I.
His ears rang and he was aware of nothing else. No vision, no touch, no other sounds. Those did not exist. Never existed. Never would and could never be conceived. Reality meant only one thing, one shrill high-pitched squeal which drove like drills into his eardrums, pierced his mind, rattled his skull. The world was a scream inside his head.
Did – did something happen?
Something existed beyond those shrieks in his head. Something had to exist, something beyond his hearing. Or could he hear? Could he perceive anything at all?
Were those the shouts of men in the distance?
He opened his eyes.
Underneath him swirled an indistinct mosaic of red, brown, peach, and white patches. Nothing understandable. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head to clear his thoughts, and opened his eyes again, blinking rapidly to focus. Same colors, but clearer now. White. Light tan. Ashy brown. Red. And there before him was a picture.
Two dirtied, bloodied hands clung to gravel beneath him. Shards of ice pierced several fingers, though it took him much more concentration to even recognize those were his fingers, let alone feel the stinging sensation from those injuries. His injuries. Blood… blood everywhere.
Is that all mine?
The piercing ring inside his skull was beginning to subside, but only slightly, so that every other sound around him echoed behind a screen of high-pitched shrieking. But he could hear now the sounds of war around him, the groan of catapults swinging burning boulders into the sky, the thunderous roars of angry dragons, the brittle clang of steel and the bold bellows of fighting men. Something wailed in the distance – he thought it was the distance – but that skull-shattering ring prevented him from properly gauging anything. It was still so hard to think.
Two words came to mind, anyway, out of the haze.
I'm… safe.
That much he knew. Somehow.
He tightened his hands, loosened them again. Breathed in, breathed out. He could feel himself stooped in the dirt, his shoulders hunched over his head, his knees buried in the ground and tucked underneath his torso. His neck was bent low close to the earth, providing him a good view of his hands and the ground and nothing else.
Well, and the blood.
That can't possibly be all mine.
There were guts intermingled with the blood, lying in the dirt like slaughtered, overgrown worms.
Were there any other injuries on his body he could not feel? He felt his shoulders rotating as he tried to right himself up and sit with his legs still tucked underneath him. From what his eyes could observe, beyond his scraped-up hands, he was uninjured; patting his leather shirt, his pants, his foot, he could find no other wound, either. The blood was not his own.
His eyes followed the trail of red to its source, lying several yards away and covered in ice.
No.
And suddenly he remembered everything.