Day 02. ANCIENT.
Based on the January 2019 prompt list published by @downwithwritersblock
Author: @blackpaladintshirogane aka @guillotinedangel
Characters: Allura, Lance, Keith, Hunk, Pidge, Shiro and some original ones added by me which are Rajhet and his soldiers.
Ships: None.
Summary: The paladins find themselves in a planet devastated by the Galra. While they try to find survivors, Hunk and Allura walk into a hallway that takes them back in time.
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"I don't even know what are we doing in this desert. This place is dead! Can't we go back to the castle now?" Lance whined, kicking a rock as him and the rest of the paladins walked across the dusty empty street of the collapsed city they've been patrolling for the last hour.
Keith growled at the Cuban's words but he didn't say a thing. Shiro smiled down at him, proud that the red paladin had been able to control his impulses for once.
"You know we can't" Allura stated, handling the situation.
"We picked a weird frequency coming out of this planet. I tried to decript the message, but I wasn't able to, so we have to check this the old fashioned way"
"And get killed in the process?" Lance replied, closing the fingers around his bayard tighter. That place gave him the chills even though its warm weather, "We don't know if it was the Galra or something worse to lure us here"
"It could also be a distress call" Shiro slowed down his pace to walk besides the blue paladin, "As paladins of Voltron our duty is to help anybody who is in danger"
"I get that, but we should care a little bit more about our lives if we're so important. We didn't even brought the lions!"
"They can scare people away" Keith stated dryly.
"Yeah! Precisely!"
"Uh. Guys?" Hunk stopped walking and called everyone's attention, pointing his finger at a huge piramidal construction that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, "Has that thing been there all along?"
Lance detained his steps right before crashing against the yellow paladin's back, and peeked over his shoulders to see what he was talking about.
"It definitely wasn't"
And indeed the building seemed to have popped out of nowhere, like an illusion.
"Should we check it out?" Keith suggested.
"No way! One thing is wander an abandoned town and another getting into a creepy alien piramid; ah, ah, no, just, no! "
"I'm actually with Lance on this one" Hunk mumbled, twisting his fingers with a worried look on his face, "It doesn't look welcoming"
"We still haven't found the source of the emission and this place looks like the only thing standing in miles. Maybe it's worth our while" Pidge was already looking at the construction with shiny eyes, "Who knows what we can find in there"
"Mummies and deadly traps"
"Lance, won't you shut up for a second?" Keith snapped.
"Look, mullet, I don't know if your emo soul is driving you to the darkness, but I don't wanna die young, even thought I'd make a beautiful corpse"
"You two, shut up" Shiro intervened, "We will go inside and look for survivors. Just grab your weapons and don't split up"
Grinning his teeth and not very convinced, Lance followed the rest of the team inside the piramid but, as expected, the place was huge, filled with twisted paths and narrow passageways. All the walls looked the same, and, as they walked deeper into the core of the construction, some paintings started to decorate them, so beautiful and luring that soon enough, Allura and Hunk found themselves alone at a dead end.
"Um, Allura?" Hunk called his partner with a trembling voice, looking around at the cold darkness, "I think we're alone"
The princess also took a quick look at the empy space, but she didn't seem to be as shaken as the paladin who quickly tried to contact any of the other pilots, without succeeding. Only static was heard on the other side of the comms.
"We're alone, lost and alone! We're gonna die here!"
"This is so weird" Allura mumbled, taking a step towards the adorned wall, ignoring Hunk's ranting, "Some of the paintings seem to be... glowing?"
She elongated her hand to touch them, but before Hunk's warning could reach her ears, a blinding beam of light swallowed the room.
When they opened their eyes again, the hallway had slightly changed. I wasn't dark anymore, as some torches were pending from metallic ornaments on the walls, the flames licking the rock on a scintillating motion that seemed hypnotic. Also, there was a sweet scent in the ambient, nothing like the tainted and thick air they had been breathing seconds before.
"Where are we? What just happened?"
"I told you not to touch it" Hunk said, with his back against the dead end, gazing, mistrustful, to the long hall ahead of them.
"I couldn't help it, it's like if I was driven--"
Allura stopped talking as soon as her sharp hearing caught some other sound in the air. She tried to focus, after shushing Hunk, just in case there were any of the other paladins, but she wasn't able to recognize the voices... Or the language.
" Hunk, do you have your bayard still with you?"
"Yes, why?"
"Because we may have to use it"
Both of them stood in silence while the approaching beings' steps started to echo in the empty room. Their hearts where racing like wild horses, sweat dripping down their foreheads... Until a dark skinned alien's head popped out of a passageway.
When his eyes met theirs, he barked something in a rough language and another three like him showed up, blocking the only way Allura and Hunk had to escape.
Looking at them, you could say they were scary nonetheless. They had long snoots garnished with a long row of sharp teeth, black furred skin and pointy ears they were laying back, in a threatening way; the three of them dressed with nothing but a colorful garment similar to a skirt and several golden jewelry adorning their limbs and neck. Also, they were armed with long spears, that were pointing at the intruders.
They looked canine, or so Hunk thought.
"They're gonna eat us!"
"We are here to do you no harm" Allura spoke in a soothing tone, "We received the transmission, we just want to help"
The four soldiers exchanged looks and one of them, that looked like the leader because of his strong presence and bigger and more richly bejeweled necklace, addressed them in a low husky tone.
"Are you Altean?"
His question took Allura by surprise, who rose her hand to touch the marks on her cheeks without even noticing.
"I am. How do you know that?"
With a quick wave of his hand, the leader dismissed the other soldiers who lowered their weapons.
"Our planet is a strong ally to yours. My name is Rajhet, guardian of this temple. How did you get in?"
"We received a distress frequency from this planet" the princess explained, "We patrolled the city for survivors until the temple appeared out of nowhere. We thought the signal may come from here, so we walked in"
"Survivors? Walked in?" Rajhet raised and eyebrow and looked at them in disbelief, "We have suffered no attacks, our city is golden and prosper as ever. And there's no way you could have just walked into the temple without the permission of the gate guards"
"Gate guards?" Hunk repeated, "There were none. And the city is destroyed, we guess the Garla attacked it"
Rajhet turned around, enraged, to look at his soldiers. One of them, the shortest, seemed to shrink even more under the threatening gaze of his superior. He mumbled something with a scared voice before Rajhet turned back to the princess and the paladin.
" My soldier says no attack has befallen our planet, and why would the Galra attack us? They're as much as an ally to Altea as we are. You're making no sense" as he spoke, his volumen rose to a point were a low growl started to creep on his throat. At the first sound of it, the soldiers rose their weapons again, "You better explain yourself right now, or else"
"Lance was right! We're gonna die here!" Hunk shrieked.
"Wait! You don't understand!"
"You're intruders in our temple! Liars! What are you doing here!?"
As they started to get more angry, the soldiers slowly reduced the space between them and Allura and Hunk, with their weapons ahead.
"We are not liars!"
"Allura!" Hunk tugged the princess' arm and signaled the wall behind him to her, "The wall is shinning again, do what you did before!"
"I--"
"Just touch it!"
"Wait!!" Rajhet shouted, but his words died in the void, as the light flooded the room again like before.
When Allura and Hunk opened their eyes, the hallway was dark again, the air tainted and they were alone.
"Hunk! Princess! Come in!" Shiro's familiar voice sounded on the other side of the comms.
"Oh thank the stars!" Hunk sighed.
"We are here" Allura responded.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes"
"Alright, Pidge found a way out. Just stay still, we're coming to get you."
"No. Don't worry, we're not moving a finger until you get here" Hunk said, sitting on the floor and leaning away from the wall, looking at it with reticence, "leave alone touching anything"
But Allura was not listening anymore, but thinking about Rahjet's words. Allies to Altea? Like the Galra? And he had recognized her as altean, even though no one had seen one of her species for centuries.
"Here you are" Shiro sighed with relief upon seeing his teammates safe and sound, "What happened? We tried to contact you, but we only got static. Where have you been?"
"I think..." Allura stammered, still in shock by the only explanation her reasoning was giving her "I think we just traveled to the past"
–Chimera.
