Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Visions in the Ash

He instructed them to breathe, and listen to the sound of the humming, to imagine they were falling into it like a pool of water, sinking downward with every second. Between moments of speaking he layered another line of humming over the previous line until Adam felt as if he were surrounded by an entire chorus of Drev,.

He did his best to ignore any outside stimuli, hoping beyond hope that Naktan was right and this WOULD help him, though a small part of him still worried that this was a waste of time. He tried to push that bit of thought out of his head, knowing that Sunny trusted Naktan, and if she did than he could also.

"See."

And then Adam felt it. he wasn't sure how or why or when his Anima lifted its head, but he knew it as soon as the burning power made manifest as fire through his veins, rolling through his body and down to the tips of his fingers as he lay prone on the floor of the shuttle. He could see the sun now, Chal hanging in the sky above as clouds passed to quickly over the blue expanse. He watched plants grow and corpses decay right before his eyes.

He watched the coil trees flower and then drop their pedals berries ripening and then falling moments later.

He could feel the planet around him, could feel every living thing that ran on the surface or crawled in the mud beneath, almost like he WAS the planet. He could feel the rolling of fire in her belly and the spewing of hot steam from her vents in the surface. He felt the small creatures crawling around under her skin, and feel the pulsing rush of underground rivers.

And he could feel something else.

Soemthing wrong

Something that did not fit into the ecosystem of this planet. He felt the roiling coils of ash that did not belong to this planet's weather systems, infringing on the natural order, a blight, a cancer upon Anin's surface.

He felt the animals fleeing over the surface, away from the unnatural cinder wind that came down upon them .

And at its heart, he felt the brooding , felt the pinprick of light that marked the Anima.

He went in for a closer look but recoiled almost immediately at a bolt of pain shot through him. His mind recoiled at the twisted burning.... Thing, that waited there, no longer a proper anima so contorted by envy, spite, hate, jealousy, and sorrow. So bright was the burning of its soul that he almost didn't notice the two small dots not some distance off huddled in the ash.

The darkness called to them, but that small pulsing of light did not move.

Adam fixed the position in his mind.

Breathing deep.

But how could he get to her. Adam knew of creatures that could survive and even traveled in the cynder winds, but he was not one of them, and he was without his SE armor or even a gasmask for breathing protection. His body thrummed with frustration. How was he supposed to help her like this, like a human? He thought about Kay, afraid and whimpering in the ash, his eyes clogged by dust, burning and unable to breathe. The burning in his chest radiated outward, rolled through him to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet.

He could see them.

He screamed in frustration, and the burning at the center of his chest became a hot ripping agony.

***

Sunny tried to keep kay from crying.

Crouching in the leeward side of a boulder amidst a bed of soft purple moss, Sunny wrapped kay in her arms and sheltered him with her face to the rock and the back to the open air. She could feel little particles of dust pelting her carapace, but she ignored it looking down at Kay, rocking him in her arms and whispering to keep him quiet.