at yourself you couldn't see anything different. Dull grey scales covered your hips, tail, second half of your arms and legs, your large claws and feet the size of your head, not that you minded, they both felt strong, like you could shatter boulders effortlessly with your long, thick, wickedly sharp claws. And speaking of wickedly sharp, every bony protrusion and spike looked gnarly and sharp, your scales where even tipped with pointy edges, the massive scales which embroided your clawed hands and feet tipped with green spikes. They gave you the impression of being poisonous. Something which lightly bothered your mind was your thin, seemingly transparently pale skin but you couldn't be bothered to wonder why it bothered you. Your flat chest was covered by four large claws that like all the others looked wickedly sharp, although it was of note that they were smooth and blunt on the side facing you, like if they were meant to grip unto and protect some of your weak flesh.
Looking behind you, you looked at your long tail, fat at it's base, slender and small at it's long tip, topped by large spikes that followed along your spine, your tail seemed like it was twice your height in length, you didn't mind that fact but something told you it wasn't that long before.
The whisper inside your mind had become quite strong by now and almost shouted at you to get moving, you eventually relented and turned around, looking at the entrance to the abandoned foyer you had lay inside of, two broken wooden doors lay half destroyed on their rusted hinges. A rusted lock sat on the ground shattered not far from the open doorway, as if something had come bursting through them. Taking slightly wobbly steps out, you were greeted with the sight of the dark night sky, the moon sat tall above, shining it's light unhindered down upon you and your surroundings, you gazed up at it's full magnificance, basking in it's glory.
It was pretty and beautiful, your mind was confused at how familiar just looking at the moon felt, like if you had gazed up on such a sight a multitude of times, enough that seeing it wasn't any sort of beauty but to you now it felt like true beauty. Looking up at the starred sky mixed with beautiful colours, such a sight was definitively not something you could even feel like remembering from some time.
You looked around more, you were in some kind of massive clearing, covered in old, abandoned buildings which had descended into different states of decay. The clearing was stubbed with trees and covered in grass, tall grass, against your thick, armoured scales the grass didn't feel like anything. Not that you even cared that you wouldn't get to feel the tickling sensation of the tall grass rubbing against your naked skin. If you still had your memory, you would be slightly embarassed of the feeling of being butt naked, but it felt natural so you didn't care in the slightest. Granted, the cold night breeze was slightly irritating as it raked your sensitive skin, a numbing sensation making itself present over your skin, but you couldn't bring yourself to care all that much, even if it was uncomfortable.
As you gazed further around, you couldn't spot anything of particular note, except for the ginormous forest that almost completely surrounded the clearing, a half-overgrown road lead off towards a gate and fence, your sharp eyesight effortlessly noticing a sizable gap in the fence, like if something had forced the bars apart, some of the bars were even torn apart, like if something had also rammed through them. If you hadn't forgotten everything you would have known it was you that broke through the fence, it was far enough away from where the road once was that even if your old captors searched for you from the sky, they wouldn't find your entrance point.
But that knowledge was far, far away now, locked beyond unnoticable barriers hidden in your mind.
You walked to the left of the large ruin which you had awoken inside, the largest object inside of the clearing. Looking for anything special, your eyes fastening on the forest path behind the building but you weren't interested in that just yet, so you shoved the thought aside for now, walking towards a small grouping of unknown ruins that even your past-self didn't know, walking over to a large pond inside the borders of a long fence. Whatever the fence had been made of wasn't very noticable as most of the fence looked to be buried in the ground or broken.
You were slightly thirsty so you headed over to the pond, stopping to look at your reflection.
Staring back at you were your mirage, a mirage of a visibly nigh-lifeless human with reptilian parts, something in your mind told you that you looked almost like a human 'dragon'. Whatever that was, both names were unfamiliar to you. You took particular notice in what you didn't look at when you were inside the largest ruin, namely your head and your wings. Your face looked young and soft, dominated by two crimson glowing slitted eyes, your cheeks were freckled with the occasional, small scale, being a more common sight closer to your neck which was almost completely covered with dull grey scales save for the front of your neck and throat, your hair was long, reaching almost past your crotch, coloured a dull-grey just like your scales but with the occasional, purple-ish streak.
Your ears where two sizable fins that used the membrane which weaved between the three finger-like protrusions of the fins, most of the fins base was hidden from view by your hair. At the back of your head towered 10 thick horns coloured bony white with poisonous green tips, the horns were organized in pairs with the largest pair being the next-highest pair with the other 3 pairs becoming smaller, the highest pair was the thinnest of the horns, but was just as long as the 2nd pair of horns.
Your wings were perhaps the more, 'depressing' part of your body, not that you found them depressing as for all you could remember they had always been ripped, the fingers still stood with their bony, protective spikes, tall and proud but now stood huddled against your body, the membrane which connected the fingers had been ripped apart, you didn't know when or how, but it was probably long enough that they weren't of any particular caution. Not that it mattered much, even if the membrane wasn't ripped apart the wings were too small to catch enough air to lift you off the ground. They were still too young, much like the rest of your body, even if it wasn't immediately apparent.
Something else of note was the presence of an amber gemstone at the base of your neck, clutched by 4 bony spikes and some scales it looked special. But you couldn't be bothered to see what else it was about, as the urge in the back of your mind pressed on, pushing you to go towards the forest. Like it urgently wanted you to reach safe haven or something, you didn't know but nonetheless relented as you crouched down to atleast sate some of your thirst, bending over as you dipped you head into the water, beding it up to gulp some of it up. Repeating the cycle for some minutes before rising back up, sighing content over the surprisingly fresh water, you didn't know it could've very well have been dirty after how-ever long it's been since the ruins had been abandoned.
You turned back around as you struggled to scrape away the water which had soaked into your thin albino skin, your claws being quite large and unwieldy to such a task while you were also careful not to cut yourself, which you did, it wasn't that deep though.
Walking away from the large pond and ruined enclosure you walked back to the rear of the central largest ruin in the clearing, turning to the wall of seemingly endless forest, a path of small pebbles and ground rock stood out among the tall grass, there was no sign of grass or any sort of plant growing through the path, it felt slightly odd to you, how perfect the forest bordered the clearing, the grass on the forests side looked neatly cut, not being uncontrollably tall, the path looked as if it hadn't been disturbed for a 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 long time, like if the forest had kept the path undisturbed and neatly kept.
Ignoring the oddness of how perfect the forest seperated itself from everything else in the clearing you found the most odd thing being the feeling of nostalgia, like if you had been on this exact path long ago but obviously you couldn't remember in the slightest, so the feeling was quite odd.
Nevertheless you trotted forward to begin your journey along the forest path.
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There was one thing you did not notice...
Inside the largest building, a building which at one time was the house of your uncle norman, lay a small chip, one that was kept offline by mystical means...
But now the mystical entity which kept it offline, had gotten too far away, and electricity surged through it once again.
The chip began emitting it's unnoticeable waves, waves which were quickly picked up by a heavy dropship...
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The dropship in question was the one which had been rocketting above the abandoned site of Normans farm but which now found itself quite a distance away.
The dropships co-pilot noticed one of his monitors notifying him of a tracker being detected, the tracker of the subject which they were searching for.
The co-pilot notified the dropships pilot and then announced the detection to the passangers through the intercom. ''Subjects tracker located, moving to position.''
''The trackers intact?'' The scientist muttered confused.
''ƧĒĒMƧ ƧŌ.'' The Boss crackled as he rose from his seat, one of his bodyguards arose to accompany him. The two individuals left the dropships rear and entered it's front to converse with the co-pilot.
The scientist could moments later feel the dropship lightly decelerate, followed by being pulled to the side as he felt the dropship turn, and after the turn was completed he began feeling pulled forward as the dropship accelerated, on course towards the trackers location no doubt.
...
In a secret location, a dozen or so miles from normans abandoned farm, large garages rolled open, revealing numerous headlights and the growl of powerful engines, belonging to armoured vehicles like Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC's), Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV's), jeeps and tanks which shortly sped out of the facility's garages and onto the roads as the vehicles formed a convoy, their destination? Norman's abandoned farm...
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Meanwhile... You were walking down the forest path, gazing around as it lead you farther inwards, and farther away from the abandoned farm of your uncle, and, consequently, the tracker which was now transmitting it's location without care, nor obstruction, yet it would take over a dozen minutes for your old captors to reach the farm, both in the air and on the ground.
You felt more calm and safe the farther inwards you went, it felt good, the urge which was pushing you, was now no longer pushing, but you felt it had a firm position inside of your mind, yet it didn't seem to utilize that position to make you hurry, or anything else. You felt welcome, like family, even though it sort of felt odd, you didn't mind, merely walking forth, no end in sight, well, of the forest, but the path did visibly reach an end.
Instead of going further inside the forest, the path turned, to the left it seemed. You would have kept on going deeper regardless of the path but something caught your eye, as in the distance, on the side of the path looking inwards into the forest, sat two large, carved stones. You were curious, curious why they were there, so you deviated from your course and followed the paths curve until you were beside the stones.
The stones weren't particularly big, but they were your height, and definitively as wide as you were tall as well, even if you were quite short, and young. Bouquets of flowers lay in porcelain pots aside each of the stones, small pots with still burning flames illuminated the stone everything in perfect shape, held alive, held pretty by whatever force inhabits this forest. For some reason the right stone caught your attention the most. The two stones had patterns carved into them. Words, and you for some reason knew what those words meant.
You started with the right stone, which was the largest of the two stones interestingly enough.
The right stone said:
Here lies a memorial to signify the disappearance of Normans niece.
The forest changed him.
Later taken away by masked men.
Taken to god knows where.
May he find peace.
2000 - 2017
You didn't know why but you felt like if this stone was, referring to you. And this fact for some reason, brought you sadness, like if you were witnessing grief you hadn't known existed, grief exhibited by individuals whom you considered loved ones. Tears began to gather in the corners of your eyes, and trailed down your face, gathering at you chin before dripping like droplets down into the earth. At the base of ʏᴏᴜʀ memorial sat a bag, on top of that bag lay a... Rektangular object with rounded edges? A... Phone? Is that what that is? Whatever it was, it's surface was cracked. And it all seemed, familiar. They even smelled like they were yours. Albeit, a different you.
The left memorial said:
Here lies a memorial to signify the disappearance of Norman.
Abandoned his farm and entered the forest, gone to who knows where.
May he have found peace, wherever he is.
1963 - 2019
You didn't remember who this norman was but whoever he was, it must have been someone important to you as you felt grief from that as well. At this memorials base sat pictures. Only one of them seemed familiar, and you could only guess it was Norman. And that guess was most likely correct. But you would never know, as the rustling of leave caught your attention, it wasn't from a breeze, it was from something else, your finned ears could only pick up a slight buzz from the large clearing. It didn't sound special to your mind, but to the urge, and the forest, it was seemingly panic-invoking as the urge, in it's powerful position, hijacked your body, tearing you away from looking at the two memorials. The sight of them, thankfully, already stuck inside of your head and forcing your body to sprint inwards into the forest. And as you left, the flames which kept the two stones illuminated fizzled, then finally extinguished, the flowers withering, the pictures, and the bag, rotting, moss revealed itself, covering the base of the two stones. an illusionary image disappearing as a multitude of different signs revealed themselves, signs detailing the farms downfall, accompanying signs of disrespective frustration... Hidden from sight by the forest, guarding one of it's dearest subjects from the darkness of humanity...
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Outside the forest, the origin of the buzzing, and the forests reaction became clearer. Your previous captors had arrived, a large armoured convoy had broken through the abandoned farms gate, the rusted locks shattering as the lead tank burst through, the tanks weight and speed shattering the rusted resilience of the gate as one of the gates broke free from it's hinges, but it didn't matter as it didn't slow the convoy in the slightest, once it reached the overgrown clearing the convoy spread out, APC's stopping to disgorge their onboard mercenary soldiers, dozens, even hundreds, of soldiers swarmed the ruined farm as up above, heavy dropships and gunships arrived as spotlights shone down upon the farm and forest, but none of the light broke through the forest leaves.
Several of the dropships descended down, landing or hovering and disgorged their complements of commandoes and goliaths, those that landed disgorged their IFV's as well, and from one of the dropships walked 4 individuals, two of them wore the boxy exosuits of the commandoes, the 4th individual was dressed in a labcoat, struggling to keep it closed as the different gusts of wind from gunship rotors and dropship engines tugged thelabcoat away. The 3rd individual was the most special one, their mask denying sight of their face, one of their hands were busy keeping their hat from blowing off.
One of the soldiers approached the Boss with a chip, handing them it. The boss examined it for a second or two before discarding it, leaving the scientist to pick it up and examine it himself.
On the Boss's command, several groups of commandoes approached the rustling forest's borders, the leaves rustling their warnings as the commandoes activated strange devices attached to the hips of their suits, devices which glowed and whirred as they created invisible fields, fields meant to keep the forests mystical powers at bay. But whether or not they actually worked... Was to be seen. As the commandoes jogged ahead, heavy assault rifle raised and shoulder-mounted secondary at the ready...
How does the forest react?
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