Ananta covered his eyes, arm shaking, as glass and plastic rained down around them.
"What… was that?"
"Me," she said simply, and ran out of the hole in the wall into an almost empty parking lot. The sound of alarms blaring was louder now, almost deafening; and in the distance, faintly, Ananta could hear screaming.
"What did… you do?"
"I planted a bomb."
"Oh."
The girl grinned, sprinting around an upturned car. "You don't seem super shocked."
"Feels like… I already knew."
"Oh, right, you know everything."
"No… Yes. Sort… of." He paused, frowning. "Who… am I?"
The girl laughed, jumping over concrete wheelstops and through well-manicured shrubbery. "Someone important. Get off, we're here." Ananta looked up and through the haze of light that seemed to surround everything, saw a chain-link fence. Behind the fence was a forest, trees packed densely together, ground covered in tall grass and bushes.
"I can't climb."
"Yes, you can."
He raised an arm and watched as it spasmed, flopped limply to his side. "Can't."
The girl rolled her eyes and began to climb anyways, scrambling to the top of the fence before extending her arm downwards. "You can now."
He reached his hand up, arm twitching frantically, and grabbed her hand - it was strangely cold to the touch. "Your hand's… cold," he said as she struggled to pull him up, gripping his wrist with her other hand. "Really cold."
"What, should I drop you, then?"
He shook his head no as she pulled him up, struggling with his child's feet to push himself over the fence. "Why is your hand… so cold?"
"Why'd you lose all your memories?" With that, she pulled him over the fence, draping his body over the top and scrambling down. "I thought you were gonna explain everything to me."
Ananta tumbled down the fence, landing painfully on his back. "Thought… I would… explain?"
"Yeah. But here we are." She snorted. "I guess he can be wrong sometimes."
Ananta struggled to stand, arms wobbling pitifully as he rasped, "Who's… he? You keep mentioning a 'him'."
The girl sighed, picking Ananta up and tossing him deftly over her shoulder again. "Come on, we gotta go."
"You haven't really answered… any of my questions yet," he said, his voice stronger now. "I need to… know."
"Why do you need to know right now? It's not like you have some higher goal. You don't even remember your name."
"Ananta."
"What?" The girl stopped and turned around, her mouth slightly open. "You…"
"I know… my name. Ananta."
The girl dropped him off her back, propped him up against a tree. "So you remember? What do you remember?" she said, clutching his shoulders. "Come on, think."
"Just… my name," Ananta said, bewildered, and the girl slumped back against another tree, put her face in her hands. "I feel… like I… know things. But nothing… concrete."
"So… you're an amnesiac cripple that I bombed a building to find. Great."
"Who is… 'him'?"
The girl sighed, pulling a roll of linen from her pocket, and pulled back her hood. "Watch closely."
The eye, closed at first, blinked slowly open, and as Ananta stared into its contracting pupil, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.
"Ananta," a voice said, both familiar and utterly alien, as if he'd known it his entire life; as if it was his own voice. "Ananta," it said, louder now, and Ananta found himself in the same room as before, a room that seemed to contain him but could not, could never, with a being that he knew, seeing everything, knowing everything-
The girl yanked her hood back over her face, clutching the roll of linen. "So? Do you remember anything?"
"There was… a room. And…" A sharp pain flashed suddenly through Ananta's thoughts, and he clutched his head. "I can't… remember."
The girl sighed, unrolling the linen, and pulled her hood back again. "Well, it's something, I guess."
"What's… your name?"
The girl stared at him, surprised. "I don't really have a name." She began wrapping the linen neatly around her forehead, tucking it under her hair and over the closed eye. "I'm not really a person, I guess." She giggled. "You're probably the only one who might understand that." The girl tied the bandage off behind her head, pulling strands of hair out and over the linen. Ananta opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted, leaning back against the tree. "So… you wanna know who he is, huh?"
Ananta nodded, struggling to sit up straighter.
"I don't know," she said, and he opened his mouth to protest, "All I know is that he's the reason I have this eye… thing. And those fucking do-gooders locked me up to test it out."
"Do… gooders?"
"The unis. Whatever. Them and the damn phoenixes."
"What?"
The girl blew a strand of hair out of her face. "Oh, I forgot you forgot." She giggled, grabbing a stick from nearby and doodling on the floor. "Forgot you forgot, heh. Anyways, there's these things called clans. You know those, uh, mythical creatures, cryptids, whatever?"
Ananta stared blankly at the drawings - a horse with a horn, a flaming bird, a sea monster, a woman with a fish tail, a man with horns, a clay sculpture, and a lion with a goat head. "What is… this?"
"Really, you don't know? I thought you knew basic… whatever. Anyways. These… things -" she pointed to the drawings - "-are the Founders. They came from far away, there were seven of 'em, blah, blah, blah. Then - " the girl scribbled seven stick figures onto the ground in a circle, each in front of their own creature. "- the Founders each gave someone a rune with special powers that made them immortal, and then each person had a buncha kids and made these things called clans. Got it?"
Ananta nodded, still vaguely confused. "So… who are you?"
"Me? Just some girl with a third eye that got kidnapped by unicorns."
"What?"
She laughed. "No, that's where you come in. I am, apparently…" she cleared the dirt and began to draw another figure - a dragon, eating its tail. "The fucked-up product of another rune. This rune. Sometimes I hear voices from the third eye on my head. Whatever."
Ananta laughed weakly. "So… who am I?"
The girl grinned, the eye glowing green through the cloth on her forehead. "You're the one who's gonna help me kill the damn dragon."