It's stormy in the city. The rough gale tears at Kaylin's dark hair, and she has to bend her body just to push against the beating weather. And that, like the still-secret memories, whistles past her in an instant. Beneath her feet lies a path, a jagged crack through old concrete- a road perhaps; above her head is nothing but the tang of smoke from burning spires.

Hope dances in vain, she knows; Darus' anger betrayed them, and yet...there was another who had betrayed Darus beforehand, and set alight his demonic obsession to return to the place he knew as home.

"The Zephyr..." she whispers, as the broken puzzle-pieces link.

Find the Zephyr. Kaylin does not know if it's her own memory, just out of reach, that calls to her, or if it is the wind that is still flowing around her ears in invisible strands.

"But where?"

She creeps forward, through spirals of rising dust and dirt, not knowing where she will end up in this once-familiar city.

She stops, looking ahead. Remembers fragments. This building is where it all begin: their meeting-house, their sanctuary as such, the place in which they had devised that plan to nurture a city fallen through its leader's greed.

She stands at the gate looking in, considering. In a way it feels wrong to rebuild what was once rebuilt so easily, yet the thought of Darus coming to get her... Why? Why had she been the first to leave. Something no longer fits into the outline of memories stored. A deed. Kaylin's own. Had she been the one to condemn them and the city that they had saved?

Find the Zephyr.

Kaylin cannot think of anything else. Her breath slips out her lips. Move now or never. Under her fingertips, the gate opens.

Author guidance for This story

The prompt: a woman who has no memory must travel through eight gates to save Tokyo and find Zephyr. (300 words)

This, as used for 'part three' has already come across Darus, the evil leader of the group who once sought to rebuild a broken Toyko. In 'part one', Kaylin arrived in Tokyo through the light train and now she must beat Darus to succeed in the mission she has no idea about.

updated Dec 14 '11 by SumnerzAngel