Leo took a step back, slowly spinning in a circle as he watched the screens surrounding them lay bare every embarrassing and private moment of his life. He reached out and tried to touch the nearest apparition, but his hand phased through the ghostly image as the video continued to play.

It projected a beautiful starry sky, with the arms of the Milky Way stretching across the heavens like a winding river of light. It was one of the nights Melody had dragged him along to go stargazing in the nearby mountain range a few miles from where they lived.

Her bubbling enthusiasm for the outing never seemed to dampen, even while climbing the steep trek to the summit. Although she was never the one to lug up her massive telescope, it still wounded his pride when he was always the only one out of breath after reaching the peak.

“Ah, an Arrival. I see Lazarus is still sowing the same seeds of chaos he has for a millennium. And what have we here, a dissociation?” The mutterings drew Leo’s attention and he found Thanatus flipping through images at a blurring pace with one hand, while the other paused upon a projection of murky grey. He flicked his wrist and hundreds of similar projections gathered, each one resembling a television screen that had turned to static. “A severance of three months during your life on Earth. Sloppy work, hardly worth my time to undo, but perhaps just a peek…”

The outline of the images began to glow with a heat that scalded Leo’s soul. The floors and ceilings of the coffee shop began to rumble and churn, mugs fell from shelves, shattering on the ground, and an old stool toppled over to break in a heap of splintered wood. The murky grey substance on the images bubbled as the glow continued to intensify, frothing up the sides of their containers to slowly drip on the shaking floor below.

For all the searing pain made him feel as if he were being boiled alive, his eyes remained glued to the slowly clearing projections. They were his lost memories, the answer to why he had agreed to come here. With every drop of the grey fluid, a new scene flashed in his mind.

He saw himself shaking hands with a smiling businessman, overtly pleased to make his acquaintance. The scene shifted to Melody hurrying out of the coffee house with a wave as she went to catch up with a group of her friends for their usual walk to school. Then he found himself staring down at a cold stone floor, blood pooling at the tiles by his feet and the smell of gun smoke hanging heavy in the air. He couldn’t stop staring at the pistol clenched in his clammy hands.

The influx of memories along with the pain came to a sudden halt. Leo found himself lying on the ground of the coffee shop, unsure if the groaning he heard was coming from the old floorboards or his own lips as he stared at a pair of legs hovering over him. “Enough of that, I have what I came here for. I’ll set the seal to degrade in time so while your dreams may be restless, you won’t be completely obliterated by the divine magic breaking apart.”

Leo slowly managed to squirm to his knees until he was staring up at the being guised as his former mentor. As if his thoughts had given shape to reality, the man’s form shimmered from Zeld’s pearly white skin to a scaled draconic black, before quickly reverting.

“As I am the most benevolent of all my kin, I will give you not one but three rewards for bringing me, albeit unwittingly, to this mortal plane.” He held out a single finger. “The first is your shrouded memories unmolested. The lock that binds them shall fail a little at a time, and each time it will leave you in a state such as this. If you ever find yourself succumbing to impatience, you may come back to your soulspace to fully repair or break the seal that I cracked.”

He lifted a second finger. “The second is knowledge. Your sister, the one you call Melody, was either brought to Asylum or has perished on Earth. I’ve arranged it so her fate will only be revealed once the lock has fully failed.” Thanatus spoke the news with a cruel smile, the words brokering stillness in Leo’s mind.

Melody might have died…The thought was like the dropping of a pin amidst the silence of an orchestra. It reverberated against the walls of his head, drowning out all other thoughts until all he could focus on was that grim possibility.

The purpose he had given himself since his dad passed and his mom abandoned them was to give his sister a life she could enjoy. Unlike his peers, he had never found any dreams to strive for in that joy-sucking world, so he had decided to at least live a life that could provide a stable foundation for hers. He worked tirelessly, often juggling two mundane jobs and putting himself through night classes, all so that she could go to school every day with a smile on her face and live a normal life.

Even here in Asylum, the backing force that had pushed him through Zeld’s harsh training and given him the will to carry on was the hope of reaching her again, so that she wouldn’t be left all alone in a cold and callous world. The revelation that she might have died was almost enough to make him break the seal then and there.

Thanatus lifted a third finger before Leo’s hollow gaze, clearly delighting in the rot his poisoned words had festered in his mind. “Lastly, I gift you with your life, as pointless a gift as that may turn out to be.” Thanatus patted the top of his head with a soft chuckle as he turned and strode out the shop. The door closed behind him as Leo looked down at his hands, imagining the gun and blood he had seen a minute before. His thoughts were threatening to tear themselves apart with the possibilities, when there was a tug on his consciousness and he felt the tether connecting his soul to his body pull tight.

He came back to himself to what seemed like the end of the world. He clasped his hands over his ears, trying in vain to mute the deafening roar of thunder and explosions that shook the earth. The entire cavern seemed to be falling apart! Chunks of stone the size of a man splintered off from the ceiling, plummeting to detonate in the garden below like rounds of artillery fire. Massive thorn-covered vines the size of buses whipped in every direction, gouging the earth and devastating all the surrounding plant life.

His body and clothes were covered in dust and bits of debris, but he was miraculously unharmed amidst the destruction. He was about to chalk up his unconscious survival to more divine intervention, when a large section of falling rock broke off the ceiling directly above him. Before he even had time to dive out of the way, a lance of lightning pierced and incinerated the falling boulder, turning it into a harmless spray of rubble.

Amira had tossed aside all restraint. Her body flickered like an insubstantial yellow flame as she practically teleported around the cavern, sending shockwaves rippling through the air with each jump. The only time she slowed down was to launch a fierce attack on her unseen prey.

A flap of her wings manifested a hurricane of silvery blades that peppered the ground, turning every tree and shrubbery in their path into kindling, while small white orbs ringed her body, firing condensed beams of energy that ripped through stone and set the scraps of the once-beautiful flora ablaze.

It almost looked like she was battling the Creeping Horror, whose vines erupted from the earth like the burrowing of a thousand giant worms below wherever she went. The tree’s trunk was shielded in a bloody red aura.

“Ah, it’s been so many cycles since I last ran with limbs of flesh. I find there is no sensation quite the same as when one’s lungs gasp for air and their heart cries for relief!” came the jolly call of an all too familiar voice behind him. “You may wish to indulge in it yourself,” Thanatus said mockingly, just as the ground exploded underneath Leo. There was a lurch in his stomach while the wind threatened to rip off his skin. Then everything halted.

He found himself dangling hundreds of feet above the decimated ground, Amira’s talons gripping his shoulders tightly enough to draw trickles of blood. This territory has fallen. The Chari plan to relinquish their domain and drop the island as soon as their young have finished fleeing! We need to get you and the hatchlings as far from here as possible! Amira’s voice was uncharacteristically panicked and trace amounts of fear that she was unable to fully control seeped through their connection.

Can’t we fight him? Leo questioned. He couldn’t imagine creatures as powerful as Amira and the Creeping Horror losing a fight.

The Prince of Pride is not an enemy for mortals to face. Since it cannot escape its doomed fate, the Horror has agreed to try to hold him here while the island falls. We can only hope the crash will cause enough damage to dissuade him from coming after us any farther! As she spoke, massive tendrils of vines began converging on Thanatus from all directions, while he stood calmly in their epicenter watching the main body of the deadly tree with an almost thoughtful expression.

Close your eyes! called Amira as the encirclement of vines closed in to block the abyssal creature from view. Leo had just enough time to squeeze his eyes shut before his insides were left behind and the wind tore at his body. The talons that hooked him in place dug deeper into his arms and legs, but the pain they brought gave him something to focus on as he struggled to just stay conscious. The pressure of the air forced its way into his lungs, swelling them like a balloon and leaving him unable to exhale. Just before he felt they might pop, the pressure began to abate and he realized their speed was slowing considerably.

Amira dropped him off lightly, letting his body collapse to the ground as he worked to expel the pent-up air in a fit of coughing. He managed to regain control a few moments later and got a look at their surroundings.

Amira had transported them to an open field dotted with the shattered, decomposing shells of what he had once thought to be boulders. Although it hadn’t been more than a month, the sight of the crater he had made upon first arriving in this world filled him with a hint of nostalgia. It was a strange irony that he would be forced to leave this island next to the place he had first arrived at.

He looked over at the small mountaintops that peered over the forest, knowing that beneath one of those hollow peaks lay a quaint cabin that had served as his newfound home for his time spent here, a home that would soon be long buried.

Two figures broke away from the woods and into the clearing, covering ground rapidly and veering straight toward them. Leo couldn’t hide the smile of relief at their approach, glad to see they had managed to remain safe in this mess.

Sparky let out an excited chirrup as they drew near, shooting ahead of Pride with her usual boundless energy. Leo sidestepped as she approached, narrowly avoiding the playful zap he knew would be coming when their minds connected once more. Pride strode up behind Sparky, giving Leo a tilt of her head in acknowledgment, clearly aware or at least more concerned about their dire situation.

Ready, little one? Amira asked as she lowered a wing, offering Leo a quick route up to the crook of her neck.

He thumbed the plain gold band around his finger, taking a brief moment to say a silent thanks for all that Zeld had given him, had given up, before accepting the offer. I won’t lose heart, he promised the departed soul of his fallen friend.

Amira rose to her full towering height, scattering the dust and dirt around them with a few mighty flaps of her wings as she slowly rose into the air. She wrapped a talon around each of his bonded companions before diving off the side of the island, delving deeper into whatever troubles may await them in this crazed world.

THE END

Cycle of Ruin: Book One

Arrival