ToC - Chapter 6 - Indigo Memories

IRyS' eyes fluttered open once more, her head and vision violently spinning in circles. It took a while, but slowly the spinning came to a halt, allowing her to see where she was.

The place she was in was dark, but her eyes soon adjusted to the small amount of light that was available. Everything was bathed in a dim indigo light, She was laying on her back, staring up at a rocky ceiling. Someone stepped into her field of vision.

The girl with red pigtails stared down at her.

Even in dim lighting, IRyS could tell that this girl looked horrified. Her eyes were wide with fear and her lips were pulled tight across her face, creating a thin, nervous smile. Through this small slit of a grin peaked several sharp teeth.

'Why'd this have to happen again…' she mumbled, continuing to stare down at her.

IRyS rolled onto her side and groaned. Her whole body felt sore and laying on the ground certainly wasn't helping. She took several deep breaths, straining her lungs to pull air into them. After a few moments, she refixed her gaze back upwards.

But all she saw were the tops of trees and the blue sky beyond them.

She pulled a hand up to her eyes and rubbed them before blinking several times. Again, only trees and the sky were above her. She scanned the rest of the area around her, seeing more trees and a few large boulders. Tall grass, leaves, sticks, and bushes covered the ground on which she was laying.

What just happened to her…?

That vision had felt so real that she hadn't even questioned if it was real or not. She had simply accepted it as reality the instant she had awoken.

The cold, stagnant air coating her skin… The pressing of the rocks upon her back… The weak, indigo light that bounced off the rocks and into her eyes… The terrified, piercing gaze of that girl…

Every sensation had been indistinguishable from reality.

IRyS pushed herself up into a sitting position and looked down at her hands. There was dirt all over her palms. She tried to brush the dirt off, but because both hands had dirt on them all she managed to accomplish was smearing the dirt around. Sighing in defeat, she relaxed forwards.

Was this a vision, too?

That thought bounced around within her lowered head for several seconds. The occasional whistling of the wind through the leaves was the only other sound besides her breathing in the forest.

She looked back up at the sky above.

And then a strange thought occurred to her.

She remembered looking up at the sky just a minute ago…

She remembered looking up at that rocky ceiling several weeks ago…

She remembered…

Remembering…

The same tight, nervous smile that the girl in her visions had worn crept across her face, too. That Priestess was right. These visions weren't implanted in her mind.

They were her own.

They were her memories.

It was impossible to argue with now. The reason that those visions had felt so real was because they were real. They were just in a reality that the present had long since passed.

IRyS knew how time worked, the forever, infinite march of temporal certainty into the future. The past, present, and future were all concepts she understood. It had just never occurred to her that the past could be remembered like this.

All of the things she had seen, smelled, felt, heard, and tasted in those memories were things that had actually happened to her.

Her past was being slowly filled in by dozens of memories. It would have been overwhelming for her to suddenly be remembering hundreds of hours of living every second.

But all of the memories consisted of the same thing.

Her staring forwards into nothingness.

She couldn't see, smell, feel, hear, or taste anything. The only sensations that were occurring during these memories were a sense of time passing and the sense that she was alive.

This was a place that she knew, though. It was where her first memory had taken place. The girl had been pacing around her, so IRyS knew that something existed beyond just herself.

Were her eyes closed during it? Now that IRyS thought about it, she had opened her eyes during her last memory, so it was possible her eyes were just closed during all of this empty time.

IRyS closed her eyes and confirmed that it did look like her eyes were closed. She felt a little dumb for not realizing it sooner, but she had been busy dealing with other things recently and hadn't had the time to devote towards thinking about such simple things.

At least, that's what she was going to tell herself.

Carefully, IRyS put her feet underneath herself and tried to stand. By using a nearby tree to balance, she could just manage to keep her legs under her. Her head spinning like crazy made the task difficult, but thankfully it began to settle down after a couple moments.

Slowly, IRyS put one foot out in front of her and shifted her weight onto it. When it held, she moved her other foot. By repeating this process, her body was slowly moved from one place to another.

Walking… It was something she had not done in a long, long time. Intuitively, she could figure it out, but it was still awkward for her. She wanted to use magic and float above the ground like she always had, but her sense of balance was not something to be trusted right now.

But where was she walking to?

IRyS stopped. Her body was moving for her just like it had all those times before. Once again, she questioned why she had never realized this.

Was she weak?

IRyS shook her head. It was impossible for her to be weak like that, she told herself. After all, she could feel an almost limitless pool of magic gathered within herself. How could she possibly be weak with a feeling like this.

As if to prove it to herself, she used her magic to float just above the ground. It was something that she had done before. It was something that was easy for her.

But this time, she wobbled and had to grab a tree to avoid falling over. Her stomach flipped upside down and tied itself into a knot. She carefully lowered herself back onto the ground. Her breathing was long and shallow. It felt like she was going to be sick.

The mighty IRyS was deathly afraid of heights…

Maybe one could be weak in certain areas, but strong in others. IRyS began to walk forwards once again, letting that thought stew in her mind.

Her destination came into question once again. Even though she couldn't identify where it was, she knew in which direction it was.

With small, light footsteps, she shuffled her way towards the place she had awoken in during her previous memory.

It was more than just the place she had started the memory in, though. IRyS knew that this place was where she began her existence here. Where she had first opened her eyes.

Her recent, clear memories told her that she had wandered out of a cave that looked exactly like the one she'd seen in her muddy, incomplete memory.

It was weird using her memories of the past to guide her actions in the present. Never in her life had she done something like this before. And she just did it again. And again. And again!

IRyS stopped walking and rubbed her temples. Was this how other living beings lived? She had no idea how they could act so casually when they could remember more than just this present moment. It must be incredibly taxing to carry with you every moment you've ever existed.

But maybe there was something she could learn by doing it. She reflected on her most recent "fight" against the Priestess, if she could really even call it that. The Priestess hadn't actually been mean to her. Instead, it almost looked like she was trying to help her. Now that IRyS was feeling better, maybe she could get some more information out of that Priestess.

IRyS tossed the idea of finding the Priestess again around in her head for a little bit. All the while, she slowly limped closer to the cave of her awakening. That place would definitely give her some answers about what was going on in her memories.

It didn't take much longer for a rocky hill to appear from between the trees. Large amounts of debris had been scattered by what looked like a small explosion. Rocks and chunks of dirt were surrounded by caution tape and hazard signs, indicating others had been here already. She didn't sense any other beings around, but she should remain on guard just in case.

The explosion seemed to have originated from below the ground rather than above it. The hole created was about wide enough for a few people to fit into. Looking over the edge revealed that it descended deeper than IRyS had thought. A long, winding slope that she couldn't see the bottom of descended into the darkness below. At least it wasn't a long drop or something like that. One might even call the imperfections along the slope a set of stairs.

A bright white flame with a light pink hue blossomed in her right hand. She knelt closer to the hole in the ground and held the flame closer, trying to see down into it.

Red hair vanished further into the darkness, giving IRyS a start. Her breathing rate increased as she leaned ever closer into the hole, attempting to see whoever else was down there.

Once she realized that if she wanted to know more, she would have to start walking down the slope. After a couple more glances at the trees and hazard tape around her, IRyS began her descent.

The air became colder and thicker as she moved deeper. The dirty walls slowly changed into rocky ones. Her footsteps began to echo up and down the narrow pathway.

Every half a minute or so, IRyS would catch a glimpse of that red hair. But just as soon as she noticed, it would vanish around a corner or into the distant darkness. No matter how quickly she turned that corner or shined her light into the darkness, the red hair would never reveal its owner.

Not that she needed to see them to know who it was.

After another minute of walking, the walls began to change again. However, this wasn't a natural progression. The rock of the walls had deep gashes in them. As she continued even further, the gashes began to form patterns.

IRyS was so focused on the walls that she got spooked when they suddenly disappeared. Well, they didn't actually disappear. The tunnel had opened up into a much larger room, causing the walls to suddenly become much farther away and hidden behind darkness.

She strengthened the flame in order to push the darkness away.

And the red haired girl was staring at her from the other side of the chamber.

IRyS gasped and in her fright extinguished the flame in her hand. The area around her was plunged into darkness, but not total darkness. A deep, dark, indigo light provided a tiny amount of visibility.

The red haired girl was gone again. IRyS could see that there was nothing where the girl had once stood. She was a little scared to ignite a flame again, so instead she wandered around the edge of the chamber.

As she walked, she felt the walls and the deep gouges that had been slashed into them. The walls were slightly wet with no plant life on them.

She had gone about halfway around the outside of the room when she noticed that the rocky floor also had developed a pattern. Except, these markings were much shallower and all pointed towards the center of the room.

IRyS walked towards the middle of the chamber with careful footsteps, the sounds of which quietly reverberated around her. A silhouette of something on the ground began to stand out from the rocky floor.

A dirty pile of… something that looked like soft fabric sat in the direct center of the chamber. She walked over to it, listening to her footsteps reverberate around the chamber she was within.

On this soft pile of probably fabric, IRyS saw a few strands of her own purple hair. She didn't really need anymore verification that this cave was the one, but she would still take it.

While she stood right next to what she guessed was her bed, IRyS looked upwards. The ceiling matched what she had seen in her memory perfectly.

There was something else up on the ceiling. More cuts into the stone that she hadn't noticed in her dream. They were too high up for her to see in the limited light, so IRyS ignited the pinkish flame again.

All of the cuts, gouges, and gashes up until now were clearly not random, but they had yet to present any meaning beyond that.

However, these were different.

On the ceiling, a complicated symbol was engraved. There was most likely a matching symbol beneath her feet, as well.

IRyS couldn't read it, but she didn't need to. The meaning flowed directly into her mind.

'Restore Hope.'

IRyS suddenly found herself unable to move. She was stuck staring up at the ceiling. Her flame had also extinguished and she couldn't use her magic to ignite a new one.

It took her a couple moments to realize that she was back in a memory. The same memory she had seen just a little while earlier.

The symbol on the ceiling and the ground beneath her bed had begun glowing. The chamber was slowly growing brighter, as indigo colored magic spread through the markings like blood through veins.

The red haired girl encroached on her vision just like the previous time. However, this time she was much closer, only a half a meter away. IRyS could feel her body wanting to move, but it was unable to. Her mind was frantically warning her that she was in danger.

'Hakos Baelz' A name suddenly cut through her panic. She knew it was the red haired girl's name. Somehow, she knew this girl very well, but couldn't yet remember why or how. At least she had a name.

'I don't want you to do this…' Baelz said. She then suddenly jerked her head away from IRyS, but not before IRyS could see tears begin falling from Baelz's eyes.

Baelz looked back down at her after wiping the tears away. Her eyes were a wonderful light blue with a small circle of orange and red beneath her pupil. IRyS could have just stared into her eyes for a long time if it wasn't for the look that was currently in them.

What had once been a look of fear and sadness was now a glare of anger. The orange and red circle began to look more and more like embers from a fire burning within each eye.

'I can't let you do this.' Baelz said through gritted teeth. IRyS still couldn't move, but she fought harder than ever. Every fiber in her body was screaming at her to run, fight back, at least do something, anything!

Baelz walked closer, her eyes burning brighter as she did. IRyS struggled to move any part of her body.

She managed to blink.

The fiery, orange flames of Baelz's eyes were replaced with a fiery, orange blade plunging down towards her. Behind it, a very angry Phoenix who's eyes burned with not just anger like Baelz's had, but with pure hatred. After all, this was the same Phoenix IRyS had nearly killed just weeks earlier.

IRyS forced the flaming, magic blade around her, diverting it enough that she could roll away from it. The blade hit the ground with a loud boom, creating an orange fireball which illuminated the chamber. In this short burst of bright light, IRyS saw a second, shadowy figure move from behind the Phoenix.

A scythe effortlessly sliced through the air, creating only a quiet whistle. IRyS turned and raised her hand as quickly as she could towards the attacking Reaper.

The echo of something thick and heavy splattering across the rocky walls reverberated throughout the cave.

Author's Note: It seems like the Myth girls have found IRyS this time and not the other way around. Will it end differently this time?

IRyS is a character I've wanted to explore for a while now and I'm glad to finally be able to. Her character in this story shares a lot of similarities to the struggles described in her original song 'See the World'. However, it was not inspired from this song because I wrote the draft for her character before the song came out. It was kind of weird listening to a song that had such obvious similarities to the story I was drafting, but it also pretty neat.

IRyS' journey here will not be an easy or happy one. The story has taken a darker, more depressing turn and the characters within it are going to reflect that change well.

Of course, IRyS hates this kind of despair. It'll be interesting to see how she deals with it now that she is more conscious of actions and their effects on the world and others.

Next Chapter: Burn Bright My Soul!
Any feedback/criticism is appreciated!