First Katja, then Rory, and then Harper next. Amma witnessed as they braved the unknown, tendrils of ivy mocking at her presence as it meshed and wove over crumbled brick and forgotten remains. A breeze swept through the tumble of curls tossed over her spine, smoothed against the planes of her back where a sphere of unholy terror bunched and swelled, feathering anxiety through her limbs and corded through her belly that seized at the turmoil of the dark lain before her. She could not catch her breath, harsh as it was through her nasal with every attempt to breathe, the weight fell to her chest an excruciating pressure that cinched her throat and pinged through her ribs with trembling exhales as panic maliciously held her fast and immobile. Her lips parted around a choked sound that fell away into nothing, stolen by the exclamations coming from the corridor that taunted her, not unlike the simulation that had shown her the truth of all that she could have been and was not, the oppressed halls and the depths of Hell where she reigned true.

Amma may not have been a stranger to pain, but horror, the minute and silent kind that sheered through her body as frigid claws of a lamented creature of dread, was an entirely new concept she could scarcely even begin to decipher.

That sphere of influence she commanded swelled with the awareness of others, figments of sounds and pinging eyes that swept down her spine wound tight and bound. Chains of fears, chains of the past that writhed against her as demented vipers of the hated dark she refused to venture into. Electric fragments of red slid through every splayed gesture, nails arched through the fabric of reality, threatening to maim at the dominating presence looming through the shadows of forgotten, overgrown shrubbery. Scarlet coils manifested upon the fringes of the world beholden to her hesitating fears, risen high over her lithesome shoulders as she said:

“Who is there.” Not a question, but a demand, one drenched in a silver glow that fell through her glare.

The steady hum of the motorcycle was the first to answer Amma's question, her eyes drawn to the gleaming black vehicle before it came to a sudden halt. Its rider dismounted in one smooth motion, his helmet retracting within his collar as the long coat he wore splayed behind him in the September breeze. His eyes locked onto her own, meeting briefly, holding as they each studied the other. Colour drained from his face as he looked upon the girl he knew so much about but had yet to see. Amma wore the face of a ghost, the past embodied in her form.

"Charl-"

Thundering hooves broke the moment and colour rapidly reappeared in Shiv's face before he turned to greet Jim who quickly jumped to the ground before approaching Amma.

"Cahors, did you open that door?"

Was that – No. No. Amma’s eyes rounded out, the crimson powers churning away at her palms immediately snuffed out into plumes of obsidian smog that slid betwixt her lungs with the sharp inhale that whistled over the pout of her lip. Taint writhed through the chasm of her heart, sired by the name unspoken, the first curl of an annunciation that would’ve shattered her world stalled by the arrival of Jim. If it had been anyone else, she might’ve had more to say- to demand. To finish that name that listed through her hellish memories as both god and the ultimate betrayer.

“I - no.” She uttered, regarding them both with a shuddered breath. “Katja did… Harper and Rory are in there with her. We followed a trail here.”

Her glare of blue once more landed on the first arrival: the man on the bike whom she did not know, but familiarity still bloomed there, his likeness spoken to her once whilst in attendance at The Foundation.

“Haven was kidnapped.”

"Haven too?" Jim replied looking towards Shiv, "Boy, ain't y'all just fine and dandy for bringing your screwed pooch over to my island."

"Then we must hurry, though if the building is compromised Daedalus would have already fled. Pray your student is both still inside and alive."

"Amma," Jim turned back to the girl, "I can push the water back and give us a fighting chance, but can you ease the process by destroying it?"

"You'll need to ensure you don't take any thing along with the water," Shiv added, his keen eyes looking down the narrow corridor. "That building is one misfire away from being gone completely along with those inside."

“Yes…” Amma answered, a peculiar haze filtered over her gaze, a sheen of silver courtesy of her powers now posturing over her arms, careless whorls of scarlet that threaded down ridges of scars and raised ink. Betwixt her ears there laid a voice, a terrible and guttural fury that sheered against her mind, fixated labels and darling phrases to her temple, dug deep into the recesses of memory gone shadowed and dead and forlorn. A name that pinged away through the wall of obsidian and scoured thick lines against the fortress of her soul, spelling out the herald of all her pain and her rage, a cruel sire that haunted her dreams now given new life.

Daedalus.

Her entire body seized on a phantom tremor, unease spindling out onto the ground in fissures of red that she struggled to contain, the world at her reckoning trembling with the influx of her power unbidden and yet foretold. Amma carefully sunk her nails into her awaiting palms, her only method for control, knowing not what that name meant to her, but knowing it nonetheless as an eternal reaper through her life undone. Within and without, she pleaded and turned at the approach of others, noting Calliope and Banjo next that stumbled upon the scene. She spared them little acknowledgment, fixating the intensity of her gaze back onto the dark, unable to vocalize so much as a demand or response before she finally stepped into the corridor- mindless of the screaming child within long thought dead that cried and wept as she vanished into the shadows.



She tells herself that she’s fine, that she doesn’t care. She tells herself that she’s okay- over and over and over again. She convinces herself long enough to at least make way further within, erratic pulses of red danced over her lithe frame in tandem to her heart with that ebb and flow that struggles to maintain the composure she’s fighting for. The walls are groaning, breathing, a tomb that she is willingly wading into, down and down, that oppressed feeling crushing her ribs and puncturing her lungs over and over again. Her breath comes out in quick gasps that tumbled over the pout of her lip impaled by a ridge of bone, so hard she tasted copper on her tongue and welcomed the distraction of pain with it. She can hear the others, but dare not call out, wary of the screams that bunched and wedded to the confines of her chest that rose and fell on shuddering exhales. The water touches her first and Amma is taken back to the endless depths of the ocean that pulsated beyond slivers of glass and sterile panels. They dragged her down into the dark so often that she knew the way through every line of her heart and soul, down and down.

Downdowndowndown –

– down within the confines of the ocean, no one can hear you scream.

I’ll lock you down here so they can’t find you.
So they can’t have you.
You said yes, you gave yourself to me.
You can’t take it back.

This cannot be undone.

The water rushes ever higher and for a split second Amma contemplates surrendering herself to the depths below, if only to silence that voice in her head. The roars, the wails, the eternal bellows of esoteric nightmares and fiendish replicas of what lay dormant and hidden within. The monster that swore vengeance and demanded it be paid in blood.

And death.

“Amma!” His voice cleaves through her mind, enough to sunder her from her awakening panic, eyes gone wide, lashes fluttering in the dark as the structure quakes and lists to the side. Concrete fell, chunks of it plummeting into the rising waters that stole warmth from her entire body, it felt like ice floes in her veins, chips of death that threatened to drag her under as metal snapped, groaned, the entire structure weighted under the rushing waters that surged and parted around her hips. It pulled against her entire frame, pushing her farther back until she braced her weight forward, her ankle protested against the adjustment, tender still in its brace, but Amma pushed through it. She would not be undone, no matter how encompassing and overwhelming her fears.

Violet energy spun through the spring water, the power immense as it was suddenly forced and manipulated back, a shield of psionic capacity that did as commanded and pressed the water farther away until walls of frothing depths shimmering in purple hues yielded around them. Amma carefully glanced back towards Jim, the other man who she could only acknowledge as The Fist, and yonder where Calliope and Banjo made up the end of their group, her eyes carefully swept over each of them as Jim came up at her side, a subtle nod all that was spared as the building shuddered and quaked once more. Katja and Harper were somewhere up ahead, Rory too and Haven somewhere lost within the confines as this freshly marked hell that had lurked below for a time unknown.

“Stay back.” Amma advised with a commanding ease, knowing time was not in their favor, not as the entire structure groaned, as if wary of her approach as she strides forward and suddenly fell to her knees, palms upon the ground and nails against the concrete as sudden swells of scarlet manifest razed through the world on a roar of power. A droning resonation shattered through metal and the fortifications that blocked some of their way, a radius of thirty-three feet all that could be spared until she stood and walked forward, palms thrust out to carry the angry tendrils of scarlet that snapped and struck and wrent through the violet barriers holding the waters at bay. She surrendered it all into the void at her eternal beck and call, the feathering lines of silver that slid through her lashes and alighted her eyes, the barriers falling away as she thrust out her arms and willed her might to reap and destroy. Amma commanded and manipulated the depths to vaporize, waves shuddering and hissing with her hellish manipulation, slowly whisked away into nothing, molecules all for naught and helpless and yielded to the nihilism of her waking world. She walked through the corridors, into the depths of her own hell, Jim mindful at her side as he continued to spell out violet barriers to maintain her path of destruction until they caught up with Katja and Harper, a door splintered and cracked that too fell away at the mercy of her power that wrought through the wood and willed it into nothing.

She knew it would not last long as she gasped and turned her splayed gestures into fists, immediately sundering that connection to the world that wailed at her manifest. Amma nearly fell, the amount of HZEs toiled about her person abundant and tangible, pulsating black and crimson in her wake as she struggled to breathe. An opening had been made, one of limited means, but one none the less that cost her precious resources, all of her time spent healing affording her just enough ability to allow them to finally reach Haven- if she still lived.

“Hurry...” She bid them, gaze aglow in silver and blue, locked ahead and within as shadows amalgamated and swarmed through her vision, tendrils of black that speared through her mind that suddenly screamed. An unknown barrier that prevented her from going any further into the dark unknown, memories lain there that would have wrought her spirit asunder- a block. One carefully constructed so that she may never venture unto the hell of her true past. Amma’s lashes fluttered, a seizing tremble that shook her lithe body until she suddenly fell back, lids shuttered over the veil of her intense eyes as she suddenly fainted with a final swirl of scarlet energy that shot off into the darkness as the entire building shook once more.

Shiv’s arms came around her immediately, catching the body of Amma Cahors as she fell, the might of her power undone spent through the traumatic experiences he knew she had endured for so long. He lifted and held her with ease, unable to shake the phantoms of the past that illuminated her face with the likeness of a woman that haunted him to this day.