Escaping Corruption (Seasons 1-3)

S2 - Mothers, plights and oncoming shadows

The sun rose over the gleaming Manor in New Aether.

In the gardens, blasts of mana were fired at illusionary targets.

Catras brow furrowed as she upheld her gaze with the suited figure before her.

Fate groaned on about some political issue between Tír Na nÓg and the land of the dead.

Catra shot forward in a flash of orange, knocking the illusory figure to the ground and meeting their face with her knuckles, mana crackling around them.

The illusion vanished with a popping sound, much like a gunshot.

Fate paused, glancing at her with a raised eyebrow.

'Truly thou is aware, I have done thy mother' He says aloud, turning back to his hands as Catra stops and turns to him, flabbergasted.

'Shut it.' She hisses, shook to her core.

'Yeah, yeah....You need to take a nap, I can see from here that you're struggling to keep your eyes open.' He admits.

She goes to argue, but finds that she does not have the strength, and complies with a frown.

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Catra finally went to bed half an hour later.

The exhaustion hits her hard, and she was asleep before she hit the mattress.

But the dream that followed was so odd that it could not have been a mere dream.

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They were calling her.

But it was not any of the names she'd come to known.

She could not understand the word.

Yet she completely understood.

An elderly woman bustled about before her, frizzy white hair and wrinkled pink-purple skin.

The woman was murmuring about Pie, which piqued her interest wildly.

'What kind of pie?'

'Silly Mara!' There was that name again, 'You know its better with berries!'

She does not.

This dream makes sense of none.

It is understandable. Yet in a hundred ways confusing.

But it is all so familiar, yet so new.

She does not understand.

She felt a pulling in her chest, a vortex growing bigger each passing moment.

At first, it was a beautiful flame flickering in her chest, but then it was a horrible forest fire spreading through the woods of her ribcage, its smoke polluting her lungs, its heat burning her bones.

Her eyelids feel heavy, the world's weight balancing in her iris. Night is falling, the light of the elderly lady's lamp is blocked out.

The world is falling into total darkness.

It feels like a dream from a life she never lived.

She feels a hand placed over hers, but when she glances in the mirror, she sees no such thing.

She doesn't understand it.

The words the elderly woman speak are gibberish and incoherent. She cannot make sense of a single word.

But she knows that this is life's way of making sure it does not reveal any vital information that may aid her.

It is life's way of helping Horde Prime and Puca.

It is life's way of defying her hope and win.

But she does not need life's approval when Fate bends to her will.

Atleast in the current stroke of her existence.

Perhaps in the past lives she lived by the unfair rules of life's coordinated sequence, but now until the galaxy has faded into history, she is Catra, the one who threads fates strings like a marionette, She is Catra, the strategist of the Horde, She is Catra, the Empress with a reign to be remembered eternally,. She is Catra. And Catra she will be.

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Adora had never known darkness without its light.

During her childhood, the Frightzone had been the darkness. A great big horrible land of darkness.

Catra had been the light.

The evenings she returned to the barracks, tired and cold, Catra had been there for her.

Adora was the moon, Catra was her sun.

Utter opposites yet he very same.

The Horde had broken them down, shattered them into rough pieces.

But the shards shone prettily in the light of Catras sun.

And that was fine with them.

When she joined the rebellion, Glimmer and Bow were her light.

The swallowing darkness of the Horde reaching on toward Brightmoon

Getting closer with each passing day. It terrified her.

But now she was She-ra, and She-ra did not show weakness.

Adora did not matter if She-ra was intact.

Time passed, a year and a half.

Now the darkness was Shadow Weaver looming above her. The light had become a maternal hold Angella had on her.

Then they had reunited with Catra and the magicats.

Catra was her light again, but for a far shorter period of time. And she was gone again, on a mission unknown.

Glimmer had become her safety net after it, her second sun, her star, comforting her and making sure she was alright.

But the darkness had stolen her too.

Now the darkness was everywhere, gnawing at the ground below her, rotting away at hope.

The sky's were crumbling but all that mattered was that the echo of her galaxy was heaving her across the camp.

They needed to escape. Pucas newfound forces had painted the skies a horrible crimson with the blood of rebels. Their sanctuaries now in shambles.

Bow begged her to keep going.

And she did. She could not loose her light again.