The room was dark, the only light was coming from a window in the corner of the room, which appeared to be at least partially underground. From the light that came from the window, the only things that could be seen were the rust colored stains on the cement ground. The stains looked suspitiously like blood.
A groan sounded from the corner opposite the window. The groan was low, and it sounded quite painfilled and gruesome. A pair of small golden eyes shot wide open and frantically searched the room, noticing almost immediately the presence of an array of unfamiliar surroundings. The golden eyes pierced straight through the darkness, as though their owner could see right through the eclipsing black air, though after several failed attempts, he knew that he could not.
The boy wanted to run, and his instinct was to climb out of the window, but he was held back. It was then that he first became fully aware of the chains that bound him to the wall of the room. There were shackles binding his legs and arms, and even one around his small waist, preventing him from moving in any dirrection.
He became panicked, his eyes widening at the sight of the blood by the window, and he began to become worried. He fought severly against the chains around him, pulling with all of his might, but it was no use. He tried to move again, but felt a burning pain on his chest and, looking down, he noticed that his usually worn red shirt had a rather large rip accross the front of it, and beneath that, there was an unusually deep gash etched into his skin.
He fought the urge to throw up, pain sinking into every inch of his small body. His dark purple hair, which blended in almost perfectly with the surrounding darkness, hung loosely around his face. He knew that it would do him no good to just stay still, and so he fought his bindings once again, this time earning a much more severe blast of pain, forcing him to shut his eyes tightly. His fingers clenched into fists, and his eyes felt as though they had roled into the back of his head. And after that, the darkness took over his eyes, and he fainted.
The boy's eyes opened once again, this time a bit more slowly, as he worked on adjusting them to the impenitrable darkness. He expected to feel the shackles around him, and see the window sheding the only light into the room. The shackles were still binding him, except for the ones around his ankles, which had been removed; as for the window, he looked around him and saw no light, and it was not long before he realized that he was not chained to the wall, but to some kind of table, and that he was staring up at the ceiling, not the wall.
He gasped and tried to scream, the shock of it all sinking in deeper by the minute, but a hand stretched out and clamped itself tightly over his mouth. He looked over to his left, and saw a girl with long blue hair, her face had an innocent look on it, but he knew better than to trust someone that he did not know. She seemed so familiar, as though they had met before, but he could not quite figure out who she was. He tried desperately to remember her, but the more he tried, the more he realized that he could not. In fact, everything before that morning, everything that had happened before he had woke up here, was a blur. All he could recall was some kind of light, a seering pain, and shouts of a name. It must have been his name, but he could not remember what it was. All he knew was that he had never been here before, and that this was not where he was supposed to be, though he did not know where exactly he was supposed to be anymore.
He fought to get the girl to let go, but dispite his groans and slight hissing, she would not release him. He tried to wriggle free, kicking his free legs,and noticed that the wound on his chest felt slightly better. Looking down, he saw the girl's free hand over his chest, a needle clenched tightly in her fingers, sewing up the cut. He steadily calmed himself down, and eventually the girl took her hand off of his mouth. She sighed, looking down at his cut, and then back up at his moderately confused looking face.
"You can not remember anything, can you?" she said, her voice even more calming then her gentle touch. The boy shook his head sadly, looking deep into her eyes and seeing clear blue. He tried again to grasp the memory of her, for her blue eyes were definately something that he had seen before, but every time he tried, that simple memory seemed to slip away slowly, along with the rest of them.
"I thought so. It was the cut, it has a kind of poison in it. You were lucky that it was only your memory that went, for it could have been your life instead. Still, it may take you a while to remember everything, and you may not even be able to do that. But that is the worst of your problems at the moment. There is still Wang to deal with..." she shuddered slightly, causing the boy to flinch slightly as he hands twitched over his wound.
"W-who is Wang" he said, surprising himself by how deep and elegant his voice sounded; he could not even remember how it had sounded, and now he knew, though he was unsure of how old he was, or even how he looked, at least he knew what his voice sounded like.
The girl sighed again and thought seriously about not telling him who she was, but she looked into his beautiful golden eyes, and it seemed as though the whole world vanished into them. Thier purity, their innocence, could capture just about anyone's soul with one glance. She opened her mouth the tell him, but she was quickly interupted by the slamming of the door leading to this room.
The girl tried desperately to hide herself, as a tall woman with long black hair entered the room, sheding a small ray of light in with her from the upstairs room, but it soon faded. This woman was obviously much older than the young girl, and she was also very angry with her.
"Grr, Pirika! You can stop hiding now, I will only beat you harder if you try to escape me!" the woman shouted, forcing the girl, who's name was obviously Pirika, out of her hiding behind two towering boxes of who-knows-what. She was shaking as she approached the woman, who towered far above her.
"Look at me!" the older woman spat at Pirika. Pirika looked up at her with slightly watery eyes, and the woman took no pity on her. Quite on the contrary, she slapped her fiercely accross the face, causing her to fly halfway accross the room, landing with a thud in an unmoving heap on the floor by the window.
The boy could not quite see her, because of the table and his bindings, but he could hear it all quite well, perhaps a bit too well. He could only assume that this woman was Wang, and that her arrival could not be good. She looked to Pirika's motionless body, walked up to it, and spit on the ground next her her. Then she came up to the table in which the boy was strapped down on. A twisted smile curled up on her face, and a dangerous glint appeared in her eyes.
"She is sure to be down for quite a while, and after that, I can assure you that she will be put down for good! Well, Ren, I guess that just leaves you and me. Surprised to hear your own name? I thought you would be. Well now, lets have some fun, shall we?"
She walked off to the other side of the room, and into the light so that Ren could see her more clearly. His eyes followed her every move, watching her as she took a small object out from the inside pocket of her jacket. She flicked it forwards, and it unroled, a long pointy spear on the end of a bright red handle, with a shiny red bead on the top end.
She walked up to him, pushed the table that he was on so that it was vertical, and he was facing her. His eyes narrowed, and he shot a sharp glare in her dirrection. She simply smirked all the more widely, raising her weapon eye level with him.
It was then that he noticed it, a small tattoo on the underside of her arm, that of a YinYang symbol. Ren's mind flashed back to that very symbol, and to the only memory that he had held onto for so long, the only one that he now had. Though it was brief and simple, it was able to clear up some of his questions, and one thing went through his mind at that moment...
This woman was a Tao, and so was he...