Ok, sorry folks, real shitty chapter here, but I couldn't very well just head into the next chapter without this happening…

It was cold and utterly bleak that night in the desert wastelands. Cyrus and I were huddled between two rock outcroppings, sheltering us as we waited out the rough storm of silver sand.

The last two months had been…literally hell on horseback. First there were the Devil's Spires; the name says it all. It was just miles and miles of treacherous, god-forsaken, barren mountainside where nothing but the hardiest of plants and nasty critters could dwell. This was all well and good for Cyrus, who could manage with the scarce vegetation but I found myself dipping into my food supply more then I had planed. And then, getting desperate, I found what had saved me.

One afternoon, we came upon a Tektite. The nasty little thing was all barbed legs, a small body and gnashing mandibles. It would have been easy enough to avoid but a sick prospect crossed my mind in my hunger-driven state. It looks like a snow crab…Those are good eatn'. And upon killing it with a single thrust of my sword, so I did. Later I found that you could bake them in their shells to preserve the meat but until then I ate them raw. They tasted a lot like chicken, though perhaps a little sweeter. From then on whenever I was near the brink of starvation, there was always a tektite to be found.

But food wasn't always the issue; mostly it was because of the roughness of the road. You would think a road to be easy sailing but no, because the trade route was not traversed very often (or from the looks of it, in years) the road had fallen into disrepair. Some times two days in a row the trails were lost in the forest beyond the mountains.

But by far the worse was the desert. There was nothing but sand for miles with the rare outcroppings of tall rocks that reached pointed to the sky like accusing fingers. That is, if you could see them. The winds were constant and came from every which direction. Sandstorms and dust devils were all too common. There was hardly any food or water. There was the occasional oasis; we came across only three I think. We filled buckets and canteens, making sure they were covered before heading off again. The journey through the wasteland had hit Cyrus particularly hard. With no plants aside from the leevers I managed to catch; He had become gaunt and listless.

But the eyes regained some of their brightness and hope as he looked to me questionably, the storm beginning to die down. I nodded when the winds died down. He followed me as I stepped out of the shadow of the rocks.

It was like another world.

The winds had stopped. Completely. Not a single grain of sand stirred. It was quiet too, relief for my battered ears but strangely unsettling. The winds had been constant up till then. Cyrus fidgeted when I tried to mount him. He pranced about in a circle to avoid me once I got to his side. Suddenly, he let loose another ear-splitting scream, his eyes wild and looking out behind me. I spun around, to face whatever danger might befall us this night.

At first, it seemed relatively harmless. It looked like a cloud on the horizon in the direction we came from, close to the ground, spanning as far as the eye could see. It was a light purple and seemed to glow with the light of the moon. Lightning laced across its surface like a varicose veins. It was coming our way, billowing like smoke from a cauldron, and fast.

What the…That's just not right…Ignoring Cyrus' protest; I swung onto his back and dug my heels into his side. We raced across the sands, normally silver in the moonlight, but now violet from the glow of the cloud which seemed to stretch a three-hundred feet high. I felt some sort of drag from it, like a force pulling us back towards it. There was no way to out run it! A deafening roar filled our ears as it came ever closer. It was on us! Everything was engulfed in the purple clouds. I screamed until the air was sucked from my lungs. Cyrus stumbled and fell, taking me down with him. And then there was nothing but inky, welcoming darkness...

***

There was a puff of air at my face and the sting of the sand. My eyelids felt like they weighed a million pounds but somehow I managed to open them. I was on my side, half buried in the sand; the moon was high in the sky above me. There was a large black horse with his nostrils by my head, checking me over urgently.

I got up, my legs shaking, threatening to buckle beneath me. Instinctively I griped the horse's empty saddle to keep from falling. My head spun and my body ached all over.

And I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.

…Who's horse is this? I asked myself, it was as if my mind had gone blank.

(this is your horse,) The answer came almost immediately, like a little voice deep within my self-conciseness, (his name is cyrus.)

…Who am I then? Why am I here in this god-forsaken wasteland?

(your name is julia salem, daughter of dimtri salem who was a smithy in guinness. you left because of a dangerous civil war, taking your search to hyrule, seeking peace and wealth.)

…Really?

(yes)

Upon demand, seventeen years worth of memories flooded forth. My loving mother setting dinner before my Damitri and I. Helping my father later with a sword, the one that I would later yield myself. Training Cyrus as yearling colt. Watching the knights over the castle walls, trying to train as they did. Looking on with fear as the same knights clashed on a bloodstained field. Watching my home burned and pillaged. My mother's scream of angst and terror as men dragged her off into the woods, grinning broadly. My sword stained red to the hilt with the blood of former countrymen.

Yet, none of this seemed odd. No. Listening to the little voice in the back of my head seemed perfectly natural. It died as soon as everything was answered though, and I soon forgot that it had ever existed. In fact, there was never a little voice. The feeling of confusion and bewilderment was gone as well. My mind accepted it without question.

The horse--Cyrus, whom I had known the last five years of his existence, pressed his satin nose to my cheek reassuringly, telling me it was time to move on again.

But I still felt very weak. Things swung in and out of focus in a dizzying manner, almost like being drunk. Yet somehow I managed to crawl up into the saddle, hugging the stallion's neck. The winds were wild (once more) and threatened to topple my failing balance. After all the time on the trail, it had become my habit to sleep in the saddle. Cyrus had trained himself to plod along without the guidance of his rider and maintain the same course.

At some point he stopped. I was roused from my sleep when the soothing motion stopped. I looked up. There were two blurry sources of light in the distance. They illuminated a pass between two cliffs, in which a huge gate had been constructed. Cyrus wined and pawed at the sand, backing up a bit. Then, like coiled springs suddenly released he sailed over a gap in the sand. I could barely see anymore but the lights were getting closer, if somewhat dimmer. It was then that I slipped out of the stirrups. I fell to the ground with a thud right outside of the gates. A dull faraway pain shot through my arm. That's gonna hurt in the morning, I thought absentmindedly. There were voices, they were in another language--or maybe they weren't, I couldn't tell. There was the shriek of Cyrus and screams of confusion and fear.

"…I…"

The darkness overtook me again.

Oooh! Amnesia then reprogramming! How original! Like I said, I hate this damn chapter and I promise I won't ever do it again…