Of Light and Darkness

[Caira Ayryn]

A soft burst of air gushed into her lungs. Smoothly it rolled from her nose when she exhaled. In... Out. Loud in her ears, but almost as if time had slowed to a creeping halt.

There was no hourglass, no slowly sifting sand, nor rain to fall, or sun to rise. There was no way to measure time, or even space if she had attempted to walk forth, in this gate of darkness. Caira straightened her posture, it had crumpled to an invisible force. Almost fitting, that she would be weighed with the gravity she felt at the beginning of her journey in the Nexus.

Ah home... She had been ripped from it and tossed here, into this unimaginable world of light and darkness. That seemed to follow her everywhere. The light in someone's eyes when they smile, verses the depthless darkness when you cross them. Or the plain white of the Nexus, verses this dark and strange void.

Yes, from what Caira could see, standing on her little square in the warped twists and turns that the unknown held under latch and key in this mystery, there were only lines traversing the land that lay ahead of her. They were to be her light in this maze of muddled thought and fear. She simply hoped they would not lead her to death.

One misstep. That might be all it would take. To end her journey. She had gotten so close. Too close, to dare make a fool's mistake to take her back to the beginning.

The Nexus. A room of light flashed from below her eyelids, then the memory blurred into the darkness of betrayal. Merik's face as he had sealed her, completely immobilized, in the same coffin that the treasure map that they had came for was hiding... Waiting to be found.

His was the face of betrayal. Truth, honor, compassion, it had all been a lie. Caira had been scammed, taken advantage of, by both her kidnapper, Omni, and this strange prisoner she had met in the dunes. Still, there was something about it that didn't fit, as Caira remembered the single moment Merik spoke of a curse that had conquered every aspect of his life. Every meaningful aspect. He almost seemed as though he thought it would have been better for him to have been trapped in that cage below the sand, for the duration of his immortal life. Even after all of this, the fiery chill of betrayal, Caira thought it better a man be free and have the potential to be stopped, than to be trapped and never have the chance to change his ways. But... Maybe that was the monk speaking.

Caira wondered if she could summon in this striped world of black and grey, but decided if the results were catastrophic (and perhaps explosive) she would regret her decision. Instead, she extended her hand out, directly forward, and immediately felt a weight slam I her her empty palm. It felt like a thick slap, done by air, or a similarly invisible force that stomped her hand with immersive pressure.

The Mage gulped and pulled her hand gently away, with the slight fear that it might be ripped from her limb.

"Forward, that's a no." She determined, and then pondered if she could use sound to guide her through the darkness, but her ears weren't keen enough to allow for echolocation, so she sat down for a moment on the ground, almost meditating, before she tore off her shoes and tied the strings together.

It almost resembled a windmill, or a version of a boomerang. It would be more effective than extending her hand, and risk losing it, and well, losing her sword would be a liability too. She tossed her circling shoes to her left, and seeing how they didn't float from the ground, or run into an invisible wall, Caira determined that this was her way to go.

Her bare feet walked along the straight line, and every few yards she continued her procedure, and the gentle thump of shoes quickly filled the murky shadows with sound, and stirred awake the darkness.

[Caira Ayryn]

For a while, the coarse sand that had found its way into her shoes, crunched in her coiled toes. After some time, the sensation dissipated, and the trail of grainy bread crumbs soon ran dry.

She left her path in the dust, so to speak, and soon, there would be no way to tell if she was even going in a relatively straight line anymore. Caira's shoe boomerang was the only thing that kept her from getting bored.

The prime continued walking, so far, she had not encountered too much that was dangerous, other than one time where she had walked forward, and twenty pounds of force slammed down on her shoulders, straight down her backbone, and shackling pounds on her knees. She walked in the heaviness with a slouch for a while, because had she not chosen one path, the only other place to turn was left - where there were no lay lines in sight. The abnormality of this sent shivers down her spine.

It looked like a black hole, or perhaps, a starless sky. Infinite black in that pocket of land, or space, or whatever. The explanation of this was assuredly danger, and Caira had not chosen to take the risk. Only later did she notice that the lines were actually on the ceiling.

But it was all relative. After all, what was a blue sky to some places, was black to other planets with no sun. Perhaps black all the time. Yes, that was a good comparison, however for Caira, who derived her energy from stars rather than the usual sustenance of food, she could certainly understand a world with a little weirdness and perhaps, rather preferred it.

There was no way to tell how much time had passed. The gray darkness seemed to shift every so often, so that it gave the impression that something or even more generally, this place, was alive. Fear tingled in her spine as her feet propelled her forward. Not too often, the shuffling sound of her soft footsteps, would be distorted, or perhaps even gone all together. This put the Camelot soldier on alert, but of course it did, anything unknown could be dangerous, right?

A groan came from her "stomach" and Caira was already feeling the weariness of fatigue. She decided that her feet had propelled her long enough, and though she had no idea how long she had traversed this very dismal void, she needed to take a moment and collect her thoughts. Maybe it was the monk in her, that had prompted her to meditate. She didn't – couldn't – doubt what felt natural to her. It gave her comfort, and brought her peace as she closed her eyes and the lines striating across like waves on the sea and streaking lines from air birds in the sky, were all washed away.

The strong-willed prime would not let her thoughts succumb to the darkness, even though it dwelled at every so-called "corner" of the room. With every inhale of thick air, her breaths became more labored and stiff. The air around her was constraining, as though wrapping around her like a python with cold steel chains. Her brow flexed, her closed eyes flinched, and the hair on her neck bristled with trepidation once more. It was almost as though her stomach had risen to her throat, heat and a flush of scarlet flooded to her face, and a burst of nausea swayed in her gullet, so that she had to gulp in order to keep down her angst.

Her purple eyes flared ope, and while she had little to piece her assumption off of, her jet black hair dangled down perpendicular to her shoulders, while her shoulders were being tugged in he opposite direction. Nerves flared to life and adrenaline pulsed through every end of her body.

Her hands reached out weakly, grasping nothing at first, but the thick force of pressure that was causing her body to float upward. Not only had the lines and rules of gravity, changed from underneath here but now she was being swept away with it. "Ahhh!" She exclaimed, and it echoed, all across the distance of the endless void.

[Caira Ayryn]

It. Was. Torture.

Caira’s body was nearly being pulled limb from limb. She had read the stories from the library in Dalaran about this place. It was a legend, and now she was living it. But what this legend hadn’t mentioned was the calamity of the gravity ripping her from limb to limb.

She felt the tugging on her lower half of her body, a dark mass of a force was grabbing at her legs. Like quicksand, except the same thing was happening to her torso and head. Her spine creaked with the stretch of pain, and finally her one-piece suit of black attire ripped in two. It still remained covering her, however her pale stomach was revealed as her body grew with the force she could not fight.

It was just like the beginning of her journey, where in the Nexus, all that time ago, she had been shocked with the force of ten boulders on her shoulders. A gravity she had learned to live with. Now, two forces of gravity collided on the same grid of this world. The void was an obscure and essentially barren place, but it didn’t seem to be lacking in chaos. Caira gulped, and unsheathed the sword she had acquired in her homeland Camelot, from her belt. This was no small task, as even defying the gravity for a second caused her muscles to rapidly fatigue. Meanwhile, she felt like every bone in her body was being pulled apart.

Color flushed to her face, and her joints began to groan with pain. The sword remained in her grasp as her arms were flung back over her shoulders, into what was now a “dormant” position. All while the strength of the rivaling gravity grew. The amount of time she had to move, dwindled away. And at some point, her bones would eventually break.

What a horrid death this would be. But it wasn’t like she had parents she would have to explain it to in the afterlife. If there was such a thing. Maybe if Primes died in the void, they didn’t come back? But that was simply a theory Caira was unwilling to test.

It was not her curiosity, but sheer willpower that kept her going. Her knuckles had become colorless and white, so pale, a beacon in the darkness. Meanwhile, the leather-fibers in the material her clothes were made out of, began to crinkle and mold in with her skin. She grimaced, and her expression was surely gurned into one straight out of a horror movie.

She reconfigured the old she had on the sword, her palms were sweaty, and she almost lost her grip a few times. The handle held by just two of her loosening fingers, which were fatiguing fast against the strain of growing force. Now, she had it though. Her silver blade angled down into the ground and speared into the floor that was so close to her, but far enough so that she hadn’t been able to reach it by ordinary means.

The blade was thrusted deep into the dismal looking ground, and unearthed a bit of etchings as she claimed her way back to freedom, and wretched her body out of the paralleled gravities. It was similar to the legend of excalibur she had read up on. Except that in this version, the sword was forced into the stone of the ground, and she was pulling herself out of death’s grasp.

Her biceps flexed as she pulled her body out toward the ground, and out of the quicksand-like space that had wrapped around her so tightly. For some reason or another, gravity was a three dimensional form, and while it could presumably grow and shrink to size, it seemed to be something that was expanding horizontally - which made sense, considering how she was just trapped in a little gravity tunnel, like some chinese finger-trap toy.

She was able to crawl below where the force was crackling just a foot above her. Strands of her hair were magnified to it, and still shot straight up, despite how she willed herself to still hang onto the sword, and hung resembling a slipping laundry string in the air. A groan of pain and one final pull, and Caira was out of the woods, more or less.

She laid there on the motionless ground for some time after she had convinced herself the gravity wouldn’t change again. Her muscles had fatigued, and everything she imagined began to go a bit hazy. She summoned her version of food, which was a glowing bright star, and let it fall into her mouth. Its heat popped like crackling fire in her mouth as the light and energy was accepted as fuel to her body. Most people, and primes ate food. Caira, had been considered more or less an alien on her own planet, and after learning a certain technique taught by the monks, she had been able to learn how to live off of light. Well, later she learned just how to become the light. But that was a story for another time.

The Prime waded through the thick pool of darkness, wheezing a bit from the thinness of the air. Her compass had become the lines on the ground. Lines she could only guess lead to Omni. But how did she know? Doubt coiled in her empty mind while she all but summoned the strength to beat it down. The lines could lead away from Omni, and to a giant monster that had every intention to eat her. She felt the ghost of a shiver as she imagined that giant worm that Merik and she had valiantly defeated on their way here. Well, her way here. Merik had buried her in a ditch. Literally. Alive.

In. Her. Own. Coffin.

But she was over it. Surely, monks specialize, if not in peace, in the forgiveness of man’s sins. Still, Caira, a Knight of Camelot couldn’t help but to feel a little bit of malice on her tongue when she envisioned Merik’s happy-go-lucky smile, while his eyes were dosed and layered in lies. As she paced onward, she recalled the fact that she had no friends.

TBG had gone to Coruscant, to hunt another bounty. Why hadn’t Caira let her resentment for Omni go, and just gone with her? They had had some great times together, and Magus too, Caira didn’t know why she felt like she had to free everyone. As she reflected, Caira came to the conclusion that her subconscious was nagging at her. She had wanted to be free herself. Free from the question of who her parents were. Free from the untold curiosity that was were her destiny would bring her. And of course, free from any place she did not want to be.

That was why. That had to be why she couldn’t stay. She had freed Merik, who had gone and backstabbed her the second he had gotten the chance. Caira was so blind, she hadn’t seen it coming, it wasn’t like there was much in it for him to take her so far, and to ditch her in the mud. But that was the way some people were. An one thing was certain about the nature of man. Humans, weren’t prone to change. They had to learn it.

...

The walking had gone on for too long. It was driving her mad. Her determination was wearier than any bone in her body, and her shoulders had wilted under the weight of her burden. She longed for a friend. It was so simple.

There was no one to talk to, no one to smile to. It was only her and the darkness. And heck, the darkness was winning. Caira felt like ripping her hair out just to pass the time. The blood pounded in her ears, and it felt like it had been eons since she had seen sunlight. Time had perpetuated to her own perception, so in a way, it certainly had been eons, especially with no device to measure it, save her own body.

After a while, she felt the weight on her shoulder increase. Just above the tattoo she never talked about, always hid, and barely remembered was even there, a white figure appeared. No- it wasn’t Omni. Not in the slightest. It was a creature she had known from long ago. A pet, if you will.

A cat hovered about an inch over the clavicle of her shoulder, it was evenly perched as it sat there, accompanying the girl on her adventures, and enduring the strife of the mission with her. There was no specific time that it had appeared. It just simply had.

She recognized the creature by its cat-like ears and ever-growing smile. Those from china would be reminded of the lucky cat that squints eternally, but adorned with a charming smile. Caira’s ‘cat’ was entirely white. It had fur. His head would move just slightly for him to get a good feel for what was going on. He’d purr occasionally, especially when influenced by her strategically targeted scratches behind his ears.

Finally Caira broke the silence of the void, “Kenzu, how did you even get here?” There was no response from her cat, as it still hovered over her shoulder, but she carried him as though he were perched right on there. “The Omniverse sure does work in funny ways, doesn’t it? Why couldn’t you show up sooner, eh buddy? I battled with a friend, then gave him the key to his freedom. Then I made another couple of friends, and went to this lousy place with nearly no life at all! It was covered in sand of all things, and all the color had been bleached away by the sun...”

Caira talked to the cat for hours. Not knowing if the cat could quite understand what she was saying. Just having his twitching set of ears was enough for Caira, who had nearly reached her wit’s end.

Finally, her lips grew too parched to move with her force, and her voice croaked as she grew weary. It had been too long a journey, and she and Kenzu neared an ominous looking portal. Of course, it had to be the gate. Kenzu the cat stayed balanced on her shoulder, like a lucky charm as her violet eyes shuddered when she grew near the door.

It glowed in the darkness. It was the light at the end of her tunnel. Caira smiled wholeheartedly and breathed in some relief. It was the end of her monotony, and she hoped never to return to the verse of crosses and darkness. Instead, Caira looked up once more at the gateway to answers and hope.