Kel opened her eyes to see, or, rather, what was left to see. Bandages were shrouded around her head, blocking out most of her vision, carving the rough weave onto her forehead, making her delicate skin itch from the linen, but…why was it there?
She rolled over onto her back on the too-soft mattress. Not her own mattress.
What was she doing here?
What had happened to her?
What was going to happen next?
She managed to lift her arms clear of the heavy, rough woollen blanket that covered most of her, and push back her shirt sleeves that were strangely too big for her…I never remember having shirts this big…She pushed back the bandages over her brow, letting her see more than darkness, but what she wasn't prepared for was what she wanted to see – an infirmary, one inside a building -she could tell from the plastering- not the tents she vaguely remembered…
She looked around – beds evenly spaced along a wall, all of them obscured in white. Some with hair poking out at the top of the slips, some completely covered over, with a body-like shape wrapped up like a mummy on the made-up bed.
Kel sat up, pushing herself onto her –painful- elbows.
Where the hell is this place?
No windows, no active people. The corridor stretched for a while, before it came to a door. An oak one. Dark, overly large and forbidding, Kel felt a pit uncover itself when she looked at that door. She stumbled towards the hole that was coming ever closer…the hole that was filled with darkness…
Kel opened her eyes, pouring sweat and throat aching from screaming as the image of the pit hovered in her memory. The windowless chamber, the corpses on the beds, the constant drone of white against her sanity… She wiped her forehead – relief flooded her as she felt her own smooth skin, not the reptilian scales of linen bandages – and sat up. Her window was mainly dark, but a thin line of radiating yellow was separating the darkness. Dawn, she thought with release.
Dressed, she stepped out into the fields with her glaive. Beginning her stretching, she cleared her mind of al horrors, all fears, all tensions.
Water, she reflected.
As smooth and serene as a lake, clear as glass, where you can see all that awaits you if you choose to fall to the bottom…
She pushed that thought to the back of her mind.
Stepping into a practice dance, sudden hands came up from the earth beside her, grabbing her sides, grabbing her freedom, grabbing her body and soul, and pulled her deep, deep down into the ground, silent as a shadow, fast as falling.
When Kel woke up again, she could remember nothing except for her binding, blinding, ripping fear. And being alone in a long, mouldy-white, taunting, straining corridor, that looked a lot like where she was now.
