From What Was

WARRIOR

The smell of burnt garlic and smoldering metal burned through my nose, and I groaned as a migrane slammed my burning head.

Ugh..

The smell was nowhere near familiar, nor gave any delight to my beaten up sense of smell. It was just enough to wake me up from long lost slumber I must've gotten from yesterday night.

I jolted up- something had clicked.

There was an ambush.

My unit was fighting and then the explosion...
I felt a burning sensation in my cheek and I brought my hand to it, but the contact made it burn worse and I hissed.

Wait.
Where the hell was I?

I should be dead. My limbs should be torn, my head shouldn't be on my shoulders, my heart shouldn't be pumping blood nor beating-

I cannot be hyperventilating right now.

"Hello!" I jolted. An old woman I never noticed, sitting down at the edge of the bed and holding a bowl of mixed greens in her lap, said with an eased, hard voice. She was draped in a royal-green cloak with a brown cottage dress and her shoes were hidden.

She had thick brown hair that was chopped to her neck with grey streaks leading down only to her temples. Her grey eyes bore down onto me, trying to read me. "Don't worry, you're safe in here. Although, you're not in Eiríni."

What in the God's is happening.

Not taking account into what she commented, I looked at my body that was covered in bandage rags that looked newly applied.

"Then again, a soldier like you looks far too young to go anywhere," the Lady thought out loud jokingly, although she sounded very bored.

I looked at her, not with a reaction, but a sense of dread; I would rather be skinned and rotting in the rings of Amartía than be in a world of dead, false heroes feasting everyday.

Yes, it was a myth. One that I really disliked and despised that a person would even assume I believe in it.

I kept my thoughts to myself as I took note of everything around me: everything was almost covered in a bed of moss and vine except the furniture and tools; this room looked like a herbalist working space with every mix and grain of vials, and papyruses on the walls identifying the types of potions and elixirs; big gemstone mixing bowls have been spreaded everywhere on a wide, stone table across from the bed I was laying on.

I noticed a pillow beside me that felt firm enough to act as a potential self defense weapon. I slid my hand gently under the pillow and hooked my thumb with the extra cloth while staring at the old lady who seemed to have been muttering to herself too intently to care about what I could do.

"Who are you? Why am I here?" My voice was hoarse but it was still there.

It instantly made her snap out of her curious muttering and she a raised a brow to me.

"My name is not important, but my friends called me Lazuli," she said with a humble grin, "or Lady Blue, decided by preference."

I stared at her waiting for the second question to be answered.

She pointed at me with her long finger, "you're here because you made a scene. And all because of my friend here who called to me, you're not as dead as you were in that maze of a forest."

A forest? Is that how far the landmine threw me?

The feeling of being thrown all the way to a forest, nowhere near where I had remembered I started, does not sit well with my stomach.