Dyss moved forward, confused by the constant stream of images he seemed to receive, of places he had never been with people he had never seen. Or places that he couldn't possibly be or have been. None of it made any sort of sense, even when he did recognize occasional characters...

Entering the clearing, Dyss was using his original vision. He had never seen Izumi with "real" vision in the first place, and wouldn't even recognize her that way. However, he recognized her shape, her outline, and her colors...

"Izumi!"

Dyss would run forward, immediately kneeling by her side, and lightly moving her from her position laying across the fallen tree to laying on her back across his legs, his arms behind her shoulders. He couldn't tell if Izumi was alive, even, but he didn't really want to think about any sort of worst-case scenario...

Izumi showed no resistance. She was drawn off of the fallen tree and practically into Dyss's lap, where she lay limply and helplessly. Even then she didn't move. There didn't appear to be any wounds on her, though. She was fully clothed and clean, even-- all except for her feet, which were bare, bloody, and dirty. She wasn't moving at all, though, not beyond something so simple as breathing. Her heart seemed to be beating just fine, too.

But the real issue was consciousness. Izumi was not asleep, not in the raw technical definition. Her eyes were open-- unfocused, but open.

There was a strong presence here, one similar to that which was felt twice previously-- back when Dyss sought after Recheov, and even earlier when he was returning to the village. Beyond Izumi, Dyss, and the small bird, there didn't appear to be anything else.

That Dyss could see, at least . . .

"Izumi?"

Dyss was relieved to find her heart beating, but the way she was comatose, or... Possessed? Dyss wasn't quite sure how to describe it. She just wasn't there, despite her eyes being open...

"Izumi!? Try to wake up!"

He had no idea if she could hear him, but it was all he could really do. Setting her lightly on the ground, Dyss took the cloth from his makeshift scabbard, laying her feet on the cloth and wrapping them up briefly to at least provide a bit of comfort, he hoped. The sword on the ground beside him, he would move back to Izumi, lifting her shoulders up and holding her to try to awaken her.

"Is someone... Or something... Here? And this bird... What happened here, Izumi?"

Dyss talked out loud, almost hoping to provoke any sort of response from anything...

Izumi said nothing and didn't appear to react to Dyss in the slightest. He shook her, he moved her, he wrapped her bloody feet, and he held her, but Izumi said nothing. Her lips parted and her jaw dropped open after sitting upright for long enough, and her head lulled uselessly to one side.

The bird's deaf song lowered in pitch, falling to an even more forlorn and sorrowful melody. It was, however, absolutely tone-deaf, and the scattered beauty of the turquoise bird's song was hard to follow, if not impossible to grasp when observing it as a casual listener.

It almost required looking at it from a different angle.

Dyss held Izumi still, unsure what was going on. However, the presence of the bird's song... It was haunting in a way. Almost familiar, at this point. The bird had seemed to try to lead him to Izumi, though...

"What are you...?"

Dyss talked to the songbird, not really knowing that it couldn't hear him. The fact that it was a bird was also perhaps not a good sign for Dyss' sanity. Still, as he did, Dyss looked around the area with the other form of vision he had gained... The one that he recognized as "real" from the vague memories that haunted him...

And through a lens mostly unfamiliar to Dyss, looked through for the first time since he'd experienced it, Dyss would find there was no bird perched upon the fallen tree.



The girl did not respond to Dyss, for her eyes were not upon his lips, and nothing filled her ears but eternal, yet pressureless emptiness.

She sat upon the fallen tree, a girl short, gaunt, and frail. She had bushy, yet ratty turquoise hair. She did not appear to be much younger than Dyss and Izumi, however. Her eyes, a faded and cloudy blue as they were, were focused upon the ground, and her ears were covered in tattered green ear muffs. She was barefoot and only wore a long and tattered dress that fell down just above her knees. All the color had aged away and there were black splotches all over, left by time and injury.

Yet in spite of appearances, her voice was absolutely angelic.

The song she sang was not one of her own creation, but of another's. It was a song she knew by heart, one she knew of the lowest possible moods. It was a sound of forlorn and defeat, of the helplessness of the observer, witnessing the horror of the show, but forced down into the audience where one could do no more than watch, wait, and hope for the very best.

"When the Sun burns out, will any of this matter?"

Dyss remained where he was, holding Izumi, though his attention was on the girl who had appeared. She was... Familiar. Dyss had met her, back in Purgatory. She was clinging to existence there, held by... Forces he didn't really understand. She may be his future, since Attis' work was likely to be destroyed...

"Aria... I remember you..."

Dyss didn't move, but he did watch her curiously. Did she remember him? Was this another vision, divorced from reality, or least the reality he had seen? He didn't really understand...

"The sun doesn't matter. All that matters is now..."

The girl, a Memory that Dyss knew as Aria, let her eyes wander as her lips parted to produce another line of sorrowful, casually despaired song.

"Who will be there to remember who we were?"

It was just then, though, that she caught something in her peripheral vision. Dyss's lips were moving, but he'd been talking before this. He wasn't addressing her, though. He was never addressing her, not when he was passing through the village-- not even when he spoke with Recheov. All her attempts at getting his attention were for naught, and again she found herself unable to do much more than play the role of the watcher, singing a song that none could understand, and those that could had simply blocked out.

But Dyss was . . . the way he talked-- the way he looked up at her when he talked--

Aria ceased singing.

"You . . . can see me?" she asked.

Unlike her singing voice, Aria's speaking voice was not at all angelic. She spoke in a dulled falsetto and carried no control over pitch or tone. She spoke very well, though. Eloquently, in fact. She was intelligible in every way, but it was very clear that she was physically unable to hear Dyss or anyone else in the world.

Dyss could see Aria, but only with the new way he had learned to see. He still didn't understand its nature, or its purpose, though. However, Aria didn't seem to hear very well. In fact, she had completely missed what he had said. He had a better way, though. He could simply create letter, floating next to himself in a cool blue tone...

I can hear you, and I can see you now, but only sometimes. What happened here?

Dyss motioned to Izumi slightly, still holding the comatose girl where she laid on the forest floor. The Legionnaire had made his life so difficult in such a short time... Dyss had lost a friend and almost lost Izumi, it seemed. If only he could understand...

And I remember you.

The girl was caught between searching Dyss's lips for words and watching the letters he made appear-- though quickly enough, those occupied her attention and attracted her curiosity. In a way, it took Aria's mind off of everything she'd helplessly witnessed thus far.

She smiled some. It was good to know that Dyss hadn't forgotten her. At least something good had come from reaching out to him, even if it was selfish of her to see it as such. Everyone committed their fair share of selfish deeds, though, and Aria was far from perfect.

"I am glad to know that some-one still does," she said.

There was Attis and Toushikyo . . . but to her knowledge, that was all. And to those two, Aria and Ozrik may as well have been as good as dead. Dyss might have told Attis about his encounter with them back at the facility, but Aria knew Attis very well. She knew how hopeless and helpless he could feel sometimes, and how often he resigned himself to the belief that "there's nothing left I can do," which was fine. After all, there really was nothing left that Attis could possibly do for her or Ozrik.

"But . . ." she trailed off and frowned, "I cannot say I know for sure. I think . . . she has been touched by the Legionnaire."

Aria reached out to try to touch the words before Dyss, hesitant but unwilling to allow her curiosity to relent. She'd never seen this particular power before . . .

"But I do not know how humans work. If he should be able to influence them or not," Aria motioned down to Izumi, "She is not reacting as we do . . . so I-- I suppose humans react differently to him?"

In all honesty, Aria was concerned for the health and safety for this girl, even though she didn't sound like she was. If she had control over her speaking voice, she'd have sounded sympathetic and concerned. This had led to many a grave misunderstanding in her past.

Given the sort of halting and awkward tone of voice Aria used, Dyss certainly wasn't going to judge her for that. If nothing else, the way she had been huddled over the other figure back in Purgatory was enough to know that she had a heart, unlike two people he had recently run into...

"I'll... I'll help her. Whatever it takes..."

Truthfully, Dyss probably owed his life to Izumi, though he currently didn't even see her. Or himself, for that matter. He had blocked the image of both himself and Izumi from the use of this power. It felt... Significant, somehow. Significant that with these eyes, he not see her or himself in the state they were in. Particularly her...

Remembering Aria couldn't hear well, and perhaps happy that she couldn't hear the struggling nature of his voice, he made a new set of letters for Aria to read.

What do you know about the Legionnaire? And how did you get here in the first place?

While Dyss was happy (in a way) to see Aria here, it seemed strange, considering what he knew...

Dyss unfortunately could not entirely remove something from vision whilst looking through this lens. He could at most reduce it to a blur to his own perception. In general, it seemed his powers of manipulating light were significantly weaker through this lens-- something, perhaps, to be expected, as this vision was one of the dullest and most muted interpretations of light in the universe. And it just so happened to be what some human beings called normal.

"You . . . do not know of the Legionnaire?" Aria asked with a curious tilt of her head.

She withdrew her hand from the words as they disappeared. They seemed like they should have been solid, but they weren't in any way. In the end, her fingers passed through them like they would a beam of light. At another time, in another place, she may have tried to wave her hand through them, just to see if she could dissipate this light on her own-- but only during the happier times of her life.

"That . . . that surprises me," Aria said with a wrinkled brow, "But . . . maybe he became reclusive? After he lost the Seeker. But he still should have the Maestro with him . . ."

It wasn't that she was intentionally holding back information, though. Rather, it seemed that something of common knowledge during Aria's time had been reduced to a state of secrecy in Dyss's time, leaving the girl confused and unsure of the current state of Memoria.

Dyss was curious as well. He wasn't sure when Aria had begun to fade... It could have been years, judging by Attis' apparent lifespan. Dyss hadn't really thought about how quickly "normal" changed when almost everyone's lifespan was so short. And the ones who lived didn't particularly care to talk...

"Attis... He doesn't..."

Dyss had to catch himself again. Manipulating light while in this state was more difficult than usual, somewhat clumsy and limited... His point of view even tended to be close to his actual head, without even thinking about it...

Attis doesn't talk about that. I've never met the Legionnaire or heard of a Maestro or Seeker. The rest of us are too young.

Young was itself relative. Dyss, despite his apparent age, was three years old, by his reckoning. Perhaps more, and perhaps less. Purgatory was unforgiving to the perception of time...

How do I stop him?

Dyss' thoughts wandered to the friend he thought a traitor. While he had failed in the task Dyss had trusted him with, perhaps Recheov might return to normal. It was only right...

"I . . . see," Aria said.

She had to resist the urge to sigh. So much had changed . . . and in how long? To a greater extent, she really didn't know. The concept of time was a very new thing to her, too. Newer to her than it was to Dyss, in fact. Unlike Dyss, she never had the opportunity to come to this world . . .

Not that her recent observations were much of a tour de force of exemplifying this world's grandeur. If anything, it made her feel sorry for the unfortunate souls that lived here.

"The Legionnaire is the king of Memoria," she said at long last, "And the Maestro, the Seeker, and Attis are his agents and advisers. Together they comprise the Crepusculum ex Memoria. In my time, to speak against them was to commit treason."

Then she realized something-- something she should have remembered earlier, and said aloud for Dyss's sake, if only to clear up some confusion.

"But . . . I suppose it makes sense, then, that Legionnaire has been quiet in your time. His enforcers are gone, correct? The Seeker has perished and Attis-- Attis . . ." she trailed off as she thought about him. Remembered the last time she ever spoke with him. "He refuses to assist the Legionnaire anymore."

But no matter. That wasn't exactly what Dyss wanted to know, though it was certainly much more Memoria wide politics than he ever knew before.

"I'm unsure if he can be stopped," she said with a frown, "From what I remember . . . Attis had spoken to Ahsrich about him-- sometime before he left us-- he said he could not "defeat the king of Memoria;" and that if he were to die, to run far away, and try to live out our lives in peace."

With that, she smiled sadly. Their roles had reversed, it seemed, and there was no peace to be had for any of them-- Attis, Ozrik, or herself.

Dyss could feel anger rising, despite his best efforts. Anger at himself, who had started all this, and opened the way to the real world for himself and the rest. Anger at himself for bringing Izumi into this, who now lay comatose in his arms. Anger at Milos, who had invited the Legionnaire into this world. Anger at Recheov for failing. And... Anger at Attis, he realized. Anger at the man who would sacrifice his friends, both past and present, to fight the Legionnaire, it seemed...

So the only friends I have left are you and Attis, and he

Dyss frowned as he reached this point, perhaps implying he would have gone on to say something negative, but caught himself. The anger he held was deep, but he didn't want to upset Aria, either. And really, he knew the truth... He was angry at the Legionnaire above all. The man who would destroy a world for his own sake, and turn Dyss' friends against him in the process.

I won't run. I can't run. Not with Izumi like this, and not when he is controlling my friends. There must be a way to stop him.

The cloth over Dyss' eyes, if Aria was to look closely, would betray a slight blue glow, coming through from where his eyes were beneath...