"If you dare stand before me in an attempt to destroy me and my family, I will descend upon you the full extent of my wrath."
-Atlas
I. Foreigner, In The Sky Above The Sindirin Empire
Upon a small white cloud lied a man with two white wings. He was snoring on his back, his body bare and naked. He looked young, an exotic tan radiating over his youthful skin. He was sleeping but slowly he began to wake up, his eyelids jittering in the crisp sky and cold sweat dripping past his pores. As he slowly stirred from his slumber, a pair of ravishing violet eyes were revealed. He looked around, his body sore and stiff. There were only stormy rainclouds that he could see. He groaned as he began to wiggle to his side, curly tufts of white hair wrapping down to his chin, falling to his shoulders and blowing gently with the pelting wind. He squinted because he found it hard to see anything in the distance beyond the darkness which would be interrupted by brief flashes of lightning. He then widened them to release the strain on his sore eyes. He pushed himself up until he was sitting upright.
The feathers on his wings danced and swayed with the wind as he sat upright. Sitting still for some time, he tried taking in his surroundings. He inhaled a large breath and sighed calmly. His purple eyes roaming around, he was thoroughly confused.
He did not seem to mind the thin air being so high in the heavens, in fact, he did not seem to be affected by it. His breathing was normal. Rarely did he shiver to the cold. He seemed to be one with the hostility of the stormy sky. But, where he was physically unaffected, his mind could not comprehend the unfamiliar setting.
"Where am I, Prometheus?" He questioned with a low voice.
Pressing down and feeling on the fleecy substance of what he was sitting upon, he whispered to himself, "Am I on a cloud?"
Becoming increasingly worried and agitated, he called out again, "Prometheus, where am I?" Again there was no response, only the crying of the clouds.
"Prometheus! Why do you not answer me!"
His worry was brewing into frustration. His heart was galloping. He could feel the stress of being so high and this unmanned him at every level. The hard exterior of the cloud slowly dwindled into a soft and fluffy density which he steadily became buried into. His belly began upheaving, feeling he would fall through the cloud at any moment.
He, with a coarse tone, called out again, "Prometheus! What in the hells is happening to me!" But, there was again no response from the person he was calling out to. So he tried standing to obtain a better view but his feet were unsteady and was partly tearing through the cloud.
"How am I here?" He cried out at the peak of his lungs with raindrops falling upon his tongue. He grunted aggressively while trying to walk on the uncanny white cloud. His hair was beginning to rise until the curls were becoming straight and become black at the roots and his brown skin was beginning to blacken at the fingertips. He was still scouring the surrounding clouds in the hopes of finding an answer but the fleets of slowly drifting clouds provided none. His frustration was growing and the brown of his skin was increasingly becoming replaced with strange blackness that festered everywhere on his body, even the white in his eyes were being taken over by this inexplicable darkness.
Upon seeing this, he yelled. He tried to calm down but his temper was taking over. He took deep and controlled breaths to ease the angst. He kept doing this until he felt on the calmer end that was the spectrum of emotion. He shut his eyes and focused internally like a meditation. He continued inhaling and exhaling. He sighed quietly and breathed in once more. He opened his eyes again and breathed in and out again. The darkness at the tips of his fingers was beginning to recede, again leaving his rich ocher skin to flourish openly.
"Damn!" He sighed with a flat voice.
He wiped away the sweat on his forehead with his wet hands. He sighed again and felt the beating of his chest with the palm of his hand. He had calmed himself, not allowing the fear to overwhelm him.
How am I on this cloud? He thought to himself.
It is because I have placed you here. A stark voice said to him in his mind.
"Prometheus!" He called out with heartfelt passion. He felt he was no longer alone, a large weight of relief rolling off of his shoulders.
"Where are you?" He called out. "I cannot see you!"
Do not concern yourself with that, Gaijin. Just know that I am with you at all times. Not physically but in your mind and heart. But, strike this concern from your mind. Pandora is back.
"What! So soon?"
So soon? No, Gaijin. You have been asleep for a very long time.
"How long have I been asleep, Prometheus?
I do not know...
Gaijin's heart felt like it was ready to plunge from his chest upon hearing what Prometheus said. The anxiety of it made him drop to his knees on the soft fleecy cloud. The darkness appeared again but Gaijin saw it and took several deep breaths, hoping to battle it back into obscurity.
"What...what did you just say, Prometheus..." He sounded agitated. He pushed his hand against his face and groaned with a dark and overbearing sense of worry weighing heavily in his chest.
Do not let the fear take you. I am still with you, you are not alone and I know it is a heavy weight to bear but I did tell you that the day would come where you would have to rise once more and protect our people.
"She broke out of the box...huh..." Gaijin said frustratedly. "Where is Athena? She is still here, right? Hephaestus? Epimetheus? Artemis? Boreas? Oceanu—"
Gaijin, I do not know...but right now you need to focus your thoughts and prepare your wings. The cloud will be tearing soon. Prepare your wings now!
"What...No. No! What are you talki—" Feeling the fleecy cloud beginning to break apart and become softer, Gaijin was worked into a panic.
Prepare your wings, now! Hurry, Gaijin!
"They're not moving...curses!" His belly was jerking and moving like a leaf blowing in the wind. His chest was fighting down the beating of his heart but he began to wonder if his chest could hold back his thumping heart any longer. His hand had torn through a part of the small white cloud.
"No! NO!" Gaijin shouted, trying to fight back the feelings of uncertainty and fear which were welling in his mind. "They aren't moving, Prometheus. I'm trying to move them." Gaijin held his breath as he saw the bit of land below through the tear in the cloud. It looked so small, like a colony of ants blanketed with snow.
The cloud in its entirety was now fading gradually. Gaijin fell further into the cloud, feeling muffled and stuffed. His leg fell through the slow fading cloud and his arm soon followed. Trying to stay calm proved difficult.
"Breathe in. Breathe out. Do not let the darkness take over," Gaijin muttered to himself, trying to work himself calm, his eyes wheezy and half closed.
Good, Gaijin. You must calm you and focus your mind.
"Oh what useful advice," Gaijin mocked trying to find a safe place on the cloud to retreat to but it the entirety of the cloud was a hazard. No more was the cloud hardened enough to support his weight, now it was a clustered ball of vapor as a cloud was supposed to be. His face was a heated knot of apprehension and welling dread.
He began pulling and tugging on his wings trying to pry them open them but they were not moving in the slightest. He kept doing this until there were tufts of feathers in his shaky clutch.
"It isn't working."
They may have very well atrophied. Prometheus considered. But I do not understand why. The rest of your body has been well preserved.
"Prometheus, I'm scared. Where is Athena!"
Gaijin...I do not know. Please just try and focus. We do not have time. If you cannot use your wings, you will crash to the land!
"I am trying! No!" Gaijin shouted while watching the fleecy cloud draining away into thin mists near him. His flat palm broke through the cloud and his arm fell along with it. His bottom, too, began breaking through the diminishing cloud. He was now holding onto a small bit of cloud that was still solid enough to bear his weight. He cried out aloud, his heart ready to leap from his trembling ribs, and like that the piece of cloud he was holding onto with dear life, broke away and vanished like the rest. Like a fallen angel, Gaijin fell.
He cried and whimper, bellowed and wept but that would not save him. His ears were hot and the darkness came again. From the tips of his fingers to the joints of his elbows, it spread through him like a blackened fire, a mutating obscurity. His mind was too chaotic to fight it back now. His arms were blackened, the roots of his hair were blackened, the white in his eyes changed like the change from day to night. Falling through the sky, he was this small speck, another raindrop to crash upon the cold and thirsty land. His wings were still useless to him, for they stood stiff and unresponsive as before, even the pounding gusts of wind could not persuade them to open. Like a long antiquated book with bonded pages, his wings were closed shut, never to be open again.
His body was flung and spun in all severe manners. His bare body was pelted the chilly gusts and pouring rain.
Gaijin, I am so sorry. Prometheus intimated.
Seeing the earth so close to him now, Gaijin could only brace himself for what was to come and like that his body struck the earth in a mighty fall. Buried into the earth, his eyes were left hanging open, and blood spilled from every wound in his body and was soaked in by the snowy patch of land, leaving a pinkish-red imprinted into the snow. The darkness was now covering his body almost in its entirety. He lied on the ground, motionless and blackened by a strange dark matter which he was so nervous of. The clouds cried over him with the blackness still spreading across his body. It seemed Gaijin was no more—
His fingers began to spasm and jerk and his eyelids were fluttering suddenly. Gasping for breath, he looked around aimlessly at the vacant pasture around him but still, he was too weak to move. It was so strange. His body had crashed but he was still alive and his body, essentially, was still fully together as if the earth was not strong enough to break him. He groaned and writhed on the ground, still suffering the pain of having fallen so far. The blackness around his body had now almost completely taken over him apart from the skin above his heart.
Gaijin, can you hear me? Prometheus's voice echoed. Gaijin!
With a weary heart and body, Gaijin nodded slowly and painfully. He fluttered his eyes open and kept them open. He relaxed his mind and pulled in an inordinate deal of air into his body, filling his uncovered belly until it was bloated like the belly of a deer.
"The amartia saved me didn't it?" Gaijin asked, referring to the darkness on his body, in a low and morbid tone. He felt around his wounds and saw they began healing itself underneath the strange darkness that was festering around his body, dark smoke rising from the wounds as they were slowly restored.
It did.
Gaijin got up from the ground. Still rattled from the fall, he fell down on one knee. He could see the blood stained snow slowly become white again as his blood evaporated and rose in the air in the form of this odd, dark smoke. The wounds on his body, whilst healing, too were covered in this dark smoke.
"Where am I," Gaijin asked while looking upon the barren land immersed in chilly snowflakes.
In a similar morbid tone to that of Gaijin's, Prometheus said, I wish I could tell you.