Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny
Chapter 2: No Time to Explain
Unknown Location
Beyond the Portal
Unknown Time
"Guardian." A faint, disembodied voice spoke. It sounded as if it were far away, or somehow underwater. Her mind fixated on the new input, the first in an indeterminate, but definitely long time.
How long had it been since last a thought crossed her mind? How long since she had felt anything. It was as if something had torn a giant hole through her soul, and so much of it was missing.
"Guardian." The same voice spoke again. This time it seemed to be distinctly clearer, and felt closer. The young woman...Louise, yes that was her name, tried to focus as it approached her.
This was the most alien feeling she had ever known. But what had she known before? Her memories seemed as if a shattered kaleidoscope, broken, jagged, and hopelessly disorganized. Only two things immediately came back to her. The first was her name, at least part of it. The second was that she had come through a portal of some kind. Not that she knew or could recall what or where existed on each end of that connection. She only remembered the portal.
A jolt of energy slammed into her consciousness without warning. In an instant, she felt awake, alert, and as if a disciplined legion of workers had reconstructed her in moments.
Feeling returned, first of her mind, and then of her body. She reflexively wiggled her extremities, if only to find out if they actually worked or not. Finally, Louise felt consciousness fully return, and she began to truly wake up.
"Eyes up, Guardian." The voice spoke once more. She knew now that it was right beside her. She could not help but do as it said, and she opened her eyes.
The first thing Louise saw was the source of the voice, a small glowing covered in some kind of counter rotating shapes. She did not know how, but in that moment she knew that she had never encountered anything like this being before. She also knew that she felt some kind of connection to it, although the nature of that connection remained elusive.
"What happened?" She managed to ask. The glowing, floating spiky ball seemed to perk up at her question.
"It worked, you're alive!" It exclaimed, and floated closer, as if to examine her. That left Louise with even more questions. Why was it surprised that she was alive? It seemed to get the hint from her glare.
"You died in here. Not that long ago, either." It reported.
"I...died?" She asked, more in disbelieving curiosity rather than shock. As her mental faculties returned, the more she realized that what she experienced could probably be explained by death. That only left the little impossibility of how in the name of the Founder was she 'not dead' now. Wait, the Founder? Louise's memory tried to call up the significance of that title, but was met with the mental equivalent of static garbage. She knew it should be important, but had no idea why.
"I do not know how or exactly when, but yes, you did die here." It told her. Although given its voice, she was beginning to think of it as him.
"Then how am I alive again? "
"That part's easy; I brought you back." He said.
"You can resurrect the dead?" Louise asked, this time with some genuine shock mixed in. That should not have been possible. She didn't know why, and couldn't remember a reason for it, but she just knew it to be true. Nothing should be able to raise the dead like this.
"I'm a ghost, your ghost now, actually. So long as a Guardian's Light remains, your ghost can revive you. I found you down here, a dim light in all this darkness." He said, although now visibly glancing off behind her, watching for something.
"What's a Guardian? You keep calling me that." She asked it.
"Guardians are those gifted with the power to wield the Traveler's Light." The ghost started as Louise slowly stood back up. As she returned to verticality, she began to part her lips in an effort to speak a retort that told the little ball that his explanation answered exactly nothing. Then, she suddenly stopped.
Louise felt the power within, and she knew what it was. Not that she could explain it with words, categorize it, or in any way truly describe it, but it was there. Like magic...but not. Not magic, or what magic was supposed to feel like? The ghost had called it Light, but if she had to give it a color it would be a dark purple. It felt bright but cold, empowering yet empty. The Light inside felt like raw, all consuming power, and it was hungry.
She opened her right hand, palm up, and concentrated on the power. There was no instrument of focus, no ritualized spell to cast, no words to be spoken. She willed it to be, and it just was. Louise watched in utter fascination as the power within came forth and coalesced in her hand. She stared into the ball of writhing, chaotic energy in her grasp and felt an unexpected, but not unwelcome surge of confidence.
"I see." She spoke, more to the power in her palm than to the ghost.
"Listen, I'll be happy to tell you everything in detail later, but first we have to get out of here before the Hive come back." He told her with more urgency than before.
"Hive? What are…" Louise started, but never got to finish. A harsh, inhuman shriek sounded from somewhere behind them. That sound cracked open a lost memory, and Louise suddenly went cold as death as she remembered the creatures that made the sound in all their horrifying detail. She suppressed a shiver.
"No time to explain." The ghost started floating forward. "We need to go, right now."
Unknown Location
Beyond the Portal
Unknown Time
Louise wrapped herself in the newfound Light as she followed her ghost, its power the only thing keeping her fear from consuming her. As they exited the room, she remembered the space before her, which she could now see was actually a large platform at the end of a massive underground cavern. Fortunately, none of the Hive creatures that her ghost mentioned were visible as they ascended to the path that led out of the cavern.
It was only now that Louise noticed, a bit belatedly, that she was covered in some kind of body suit, form fitting but not so tight as to be uncomfortable. In fact, it was so perfectly fitted that it barely felt like clothing at all, more like a second skin. Upon the suit was a light robe, at least it sort of looked like a robe. It was cut in all the right places as to not impede her movement in the slightest. Atop all of this was a helmet, although from the inside it appeared almost completely transparent. It was easy to forget it was even there.
She was pulled out of her reverie by the recurrence of that horrible screaming sound, and this time it was very close. Barely two seconds later, three creatures appeared through the doorway before them. They were various shades of grey, almost thin enough to be skeletal, and each bore three eyes, a vicious looking set of claws and teeth.
Louise's newly restarted heart lurched in her chest. Her eyes went wide and her hands began to shake as the sight of the creatures dredged up terrible memories to the fore of her mind. She remembered now, with sickening clarity, how a pack of these things had ripped her to pieces down in the chamber below and behind them. She doubted that her newfound apparel would do much to keep their claws away from her flesh for a second time.
Her shock and fear passed quickly, replaced by a blossom of fury. She did not even know what they were, but she was certain that she hated them. She wanted to destroy them, to kill them. Kill. Kill. KILL! Then, even more suddenly, the feeling shifted to an ice cold rage. Louise could feel the power stirring within her, as if it were searching for a way out. It wanted to devour those three beings just as much as they wanted to do the same to her. Now, she wanted to erase them from the world entirely.
Instinct took hold, one that she never knew she had, and she thrust out her left hand toward them. The power within, the Light, shot forth as a glowing sphere of energy. It hit the center figure square in what she assumed was its chest, staggering it. Then, a fraction of a second later, the world in front of her began to swirl. From where the ball of energy impacted grew the center of a vortex. Wild scintillating energy washed over the surrounding three meters, including the other two creatures. It wasn't benign.
The creatures caught inside the vortex began to shriek and thrash as it disintegrated them, their bodies breaking apart into glowing dust that flowed inward to the center. It only took a few seconds for them to die. When the energy dissipated, all that remained was a light coating of purple dust, and half of one leg that had been just a bit too far from the epicenter.
"Good job." The ghost said from beside her. "Most newly awakened Guardians can't project their Light that well so soon."
"What were those things?" She asked it, him, enormous stress evident in her voice.
"Hive thralls. They're the most common type of the Hive, and most often attack in swarms to overwhelm targets with their claws." The ghost reported. The unspoken part was that she was already intimately familiar with how that worked.
Louise kept moving until she made it out of the passage way. Though another doorway, and she finally emerged onto a metal floored area that circled half way around a titanic hole that went so far down the bottom could not be seen.
"Is it safer here?" She asked the floating ball.
"I'm afraid not. This is the Hellmouth, the Hive's main stronghold on Luna. We're on the upper levels, so it's not that much farther by distance, only a few more kilometers until we're out of here. But there's going to be a lot of Hive between us and the exit, and a lot worse than just thralls." He reported as if it were just an everyday occurrence to be faced with fighting through devils and monsters in their own realm.
More piercing shrieks echoed down to Louise's ears, and she tried to reinforce the bit of confidence that had just been built by killing the three thralls. This was a crash course, with almost no time to study either her new Light powers, or the Hive. It was exam time, and she would have to pass in order to make it out of this place.