Into the Dark

I awoke - barely. My mind felt like it was lost in a careening hurricane and weakness prowled my soul. Pain shot through my brain like the crackling of cruel lightning. Half-formed thoughts whirled in my head and I struggled to turn them into something concrete.

Where was I?

For that matter, who was I?

What was my name? I fished around in my reeling brain for memories, but it seemed like there was nothing there. Well, almost nothing. My name felt like it was on the tip of my tongue, but it remained, frustratingly, just beyond reach.

There seemed to be nothing in my brain at all beside my conscious thoughts.

I felt a tinge of panic and a feeling of foreboding that I couldn't explain. I wanted to get up and run away. Find some quiet and forgotten corner of the world to hide in and to stay safe. But stay safe from what?

A croaking noise broke through my thoughts. Someone was snoring in my ear. My eyes edged open and I turned over onto my side. That was a mistake. Some sort of noxious effluent rolled and slopped in my stomach and a sickening nausea shot up into my mouth and nose. Waves of queasiness flowed through me.

Next to me, snoring, was a giant potbellied rat. It's face didn't look familiar.

I tried pulling myself up but hit my head on the bottom of unseen bench. Rubbing my sore head, I looked around. I seemed to be under a table in the darkened common-room of some sort of dingy inn. Sleeping, snoring and murmuring forms were sprawled around the room, laying on tables and under them. The place reeked of body odor and stale ale.

I crawled out from under the table, pulled myself groggily to my feet, then looked around for a few moments. Nothing in the room seemed familiar. My own clothes and even my own body felt strange and foreign to me. Feeling my way through the dark, eventually I found and roused the sleeping inn keeper. He wasn't happy to be woken.

"You're still drunk, you damned fool ... " he murmured, half-angry and half-asleep. "Go back to sleep. I don't know who you are ... ask your friends. You were drinking and arguing with some girl last night ..." He paused to drowsily rub his nose and then reached over for a mug of water and drank.

"... something about the Resistance... and the Tyrant ... " he continued after he'd finished. "The girl you were arguing with ran for the door ... you tried to catch her but collapsed. You didn't wake up again so I pulled you under a table to sleep it off ... " He yawned and rubbed his face tiredly then rolled over onto his side, away from me. Apparently my audience was at an end.

I would have questioned him further, but I was listening to something else. Something far off in the distance. It was a chorus of harsh voices that was slowly coming closer.

I listened, trying to make out the words, and the inn keeper suddenly turned back over, listening intently as well. There was a look of trepidation on his face.

"Through the gloom of the night we go! Under the boughs of the elms we creep! With burning brands and sharpened blades, dirty deeds will be done dirt cheap!"

The innkeeper's eyes were now wide. He choked on the words, "Th- Asag-! The Ashagi Clan!"

Outside I could hear the clatter of hobnailed boots around the inn, and the windows were suddenly lit up by blazing torches. I stumbled back out into the common room, my weapon in my hand. I'd been dreading something since I woke and now it seemed to be about to come true.

The sleeping forms in the common room were stirring. Heads were raised, looking around in confusion and alarm. Then suddenly the inn doors were thrown open and the common-room was bathed in the fiery light of many torches. Wicked eyes peered in. Wicked blades flashed in the torchlight. But it was a slight, girlish figure that finally stepped across the threshold.

I stared at her; a silhouette against the flames, and apparently she stared back at me.

"Goodbye," she said. Her voice was like that of a little girl's. But its mocking, triumphant tone shocked me.

I stared at her blankly. "Goodbye? But you just got here."

She laughed a laugh that sent a chill up my spine. Then she turned and disappeared out the door.

"Burn them!" she screamed, "Burn them all!"