Dedicated to FallenMidnightAngel for the adorable picture of Athira ^_^ 

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Chapter 14 - Within Legend Lies Truth

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Despite what instinct was demanding she do, Athira went back to Indigo base and to her surprise, stayed.

She locked herself away in the room she’d been given when they returned, trying to get her mind in a place where she thought she could handle people for a length of time. She wasn’t quite ready to face Indigo, more specifically Shift, and she knew that they’d want a better explanation than what she’d already given them... but Reader’s words kept replaying in her mind.

Child of Sin.

 The doubt raced through her again, destroying whatever sense of confidence she’d built up since the last time it circled her thoughts like a shark, threatening to consume her alive.

She buried her face in her hands. Talon?

His reply was quick. What’s up?

How do I do this?

Well, usually one initiates social contact by leaving their room.

“Such a helpful bird,” muttered Athira.

She sat on the end of the bed in silence, mulling over her thoughts until a knock came at the door.

It raised her head and she stared at it, unsure what to do. On one hand, she wanted to answer it, but on the other, she wanted to sink into the bed, through the floor and run for her perch atop the city.

There was silence after the knocking. Just as Athira thought they’d left, it came again, and this time accompanied by a voice.

“Thira?” Zoe’s voice floated through the door. “I was just wondering if you wanted to come out yet. I know you need your alone time but, I mean if you want to, Raph wants your input on what Reader was talking about yesterday.”

Athira slid the door open with her colour, finding a startled Zoe on the other side of the frame.

For the first time she’d seen her since reuniting with her friend, she wasn’t in her suit. Instead, Zoe wore jeans and an amber coloured shirt with a large sunflower in her hair, although she still had the Elite’s armband circling her bicep.

Athira must have stared for longer than she realised because Zoe reached up and touched the flower and gave her a small smile.

“I have a garden of them on Indigo’s roof,” she said quietly. “They like my light, and when I talk to them they seem to grow a little better.”

“It suits you,” said Athira. She stood up. “You said Raph wanted information about Reader’s activities?”

Zoe chewed her lip and shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it so crudely, but if you’re willing, he’d like your assistance since you seem to have a much better grasp on the situation than we do.”

Take it while it’s being offered, I guess. “Lead the way.”

Zoe visibly brightened as Athira made her way to the door. She took Athira’s hand and practically pulled her down the corridors. They came to a section where the hallway veered off into a series of sharp corners. After nimbly stepping around three of them, Zoe stopped in front of a wall and pressed a glowing hand against it.

A moment later, the wall faded out of existence and Zoe stepped through into the well-lit stairwell below.

“Disappearing walls, what next?”

“Kione’s invention,” said Zoe. “It recognises our specific type of colour, not just the colour itself.”

“You guys are really big on security, aren’t you?” said Athira.

Zoe laughed. “I think we both know that nothing is going to stop you getting into a room if you want to. It’s not like we’re giving away Kione’s encryption codes as Talia keeps making it out to be.”

The stairwell led to a square room with several rooms. Zoe kept going for the one straight ahead, punching a code into the small keypad on the side of the wall. The door slid back, revealing a larger room with even larger screens lining the walls.

Inside, Raph and Shift sat on a long couch, while Kione tapped away at a keyboard and Talia leant against the wall.

“Thanks, Zoe,” said Raph. “Hey, Athira.”

Talia rolled her eyes.

“No one’s out on patrol?” asked Zoe.

“Elites gave us the day off, said we needed to be on call if they had ‘urgent questions’ regarding yesterday,” said Raph. He frowned. “I don’t know. I feel like they’re hiding something from us.”

“And you’re going to talk about it directly in front of their equipment?” asked Athira. “Considering all the other stalker tech they’ve put in place, you trust them not to have this bugged?”

“I rebuilt the entire system myself,” said Kione. “They only hear what I want them to hear. Right now, if they’re looking, they think I’m in here alone monitoring security while video loops have Shift and Talia in the common room watching a documentary on plant life, Raph’s doing paperwork and Zoe’s training. I haven’t got any footage of you, so you’re locked away in your room.”

Athira raised an eyebrow. “Detailed.”

“Has to be,” said Kione. “Discord’s too damned picky.”

“Not every team is so lucky to have privacy from the Elites. We’re graced with Kione’s skills,” said Raph. He clucked his tongue. “Although not every team has to deal with Discord. Either way, we’re starting to think the Elites are hiding something big from us...”

“...And we’d like to know what that is,” finished Shift.

“Have you found anything else since I left?” asked Zoe, taking a seat beside Raph.

Kione brought up files on the screen in front of him, enlarging it for the rest of the room’s occupants to see. Various faces of sleeping people, taken on streets and in hospital beds lined up, each picture covered in additional details about location, treatments and individual details.

“Other than Discord and the rest of the Elites being evasive, we’re getting reports about citizens being attacked,” he said. “However, instead of sustaining physical injuries, they’re simply falling into a coma and nothing can wake them up.”

“What’s their excuse for that?” asked Athira.

Raph stood up and touched the screen, bringing a picture of a woman garbed in a sleek lilac dress.

“The Elites are pinning it on a purple villain named Lullaby, only her powers lasted no more than half an hour at best. She hasn’t been seen in nearly three years by anyone but Elites and it makes no sense that she’d start randomly attacking civilians now.”

Athira folded her arms. “Well, I can tell you now that they’re lying about that.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Talia, voice dripping with honey.

“Because three years ago, I left Lullaby on the Elite’s doorstep unconscious after she tried abducting a few kids from their sleeping parents. Unless she escaped, which I highly doubt, she’s still within their facility somewhere.”

Shift broke the ensuing silence. “You what?”

“I left her for the Elites to lock up or imprison, whatever it is they do with scum like her.” Their disbelieving looks seemed to need more convincing. “Basically, doing your jobs for you.”

Talia snorted. “So if we believe you and Lullaby couldn’t have done this, what other explanation is there?”

“That there’s something going on that they don’t want to tell us,” said Raph slowly. “And something’s telling me it has to do with whatever Reader was trying to accomplish.”

“Reader was calling us children of the titans,” said Shift. Athira noted how he left out the special title Reader had given her. “Talking about a ‘he’ breaking through the veil, and something called the Spectrum alliance trying to stop it.

“And the kid he had,” said Zoe, leaning forward. “He kept talking about a sleeper being disturbed, waking up. If people are falling into comas, is it possible the two are related? The sleeper is waking up, so people have started inexplicably falling asleep?”

“I think the kid is our most reliable link here,” said Raph. “Reader could be lying and we don’t know his ultimate motive, but the child? What reason would he have to lie? And as far as I know, Reader can only read minds, not implant ideas in them.”

There was a lull in the conversation, the silence only stopped by Kione’s continual tapping across the keyboard.

Talia pushed herself off the wall and went to stand by the screens. “Is it possible that this sleeper is the one breaking through the veil?” asked Talia.

Shift glanced around the room, flickers of green colour dancing around his fingers.

“It could explain why the Elites aren’t telling anyone,” he said. “Something that powerful on the loose would cause mass panic. At least if they blame a known villain, the public have a mortal image to contend with. Something that can be caught.”

“The kid was colourless, right?” said Raph. “Didn’t the Elites have some colourless guy asking you questions when you were with them the other day Zoe?” Zoe nodded slowly, and Raph continued. “Why would they do that? Their excuse is that they want to make sure the colourless have a place in society, but that seems a little extreme.”

“Unless they made him memorise it, he was doing it on his own, too,” said Zoe. “There were Elites supervising but they never interfered, even when the man asked me to demonstrate my powers.”

Athira watched Indigo shoot back theories back and forth. Most of them revolved around this sleeper waking up, what it could be and how it was linked to the colourless people. She half listened to them while attempting to sort out her own thoughts.

If it’s the sleeper breaking through the veil... She frowned. Sleeper is the last word I’d apply to Rathe.

“If there is a sleeper waking up,” said Athira. “It would explain why the disturbances have only started in the last six months, and why they’ve been occurring more often and getting stronger each time.”

“Six months?” asked Raph. “The Elites only have reports of them for the last two. Are you sure?”

Athira grimaced. “I can’t mistake them. They make my colour writhe beneath my skin and make me nauseous.” Kind of like I’ve been feeling since we captured Reader. “I also don’t think Reader is the direct cause of these disturbances. He’s only started showing up in the last few months.”

“Makes sense,” said Raph. “Kione, you have anything?”

“After a brief scan of the Elite database we have direct access to,” said Kione. “The only mention I can find on anything is of the titans, some colourless person a few years ago ranting and raving about the planet being a prison for something and we had to destroy it.”

“The planet?” said Talia. “As in the entirety of Thols? We’ve searched and scanned and documented just about every inch of this planet and people still think there’s something hidden in it?”

Shift and Athira’s eyes at the same time. “Not in the physical world.”

“What?” said Talia.

Shift nodded his head. “That makes sense,” he said, approaching Athira. “Reader was saying we... you were looking in the wrong place, in the physical. So if this sleeper exists in the mindscape type plane instead of the physical...”

“...then it’s waking up, moving into the physical. Past the veil,” said Athira.

“Exactly,” said Shift.

“Are there other mentions of titans in other databases, Kione?” asked Raph. “Reader mentioned something about the Azarin monks, try looking into them.”

“On it.”

“So, Athira,” said Talia. “Bringing up something everyone else has forgotten, why did Reader have such an interest in you?”

“Probably because I ambushed him at Starpoint tower. That usually gets one’s attention.”

Talia would not be dissuaded. “So how did you find Reader at Starpoint tower?”

“Same way I did at the docks,” said Athira, folding her arms. “I tracked the disturbance.”

As far as she was concerned, that was close enough to the truth, but Raph was having none of it.

“Athira, we understand that you have reasons for keeping things from us,” he said carefully. “But this is important. If you have anything that could help us figure this out, we’d love to hear it. People are in comas because we’re ignorant, and I don’t think we can afford too much secrecy now.”

Athira glanced at Shift. He was looking up at her from the sofa, she was sure trying to send her a message with his eyes.

I’ve kept your secret about the mindscape, he seemed to say. And I’ll keep it until you tell me I don’t have to, but we need your help.

Athira sighed.

Damn it, Shift. Talon, I hope you’re happy because we’re about to have help.

“There’s an old Azarin monk tale that mentions the titans, but it’s ancient. It comes from a sub-group that calls themselves the watchers, or the wardens or something like that. As far as I can remember, the titans are a race of celestial beings who live in a utopia. They managed to shape their perfect society by expelling all evil into a physical form , only once they did that, they found that they couldn’t destroy it without destroying themselves.

“So instead, they imprisoned each evil for all eternity. The theory behind the text is that each evil is locked away, one per galaxy, and is more specifically imprisoned within one singular planet in that. The rest act as decoys if anything were to attempt breaking the evils out. The wardens claim we were given our command over colour by the titans to make sure the evil never breaks out.”

“And how to do tie in to all this?” asked Talia.

“I’m a self-appointed guardian of sorts,” said Athira, figuring the excuse she’d used with Shift would work here too. She paused, considering her next words carefully. “I don’t really have a choice in the matter. For some reason or another, my mindscape and my colour is linked to some being that calls itself Rathe.”

“Could this be the sleeper the child was talking about?” asked Zoe. She looked worried, as if the connection between the two would break her heart.

Athira swallowed down the hurt. Why did it matter if the child was linked to Rathe and not her? Or was it that Zoe had seen firsthand what Rathe’s influence could do?

“I don’t know,” said Athira after a moment. “But if I had to take a guess, I would say it’s not him. ‘Sleeper’ is not a term I’d ever apply to Rathe. He’s cruel and his rage is boundless. If it were him, people would be more likely to fly into fits of blind fury and kill each other than simply fall asleep.”

“I can vouch for that,” said Shift. “He’s not the coma type of bad thing.”

Athira’s lips pulled into a smile against her will for a second before fading once more. “Besides, the thing in my mindscape is only an essence, a fragment of its true self. I have no idea where it resides in the physical world, but it’s not close. Not like these disturbances feel.”

“So what’s Rathe have to do with this coma situation then?” asked Raph.

“There’s... some kind of lore attached to Rathe, something that appears every so often before vanishing like it never existed,” said Athira. “I’m not sure where it comes from, but it’s always something like a prophecy, a promise that one day Rathe will break free of his prison into this world and consume it all.”

“I’ve heard that before,” said Kione. “Always assumed it was just another one of the northern cities legends they told around the campfire.”

“But you think Rathe is one of these... evils,” said Raph. “The ones imprisoned in planets by the titans.”

Athira nodded, not trusting herself to speak and give something else away.

“So while Rathe might not be our sleeper,” said Shift. “It might give us a clue to what this sleeper is and how to stop it from waking. Or at least what’s making it wake up so we can knock them out.”

Zoe’s hands were lighting up from excitement. “And if we’re going off the monk tale, it’s trapped somewhere inside the planet, inside Thols--“

“If there were something beneath, inside or on Thols, myself or one of the other hundreds of elementals would have felt it,” said Talia. “It’s absurd!”

“And yet, so is the idea of the colour black, eh Tal?” said Shift.

Raph returned to the sofa, bringing up some data he’d transferred on to his wristlet from the computer. “We’re still working off legends and myths, guys.” He clucked his tongue. “Athira, do you have anything else?”

Athira gave him an apologetic look. “You have to understand that I don’t understand this situation fully, Raph. I’ve been looking my entire life, searching for answers that most of the time, don’t exist. Ways to stop bad things from happening, ways to stop my own colour from exploding within me.”

No one seemed to know what to make of her last sentence except Shift who nodded to himself in the sofa. He gets it. He’s felt what it’s like.

“How do you know about the Azarin monk tales?” asked Kione without turning around. “I’m scanning through their databases now and most of the stuff is locked down, even the fairytales.”

“I had access to it all when I lived in the Snowlily Hills Monastery. They raised me.” Athira rolled back her sleeves, presenting the runes on her arms which were glowing against her skin. “They were the ones that tattooed my arms with these runes, trying to bind my power in me when I was young after they realised... Well, it didn’t go so well and the initial runes peeled away.”

“Okay,” said Talia. She walked up to Athira, but this time maintained her distance. “Even if you accept everything else she’s told us so far, it doesn’t change the fact that runes can’t just ‘peel away’. The amount of sheer colour it takes to destroy a rune is astronomical. Especially if they were done by the monks, they’re the masters of creating and inspiring runes!”

“Fine,” said Athira. She gestured at the bag on Talia’s hip. “I’ll prove it.”

Talia seemed stunned as Athira extended her forearm towards her. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“You’re a blue, aren’t you?” said Athira. “Read the runes. Tell me what they say.”

Talia took her arm, her fingers lighting a dark blue as they trailed over Athira’s skin. “They’re talking of channelling, redirecting the flow, slowing. Things like that.”

“Right,” said Athira. “Now, doing whatever it is you blue colours do, I want you to try and draw one that simply says ‘stop’.”

Talia gave her a look like she was crazy. “Then you won’t be able to use your colour.”

“And I’m sure you’ll be torn up about that for the rest of your life.” Athira jerked her hand. “Just do it, Talia.”

Raph gave her a concerned look. “Uh, I’m not sure--“

Talia interrupted him. “Fine, but I tried to warn you.”

Talia took Athira’s arm at the wrist in a vice like grip that was no doubt intended to scare her based on the way Talia watched her face as her colour rushed to her hand, outlining her fingers in a thick, dark blue glow. Athira watched her back, keeping her face neutral. That fact alone seemed to cause Talia’s behaviour to take a sudden nervous turn.

Talia pressed her palm to Athira’s wrist in the space between her other runes. From someone she’d only ever seen working with earth and metal, it was fascinating to watch Talia’s runes come to life. The colour moved from Talia’s hand to Athira, seemingly as if it were under a thick layer of plastic.

After a minute, Talia removed her hand, wearing a smug expression. The rune quickly lightened to the same as the rest of them, sinking into her skin quickly. Everyone was watching the rune on Athira’s wrist, expecting it to disappear.

When nothing happened except the rune starting to glow, Talia cocked her head and pursed her lips.

“See, I told you. They don’t just peel off. It’ll be there tomorrow and next week, and next month, because runes don’t come off.”

Athira waited until she was done before extending her hand towards an apple Shift was playing with. She closed her hand into a fist, black colour coming into existence on both hand and apple, and much to Shift’s displeasure, bringing the apple back to her hand at her gesture.

Talia’s eyes went wide for a moment before she took control. “It’s one little rune, and that tiny piece of colour can’t take much. It can slip by the rune.”

Athira rotated her forearm, presenting it for inspection. This time, Talia’s eyes almost fell out.

The rune was gone, the remaining blue outline fading as they watched.

“And imagine,” said Athira dryly. “That was only a tiny little piece of colour.”

Even Kione had looked away from his screens. “Damn, girl. That’s impressive.”

Shift was the only one that seemed to have expected the result. He stood up, eyes narrowed at his apple still in Athira’s hand. She levitated it back to him and resisted the urge to drop it on his head, placing it in his waiting hands instead.

He smiled and took a bite. “So, what’s the plan, bossman?” he asked Raph.

Raph made a horrible squeaking noise with his lips as he thought. “We have the meeting with the Elites tomorrow, or I do at least. While I do that, I’m thinking some of us should pay a visit to the Elite hospital where Will was placed after he fell into the coma. If we leave Talia and Kione here to man the base, do some more research?”

Nods came from around the room. “Sweet.” He turned to Talia. “Are you comfortable with solo patrolling Tal or would you like me to ask someone from--“

“I got it,” said Talia sullenly, once more slumped against the wall.

“Right. Then we’ll go to the training room, get in a quick circuit or two before the day ends,” said Raph. “Let’s go, Indigo!”

Raph and Talia were the first ones out the door, followed closely by Athira and Shift, who muttered to himself just loud enough for Athira to catch it.

“It still sounds like he should have pompoms.”

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A/N - I HAVE TODAY LEFT TO FINISH NANO because well-timed parties and such but IT WILL BE DONE. SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK. And with that I present to you the most rambly infodumpy chapter ever but screw it. FIX IT LATER. WORDS NOW. RAWR. 

#believe

Wordcount: 48, 022 [Technically +200 words of another scene a few chapters from now] CAN YOU SAY 1.7K WORDS LEFT