”Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock,
The sky fell on the clock.
Chains unbound,
the sky began to frown,
and kept on falling down.
Freed at last, sullen is my face,
Quickly must i move on; no more time to waste.”
-Oda Mi-wa Ayansa; The Fallen Child
She curled her fingers as the blackness of space and its twinkling stars began to flood her eyes. Was she…? Pain flushed her head in the form of a migraine as the sight she hadn't seen in so many uncountable ages poured into her eyes, prompting her glowing eyes to widen as to take in the darkness. So long in that… place had made her weak, but now… it was hers. Freedom. The Ibi-ti Tubu, as she called it. The place of prison, now another mark of her strength.
From her back, wings of light flickered to life and spread wide, unfurling from projectors as they began to bend gravity to their will. She straightened out and first looked over herself, her dark hands held out with fingers splayed. Her robes were weathered from time and the metal interlaced with her body was scratched, but more than perfectly functional. From her belt she produced the leaf-shaped blade of her Ida shortsword. It looked plain until she squeezed its handle tightly and a soft white glow coursed down it’s spine. The spine opened as a thin coat of particles formed glowing white around the blade’s edge, impossibly thin.
With a flick of her wrist, it dissipated and she sheathed the blade, then doing the same with the spear on her back. Afterwards she returned it, and then turned to observing the area around her, content with the state of her equipment.
Space glowed an eerie, soft red, amidst a three-dimensional field of black mist blotting out swathes of stars. She turned around and the visage of the galactic disk encompassed her vision. That was where she needed to go, but she had no method of faster than light travel- she would need to ponder for a moment.
Her sensors blinked as she set them to searching the area for any sort of life, sending out pings across light-minutes of space as she continued moving at absurd speeds through the void with gravitic manipulation. She furled her wings around herself, going partially dormant and looking internally while she waited for a return on her pings.
The air was cold as her mind resorted her to a soft, red sandy beach affront a sea of water saturated into a white colour by salt and minerals. She sat down, and let out a deep sigh.
“Finally free,” she said to herself in a resonating, tonal voice that sung with soft echoes and deep harmonies. A wave of anger flushed across her as she let the memories flush back to her, no longer hiding them with her safety confirmed. “pe ọmọ ale!” she yelled out in her native tongue, throwing a sandstone so hard that it disappeared behind a distant white-wave. A large insect crawled beside her and shriveled up, her seething rage burning the dream-creature before it could even get close enough to touch her. She stood and untied her hair, carefully running her fingers through it.
So much time lost, she couldn’t even count it. Left to rot by the people who raised her. A promise turned a lie by the ones she had given her work to. Trapped in a space between space because of someone she knew only the face of, a face that set hatred into her soul. ‘Never again,’ she thought, ‘never again shall they hold my trust.’ The white fire pouring from her eyes grew in intensity. The urge to kill was powerful, but she must contain herself- now is not the time to rampage. Find a way to move around the galaxy, find those who wronged her, and find a way to leave the galaxy. That is what she must do, what she must fulfill to be true to herself.
She let out a sigh and tied her hair back once more, hanging long but kept out of her face and off her shoulders by a tied cloth. The flames in her eyes died down, and she moved away, the sand she had once stood on turned into glass by the anger in her dream-state.
Ayansa let out a yell, and then she woke up once more.
Jame had been monitoring the sensors in utter boredom for his shift the past few hours. There was never anything out here- why were they monitoring the core anymore? He took a deep drink of his plain black coffee, and as he turned back towards the display, a blip appeared- his eyes widening- then disappeared as a thud rocked the small station. He spat out what coffee was left and jumped out of his seat, turning towards the wall behind him that he had felt the bang from.
There was almost complete silence for nearly three minutes, broken only by the soft beeps of the room and the occasional slight tap. As Jame was preparing to let out a sigh, and sit back down- writing it off as debris- there was a bright flash of white and the sound of a powerful wind. He turned his head away and backed up as the light began to subside.
He peeked up, and let out a surprised, fearful yell- in front of him was standing a person whom had appeared out of utterly nowhere. “What in the goddamn!?”
She was dark-skinned with pale white hair and glowing eyes of the same colour. She wore white and gold robes and a silvery wrap that held her long, flowing hair out of her eyes. She had glowing wings that spread out behind her, and a spear on her back. One of her arms had pieces of material glowing with white light circling around it, and she lifted her chin up with a look of annoyed superiority.
“Watch how you speak to me, Eniyan,” the woman sneered, her words in a foreign accent he had never heard before. She seemed to be struggling with galactic common, yet she became more naturalized to it with each word. “I need to know where I am, and you will tell me.”
He stuttered as he held his hands up, “y-yeah i can g-get you a map!” he cried out, turning around and pressing a few buttons on his console. On one of the larger screens, a picture of the map with some markers for important locations and, of course, where the station sat around the core. She pushed him aside and so effortlessly that the wind was pushed out of his lungs, and she began toying with the computers. Her hand laid across the computer and wires of light plunged into it, going gold as data flowed through her body. After a few seconds, she pulled back and frowned once more.
“You may move,” she said, not even looking at him. The white flashed once more, and the woman disappeared without a single trace aside from the bruises on Jame’s back and chest. He looked over at his coffee.
Had Alan spiked it again?
