The raging torrent of Black pulled Athira in.

She could do nothing to stop it.

It dragged her back and back until she fell into the place where her mindscape lay, no longer the tranquil twilight field but a monochrome landscape that radiated fear. The air scorched the insides of her nostrils. Through that connection that linked her to everything, she felt the heavy footsteps of a large presence, felt the pond's crystal waters bubble and froth as it was heated from below.

Without seeing them, she knew her memories were in chaos.

Black covering her like a second skin, Athira ran through the field, knocking aside grass and flowers with abandon, every single one of them the same shade as her Colour, completely indistinguishable from each other. The memories cowering around her pond were a little lighter, but barely.

They saw her. Their fear did not change. "What's going on?"

"The corrupted memory," said a memory that looked close to her eight year old self. "We can't stop it. It's rampaging across the mindscape and destroying anything it comes across."

"Destroying? Can they even do that?"

"When we're relevant, we gain strength, we... activate," the memory answered. "When the monster corrupted this other memory, it... I don't know. It made it stronger still, but only when it's active. It's strong enough to destroy us."

"How can memories destroy eachother? People don't just forget their past entirely, do they?

"Mindscape memories are the emotional attachment to your past," said the memory. Though Athira couldn't make out her expression, it was easy enough to guess. "You won't forget your past. You'll just lose whatever emotions were tied to it, like someone else had told you about their own experiences, and unless you get that memory under control, we're all going to be destroyed! Who knows what will survive of your mindscape without us holding it together!"

Athira didn't need to ask where the memory was. She could feel it, pushing and shoving its way up the connection. "And how in the name of Colour do I get a memory under control?"

"I don't know!" the memory screamed back, sinking to the ground. She seemed a little more transparent than before, but that could have been the result of the reddish mist rising up through the dirt. "Just do it quickly!"

Athira flicked out her wrists, kicking off the ground and flying towards the corrupted memory. So, she was winging it. That was fine. She did that on a regular basis, even if it wasn't usually in her head. She could do this, she just had to--

She stopped dead when she saw the memory.

She knew immediately which one it was, and she wanted to turn around and run until her mindscape ran out. She knew why this memory was triggered. It was the first memory the monster had truly touched, and she'd never, ever forget it.

Athira's hands were shaking, her feet back on the ground as the memory felt her and turned, its gaze sinking into her skin. Its eyes were large, black pools on the face that was several times the size of her own. The corrupted memory towered over her, blocking out the moon overhead, casting its shadow over her and blocking the light.

It reached out a hand.

Paralysed by fear, Athira did nothing but tremble as it grabbed her by the waist, lifted her up, and bored its stare into the back of her head.

The world around her turned a perfect black. The connection faded into the mist as the fog closed in and turned grass to stone, turned the hot air inside her lungs to the musty, confined scent of the underground.

The faint sound of dripping water lured her parched throat in the darkness. Though open, her eyes may as well have been gouged from their sockets. She saw with her fingertips, edging her way along the ground with careful steps. Her boot kicked something that squeaked and skittered away. Her fingers found damp rock. She followed it down the wall to where it lay in the gaps between the stones under her feet, useless.

She wanted to scream. She didn't dare. Instead, she sat on the floor and turned her back to the wall, arms up to shield her face. Once already she'd made the mistake of falling asleep in here, but never again. It didn't matter how heavy her eyelids were. She'd rip them out before she fell asleep in here again. The teethmarks of the rodents that occupied this tomb with her still stung.

No one was coming. She knew that now. She didn't know how many hours, how many days, how many weeks had passed down here. It didn't matter when the sunlight didn't reach you. Didn't matter when shadows clung to your body, sticky and invasive.

She'd tried escaping. Tried to press herself through the ceiling, only to realise she couldn't. The stones repelled her Colour, or so she'd assumed. Only the burning of the Black beneath her skin told her she'd used it at all. Her eyes couldn't tell her otherwise.

And so she sat, alone in the darkness, guarding her uncovered skin as the scuffles and squeaks and scratching grew braver.

In the back of her thoughts, Athira knew she wasn't there, but she couldn't break her mind free. She knew what came next. She knew things this younger Athira didn't. The days that would pass--the desperation that would kick in. The feral instinct that drove her slowly insane, the--

The darkness cracked.

Light.

Not the white, snow-glared light that had broken her solitude, either. No, she remembered that light, the silhouettes that had filled it as they called a name she didn't care about. This light was a beautiful, brilliant Yellow, and it breathed a name she treasured more than life itself.

"Thira?"

Breaking the memory, Athira found her feet. The light didn't cast a glow on the stones or her body. They were still bathed in pure shadow, the details lost in darkness. But this light existed. It was there.

Athira stumbled towards it. Her hand reached out. It flared, grew brighter, and swallowed her completely.

After her next blink, Athira was back in her mindscape, kneeling at the feet of the corrupted memory.

It screeched--a screech she knew had been recorded from her own throat so many years ago--and cried out in fury, lunging towards her only to recoil a moment later.

The Yellow light had followed her back. It bathed her mindscape in its light from a place high above her head, piercing the Black, splashing pure, beautiful colour across the field once more. Though the Black lunged and spiked, it couldn't contain the Yellow. A light that her shadows couldn't contain.

Protecting her.

Athira rose to her feet, a strange clarity in her mind. Fear still gripped her insides, but she wasn't paralysed. She could act--but what could she do?

The corrupted memory had to go. If it stayed connected to her mindscape, it could rise up again, and she wasn't sure how to subdue it anyway. At this distance, her other memories seemed barely significant. Which meant...

Athira covered the thrashing memory in Black and flew towards the edge of the field, the place where the grass had died and the ground had cracked, the Yellow light following her as she moved. As her feet touched down on the bare dirt, Athira hovered the corrupted memory over the cliff.

"It's a long way down there," she told it. "I can feel it, and that feeling decreases with distance. Once you're down there, you won't be able to influence my mindscape any longer."

The corrupted memory was beyond words. It thrashed and screamed and flailed, trapped in the unending cycle of darkness, each cycle only marked by that moment where she had changed. Where the monster had broken through.

"I banish you," said Athira, and dropped it.

The corrupted memory fell through the fog.

Eventually, the sound of its screams faded.

The growling below stopped.

Athira pushed away from her mindscape, zooming down that tunnel of Black that linked the two together to find herself huddled in the corner of the Elite's room, cloak wrapped around her and crystals burying her body up to her waist.

She pushed them aside. They tinkled to the ground, their sound the background noise to a word that was so much more precious than all the Colour in the world.

"Thira?" said Zoe, stepping forward. "Are you awake? Are you okay?"

"I'm... okay," managed Athira, her voice hoarse. "I'm awake."

"What happened?"

"The Elites... they triggered a memory. A bad one," said Athira, cutting off as she saw Zoe's question. "But I think I should be asking you the same question. Weren't you supposed to be in group training?"

Zoe dropped to her knees, leaning forward, taking in every detail with those concerned eyes of hers. "I was, but an Elite rushed in and said they needed me right now. They brought me outside the room and told me your Colour had destabilised, asked if this had happened before, if I knew what to do. I told them they had to let me inside with you and I'd fix it."

Athira felt cold. "Zo, the Colour could have killed you! I wasn't in control of it, it sliced open that other Elite's skin! What were you--"

"You wouldn't hurt me," said Zoe softly. "I trust you, Thira."

Athira shook her head, curling her knees against her chest. "Don't do that. Not unless you want to get hurt, Zoe. Don't trust me, especially not my Colour, not ever."

Yet Zoe ignored the warning and inched closer until her back was against the wall beside Athira. "You don't give yourself enough credit. Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't feel like giving the Elites a heart attack from the excitement."

"They can't see or hear us," said Zoe. "You fizzled that out when your Black went nuts, apparently. They had no idea what was going on in here, only that you'd still be inside because Colour can't penetrate the walls." She paused, giving Athira time to speak. When she remained silent, she continued in the voice of gentle words. "You kept muttering about shadows. Is that what you were running from when you found us? Shadows?"

Athira was speaking before she realised she'd wanted to. "I... no. The memory wasn't that. I thought I was back in the tomb."

"Tomb?"

Merely thinking about it in the past had left Athira shaking. Now, she didn't feel anything. Even remembering it in detail, every scratch and scrape on the walls didn't affect her. She was numb to the experience, able to recount it like she would a shopping list.

"When I was.. I don't even remember how old I was, but before I got my runes, the monks wanted to test the true 'depth' of my Colour. I'd had a few episodes where I lost control--Purple merge included--but it was never the extent of my power. They tried a few things to force me to show it, terrified as I was of my Colour, but nothing worked. Not until the tomb. I remember falling asleep, but when I woke up, there was nothing but black. I was convinced I'd gone blind for the first few hours, but eventually I realised where I was.

I couldn't move through the stone with my Black. I couldn't see my own hands. I followed the sound of water as I grew thirstier, eventually resorting to licking the walls out of desperation. There were rats that were as hungry as I was. I searched the walls for a way out, convinced it was a test, but there was none."

Zoe's eyes were wide. "Thira--how did you get out?"

Athira shrugged. "Some time later, a few days, maybe, they opened the tomb. I don't know what they were expecting to find, but the monster manifested itself in my body when I saw them. I remember feeling so angry, the urge to shatter their bodies against the stone, then the monster's spines and tail and horns pushed its way through my skin. It drove my movements, and I let it. I broke at least eight of them before Trian stepped in, and it was only after I'd gouged his shin to the bone that I realised what I was doing. They put me to sleep for a week to let me heal. When I woke up, there were thirty of them dedicated to sealing that monster within me away with runes forever." She lifted her arm, turning the runes over with a careless movement. "Guess they succeeded. The Elites are still alive."

Zoe was silent. Athira didn't blame her. She was mildly surprised that Zoe hadn't told her she was the real monster and stormed out of the room, telling the Elites to put her down on the way out.

"I..." Zoe's voice was barely audible. "I don't understand how anyone could do that to someone."

"It's not an excuse, but I didn't know what I was doing," muttered Athira. "I was running on survival at that point, and they were a threat."

"What?" said Zoe. "No, Thira, I mean the monks. I don't think anyone could survive the darkness and come out unscathed. What in the Colours were they expecting by torturing you?"

"I..." Athira closed her mouth. "I don't know. Not all of me left that darkness, though. I lost something in there, and I don't think I'll ever get it back. What did you do, anyway? I think I saw your Colour inside my mindscape."

"You can see your mindscape?" squealed Zoe. "That's like--wow, okay. That's seriously cool--but, uh, yea. I came inside and your Black was just everywhere. The tendrils kept trying to grab me so I whacked them a bit with the Yellow until they retreated, but it kept coming out of you and eventually I just thought, well, okay, I'll just blast you and see what happens."

"You blasted me."

"Yes."

"With your lazer."

"Um, yes."

Athira couldn't stop the giggle. "Flames be quenched, Zoe. You're amazing."

"Is that an 'I'm not mad you attacked me' statement of forgiveness?"

"Sure, we'll call it that. You're the reason I broke out of the memory, I think."

Zoe pounced into her usual hug, sending lines of warmth all over Athira's body. "We can stay here for the rest of the day, if you want. I'll just go out every so often and give the Elites an update so they don't storm the room."

"They want to remove my runes," said Athira, brushing her fingers against her arm. Already, the skin was cooling, the runes slowly sinking back into her skin. "I can't let them do that. Without the runes, I don't even want to imagine what the Black would do. They think some random Blue put them on to contain my 'volatile merger Colour'."

Zoe retreated, tilting her head. "So why don't we go out there now and ask them to rune them off?"

"Did you not just hear what I said? Spines, uncontrollable Colour, or does that sound like fun to you?"

"Well, think about it," said Zoe. "They don't know the monks were the ones to put them on, right?" The way she said monks held venom, like she would have blasted them had they been in the vicinity. "So they're not going to go full rune removal on you. They'll pop a rune on your skin, your runes fade naturally, and then your Black dissolves their rune anyway. Fixed!"

"And how do I explain the fact that their rune is suddenly gone?"

Zoe pursed her lips for a moment. "You ask them to make theirs invisible because you don't want the other kids to make fun of you?"

Athira turned over her arm, considering the idea. "That might just work, Zo. You're a genius."

She beamed. "I know, Thira, I know. Follow in my footsteps, will you?"

"What, getting sixty percents on my exams?"

"Pretty sure your average is fifty one."

"Mine are intentional."

"Mine are still higher!"

Athira rolled her eyes. "Flames be quenched, you're persistent. We'd better go talk to the Elites before my runes fade."

"Why do you say that anyway? Flames and fire and stuff?"

Athira gave her another shrug. "Fire was sacred to the monks, especially Trian. It banishes shadows, and it's the one element that humans can't control. We have air, water, stone, all the subsets--but no fire, so it's sacred. The element of the creators, I guess."

"Huh. I see. You should teach me more about this kinda stuff when we get home. It sounds a whole lot more interesting than the schoolwork they give us."

Zoe jumped to her feet and held out a hand, pulling Athira to her feet. Instead of releasing her fingers, she squeezed them and held them to her chest.

Her gaze was steady. "I'm glad you told me, Thira. I think you went through something horrible, and I know it's hard for you to talk about. Just know that, no matter what, I'm not going to turn my back on you. No matter what you've done, no matter what you do, I'll be right here. Okay?"

Athira's throat shut. Her answer was a nod.

Zoe smiled. "Good. Then, let's go trick some Elites who think they're special little fire elementals, shall we?"

Zoe twisted her grip and led Athira towards the door, never letting go of her hand.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Wew, chapter! Cookies and such, go team, yey!

I was half asleep when I wrote this, sorry if bleh, if there's any typos leave me a comment with ~3 words of where the typo is so i can ctrl+f and fix it in the morning =>

One more chapter until P2 is done, I think =o Depending on how indigo is going, miiiight be able to start part three. I DUNNO. WE'LL SEE.