Sky's Prologue

Prologue of Prologues II

Irisir was running. How long has she been doing that? It didn't matter, because she didn't know. She didn't know where she was, how she got there, or what time it is. 

Her legs ached, they felt like they were bleeding, and her lungs were screaming at her to take a break. Her vision was bleary, it had been for a while now. Even though her body was practically begging her to stop, she pushed on. 

She couldn't stop now, because if her pursuers wouldn't kill her, the wilds would. Something she picked up from her older brother. She had to find somewhere safe. Somewhere she could place her trust in.

She was running away from everything, her home, pursuers—everything she lived for, with, and in. Her home was burning to ashes before her eyes, and her parents were murdered in front of her, and she had no idea what happened to her brother.

She touched her face. Her mother's blood was still there, splashed onto her face. Before she died, she told her daughter to run. It was pretty much the first and last command she listened to, and she hated that.

Tears flooded her eyes, making her vision worse, which resulted in her tripping on a tree root. Irisir shrieked. Her nearly limp body rolled down what felt like a hill. 

Once she stopped, she tried to get up, but her muscles refused to cooperate, so she stayed down. This is it. This was the end for her. Voices whispered in her ear, ah, was this the afterlife already? 

Irisir had no strength to move a single muscle on her body, much less even open her eyes by even a crack. So she rested there, unable to feel anything that happened to her in the next hours.

******Three Hours Later, Location Unknown******

She opened her eyes, and groaned.

Her ears rang loudly, it was like her head would burst.

Wait.

She can't die again. She just did.

Her eyes fully opened to what seemed like a library-turned-makeshift-clinic. There were medical supplies and potions in one corner, and there was a rusty silver door at the end of the room. 

There was a glittering blue diamond in the center of it, and... was it... glowing? In her direction, too! Surrounding her were other patients on benches and... are those anvils? Anyway, they seemed to be quite injured and they were all unconscious. 

All except her.

Irisir.

She gasped, slapped her face and pinched her skin, no! This wasn't a dream! She was really alive! 

She then made an attempt to stand up, which resulted in her falling face first on the floor near one of the anvils. "Ow..." her voice was hoarse, probably from all the running which caused her lungs to hurt so badly.

 Actually, where is she? She knew she was in a clinic, yes, but where was this clinic? Surely there are no clinics out in the woods, right? Someone must've found her and carried her here. That explained the voices she heard before blacking out. Could these people be trusted? She rubbed her forehead, and tried to get up again.

She slipped and fell on the floor again. Grumbling, she tries to get up.

"...your legs are too weak. You have to stop pushing yourself, you can't stand yet." A soft male voice called out to her, it almost sounded nasally. Pushing herself was the way she got here was what she wanted to say, but decided against it, then suddenly realizing she just woke up in some random clinic. She couldn't trust the people here, not even the injured. At least not yet.

Confused and afraid, she tried to look for the source. No one was awake when she woke up. Her eyes scanned the room until she saw that the boy next to her was already awake. He let out an "eep!" once their eyes locked. 

The boy was rather short and stout, and he seemed really uneasy being stared at. His eyes were a vibrant green with blue shading the uppermost part of his irises, and his white hair was stylized as two tufts sticking out from the sides of his head, but those seemed like the only hair he had.

He was wearing plain white robes like she was. His eyes darted from side to side and his sweat fell like waterfalls. It was then Irisir realized that she was making the poor boy uncomfortable and apologized, still however, weary of him.

He replied with "It's alright, I'm Ayin, who are you?"

(To be continued... next chapter: Determine)