Chapter One: The beginning
It was a cold September day as a soft freezing breeze blows through the tent and I stand up from the stool I was sitting on. Papers strewn out across a desk as a small flicker of the candle light spread an eerie shadow across my living quarters. My name is Nespher Mcel and I am a soldier. A lone soldier lost to the tide of war and corruption. I walk over to my rucksack and pull out a ration. My rank is Staff Sgt., but I guess that doesn’t matter much anymore, since I have no idea where I am. I’m 26 years old and tired of being alone, even soldiers get lonely after a time. I walk out of the tent slowly eating the ration and take a look around, a large crate opened up to my left with weapons and ammo spilling out. I look to my right and put a strain smile on my face as I look at what had saved my life, a pretty beaten up Humvee.
‘Octavia,’ that’s what I called her, after someone I knew long ago who saved me from going down a dark path. Walking up to it I gaze inside as I see the damage that the girl took, windows shattered, electrical malfunction, bullet holes all over the hood and sides, and two flat tires. “You did your job girl,” I say with my deep and scratchy voice, “just wish we could’ve saved more than just me.” Looking away, I find where I buried the only other escapee, who was shot during the fight and died from blood loss in my arms. Shuffling through my pocket I pull out a pair of Dog Tags and mummer a small prayer for the young soldier.
Looking at the tags I see the name of the boy ‘ANDERSON, JOHN’. Poor fellow had a lot of spunk this Anderson did. I look back toward the still burning ruins of the base we were stationed at. “Fort Beldem,” I mummer as I recollect a small memory of it…
“Damn! I’ve been hit!” a burly voice sounds to my right. Looking over at him I see a hole in the armor on his chest and blood slowly leaking out of the hole.
“Oh God!” I yell as I move over to the injured soldier, “how deep is it?” I ask hoping that it isn’t deep so I can fix him up with what little knowledge of medical care I know.
“I-it’s deep…” the man struggles with each word “I don’t t-think I can keep this up.” Damn…
“Okay I’m gonna get you out of here, just hold on and don’t you dare leave me!” I grunt as I lift the heavy soldier and run behind a Humvee taking cover. Opening the door I softly lift and place the man in the back of the vehicle, as I do so the guy puts out a pain grunt as I hold the wound with his hand. I close the door and jump into the driver’s seat, slamming my foot on the gas, the vehicle lurches forward and gains speed quickly.
The Humvee bounces as I drive through enemy tangos who where standing in front of it firing at the behemoth before it crunches over their screaming bodies. We quickly make distance as I find the road out of the base and drive as fast as I can still under fire.
*POP*
The vehicle slows at one of the tires gets shredded up from a spike strip, but not enough as we zoom out the gates…
Snapping out of my thoughts I walk back into my tent as the Sun starts to fall to the horizon. “Tomorrow I’m gonna risk it and go back,” I say to myself dropping onto the stool regretting running when I could’ve fought and maybe even save a few more people. “No you did all you could, you know that… right?” I say to myself as I look back at my desk and the papers. What records I could retrieve before the thing happened, at first they were for a mission I was going to leave for, but now they meant nothing to me.
“Tomorrow, we will see tomorrow.”
I climb over the remains of what once was a wall, everything seemed to be destroyed, well… I guess it is. “Hello! Anyone here! Is anyone alive?” I step over a fallen pillar and see a man holding his arm with his back against a destroyed Humvee. I quickly make pace as I run over to the man and kneel before him, the gentle rise and fall of his chest tells me he is still alive, but barely. Gazing at his arm I find out that he has lost a lot of blood from a bullet wound to the shoulder. “At least your alive bud.” I say simply, wrapping his arm with some bandage I found in the wreckage.
Once I finish I picked the man up and over my shoulder till I find a suitable vehicle to transport him and me back to my camp. I continue calling out for survivors, but only come up with dead bodies, I step over the fallen corpse of an Iraquen soldier. Damn how long has this war been? I think like four or five years, I mean five years? Who fights for no reason that long? Never mind, back to getting us out of here.
I look over at the vehicle yard and see a FAV sitting there almost untouched with a M60-E4 still attached to the Turret seat. But what I see past that grabbed my attention even more, a purple sphere with someone or something coming out of it “Crap” I whisper and hide behind a carcass of a Abrahms Tank.
--Change P.O.V.—
“Twi, do you really think we should be doing this without those guards Celestia is sending?” Spike asks behind Twilight who is halfway through the portal to a strange new world.
“Aww Spike… are you scared?” The princess of Magic joked. Twilight stepped back out of the portal to look at the small teenage dragon. “Anyway there doesn’t seem to be anypony around anyway.”
“But I still have a bad feeling about that place…” Spike muttered to himself, as he walked up to the portal and put his clawed hand through it, but pulling back just as quickly.
“Well you shouldn’t be,” Twilight says as she walks over to the book that helped her summon the portal and grabs it in her hand, “why would this be here if the place was dangerous, it would’ve been destroyed.” She then looks back at the book, “What secrets lye just through that gateway I ask myself.”
“What if the last pony that lived here was never strong enough to summon the portal? I mean it did take a lot of magic for you, the princess of magic, to summon it!” Spike replied as he stamped up to her, still about a head’s worth shorter that the tall princess.
“Valid point Spike, Valid point…”
--Change P.O.V.—
I sprint over to the vehicle seeing as the purple orb is still and no movement shows, twisting the key to start up the FAV. I set down the man I picked up in the turret seat and jump back in the drivers seat. “Sweet mother of ----“ my voice is cut off as the orb does something strange, it starts to suck us inside of it, “Well fuck me…”
-End chapter One-