Strange Purple Wisp

Even this close, the thing still felt like nothing. No warmth, no cold, like nothing was there in the first place.

It calmed her and gave her the confidence to edge closer to the orb.

The moment her fingertip brushed the orb, it wavered and the next second seized onto her with desperate speed, clinging greedily like a living thing.

She gasped aloud, stumbling back, her arm stretched out in front of her.

The flame, if it could even be called that, bled up her skin in erratic surges. It should have burned. She knew it should have burned. Every frantic instinct screamed at her to expect the pain — but there was none.

No pain. No heat. Just the sensation of something deep inside her arm instead of on it moving upward and through her body.

'Foolish! What a foolish girl I am!'

Her wide, celadon eyes locked onto the spreading fire, the colors churning and shifting over her flesh. Purple, black, and everything between.

She fought back a sudden surge of panic.

"Cease..!" she croaked aloud, she knew it wouldn't do much.

Her free hand snapped forward, clawing at the flame in a frantic, instinctive motion. Her fingers raked across the invasive thing... and it reacted.

The living fire flinched.

It recoiled from her touch, almost shuddering. Its hungry advance slowed halted for just a heartbeat, its colors stuttering and stammering as if in pain.

It didn't last long, the thing seemed to have recuperated and continued its march.

The girl didn't let that reaction escape her mind however, she clawed at it again, more aggressive this time, her nails scraping across the unnatural light.

The flame's colors wavered violently, bleeding into something new — a ghostly silver, flickering weakly.

A relieved smile stretched across her face for a second, then she clawed again.

The silver spread faster than the original colors had. As she watched, trembling, the once greedy thing shrank, curling tighter and tighter until it was no more than a single, wavering white wisp, perched like a bird in the center of her palm.

It hovered there for a moment, impossibly bright, then collapsed inward. A stream of light, as small and thin as a hair, darted from the wisp into her fingertip.

The girl gasped and instinctively jerked her hand back, but it was too late. The white light poured into her, bleeding along her veins, filling her with a sensation that wasn't heat or cold, but closer to an aching pressure.

Something in her body had changed. A minute, imperceptible change... but it was there, she could feel it.

Her breathing slowed as she hesitantly flexed her fingers. Her body, battered and stubbornly uncooperative until now, seemed a little less foreign. The pain hadn't vanished, but it had dulled ever so slightly.

Her legs, a traitorous pair that had barely agreed to obey her commands just minutes ago, now responded with a cautious loyalty. Wobbling but willing.

'And to think, I wouldn't have noticed if I weren't already such a wreck!'

She stayed like that for a moment, simply breathing, eyes flowing and settling across random points in the now-still room.

Everything looked the same — the fractured crystals bleeding light, the corpse of the spider-creature sagging lifeless in the corner, its empty core like a black eye watching her from across the floor.

The girl pushed herself upright, biting down a whimper as her bruises protested the motion.

She threw a suspicious look over her shoulder as she crept past the dead monster, keeping a good distance from its ruined body.

The two doors ahead the bedroom had to offer loomed ahead. One stood just a small distance from the dead thing, inset into a wall whose stone seemed melted around its frame. The other opposite of the first set in a similar wall.

She glanced left then right, froze, then chose to favor her right side as she went. It was better to create as much distance between her and where the dreaded knight had last wandered.

Her hand gripped the twisted handle. She pushed.

Nothing.

Grimacing, she set her shoulder against the door and heaved. The metal handle groaned but the door itself refused her. Only a scraping noise answered, rolling out into the dead room.

Her eyes darted to the corpse of the spider-thing. It hadn't moved. She dared a glance toward the darker recesses of the room, half-expecting something else to slither from the shadows in answer to her noise.

Swallowing dry, she pulled back. No good then.

Turning, she limped back across the room toward the other door, further opposite. This one looked no different, and that offered little comfort.

Reaching it, she pressed her ear against the surface and held her breath.

It was silent.

Her fingers curled around the iron ring of a handle, she twisted, it groaned, but this time it actually gave way with a reluctant jerk.

This room was shaped more like a funnel than a hall, starting wide and narrowing into a broken corridor, like the path she had came through to escape the knight. The air here was drier, thick with mineral dust and something old, but not so cloying. Almost as if something had recently passed through.

She stepped through and immediately realized how far it was from the last place. This was no hollow hall carved for purpose. It felt unintentional.

Rough walls closed in around her in uneven waves, the floor sloped, the ceiling bowed lower with jagged teeth of stone hanging down.

The room was as cavey as a cave could get.

She scanned the gloom, but there was nothing new. No creatures, no doors or beds or purpose. Just crystal and rock.

She moved still on edge but with no immediate danger her tense muscles gradually began to ease.

Now that there was space to breathe — to think — her mind, focused on survival until now, began to calm.

The white flame.

It had vanished inside her.

'Was it lethal…?'

'Is it going to kill me? Am I slowly dying?'

She raised her arm as much as her tired body allowed and flexed her hand. It still felt like hers. Her veins hadn't turned silver. Her skin wasn't glowing. But still…

She didn't like the thought of something foreign invading her body. Or something like it. Quiet, dormant and she could do nothing about it.

She frowned.

'Nothing is in there, it is gone so it is not my problem.'

Her brow twitched. Her footsteps continued with the same pace and stride, but she was unsure. She moved further into the cave.

And yet, none of that was what truly weighed on her now. Not the wisp that had buried itself in her, the knight that had threatened her life, the bloated fleshy spiders or the grim, vile plantation.

It was the silence. The unbearable, strangling silence. Not just this room — everywhere, not a voice, not a face, not a sound that hadn't come from something trying to kill her.

The spider-creature hadn't spoken. The knight hadn't spoken. She hadn't heard language since she'd woken up in this place.

And with that thought came another.

She didn't even know her own name.