Paradise (part 1)

Her memories are broken, a fragmented mess of nightmares. She remembers the Dreamstalker, a monster from another world. She remembers the horrors that swirled around it. She remembered how the most powerful women she knew had been reduced to terrified, screaming little playthings for it. She remembered the rage as it had attacked Grace, as it had fed off the nightmares of her friends.
She remebered the rage. The fear, the pain, all overshadowed by the rage.

She remembered ripping the ring from it's body, taking the hand and the monster's power with it. She remembered the way its screams had pierced to her very soul. She remembered what Athena had told her; that only a Star Sapphire could even hope to truly destroy it.
She remembered the cold. The blackness. The void. She remembered flying higher than she had ever flown before, higher than the embrace of the Earth's atmosphere could extend. She remembered choking. Suffocating. Using the last of her strength to hurl the ring as deep into the void as she could manage, out into the black.  
She remembered drifting, weightless, acutely aware for the first time in her life just how small and insignificant she was; a speck of dust, floating through the endless nothingness.
She remembered falling.

She remembered waking up, floating in her back in warm, torquoise water, beneath the golden glow of a Mediterranean sun. She remembered thinking there were worse ways to die. She had just saved the world, and her reward, apparently, was paradise. Some small part of her was screaming. Something about Grace.  
...Grace had always wanted to go on a cruise to somewhere warm with her...that must have been it.
With a gentle, contented sigh, Svetta laid her head back in the water and let herself drift asleep...


LATER…


The Amazoid bobbed gently up and down, suspended in the air as it always was by some propulsion system Aella didn’t even bother trying to understand; the little robot could hover, that was all that mattered.
It bobbed low over the prone body, her clothes in tatters, and let out a long, low beep. Aella stooped over her, inspecting her dry, cracked lips, and the somewhat bluish tinge her face had taken, its cells starved of oxygen. She appeared to have suffocated.
“Can you help her?”
The machine looked at her with its big, blue eyes, and she met its gaze.
“She is dead.” If mechanised voices could shrug, the Amazoids’ just did.
“So was I when we met.” She reminded it.

It sighed, - or whatever the robotic equivalent was – and turned its body a little from side to side, as it often did when it thought it was infallibly correct and she was just a stupid little girl who had no idea what she was talking about. It did that a lot.
“You are a Champion of Amazonia.”
“Themiscyra.” She corrected it. For some reason, it was always calling the Amazon Isles Amazonia instead. It never even seemed to acknowledge her corrections.
“You have been imbued with power by your Gods. Your body and spirit are significantly more durable than most. Which is useful, because without your enhancements you would have been considerably more dead prior to our meeting.”
“Can I just remind you that you literally have a star-spangled bullseye on your chest?”
“Is that a threat, Amazon Arrow?”
“Oh, you picked up on that?”
“Need I remind you that the Blood Rings you wear are ineffective against inorganic matter.”
She sighed, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Just…can you help her, yes or no?”
It hovered silently for a moment. Its eyes glowed a little brighter.
“She has sustained significant injuries. Her organs and many of her bones have been crushed, and as a result, while suffocating, she also bled to death, internally. Given the state of near complete deoxygenation in her blood cells, I am amazed her body withstood the impact as well as it did.”
“Impact?”
“Affirmative.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It will be some time before she is fully recovered…”
“But..?”
It gave a resigned sigh. “Affirmative.”
“Well, get to it.”
“Has our primary objective suddenly become a lower priority? Are the other Champions not still at risk?”
“Amazoid.” Aella’s voice did not invite argument. Thankfully, the Amazoid seemed to acknowledge that, sinking a little lower in the air as it drifted towards the prone body splayed between them.
“Yes, Amazon Arrow.” The robot gave what she had come to recognise as its equivalent of a tut, and went to work.


LATER STILL…


Svetlana Kistrun woke, gasping for breath and jerking upright. Pain spiked through her – ribs, lungs, stomach – and her head swam – she could feel the pressure building, behind her eyes, pressing against her skull, so hard it felt like her head would burst – and she began to cough. Harsh, ragged, rasping barks, jarring through her entire body. She let out an involuntary cry of pain, and tasted blood. Even screaming hurt; her throat was hoarse, her lips dry and cracked, and it felt as if something had siphoned all the moisture out of her mouth.
Somehow, she found enough liquid inside her to cry.

Her eyes stung, badly. The sun wasn’t bright, but to her it was blinding. As, eventually, the world swam into a hazy approximation of focus, she noticed the thing hovering about a metre away from her. It was a little metal ball, about tall enough to come up to her knees, with a pair of bright glowing blue circles she figured must have been its eyes. It bobbed gently up and down, looking at her.
It was weird to think of it as looking at her. How long had it been watching her, exactly?
“You are awake.” Its voice was weird. Like someone was using Google Translate’s audio function.
“Uh…” she opened her mouth to speak, but all that emerged was an initial hoarse whisper, followed by another bout of coughing. Flecks of blood flew from between her lips as the cough forced them to part, a few stray speckles of red, abandoning the sinking ship that her body had become. They splashed into the sand beside her – there was sand, she realised. Gorgeous, white sand, a picturesque beach stretching on endlessly, as far as her hazy vision could see – and tainted this paradise with her pain.
The little robot beeped.

“I recommend you consume fluids promptly. By my calculation, it has been roughly eight days since you last ingested water.”
Svetta looked around, and eventually found a little flask set beside her. She started to gulp down the water – which wasn’t particularly cool, or fresh, but to her it was heaven – as quickly as she could, and almost coughed it all straight back up. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she forced herself to swallow, and continued, more cautiously. The flask was completely drained of its stale, warm water in less than thirty seconds.
The little robot beeped a chirpy acknowledgement as she looked at it, wiping the drops of water dribbling down her chin with the back of her hand.
“Excellent. I advise you remain still; your body suffered significant trauma. Amazon Arrow should return shortly.”
Amazon Arrow? Svetta blinked. Chrys had found her?

Her ribs hurt when she bent her tummy to sit up, so she laid back down.
She didn’t mean to go to sleep. But the second her head was down and her body at rest, her mind seemed to realise exactly how tired she really was. Her world was consumed by a mass of dull aches and the occasional vivid stab of torment when she tried to breathe too deeply, or shifted her position.
She found herself thinking back to her first encounter with Voltra. The supervillainess had blasted her with electricity, and her heart had stopped for a short while before one of the students she’d saved had succeeded in resuscitating her.  She’d only been dead for two minutes then, and had spent the next month stuck in bed, unable to do anything until everyone at Onpyh had been absolutely sure she was recovered.
It hadn’t hurt as much as this did.
It was like her lungs were in a vice. Like a monster, with terrible strength and terrible claws, had her chest in its grip, and her every breath scraped its claws against the soft, tender flesh of her lungs. Her tongue was sandpaper, her words jagged chunks of broken glass and rusty nails trying to gargle their way up her throat. Her eyelids were lined with razor blades. Her stomach had been torn out and ripped apart and put back together and stuffed inside her.
She fell asleep, hoping that, at least in her dreams, she would be safe. Free from the pain, and torment.
She was wrong.
The nightmares were worse than the sum of all the agony.
Svetta Kistrun woke, screaming.