Bound At Heart

A New Side to Him

Ilyana found herself drifting once more. She felt cold, shivering in response. She was getting really bothered by the events that caused her to not participate in the world outside of the unconsciousness, but it was out of her control at this point. She kept the mental note to be more careful. This dream that she found herself within was very unwelcoming. The coldness ceased when she heard cackles of flames and soon screams of the damned filled her ears. She clenched them, bewildered and shaken. She thrashed and retaliated at the sounds. Next thing she saw was a faint image over her home village, burning, suffering the wrath of purple flames as a creature of the night with bat-like wings emerge from the distance, clouded with the unnatural night's smoke it produced from its corrupted magic. It took shape from the dragon she saw before she fainted. And soon, that dragon flew right towards her as the smoke surrounded her, shaking her to the bone with fear as she too began to feel as if she were burning. Those eyes... those sickly purple eyes came to her vision and she broke through the dream as if it were glass. She found herself falling.

•~○~●~○~•

Ilyana gasped and jumped, immediately sitting up on her bed, drenched in sweat as voices filled her ears the second she did. The whiplash soon came after along with a headache.

"Ilyana!" said multiple beings. When her eyes cooperated, she saw Jean and Elmora by her side and Ryu's shadow over the roof of her borrowed home. She looked up to make sure it was him.

"Ilyana, you're all right!" Ryu sighed with relief.

Everyone began chatting and Ilyana suddenly began feeling caged, that the room around her was closing in and the dream began to replay in her mind as well as the purple eyes that came with it. She threw off the covers and ran out of the room. Protests were heard and it wasn't until Ryu stopped her.

"Hey, hey, hey," said he with a puzzled look. "What's wrong? Ilyana, breathe."

She rested against his forearm, hiding her head against him, trying to regulate her breathing.

"Ilyana?" Ryu asked hesitantly.

"I'm sorry," she backed away from him, a bit calmer than from before. "How long was I out?"

"About a few hours... The sun is already setting... Ilyana, why did you run?"

"Didn't exactly sleep so comfortably nor dreamt the best of dreams..."

"Oh, you just surprised me, is all."

"I was surprised too, didn't exactly expect the dream that I had."

"Ilyana what's wrong?" Came a female voice whose pitch matched exactly like Elmora's in Ilyana's ears... and not within her mind. Her eyes widened and she quickly turned around to see Elmora approach her.

"Elmora?"

"Are you all right?" Elmora physically spoke. This completely baffled Ilyana, rendering her shocked.

She stammered before saying, "You-"

Elmora grew frantic to explain, "Well, Jean was the one who's been teaching me these past few weeks! I planned to surprise you when the time was right but when the words rolled out I really couldn't take that surprise back..."

"Well, not going to lie, you did surprise me," Ilyana lets out an airy chuckle, placing a hand on her chest. "That is going to take some time to adjust towards..."

Elmora chuckled as well, "I bet it will."

Then it was Jean's turn to speak, "Elmora is a guardian spirit creature just like myself, she carries the magical potential to speak verbally and so when I told her I could teach her, she didn't hesitate to say yes."