ToC - Chapter 3 - Lost Legacy

Calli came up from the shadows gasping for air once again. She coughed violently, feeling pain surge in her chest every time she did. It was difficult for her not to accidentally bite her tongue or the inside of her cheek. The coppery taste of blood already stained her mouth.

Moving through shadows was complicated in a mortal body. She had been used to her entire body melting into shadows and moving in whatever form was the fastest. She could be in a million separate pieces or one large blob.

However, her mortal body had to stay close to its original shape. This limited her maneuverability and speed. There was also no air to breathe in the shadows, so she needed to come up for air on this longer transit.

When her coughing subsided, Calli looked at her clothes and saw how much blood had stained them. She was even beginning to feel lightheaded from all of the blood loss. Thankfully, she was almost to the castle. Ducking back into the shadows, she made one last transit into her room.

She landed on her floor with a muffled thud. The blood from her wounds drained into the shadows beneath her. It took a couple tries, but Calli was eventually able to stand upright with help from her scythe.

The dark pod she had served two purposes: Creating and maintaining this mortal body she was using and repairing it if it were to take any damage.

She never thought that she would need to use it so soon, though…

"That damned cloaked bitch…" Calli mumbled to herself, as she slipped into the pod. The cold embrace of shadows engulfed her and her vision was consumed by darkness.

The process of transferring back to her Reaper body was much simpler. Her soul was released from the mortal body and she reconstructed her normal form from the shadows.

But it felt like something was missing now. A hole in her very being that nothing could fill.

Once she fully reformed in her room, Calliope looked at the dark, pulsating pod. It was trying to repair the injuries she had sustained as quickly as possible. It would most likely take a few days, as the process was complicated and delicate.

She both couldn't wait and never wanted to get back into that mortal body. Emotions were exactly as they had been described to her, but actually experiencing them was a challenge like no other. The first word that came to mind was 'painful', but 'complicated' would probably be more accurate. Amelia told her that they came with ups and downs, so this was hopefully one of the downs.

Wait, was it Amelia or Kiara that told her that? Calliope scratched the side of her head in thought. Maybe transferring her soul came with some weird memory issues. She would have to look into that. Ending up in a situation like Kiara would only cause more problems.

Speaking of problems, there was a large one she needed to check on. Calliope quickly slipped back into the shadows, feeling the freedom of movement that her Reaper body allowed. After a moment, she appeared in Death-sensei's room.

"Woah!" they exclaimed, surprised by their pupil's sudden and premature return. They calmed down quickly and lowered their tone of voice back to a normal level. "What are you doing back so soon, Calli?" Calliope stared at them with her normal, cold glare. Death-sensei immediately knew that this was not her mortal body.

"I got into a fight already," she answered, clenching a fist next to her.

"Already?" Death-sensei was more surprised than anything. "Did that second set of Ancient Ones also go ballistic?" they asked. Calliope shook her head.

"No, something was waiting in ambush back at HQ." Death-sensei sighed, nervous about their next question.

"Are all of your friends ok?" Calliope looked up at the dark ceiling, thinking for a moment.

"I haven't felt any of their souls enter here, have you?" Death-sensei shook their head, making Calliope look back down with relief in her eyes. After losing Amelia, she didn't know if she could take losing another… "That's good… very good…" she said quietly.

"So you left before the fight was over?" Calliope grimaced. Shame still permeated through her after that defeat.

"That mortal body is limiting during a fight," she said, shifting her weight onto her other leg, "I need more practice with it or I need to not fight in it at all."

"It's unrealistic to expect to never fight in it. The need will inevitably arise again, so I would recommend learning its limits and push them as far as they can go," Death-sensei offered their advice. Calliope nodded before bowing slightly at them. There was a reason they were her 'sensei' after all.

"Thank you very much for the advice." Death-sensei chuckled slightly.

"So how were they," they asked, lowering their voice to almost a whisper, "The emotions I mean." Calliope shrugged, not out of apathy, but because she still needed more time with them.

"Complicated," she said shortly. Death-sensei seemed slightly saddened by such a short answer, so Calliope decided to expand a little further, "I just need more time with them. I think I got a lot of the bad ones this time around, but next time it should be better." Death-sensei was much happier with this answer.

"Alright, but I do want to hear more about them, ok?" Calliope nodded.

"Of course."

"Well then, you should probably return back to your friends. I can't imagine that they are happy with your apparent death," Death-sensei made a slight joke. Calliope laughed dryly at it, but shook her head at his goodbye.

"I need to check something down in the Archives first. I think you should come with me, too," Calliope said vaguely before vanishing into the shadows. Death-sensei followed suit and appeared next to Calliope deep within the Archives.

The Archives were the history of every life ever lived. It documented every sight, smell, taste, touch, and noise that a being experienced throughout their life. This included their thoughts, aspirations, and emotions, as well. Right now, Calliope was sifting through a particular section of her own memories.

Death-sensei immediately noticed the time frame she was searching in. The wordless books that lined the walls meant that this was right in the middle of the Forgotten Times. Calliope was running her hand across the books until she got to the first one with words in it.

"What are you hoping to find here?" Death-sensei asked. This section of time had been mulled over by thousands, if not millions, of Reapers since it was created. Right after the inter-dimensional war ended, this section appeared. Its existence meant that there was a short, but not insignificant, period of time that was completely unknown. Even the Council failed to recall what had occurred.

"The being that I fought had wiped Emersyn's memory, along with everyone in the city," Calliope answered, opening the book to the first pages. She flipped it over and pointed at the first words that appeared.

'Caesura of Despair.'

"Come with me to Kiara's entry," Calliope said, disappearing before Death-sensei could ask anymore questions. They followed soon after, but remained quiet when they arrived next to her.

A Phoenix's Archive entry was unique among mortals. Normally, an entry would only be created when a mortal being died and their experiences would be transcribed into the Archive. However, since a Phoenix could die and rebirth, their entries were divided up by those deaths.

Kiara was an even more special case. If a Phoenix was reborn into the same timeline and retained some of their memories, only the ones they forgot would be written into their Archive entry. Now that Kiara had remembered everything, her entry was whittled down to a single book with a single page. It sat alone on the shelf until Calliope picked it up with extreme care.

Only one sentence sat on the lone page.

'Caesura of Despair.'

"Keep following me," Calliope said, her eyes filling with revelation. She vanished again and Death-sensei followed her.

Calliope moved to each and every Phoenix entry that was in the Archive. Some had the phrase and others didn't. After she ran out of Phoenixes to check, Death-sensei tried to ask her what was going on. But Calliope moved to one last entry.

The entry of Emersyn Monroe.

An entry that shouldn't exist.

Just like Kiara's, there was a single book with a single page and a single phrase written in it.

'Caesura of Despair.'

"I fought them…" Calliope said, slowly putting the book back onto the shelf, "The one that created the Forgotten Times and attacked the Phoenixes." Death-sensei's eyes went wide, as Calliope and them locked gazes.

"What do they want?" Death-sensei asked. Calliope put both hands to either side of her head and sank to the ground.

"I-I don't know…" she mumbled, "They just said that they were the end of despair and harbinger of hope… I remembered the first phrase in my entry after the Forgotten Times had a similar wording, so I went to check. They also looked exactly like what Kiara said had attacked the Anchor and they had erased Emersyn's memories. It all makes too much sense…" The realization slammed into her hard enough to make her think that she still had emotions at that instant.

"Well, they seemingly have only appeared twice," Death-sensei thought about the situation as logically as they could, "Once right after the war and again after your fight against the Ancient Ones. Could something have happened in each that triggered their awakening?" Calliope shook herself out of her thought spiral and instead thought about the link that Death-sensei just proposed.

"Despair…" Calliope mumbled to herself. Death-sensei leaned in closer, paying close attention to what Calliope said next. "They end despair and bring hope! Both times that they awakened were right after a massive, reality-shattering battle. They must react to the overwhelming despair created by those kinds of conflicts!"

"But how does that help us figure out what they want?"

"We can only guess, but I think that by, 'spreading hope,' they are actually erasing everyone's memories."

"So you think they are going to try and create another Forgotten Times?" The very thought of that shook both Reapers to their very cores. It was possible that this exact same conversation took place during the previous Forgotten Times and they didn't remember it anymore. If they were going to do anything, they had to do it now before everything was erased again.

"I'm going back," Calliope said. Death-sensei nodded sternly.

"Stop them, Calli. I'll gather the best Reapers and search for them." Calliope was about to leave when she remembered one more thing.

"Oh, can you grab J-Chad while you're at it?" she asked them.

"You think you'll need her on-site guidance for this one?" they asked in return.

"Emersyn needs all the help she can get. Especially with the state she's in…" Calliope replied. Death-sensei nodded at her.

"I'll send her up to help as soon as possible."

"Thanks."

"Anything for my pupil. Now go stop them."

The city street that Calliope returned to was not what she wanted to see. Sirens wailed through the dust in the air and debris littered the shattered street. The only saving grace was that she could see Kiara, Gura, and Ina being loaded into an ambulance. They would live.

To make matters worse, a group of soldiers that were standing nearby noticed her immediately. They pointed their guns at her and told her to put her hands in the air and get on the ground. Bullets were not much of a threat to her, but she really didn't want to get into a fight with them.

They were Foundation soldiers after all.

Any move made against them would destroy every possibility of a life with Myth. For now, she would obey them until everything blew over.

The soldiers closed in on her, weapons still pointed at her. They fully encircled her and one tried to reach for her arms, but a voice cut above everything else.

"She's with us!" Emersyn yelled, "Stand down!" All the soldiers hesitantly lowered their guns. Emersyn walked through the circle and stood in front of Calliope. "Are those other two Gura and Kiara?" she asked.

"Yeah, who else would they be?" Calliope responded. Emerysn nodded starkly.

"Just need to make sure they are friends and not whatever just attacked us."

"Is it gone?" Calliope asked. Emersyn looked back at the ambulance as it began to drive down the road. It was slow going at first because of the destroyed road, but soon it was moving at full speed towards the nearest hospital. She turned back to Calliope with a look that was warmer than anything Calliope had seen from the stoic manager.

"Ina got grabbed, but she suddenly broke free and teleported them away. I don't know how long we have before they come back, but all Foundation personnel are on high alert with more coming as fast as possible." Her look hardened back up as she spoke. Calliope simply nodded.

"Need any help from me?" Emersyn gestured to HQ, which now had a large hole in the side and most of its windows broken.

"Some answers would be a good start."

The questioning was lighter than expected. It mostly consisted of personal questions about Calliope and the other members of Myth. Emersyn explained that the local database had no mention of them, but all overseas databases did have them listed. It made sense that the files here would be the outliers, but they just needed to make sure.

Calliope explained what they had been doing, leading to her explaining the events that had occurred at the Anchor. Everyone paid close attention to this, not interrupting her a single time for questions or clarification.

The odd thing was that Calliope found it difficult to describe what Amelia had done. It felt like the events were trying to escape her mind, but she still managed to tell everything that she could.

She then went on to explain her theory regarding who had attacked them. The being, Caesura, was responsible for at least one other instance of mass amnesia in the past. The attack at the Anchor basically confirmed that this was the same being. Emersyn asked for even more back up when she heard what Caesura was capable of.

Emersyn thanked Calliope for her answers and offered to drive them over to the hospital to check on the others. Calliope knew she could just Shadow Walk over, but decided to take the car ride. Emersyn could probably use the company right now. Plus, she had never been in a car before.

"Oh yeah, I'm bringing in more supernatural help," Calliope said to Emersyn. This caused Emersyn to pull her gaze away from the car window, which she had been observing the damaged city through.

"Supernatural help?" she inquired, "Who are they and what would they be doing?" Calliope let out a short laugh.

"She goes by J-Chad and was one of my old managers back in the Underworld. I asked you if you thought you would need help and you agreed, so I asked her to come up and help out. Think of her as a personal assistant, if you think you need one of those," Calliope replied. Emersyn looked up at the roof of the car and thought about the proposition. She eventually turned her gaze back to Calliope and shrugged.

"It would be nice to have an extra set of hands with me," Emersyn said, "If you trust them, then I'll trust them. Although the paperwork won't be very fun…" Emersyn's more informal language and relaxed demeanor made Calliope chuckle.

"I think the best description of her would be you, but with a lot more snarky jokes." Emersyn narrowed her eyes at Calliope.

"Are you saying that I can't be funny?" Calliope continued to laugh lightly.

"I don't think anyone has ever heard a joke come out of your mouth before, Enma." Emersyn shook her head and looked back out the window.

"I can't believe that you know about that nickname, too," Emersyn mumbled under her breath. Calliope heard her and remembered something.

"You said that you would tell us about your past when we got back," Calliope said with a sly smile.

"I don't remember saying that," Emersyn replied.

"Well of course you don't, but you absolutely told me-" Calliope stopped talking when she noticed Emersyn's cheeks were raised up. In the reflection of the window, she was giving Calliope a cheeky smile.

"I can joke when I want to." Calliope shut her mouth and turned to face out her own window. Still though, a small smile hung onto her face.

Even in her cold, lifeless Reaper body, she could feel her soul warm ever so slightly.

The next few days were the most painful of Calliope's life. She had no need to eat or sleep in her Reaper form, so the only thing she did was watch over the other three girls. They all looked so peaceful laying in the hospital beds, their chests slowly rising and falling with each breath. At least Calliope wouldn't have any work to do…

Both Gura and Ina had several broken bones and were lacking a lot of blood. Ina's body seemed to glue itself back together as she slept. Gura had noticeably faster healing, but the doctors had to reconstruct some of her jaw.

Kiara's injuries were by far the worst, as the right half of her body had been badly burnt. Calliope initially wrote it off as her using too much fire, but the longer the burns remained the more she began to worry. Every other one of her injuries healed up in no time, including her entire left forearm. However the blackened, raw flesh on her right side simply refused to heal.

The doctor's did everything they could to graft skin and help muscle heal, but there was only so much they could do. They told her that it would require months of physical therapy for Kiara to use her right arm normally. Thankfully the burns did not extend too far onto her legs, so she would be able to walk no problem.

During this wait, J-Chad introduced herself to Emersyn and the Foundation. She was brought on as an assistant manager to Emersyn. Calliope would have visited to catch up with her old colleague, but her mind was solely focused on Kiara.

It took five whole days, but Kiara's eyes fluttered open late one night. Calliope's gaze moved up to the beautiful pink eyes she had missed so much. Kiara blinked a few more times, her right eyelid moving slower and twitching slightly. It had been burned, but not too severely.

"Ca-" Kiara tried to form words, but her vocal cords seized up from disuse and damage. She coughed slightly before swallowing hard. Her breathing increased for a moment before it settled back down.

"You need anything?" Calliope asked. Kiara ran her fingers over the scars on her throat.

"Water…" she croaked. Calliope nodded and walked out of the room. She found a nearby vending machine and paid for a water bottle. When she came back, Kiara was trying to push herself up into a sitting position. To Calliope's amazement, Kiara had a tiny amount of control of her right arm.

"The doctors said to not move that side," she said, closing the door lightly behind her. She helped Kiara sit all the way up and handed her the water. Kiara tore the cap off and began to pout it into her mouth. It was a little too fast, though, so she began to cough painfully. When the coughing subsided, she drank the water much slower.

"The doctors have never met a Phoenix before," she said in between sips. Calliope looked back at the door, thinking of how amazed all the doctors had been when they'd seen how fast Gura and Ina had been healing.

"And you've never been injured like this," Calliope retorted, looking back at Kiara. She sat down on the edge of the bed. Kiara finished the water and set it down on the table next to her bed.

"I'll live," Kiara said simply. Calliope shook her head at Kiara's nonchalant response.

"How did this even happen?" she asked, waving her hand at the pink scarring that covered Kiara's right arm. Most of the burns had scarred over by this point, meaning that at least some healing was taking place. It almost seemed like normal human healing.

Kiara looked up at Calliope. Her normally bright eyes suddenly lacked any shine, appearing as lifeless as Calliope's own.

"They missed."

Even Calliope could feel a chill run down her spine when Kiara said that. Her monotone delivery didn't hide any of the raging bloodlust that was boiling just under the surface. Calliope put a hand on Kiara's good arm.

"We'll find them, Kiara." During this wait, they had not reappeared. Calliope was both glad that her friends were safe and angry that they were seemingly ignoring them. Did they deem them all too weak to be threats now?

"I'm going to burn them till their bones are ash," Kiara said, the rage in her voice more palpable now. Her hair began to glow slightly before dimming back to normal.

"Right now, you need to focus on healing that right arm. After that, then we can hunt them down," Calliope told her. Kiara looked at her right hand and closed and opened it. She felt her muscles and tendons straining even under such a small workload. She sighed, knowing that Calliope was right.

"What did you find on them?" Kiara asked, knowing that Calliope had gone looking for anything regarding who they fought.

"I didn't find any mentions of them specifically, but I did find the phrase, 'Caesura of Despair,' written in a lot of Phoenix's Archive entries. Yours was reduced to nothing since you remember everything now, but that phrase was still in a single book," Calliope explained to her.

"You think they caused the Forgotten Times?" Kiara probed, theorizing the same thing as Calliope. The Reaper nodded in agreement.

"When we found Enma, she was confused with a lot of her memories altered or even removed. She had a single entry that also has, 'Caesura of Despair' written in it." Kiara clicked her tongue and looked up at the ceiling.

"Well that basically confirms it," she said.

"So that brings up the question of how you fight against a being that can make you forget they ever existed."

"We kill them while they're busy with something else," Kiara said, remembering how she had managed to hit them when they were occupied with Ina.

"We're lucky to even have a second chance at all…" Calliope said quietly. It terrified her to think that Kiara had only been a foot away from certain death. She hadn't been there for her at that moment… And yet she would be next to her in the next…

"So let's use it."

Author's Note: And now the real tone of the story has been set. These girls are way out of their depth, but it doesn't seem like they are going to hide and wait for help.

Calliope is slowly figuring out what IRyS truly is and what she has done in the past.

J-Chad technically gets introduced this chapter, but we won't actually see her until the next one. Emersyn seems to be coping well and her attitude is a little more lax than normal.

Kiara is severely injured. I think it is actually the worst, non-fatal injury in the series thus far. She'll have to recover for a while to regain her strength in that arm. However, I'm not sure she's willing to wait that long.

Next Chapter: What Remains of Us.

Any feedback/criticism is appreciated!