Nemo

That's a working title, might keep it, might not. This story is set on my world Hyldrassil and is just a little side story that helps establish a bit of background and workings to the world beyond the main story from the 'Mana' project. The story presumes that the events of the Mana stories have not taken place yet, and is set in the Duchy of Tithonus as the war approaches between it and it's northerly neighbour the Empire of Strenia, and follows the journey of a young woman who has been robbed of her mind and left for dead.

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A frigid wind blasted the frozen high places of the world lifting waves of powdered snow across the crags of the mountain and howling in the lonely emptiness.
Beneath a gray outcropping of rock shaped and blasted dry by the chill wind a drift of snow had formed in that sheltered place, flakes and powder dropping out of the wind to pile gently against the cold stone.
There was a certain contoured smoothness to that snowdrift, the shape of something that did not belong in this barren and unforgiving place.
Moving slowly there came a soft groan, the snow was falling on pure white clothing not light but entirely too fine for such a place, a robe of white woven with silver embroidering had fallen to cover the head of the person underneath.
Groaning again, the robe was pushed back to reveal the delicately featured face of a young woman with eyes of such a pale blue as to resemble the hue of frost and hair blindingly white. She shivered in the cold and rose unsteadily to her feet, not noticing a silver necklace with a fine talisman fall from within her outfit into the snow.
Wrapping the robe about her body she felt a pain in her head and pressed her hand against her temple.
Something wasn't right here, apart from the fact that she was half way up a mountain wearing the clothes of a spring morning, something was missing, out of sync or just hidden beyond plain sight.
She backed further into the shelter of the outcropping and tried to remember how she had got here, and why she had chosen to come so woefully under-dressed. Then she tried to remember where she had been before coming to the mountain.
Then she tried to remember who she was.
"Oh Hells!"
Looking around the lonely mountain across a gray sky filled with the whipped up eddies of snow, she felt despair set in with the realization that she had no memory of ever existing.

***

She struggled against the wind, the cloak pulled tight about her for whatever shelter it was worth and the hood pulled over to shield her head as she trudged through the snow. She had no idea the time of day, only that it was day time somewhere beyond the vast gray sheet of the sky above.
She had struck north, there were fewer peaks this way and it was the downhill path, chances are she'd find some semblance of civilization on this course before freezing to death. Or so she hoped as her feet sunk into the deep snow, her boots were only of a light leather and already her toes were growing numb.
The dark void in her mind gnawed at her, more terribly because there was not so much as a fragment of memory upon which she could rebuild her life or even the last few hours prior to her current predicament.
Her name? Surely that at least should still be in there, how can a person forget something that has been with them their entire life?
Stumbling in the snow she went down on one knee, her skin sinking into the numbing coldness. Picking herself up again she staggered forth feeling the very air try to say the life from her.
Deep inside she cursed the mountain, cursed all mountains, not out of hatred or spite but because right now she had no one else and nothing else to blame. The frigid wind was blowing harder and harder, the sky getting darker, she was losing the feeling in her hands and feet, and she was getting weaker.
She knew she was dying.
The cold snow came to meet her as she collapsed once again, this time on both knees. Shivering, she barely had the energy to stand, she fought against the cold with every ounce of her reserves and stumbled forward in the face of the bitter onslaught until at last falling all the way down.
Lying with her face in the cold snow she thought what was the use in fighting any more, let the ferryman come and take her from this wretched place.
In this cold she doubted that she would even feel it when the embrace of death came, she would slip from this world anonymous even to herself.
She watched each breath steam from her mouth against the chill wind, each getting shallower, weaker, getting closer to that final sigh.
And beyond that breath she saw across the desolate and lonely mountain, frozen gray stones and drifts of snow so keen to sap her life.
In the haze of her breath she saw something else, a structure made of dark wood and built against one of those sheltered outcroppings. It looked like a kingly hall, and it was close, so tantalizingly close.
Summoning all of her will, all of her strength she pushed herself up against the final embrace of the cold, crawling first on all fours she made her way toward that building.
Burning with inner fire, determined that she should live she forced herself to stand and walk, to make one final push for that sanctuary.
Her muscles burning and her sapped body straining against the flame of her will she pressed on, the hall getting closer and closer.
The wind howled at her as if the very mountain had cast its lot with death, the cold wind cut at her and snowflakes melted on her skin as she burned with the exertion.
She was almost running by the time she reached the worn stone steps and with one last effort she slammed hard into the door. It was solid and it held fast.
With the last of her strength she banged against the heavy wood, trying to call out but felt her voice strangled. She kept hitting the door, but all around her was becoming dark.
Light was leaving her.
Sobbing at the cruelty of fate she slid down the dark stained door, trying to hit it one last time she found at last her strength had failed.
Her thoughts grew slow and she knew that her time was at hand.
And the darkness took her.

***

There was heat, and it was black, so very black.
She had no feeling, no sense of time, no sense of self. She was a mind adrift in an infinite void, and from where the heat came she did not know for there was no sign of light or life.
There was just the darkness, yawning and eternal it had her now in it's sweet embrace, not terrifying as she first thought it might be. No, if anything it was welcoming, it enveloped her and held her wrapped up and safe, there would no longer be any pain, any fear. These thoughts all washed away in the black, the darkness would care for her, would sustain her forever.

***

Brother Konsidine tended to the lamp oil of the chamber, working delicately as to not spill any over the manuscript he was illuminating for fear of ruining what would have been ten years of his life.
Not yet in his thirties Konsidine had came to the monastery a troubled youth, wracked with dreams and visions of great and terrible horrors, dread things untold of in the lands.
Writing provided catharsis, took the teeth from the demons in his mind, freed him to examine the beasts that revealed themselves every night when the lights went out. He found too in the archives that he was not the first to see such terrors, that these beings of such bottomless malignancy appeared in the writings of poets and madmen through the span of recorded history.
It was the work of the Order to catalog and track these ramblings, to find the coherency in the gibberish, to give definition to that which wishes to remain unseen. For the monks know that not every force in the world can be seen with the eyes, heard with the ears, or even touch by the hand, they knew that there was much mankind did not understand and might never do. And they knew too that from the human perspective most forces would have a predisposition to the malign, for how could ageless forces care about such brief lives as man?
Konsidine laid the jar of oil back in its box and sighed as he stared at the bare wall of his chamber, watching the light play on the walls from the dancing flames of his two small lamps. His eyes were on the light but his mind was on the woman in the chamber at the end of the hall who had arrived barely clothed and half dead at their door two days past.
His thoughts were not carnal in nature or the erotic musings of one who led a sequestered life hidden from the opposite sex, abstinence was not a requirement of the Order and those within the monastery had as complete lives as any from the nearby town of Tol Barad.
No, he was thinking about how she came to be so far up the mountain in such ill suited clothing, as nearby Tol Barad was it was still the better part of a day's hike straight up to get here. She bore no identifying emblems or talismans, her clothing resembled nothing seen in the mountain or the surrounding region.
And so much white? To say it was unnatural would be wholly superstitious but it did make a statement about her, either as a priestess or as some other figurehead. Perhaps some virgin cult?
He jotted thoughts idly on the edge of the manuscript, words like white, delicate, like a Sylph, frost eyes...
Pondering this for a few moments longer his eyes fell to the words he had written and at last a connection was made, he stifled a curse because he had been doodling over the manuscript he had so carefully worked on.
A knock came on his chamber door as he tried to scratch the ink from the parchment, one of the elder monks, brother Gregor excused himself and with few words handed Konsidine a tome bound in ancient and cracked leather. It bore a single faded emblem of an ankh within a sun, the book being an artifact held in trust at the monastery until such time as it would be required elsewhere, a book with the rather ominous title of 'The Truth'.
Konsidine had need of the book for some of the more cryptic visions that had came to him lately, some of which if interpreted literally were both gruesome and terrible.
"Father Michael requests that you tend to our patient this evening," Gregor said, "then if you wish you may join us for a late evening sherry in the library."
"Thank you, brother, I'll tend to the young lady and I shall join you when I can."
As Gregor excused himself Konsidine looked to the ancient volume in his hands, he had waited this long, one more evening would do no harm.
He placed the tome next to the manuscript, took one look at the notes he had inadvertently jotted and decided that it would be far simpler to cover them with a decorative border, and then he left his chamber.

***

The warmth she had first felt was now a burning sensation all over her body, her skin felt as though it was on fire. She flailed and tossed in the burning dark, trying in vain to pat out invisible flames on phantom limbs.
Fear came upon her, was she bound now for some underworld of fire and darkness, hot tears streamed on her cheeks causing her face to burn.
She screamed and her eyes were wide open, she was suddenly heavy as her body felt real once more as she kicked and fought against a heavy cloth on top of her.
A man appeared above her, trying to hold her shoulders and saying something that was not registering with her, though his actions did suggest a certain calmness.
Relaxing from her struggle she began to take in her surroundings, a darkened room lit by a couple of oil lamps, bare walls and spartan furnishings ave a wooden desk on which lay a basin and a few books.
"There," the man said, a monk she realized, "be calm, you are safe here."
Her skin still felt as though it were on fire. Of course, the cold, she vaguely remembered a struggle through snow and bitter winds and the hope of salvation beyond a heavy wooden door.
"Can you tell me your name?"
She fixed him a blank stare, the memory coming back to her that she had no memory.
"No."
"You are perfectly safe I assure you," he persisted, "I am brother Konsidine, you are in our monastery."
"I can't tell you my name because I don't know who I am," she croaked, her throat dry, "I don't know what I'm doing here or how I got here."
"I suppose that spares me a few questions."
"Can I have a drink please?"
"Of course," he said with a fluster before reaching for a ladle in the basin and drawing a cup of water from which she drank noisily.
"Go easy, you haven't had fluids for a couple of days."
She lay back on the bed, the void in her mind still gnawing at her but at least now she had some warmth in her body it didn't feel quite so tragic. Exhaling deeply she stared at the plain white plaster of the roof, watching the shadows of the lamplight, allowing a moment of pause for perhaps the vaguest fragment of memory to reveal itself.
But the moment was in vain for no thought or sense of self was forthcoming. She pondered what that meant for surely to have lost her memory such basic functions as speech or the ability to walk should have been lost to her, certainly she should not be able to think so clearly as she was now. It was though the memories had been selectively wiped from her mind, that somehow everything that made her who she was had been removed leaving only a lost and alone young woman.
"Do you have any idea how you even came to be on the mountain?"
"I don't even know where this mountain is," she said, "everything is gone, or hidden from me."
"Well, we're on the far north of the Duchy of Tithonus, on the range separating Tithonus from the Empire of Strenia, near Tol Barad."
"Those names mean nothing to me, you may as well be listing places from a storybook."
"I'll bring a map on my next visit," he suggested, "perhaps something there may jog your memory."
They spoke for perhaps an hour, Konsidine talking of places in the world and local history, the girl for her part persistently having no knowledge or recollection about such persons and places. She hid her frustration well, deep as it ran, to be so completely stripped bare of such things as her personality and even the most basic things about herself.
In the end Konsidine left her to rest with the promise that he would return shortly with some food and a map.
She felt safe here in this place, that whatever darkness that had sought her out in the world could not reach her here. She could put no name or image to that though just a strong feeling that her present condition was no simple accident.
Here at least she could recuperate, try to get herself together and plan what she would do next, to find first herself and then whoever it was who took her mind. She would find no solace or peace here, but for the time being at least she could find rest.
There was an indefinable aura of protectiveness here, like something greater watching over them all, even from the monk, Konsidine. She had watched him leave and he nearly seemed to glow, there was something like a silver sheen or half light as though some energy surrounding him was barely contained within his body that reached out with a life of its own to thwart the darkness in the room.