Who's Who? || Empires Swap AU

Chapter 1 - Something's Fishy

Scott was hanging around his barn, pretending to chat with his llamas as usual, he sat on one of the fence posts casually. With the lack of citizens, the llamas were really all he had. He planned on totally not kidnapping some villagers later on and forcefully recruiting them into Chromia. Surely they wouldn't complain. Not like they're that intelligent. Scott laughed at the thought, he shouldn't be making fun of people he hadn't even met yet. 

After a heartfelt conversation about Scott's favourite colour, cyan, a low rumbling began to shake the windows of the barn. Scott quickly patted a llama with a green carpet on its back and ran outside to investigate. In the distance a huge blue-pink-magenta cloud could be seen rapidly taking over the sky. Stratos was already surrounded by the looks of it.

"Ohhhh my god-" The cyanette gaped at the view. It looked unreal. 

Within a few minutes of Scott staring at the cloud, it had reached Chromia. A colourful haze began to fall, like a thick fog in the woods, it proceeded to wind around buildings and fields, creeping over the paths and grass.

Scott felt uneasy now. It was a little eerie. The purple-ish smoke started coiling around his legs and through to the barn behind him, the familiar noises of his animals went quiet. 

"Uhm.." He mumbled and looked around for an escape, but nothing was found. The whole of Chromia was covered in the weird cloud. He could barely see through it! It was getting hard to breath. The smoke tasted foul, yet sweet, it stung his throat none-the-less. Scott raised a hand to his mouth and covered it as if it would act like a filter, but that didn't work, his vision began to darken and his head throbbed. The cyanette could feel his knees weaken before he dropped to the ground.

Scott's eyes dashed around, the fog was too dense, he was unable to see a bare metre around him. The swirl of colour was no longer seemed mesmerising, but extremely threatening. What is happening-? Scott though before collapsing onto his side. Cmon, I'm too pretty to die. 

He laughed weakly, the darkness closed in, and Scott fell unconscious.

. . .

This has to be a bad dream, it just has to be!

Scott was running around Chromia as it crumbled around him, the sky was black but splattered with red stars, his animals were frantically calling for each other. Unearthly screams echoed from nowhere. 

"No no no no NO NO!" Scott yelled and awkwardly scampered over to his starter house, of which was now within a huge blaze. He turned around and in the distance; Stratos was falling from the sky. He gasped as he saw Joel getting hit by huge chunks of his disintegrating empire. 

The ground was splitting, orange lava spewed from within, it quickly set fire to the trees surrounding it. Red smoke twisted like tendrils between the ruins of his netherportal which was now shattered on the ground. Ashes swirled around like a poisonous snowstorm.

It was too sudden to be real. The fog had taken over Chromia, it's not like the world would end next.

"I just have to wake up-!" The cyanette began to punch himself in the arm, but he couldn't feel anything. Was that a good sign? Maybe. It wasn't real. Scott took a deep breath and  began to focus, but that didn't last long, he'd only now noticed the absence of his adventuring fedora. Things couldn't get worse. 

"It's only a dream, Scott. Just wait until it's over."

. . .

Scott jolted awake in a cold sweat and reached an arm out... but Chromia wasn't there. His vast empire had been replaced with old wooden walls and floors. Barrels were built into the walls around him. Scott slid out of the bed he respawned in and exited the room cautiously. Crashing waves and a strong aroma of salt hit his senses.