Chapter 3: Fragmented Memories
"Welcome."
’Arg... damn.’
The grating voice made his ears ring — a pain nearly as stinging as his arm wound. Another pain that served as proof of reality over construct.
Proof this was no hallucination.
It was far too vivid and sensory to ever be considered fake.
A few people snapped out of their dazed delusions and began shouting with no direction.
"What the hell is that?!"
"Ruby! Are you there?! Ruby!"
"Did that thing do this to us? Why?!"
"T-this isn’t funny!"
Unlike those screaming their heads off, Axel remained collected... although he most definitely wasn’t calm.
This being — this angel-like woman — he recognized it.
Not that he could pin that recognition to any specific memory; however, he simply knew this wasn’t his first time bearing witness to her agonizing beauty. Nor was this his first time being summoned.
The entity spoke over the fervor of the crowd.
"You have been chosen, heroes."
A man near Axel clicked his tongue, then screamed:
"I damn well didn’t choose to be chosen! Send me back, asshole!"
Though not all even seemed wholly focused on the being. Like the handsome blond man running around, who’d garnered a few spectators drawn to his peculiarity.
A few even shouted at that handsome man instead of the entity.
"You think this is funny, huh? Sick fuck!"
"Stop sprinting in circles, sisterfucker!"
The woman above looked down with an irreverent glare. Holding out her hand, she opened her palm.
’Gyah!’
Axel felt his body seize, like a mass of tiny insects had crawled all over his body and inside his mouth, then solidified into marble, encasing and gagging him.
Not that anything physical happened.
With his eyes the only part of himself that he could move, Axel looked left and right and noted the same consternated looks etched upon others’ frozen faces.
As if nothing had happened, the woman continued:
"You have all been assigned a Task. Fail to complete the Task, and you will die. Complete all the Tasks, and you may be rewarded with a chance to live."
’A... chance?’
The moment the final echo escaped its heavenly throat, the space above seemed to warp and fold in upon itself.
In a blinding flash, the entity was sucked into an invisible wormhole.
Once again, the summoned were left alone with little direction.
’Surely, it had more to say, right?’
All at once, motion returned. Many stumbled, having been resisting the force. Others broke down and cried. The rest, like Axel, stood with mouths agape, trying to make even a little sense of this senseless situation.
The first to start the screamfest again was a tall man standing next to Axel with a scar over his bottom lip — the same one who raved about not choosing to be here.
"Task?! At least tell us what to do... Argh!"
The man promptly fell on his ass, then frantically pointed at the air in front of him.
A fragment of fragments fell into place as he witnessed the sight...
’That’s right... the status screen.’
The man looked to the woman nearest to him and yelled:
"Y-you! Say Task!"
"Task? Hu-wah!"
The woman held up her arms as if the wind had formed fists and was threatening to pummel her.
Soon, that spectacle caused a domino effect of people asking about why they were freaking out when saying ’Task’, then freaking out themselves.
As for the reason...
Axel took a deep breath, pressed lightly against his arm, and shifted the jacket so the blood wouldn’t dry and glue the fabric to his skin. Then, he quietly said:
"Status."
A moment after he willed it, a transparent blue screen flashed into existence before his eyes.
☼☼☼
Axel Hart
Age: 20, Gender: Male
Contractor: [- - - ]
[Tasks]
[Slay the Goblin King in the Castle] - (Time remaining: 719:54:55 hours)
[Skills]
[Perfect Memory]
[Fall of Babel]
[Relics]
[Afflictions]
[???]
[Memory Suppression]
[Earth’s Last Hope]
☼☼☼
’As I thought...’
He hadn’t exactly remembered the screen or what it held, only that it existed. And that it was the parent screen to the one all the others were freaking out about.
After studying the border of the holographic screen, Axel began focusing on the words themselves. As he did, his eyes instantly snapped to the bottom.
’[Memory Suppression]?’
As Axel focused on that damnable phrase, a block of subtext popped up.
[Memory Suppression] - [Caused by regression. Amount of fragments needed to recover based on karma.
Fragments recovered: 0/10]
’Wait...’
Axel clutched his head with his uninjured arm.
’It wasn’t that I’d forgotten memories of the past, but memories of the future!’
Clutching at his hair, his fingers dug into his skull as if trying to pull out the drowned memories.
’Regression? B-but how? Why?’
It didn’t make sense...
Not that much was deciding to make sense at the moment.
To try and calm his internal turmoil, Axel looked around at the people who’d gone unnervingly quiet, focused on reading out the task.
’A-are they from the future as well?’
Was everyone undergoing the same plight as him? Was anyone else?
Maybe. But he doubted it.
Either way...
’Fragments.’
There was a way he could recover his lost memory.
The how eluded him at the moment, but the only path toward discovery lay in following the unpaved path.
With that goal set, Axel finally managed to somewhat calm his mind battered by the endless agony of forgetting alongside the physical pain.