Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

047, hennessy... come out and play...

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
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Sylvie had no memories, and yet she still knew this was the worst pain she'd ever experienced.

She landed hard on her ankle, bending it in the opposite direction.

Immediately, Sylvie knew she'd broken it. Pain like a hot steel wire, sharp and blinding, jabbed its way up her leg and into her hip. It felt as though the bone itself had splintered, shards of pain radiating outwards. Time seemed to freeze, the world narrowing to just her, her ankle, and the agony.

She almost blacked out. Her head spun. Her breath became nothing but desperate gasps. The pain was so horrible that she forgot her name.

You can't let this be the end, she told herself. Not until you learn who you are.

She tried to breathe more slowly. She lay as still as possible, compartmentalizing the pain into something she could store far far away as to ignore it the best she could.

Part of her wanted to weep at the world for being so unfair. She thought losing every single memory of who she was and what made her herself was horrible enough. Was it necessary to completely shatter her ankle as well?

She pushed her emotions back down. She wouldn't survive if she got like this—the lack of knowledge in her brain required her to be attentive at all times. Getting through this quest was like taking a test she never studied for, but pretending like she knew all the answers. She would have to fake it until she made it.

She looked around her. Her daggers had skittered a few feet away in opposite directions. In its dim light, she could make out the features of the room. She was lying on a cold floor of sandstone blocks. The ceiling was two stories tall. The doorway through which she'd fallen was ten feet off the ground, now completely blocked with debris that had cascaded into the room, making a rockslide. Scattered around her were old pieces of lumber—some cracked and desiccated, others broken into kindling.

Every heartbeat of hers seemed to pulse in time with the throb of her injury, an insistent reminder of the damage. She inspected her ankle. Her foot was still bent in a strange, awkward ankle. She couldn't feel her toes. That definitely wasn't good. The only fortunate thing she could find was that she didn't see any blood.

She needed to start moving, but she still couldn't bring herself to quite yet. To try and delay carrying on as much as possible, she focused more on herself. After the fall, her hair was an absolute mess. For some reason, it had previously been in a half-up, half-down style with a white bow clipped in. She took everything out and let her hair down.

The white bow was now dirtied, and she thought there had to be some irony in that. White was a symbol of innocence, after all.

She temporarily snapped her ponytail around her wrist before she clawed through her hair. Then, she pulled her hair back into a quick bun. It wasn't the most sturdiest of hairstyles, but it was the best she could do right now. After clipping the bow back in above the messy bun, she accepted that she needed to keep going.