Awakening
Page 93
*
She walked on for another hour, as the sun slowly sank towards the horizon. The green speck in the distance had grown increasingly bigger, and she soon fancied that she could make out the hard bark of the palms and smell the refreshing breeze from the greenery. On impulse, she directed a tendril of power into her mind, targeting the area where she had been attacked. Directing the power via her will, she sought out the shards of the broken memory, though she could no longer remember what exactly the memory had contained.
The tendril split into many, scattering and searching throughout her mind. One by one, the pieces came to her, lulled in by the tendrils. She began to reform them, using her power as the glue that would hold them together. Soon, the fragments had completely reassembled themselves into a brilliant multi-coloured sphere. As soon as the last piece clinked into place, the memory returned to her, filling her with the details of her first encounter with Ion.
Satisfied with her reconstruction, she began to withdraw the tendril, when another shard suddenly appeared before her. It did not belong to the recently fixed memory, of that much she was sure. Tentatively, she reached out, connecting with it. For an instant, she received a vision of the desert, though it was a part of it that she had never seen before. Intrigued, she sought out the rest of the fragments, calling to them in the same way as before. Slowly but surely, they came, slotting neatly into place. She began to feel the strain of using so much of her power at once, but she ignored it in her desire to reconstruct the memory.
A few moments later, it was complete: another multi-coloured sphere, identical in every way to the first except for one crucial difference. She reached out and embraced the swirling ball of memories and was instantly transported to a different world.
She was still in the desert, that much was sure, though it was obviously in a different time and place. She hovered, several feet above the ground, waiting for something to happen. Another entity soon appeared, walking in a slow, steady manner. Its long, white hair was blown around in the breeze, and its violet eyes seemed dull and lifeless.
Alza knew immediately who she was looking at: herself. The memory did not seem to notice her, and why should it? This was nothing more than a recollection after all. The memory Alza walked calmly, in no hurry or worry. She did not even notice her surroundings, crossing dune after dune in a slow, unchanging pace.
“So this is what I was like before I met Barsch. It's rather unsettling. How did she... I, survive?”
The answer was soon presented to her as a lone hare leaped in front of the memory. As she approached, the rabbit sensed a change in the environment, emanating from the strange two-legged figure. It tried to draw nearer, its inquisitive nature getting the best of it, but it suddenly stopped, still twelve paces away from the girl. Immediately, it turned away and hurried back to wherever it had come from, not daring to look back. Alza glided closer, feeling the malicious aura the rabbit had felt only moments before. Not only that, but she could feel something push against her as she tried to get closer.
It was a bubble of air, completely surrounding the past version of herself. It repulsed everything: heat, cold; predators and helpless onlookers. It would have taken a lot of energy to keep up the shield continuously, but she did not show any discomfit or weakness. Alza could see the flow of the power within her, constantly replenishing any lost nutrients and keeping the body fit. Time seemed to accelerate, and Alza watched her other self walk miles in minutes. Soon, they reached the end of the desert, the memory not stopping once in its relentless march. Alza watched as she traversed plains, forged rivers and climbed mountains, for countless days and weeks. Eventually, the accelerated time of the memory reverted to the norm as it neared its destination.
They had arrived in a place that was strangely familiar to Alza. A large forest loomed on the horizon, the fading sunlight deepening its natural shadows. Her memory was still walking, though every once and a while she would stumble and fall, before picking herself up and continuing. Although it was invisible to most, to Alza, the bubble of air that kept the memory safe had begun to fall apart. Small holes had appeared, growing larger with every minute. They passed by a hut, its sole occupant sleeping by the fireplace. Based on what Barsch had told her, in a few minutes, the figure would wake up and go hunting for dinner. They left the area, unseen.
A few moments later, they came upon a dead glade. The passive purification exuded by her younger self immediately set to work, quickly returning life to the dead clearing. This proved to be the last straw for her worn-out body, as the bubble rippled, before finally collapsing. Alza's memory fell to her knees, bereft of the energy needed to stand. She glanced to the north, perhaps sensing the naïve teenager on route to the glade. With a soft sigh, she stood on shaky legs, her eyes seeming to see the star laden sky for the first time. Something made a sound at the opposite end of the glade, something with two legs and a thumping heart. As Alza -the real one- turned around, the memory ended. The last thing she saw was a pair of worried greenish blue eyes regard her past self with astonishment. She did not need to see the rest, she had already lived through what happened next.
Alza re-awoke to the real world, noticing that her body had continued walking whilst her mind was busy. She looked up and saw that her destination, the life-giving oasis, was almost within her grasp. She had arrived without even noticing.
She took a step forward, noting that the ground beneath her felt strangely loose. Roughly ten paces to her right, a large section of the desert floor had disappeared, leaving behind a gaping chasm. All around her, she could see many more holes in the sand and knew that there were probably many more than what she could see. From that moment on, she tread lightly, lest she fall into the bowels of the earth.
In this manner did she make her way towards the oasis. However, no sooner had she started this treacherous crossing, did she feel a tremor beneath her feet. She already knew what would happen so she took off in a flat-sprint, hoping to reach the green sanctuary before the quake came in full.
She almost made it, she almost got past the last group of holes, but it was not to be.
Her strength, drained by the day's events, failed her at the last. The earthquake came, chasing her down. Where it went, it wrought destruction, tearing at the earth and exposing the chasms in full. She witnessed the sand beneath her fall away in slow motion, as the ground violently convulsed. She was helpless, left to fall into the widening abyss beneath her.