I walked for a minute. Only a minute. Sixty seconds.

And then I was attacked.

They came suddenly. I had no chance. My knives were stripped from me, my hands and legs were tied, and I was held on a stretcher and taken to the house.

Ten of them, in all. I had to admit: it was flattering that my enemy considered me such a threat as to merit these numbers.

And without boastfulness, I must say that I could have probably taken three of them. My training was such; and theirs wasn't. However, their numbers were too much. I managed only to wound one.

Then they took me.

They carried the stretcher to the House. It went faster than I'd expected. Only about six minutes. Through the journey, I cursed at them, threatened them, and honestly I had no fear.

When it came in sight, my great resolve and high spirits left me. My aggressiveness was gone, replaced by a new feeling.

Fear.

My plan had been to enter the House, with Garrett backing me up, and to take out the guards, rescue Calen, and kill my enemy. A perfect plan.

But I had not reckoned on entering the House on a stretcher, tied, surrounded by ten armed guards, and alone.

I felt fear. Deeply. I didn't fear for my own life, of course. I knew there was a better place, to which I was sure I'd go.

I felt the fear of failure. My enemy had done what he wished for a decade or so, uncontested. I had fought him for seven more. I had been sure of success. Nothing else occupied my mind, only the hatred of my enemy, my sorrow for my family, and my love for Calen.

And now that we were in the House, I felt the fear more deeply than before. He was too close. Both to me, physically, and to victory, permanently. If I couldn't stop him, I, who had trained for m lifetime and had not a single other goal, who could?

There was something wrong with this. If there was any justice in Fate, any pattern of good and evil, any reason why the world wasn't a tangled, anarchic mess of chaos and build-your-own-fate, I should be winning.

But I wasn't.

I hadn't lost yet, but the score was uneven. Very uneven. A comeback would involve: losing my bonds, retrieving my weapon, all before the guards attacked. Then defeat the guards, and their backup, and their backup, and then killing my enemy.

Hard.

There was something unfair about the way this had gone, both for me and the world. My enemy didn't deserve to win.

I wouldn't give up, though. Though Fate had fallen and justice was nonexistent, I wouldn't stop till my last breath.

But I just felt the wrongness of my failure.