Orange light flickered in front of my shut eyelids, and faint warmth tickled my skin. A crackling sounded in my ears, a sound I knew, though I couldn’t tell where I knew it from.
How do I know that sound? And is that a hint of smoke in the air?
I strained my ears, listening, searching my mind for a connection to the sound around me. The scent. That bright orange shimmer in front of my still closed eyes.
There was nothing. My mind was totally blank.
No past memories, no encounters, adventures, no hopes, no fears.
Not even my name. Who am I?
I couldn’t answer my own question, and I knew that should have terrified me. Yet my mind kept going back to that sound. That smell. That bright orange shimmer. I knew them. I didn’t know my own name, but I knew them. I was sure of that. I also knew that faint tickle of warmth on my skin. Somehow, I knew all of that, but not who I was.
Can’t be helped right now. Perhaps it will all come back to me later. Better focus on other matters for now.
Like that sound, scent, and orange shimmer that continued to bother me.
A groan escaped my lips as I struggled to sit up, my eyes still clenched shut. The crackling sound enveloped me stronger than ever now that my head was no longer pressed into the floor, and that tickling warmth on my skin grew stronger.
That warmth — it was still just barely noticeable, like the sun on a damp, rather cold morning as it broke through the clouds and stretched itself to get ready for the day. Slowly, bracing myself for what I knew my vision would show me, I unclenched my eyelids and opened them.
Blinding orange, red, and yellow flashed before me, and my eyes were shut again much more quickly than they had been opened. This time, I opened first only one eye, only a tiny slit, to allow the narrowest stretch of my surroundings into my field of sight. Then a little more, and a little more. Eventually, I opened my second eye following the same, slow procedure as before, and then I finally took in my surroundings.
I had expected something like this — the orange shimmer, the faint warmth, the crackling sounds, they had all been rather clear signs for what I would see — and yet the sight still caught me by surprise.
I had no memories of my past, not even my own name, and yet I knew full well what my senses had been telling me even before my eyes confirmed it. All around me raged flames, burning bright red and orange, smoke billowing against the ceiling of the building I was in.
Putting one foot and hand firmly on the ground, I pushed myself up into a standing position, a grunt escaping me as I did so. Everything hurt. My body felt like it had been ripped to shreds, cut in a thousand different places, and then burnt alive.
It hadn’t. Obviously. I was still here, though I had no idea how.
The flames danced around me, and I took in the sight, the sound, the scent. The feeling of the heat against my skin, still barely stronger than morning sunlight, and the taste in my mouth. The taste of smoke, of burning embers and fire roaring.
As if to confirm my assessment, the flames let out a loud, shrieking roar, the crackling now almost deafening in their volume.
For some reason, I liked it. The fire around me, dancing in the breezes of wind that fought their way into the building through open windows, the heat on my skin. The sound in my ears. The scent in my nose. The taste in my mouth.
I shook my head, the movement aching. Absently, I rubbed my neck, gazing around, wondering…
Why isn’t the fire affecting me?
I should be hot as hell, my skin blistering, my hair catching fire. I should be burning, or suffocating in the smoke. I should be dying. No. I should be dead. I couldn’t remember anything that had happened to me, ever, in my entire life, but I felt like I should be dead right now, not standing in midst a raging fire without any harm coming my way.
Again, I shook my head, trying to chase the thoughts away. The wonders. The mysteries of my past or my present.
I was alive, so perhaps I should try living and get the heck out of here. Even if the fire didn’t hurt me, surely the pieces of charred and burning lumber and rock that were falling from the sky — well, the ceiling — would.
I took one look down my body to see if anything was seriously injured. I felt like crap, but that might not mean anything. For all I knew, I could simply be exhausted. Heck, I didn’t even know that, because I remembered absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Still, a glance at my body gave a few answers at least. For one, I was not yet in my teens, probably just a couple years older than ten or so. Secondly, my body showed wounds but none I couldn’t handle. And third, I was standing in a pile of ashes. I had been lying in a pile of ashes when I came to. Whatever in the Six Lands that meant.
I was dressed in a black suit accented with red on the jacket and the pants. On the ground beside me rested a dagger, the blade shimmering black and dark blue in the light of the flames. The sharp blade was probably around ten inches long, and though no recognition flared in my mind, I reached down and pocketed it.
Raising my head, I stared down the flames, trying to find the way out. There had to be a door here somewhere. I only had to find it and get out before being speared to death by one of those wooden pieces falling from the ceiling. Turning in a circle twice, I thought I finally found what I was looking for — the exit, so I sprinted in that direction.
Well, to be fair, I was trying to give it my all, to run as fast as I could, but it felt like I was going at a snail’s pace. A snail that had suffered some serious injuries.
When I reached the door, I stuck my head outside, still careful to avoid touching anything. The heat didn’t seem to affect me, and perhaps I was fireproof — it was possible, there were Blessed in this world, people with extraordinary powers, like magic — but I was absolutely not ready or willing to test that theory right now.
Squinting my eyes against the sudden light outside, I looked around, turning my head from left to right until my sight fell upon the backs of two strong adults.
Who were they? What were they doing here? Why were they standing so close to a burning building as though they were on guard duty? Were they on guard duty?
My mind went into overdrive worrying about what this all meant. Waking up in a burning building surrounded by a pile of ashes was bad enough, but guards standing outside without a care in the world that I was in here, or that the building was on fire. That couldn’t possibly be good.
Trying to slow my breathing and stop my panic attack, I pushed my heart to stop beating so frantically. Inside myself, I wondered. I knew there was a place in my body, a place where I would find part of my spirit, a place where I could not only calm down, but where I might even find answers to all the questions I had. Answers to my past. To my present.
With a quick glance back at the flames behind me, I decided to try. If I could find answers, it would be worth it. I didn’t know how I knew where to go, but, somehow, I just did. I searched inside myself for mere seconds until I found the spot I was looking for.
Everybody had this place inside of themselves, a place where they could meet their spirit, connect with it even. It was the place of their spirit animal, and I desperately needed mine. My heartbeat increased again, its pace going almost frantic once more when I found nothing. The place was empty. There was nothing, no animal anywhere to be found.
But that was impossible! I couldn’t remember my past, events, faces, or people I’d met, but I could still remember a few things. I knew about the Six Lands, about the Blessed, about the spirit animals. Everyone had a spirit animal. Everyone!
And yet, where it should be inside me, there was nothing. Nothing but a pile of ashes similar to the one I had awoken in. Empty. That’s how I felt. I felt empty without my spirit animal, although I couldn’t even remember what it was.
My heart threatened to burst out of my chest at the realisation that I didn’t have a spirit animal, or that it was dead inside me. Was that even possible? I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore.
What are you doing?
What was I doing? I didn’t have time for this, to freak out, to bury myself in pity and loss and emptiness over my missing memories, my missing spirit animal.
The gentle touch of the heat coming from the mansion and the soft crackling of the flames — okay, it probably wasn’t supposed to sound soft, but somehow, it calmed me — brought me back to reality. With a few forced lungfuls of air, inhaling a bit of smoke in the process, I forced my mind to focus and my heart to slow down again.
I looked once more at the two men, trying to figure out who they were. One was thin as a stick, a twig branching from another twig, and the other was bulky, large and broad and somehow thick without being fat. At least as far as I could tell looking at their backs.
They were talking, I realised, their voices carrying. They stood mere feet away from me, but over the crackling of the flames I could barely make out the words escaping their lips. I strained my ears, willing, forcing myself to hear more, to identify the sounds blowing in the wind.
“…thing, though … poor boy, so young. Shouldn’t have died,” one of them said. I thought it was the twig, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Yeh right, shouldn’t have. Bosses won’t like it!” The other one responded with a grunt of displeasure.
A boy? Shouldn’t have died? The bosses wouldn’t like it? Were they talking about me? I could practically feel my eyes widening in shock and surprise, but I forced myself to keep listening.
Behind me, the ceiling kept crashing to the ground, the massive estate reducing to a pile of burnt timber and ashes.
“Yeah, but he’s only twelve, mate! Too young to die, know what I mean?” The first voice asked. I still felt the voice belonged to the twig, which meant the bulky guy was going to answer.
“Shouldn’t have run then! No one runs from the bosses!”
“Why’d he run?” The twig asked. “He’s been—”
With a loud crash, a large part of the roof came billowing to the floor, pushing a cloud of dust and smoke over me. Inadvertently, I coughed as the smoke hit my lungs. I didn’t mean to, I knew it was stupid, I knew the guys would know I was here now, but I couldn’t help myself.
As the men turned around to look at me, I took the first step out of the mansion onto the rocky ground outside. Patches of grass bloomed underneath my feet as I took further steps, slowly increasing my pace as best as my tired body allowed. I really needed to rest, to sleep.
There was no point in thinking about what I needed right now, in thinking about what I’d lost. Not that I even remembered what I’d lost.
I stopped when the bulky guy stepped in my path, his eyes fixed on my face. The twig came up next to him a few feet away, trying to circle around me as much as possible. Were they going to stop me? Yes, of course they were. What a stupid question.
Their eyes widened when the smoke cleared enough for them to see my face. The bulky dude looked like he’d been hit over the head by a mountain, and the twig stuttered a few muffled sounds that weren’t willing to escape his lips.
Huh… Strange. Or probably not. If I was the boy they had been talking about, and they thought I was dead, then I guess surprise on their faces was the least of my worries. The rock was the first to recover from the shock of laying eyes on me, and without a word or glance at his partner, he launched himself at me with all the speed his thick form could muster.
Normally one would flinch, right? A massive bear of a man comes charging at you, and you flinch, shy away, right? Especially when you’re a twelve-year-old, little boy. My mind wasn’t shying away. My mind was not even scared.
Rather the opposite.
By the time the man before me had finished his first step in my direction, my mind had miraculously conjured up a good half dozen different ways to dispatch of the guys. And in none of those versions did I get anything more than a minuscule bruise on my arm.
I shook my head for the briefest of seconds. Strange. How did I know how to take them out in so many different ways? I couldn’t remember anything about my past, but apparently my mind knew precisely how to fight two grown men. It took more strength than I would have imagined, but I pushed the thoughts away. I wasn’t here to fight these guys. I just wanted to get the heck out of here.
When bulky guy’s swing came, I ducked underneath, half in a trance, and thrust my fist into the inner side of his upper arm. Within a fraction of a second, I had kicked his shin and forced the palm of my hand into his face in an upward thrust. Blood spurted from his nose, but I didn’t care.
I just turned from him as quickly as I could and ran away, away from the burning mansion, away from the guy on the ground, away from everything that was back there.
I could feel them following me, like a sixth sense, an awareness that should only come with years of training. I refused to look back, fearing they were so close they would reach me if I slowed down — though in truth I had barely made it a handful of steps as it was.
Without realising it, without planning it, without even wanting it, I stopped dead in my tracks, a taste of the freshest water on my tongue. Water from a stream so clean and beautiful that once you started drinking you would never stop again.
Around me, a thick mist shaped all of a sudden, not slowly and gradually but all at once. One second the air was clear safe for bits of smoke from the crackling flames behind me, and the next there was a mist so thick I couldn’t even see my own hands right in front of my eyes.
Wait… How could there be mist when fires were burning only a few feet away? The taste of fresh stream water still assaulted my mouth, accompanied by the scent of freshly cut grass growing stronger by the second. Both such massive contradictions to the flames behind me that I still stood rooted to the spot pondering what was going on.
“Come on!” The voice of a young girl echoed in my ears. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, the mist seemed to have obscured even echolocation. “We have to get out of here!”
With those words, I felt a touch on my skin and the mist within half a foot around me thinned enough for me to see a little girl’s hand on my arm.
“We have to get out of here. Come on!” The little girl said, tugging at my arm.
The men behind me completely forgotten, and enveloped by the scent of cut grass and the taste of fresh stream water, I let the girl pull me away. One step, and another, and— There was no third step.
From behind us, a deafening bang, almost like thunder, sounded with all the might of a god.
Unable to stop myself, I looked back, only to find the fires that had been burning softly and slowly inside the mansion now blazing rampantly out in the open and rocks the size of my entire body and larger still crashing down the mountain.
The mountainside was collapsing. Just what I needed right now. And a blazing inferno was rushing towards us.
Without another thought, I grabbed the little girl’s arm and pulled her back until her body crashed into mine. I folded my arms around her, sinking with her to my knees, and tried to envelope her as best I could while the flames burst around us. The sound of the crackling fire caught in my ears, almost silenced entirely by the thunderous noise of the mountainside collapsing.
It felt and sounded as though the world around me was ending, but I didn’t move even an inch. I couldn’t, not with the little girl in my arms.
