Lost Ones

"Make haste, we owe it to the world to keep her safe."

These words came from an elderly and scraggily man with an unkempt beard, a bald head in tattered cloths that wrapped solely around his waist. In motion somewhere deep within what seemed to be a barren land. Or perhaps a once flourishing grove that was stripped of nature's kiss on its sacred grounds, rendered now to dead-straw fields and peculiarly hallowed brown stumps that follow him on cursed roots. Almost soundless as they creep along. Only cooing and grumbling from the base of the wood when he turns a quick glance to them.

He continued on.

"The prophecy clearly states that-"

"Enough about the prophecy, you'll upset the gods with your blasphemy!"

His companion sneered across from him, his voice almost cracking as he glared blunt daggers.

"You senile, Lost, ol' vet"

The antagonizing voice came from a young, scrawny, boy whose body trembled in his attempt to carry his side of a lifeless body clutched between the two of them. A woman, who's delicate wrists were firmly grasped by the boy whilst the old man held her ankles, stopping in his tracks. Two slender legs were hoisted at waist level on his end. But the boy's words did not dissipate from the air with passing minutes. A grimace had crossed the man's face as embers seemed to dance around his eyes. An illusion perhaps. Though enough to avert the boy's gaze with dots of sweat slipping down his cheeks.

"Lost?"

The man scowled.

"Do not compare me to the folly of souls, Boy. Those trite... no, ignorant Baofoons who settle in solace in what shopworn desires they stumble upon."

Jerking the body back onto the move, the boy is tugged into momentum as well.

"Do I look like a mindless ape? Though Baofoons may be too much credit. At least they seek creation with all four of their arms and legs. A Skeleton is more like it. Wandering stacks of bones with no direction. No, I've known true and well who I am for many decades now. My purpose has been clear to me before you were even craving to nurse, Boy..."

He went on, squabbling to himself in a low murmur. The Boy shown little regret over his earlier comment but also appreciation for the distraction from the hallowing stumps that lurked behind them.

Then, the time had come. They finally reached their destination. Two men holding solemn, though forlorn expressions as they cycle back to the mission at hand. After the body was dealt with, the older one fell to his knees in front of it. A sense of awe as the old man let out a delicate hum, something beyond the aged vocal cords and raspiness his voice originally carried. One that shook the air and soil as he prayed for a miracle. Hands clasped, desperately.

May the gods one day tremble from their reign...

***

In the essence of change.

A voice brushed my ears in such quiet suddenness that the hairs on my neck came to ends from someone's residual words. A rushing breath gathered sharply but as I inhaled, my chest rejected me, only barely expanding with dusty air. What? It's enough to stir a mind-tunneling desperation for that first, fulfilling breath. To taste the putrid filtration I was surrounded with. Yet I could not feel more than a shred of space around me to intake. What's happened to me? Why can't I remember anything? No matter how hard I tried, it was almost like wearing a gas mask while breathing inside a crinkled bag. The weight on my lungs slowly collapsed, preparing to crush me at any moment's notice. Before I knew it I was tearing up in attempts to slow my breathing; all to no avail as confusion and hyperventilation stole my thoughts along with my body. So much so that I couldn't notice the gentle hum that began to caress my soul. Like a forbearing spirit watching over my fragile soul. Though the only thing I could focus on was the obvious fact that I'm going to die, and more importantly, where am I about to die? While the muffled sound of crunched leaves echo from a distance outside of earshot.

To make matters more horrific, a heavy shaking that resembled earthquakes rattled me unwontedly. Thoughts of being crushed or pulverized replaced my current fixation. Forget breathing, my head was uncontrollably fuming with anxiety. The reality of my isolation caved in and was mortifying. What does someone do in this situation? It wasn't long when rows of legs began tapping across my skin in small sections. While a wave of excruciating pain rippled over my bones when I flinched, my lungs, my chest, my back. Agony sweeping over my psyche that I could not comprehend anymore. Was this punishment? Was I already... Where am I? I thought again as I tried to open my eyes. Something slipped in between my eyelids to turn my bitter tears, sour. A burning feeling starting from my eyes and spreading throughout my head and throat. My consciousness slipping as the heavy-chested breaths continue to take more from me than they ever gave. My ribcage igniting like a bomb that'll go off in seconds with my lungs bursting soon after.

I can't take this. Somebody... please! Because I wanted to pray, I wanted to grovel onto the ground and repent with so much of my being that I have nothing left for myself. There has to be a reason I'm suffering so, and still I'm too afraid to ask a higher power with chances of the answer I'm looking for being too pitifully undesirable that all hopes are swallowed whole by a pit I can't ever fill. For a slow decent into madness.

Until the most calamitous moment this unfamiliar world has met came fatefully to me. As if a seraphic turnip was being plucked before winter's relentless frost, a sweet release came to my half dead soul as a metallic hand burrowed into the dirt, grasping a clump of my hair and pulling with unbelievable might until my body creaked beyond its limits, and finally was uprooted to be praised by the night sky. He then held me up against a lunar light, still by the hair, to cast a shadow onto himself that crackled and spat from scorching flames around us. But I'm sure it was such a beautiful sight to be alive. Beyond the scenic view, the tears and wind restored enough of my vision to gaze, achingly at my hero as well.

I would call him a pillar of truth, stampeding, impeding, dislodging all anguish my toxicated mind conspired. I could almost hear heavenly trumpets stretching down from the clouds, heaving their anthem of notes too glorious for mortal ears to perceive. A song of victory to ensure this was no coincidental story. Strange four-winged birds with short beaks, green luminescent feathers that left a trail of blue and green light, danced around us from high above. An unfamiliar place, all to welcome a divine departure from my once torturous captivity by the silent cries I manifested to the best of my ability. If there is a God, I thank you.

A knightly figure with a broken face mask revealed one fiery green eye against brown skin. The rest of his armor looked to be mangled by something ferocious. Some of his black hair peaked from the damaged helmet and he seemed barely any taller than I. Though looking around at what seemed to have been a graveyard around us had been completely molted to cinders and ash.

My voice didn't project as well as I hoped, but it was enough to be heard through hoarseness and scratchiness.

"Who are you?"

***

"Isaac, come here for a moment."

I looked back to see Grandmother waving me back inside. One of my legs already outside the door when she called. A shin guard reflecting off the little sunlight the sun provided from far away.

"Exploring Logi can wait, my little salamander. There's somewhere I need you to be."

She trailed into the living room. So retracked my foot to silently follow.

Grandmother had always considered me her "Little Salamander," but I'm sixteen now and quite frankly, I have yet to understand where she had drawn this relation. Every time I asked about it: Well, have you looked in a mirror lately? Is the only response I was given. I even tried to look at myself through my chest plate, my shoulder plate, my helmet. Though also according to Grandmother, my armor is blessed to grow as I grow but also useless for seeing myself, "among other things," she'd murmur to herself. Perhaps a cruel joke for her grandson to never truly know his face.

I stood at the doorway of the living room when she sat down on the couch.

"Do you remember when you were only this tall?" Grandmother asked with a hand stretched horizontally. Leveled only a few feet off the ground at most.

I nod while recalling a few choice memories of my own.

Grandmother looked at me sternly for these next words. The wrinkles on her face becoming more folded with veins mildly poking from the skin.

"I told you that before you were, born the gods took refuge at the bottom of our world Omina, after the last Human-God War. Humans occupied the upper hemisphere. The war was unforgiving, and a lot has changed ever since. But what I did not tell you was that this was all due to an old prophecy scribed by The Fates."

"The Fates are the three old women you told me about?"

"Yes, Isaac. The three old women." A sigh escaped her lips due to my blatant historical understanding. Then she continued. "The prophecy is like a holy grail for humans. A ray of hope," she clears her throat, "The world shall fill with dreams. While children rise under the moonlight. O' how their stories will intertwine like gallant vines strangling a mountain to its peak. For glory of man, the Lost Ones usher the meek. Then the children will rest once again, as their days become weak."

` I don't understand, does this mean that the time has come in some way? My head tilted in confusion, following her prophetic warnings. She's back to her feet in mere seconds as if now that I've heard this story, there is no more time to waste. Eyes gentle and sincere, her warm fingers almost melt my shoulder pad at the touch.

"Isaac, I know you love exploring this region. So, there's somewhere I must ask that you go for me. I know out of all of Logi, you're probably tired of me asking, but there's a rose I need you to find..."

That's when she sent me there again. More earnestly and concerned than she's ever been. To Lily Graveyard. To dig up a rose and "Rise under the moonlight." I wonder what she meant by that.

But when I arrived, my eyes widened at the sight. The majority of the graves had been pulled apart. Dirt, coffins, skeletons scattered about the surface. Completely desecrated.

Then I saw him. A boy in fine linen garments and long, brown hair. His blue eyes feverishly flickering about in his current grave digging, showing flagrant that this was all his doing. I could feel the heat rise within me. Frustration? Anger? No, I did not know these things very well. I merely came as a task from time to time to survey the area. Though maybe that was all it was, a feeling of disrespect that someone would come to intentionally ruin a place for the Lost souls to lay rest eternally. Yes, that didn't sit right at all, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. An almost nauseating feeling that tightens my clenched fists. Something that somehow catches the boy's attention.

"Have you seen a child around here?"

He asks, straight to the point. But a child was not something I've ever seen around here, nor expected to hear him say. So I shook my head no.

"You can't turn over all the graves like this."

His ears perked up at the sign of defiance and turned back to me, dropping his shovel and a clump of dirt in the process.

"I am the grandson of Atlas, don't you know? I will do as I please for the sake of the gods."

He must be referring to the prophecy. I consider, but that's not enough to keep me docile.

"I don't care, you're going to have to stop."

Grandmother told me to watch over this place today-"

"Your grandma?!"

"She said it would be best to keep a watch over this place-"

Before I knew it, I was staring at the sky, and a moment later, my head collided with the ground under the boy's palm. I don't know how he got in front of me so fast. How he was so strong. Why I feel so heavy. But all the emotions welling up inside me could not be held back. And before the boy could say anything else to solidify his dominance, I remember my eyes flickering like a blow torch. A wave of pain puncturing my helmet. A pure rage enveloping me. And a grand display of fire dancing all around me.

When I blinked, I came to what used to be a graveyard, now fully engulfed in flames and a single rose standing as if it was calling to me. What happened here? To me? It was strange how my body started to feel heavy and unforeseen injuries made me limp toward the flower. With a slow scan around the perimeter, I'm not sure where Atlas's boy had gone, but he seemed to not be around anymore. Unless he was... I hope he still lives.

So then I approached the rose and with a single thrust, take out the rose that resides in the graveyard. Grandmother's words echoed. I reached the roots of the flower and plucked it with the strength I had left. I pulled and pulled but I could not recall a flower being this wedged into the ground. That is until I finally retracted my arm and was face to face with a girl, so bloody by my uprooting and her past conditions that it was hard to tell if she was still a breathing. Or alive. But to me, those brown eyes that shown between her squint, long hair down to her back, that sense of familiarity that I had never felt before. She was shockingly beautiful. And the look she gave me, as if she met an ethreal being was enough to make my heart flutter. Enough to ignite my soul.

My voice came raspy and burned as I spoke, but I needed to know.

"Who are you?"

Her reply came weakly. No more than a whisper.

"Tamara... my hero."