Keeper of the Veil

Lost.

~~~Alevra. 0 B.C.~~~

I knew I fainted.

There was no one around me, no anchor to pull me through the ocean of darkness. No comfort except in the black emptiness that enveloped me like a cold, secure blanket.  

The all-consuming pain felt like a counterfeit medicine man sliced my torso. With metal claws he hacked apart my body, tearing at my lungs, just to rip out my heart. My imaginary medicine man poured liquid fire down my throat and dropped a match on my tongue, setting my insides ablaze. White-hot pain seared across my body and left behind a metallic taste in my mouth.

Slowly coming back to consciousness made me curse the fates that brought this evil upon me. But as unlucky as I felt, I knew I had escaped death for the time being. This could surely be some sort of blessing in disguise. If I could survive, I could continue the war. I could put an end to it. The rest of my kind had been eliminated long ago, I was the world’s only hope, and I failed them. Our enemy won the battle, but still I needed to win the war.

Seeing dense trees surrounding where I had collapsed shocked my system. I didn’t remember how I ended up here. The ground I’d curled up on looked almost like it’d just stopped raining. Dark droplets of thick liquid glistened on the blades of the grass. The dirt felt slick and moist beneath my hands, the iron scented air felt thick and heavy in my lungs.

From the moon above, shadows danced down from the tree canopy, serving as my only company in the dark. Other than that, the feeling of being alone consumed my body. It sent alarms racing through my brain. Panic seized my being and chased away the black numbness that had engulfed me.

In that moment, I could barely breathe, my lungs scarcely inflated. The liquid fire that filled my airways raged through my veins. Air, I thought, is what I need. But every breath only gave a fan to the fire.  I choked on my sobs, crumbled up against the trunk of a tree, and willed myself to die. This was just too much. No way could I survive, but still, I questioned if I wanted to live through this torture.

My Soul was retreating from my consciousness, that much I knew.  Something beyond the boundaries of my memory was doing this to me. Something shocked my system so greatly that my Soul couldn’t handle it.

I found myself questioning, what happened before I blacked out?

Where could my partner, Ryuu, have disappeared? I knew him and I were together before I fainted, for we always fought side by side. My memory seemed lacking in what caused our separation.

I feared what I would find if my memory caught up to me. What could have caused this gaping pain in my chest?  After everything that Ryuu and I had gone through, was it possible that he and I were defeated?

Could that shock have damaged my Soul? I was not dead yet, I knew that much. Still I feared for my partner, could his death have been the trigger that had made my Soul withdraw only moments ago?

I didn’t want to think about that.

Closing my eyes and blocking out the now familiar forest that surrounded me, I felt deep within my Soul the fluttering of a memory as it rose like bubbles to the surface of my thoughts.  The scene played across my inner eyes as clear as the day it happened, when I was new to his world, when my partner and I had only spent a few months together:

Ryuu stood before me, looking down, his violet eyes bore down into mine. I knew then how much I loved him, but I could only hope that he could see that in my eyes. I could never tell him out loud how much he meant to me.