The Fall Of Imbria (The Fendara Series. Book One)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Augustine

As I wake from my magic induced slumber, I can hear the thundering footsteps of each person running past the room I'm in.

My eyes sting as I force them to open, my vision a blur. Unable to recognize who I am, where I am.

I reach for my pounding head, to find crimson at my fingertips, the taste of iron and decay on my tongue.

It comes to my attention that I can hear the pounding of pain yet can't seem to heed mind to it. Almost as if I can't feel a thing.

Dragging my bruised body up, I take note that I am laying on what seems to be a wooden work bench to confine prisoners, the splinters of the wood digging at my palms yet still not an ounce of pain.

Strange.

Flashes of what I can only assume to be visions shock my brain in waves. A girl with long ashen hair wielding a sword and sparring with me.

Another flash of light strikes. An older boy with shaggy sandy blonde hair talking with some tall darker haired fellow in the distance near a wagon.

Another strike of light. A tall blonde with a blue cloth wrapped and tied behind her head looks at me, washing my face with a cloth and cleaning my cuts. "You're so strong my boy, one day you'll take on the world just like your brother." Her words hit me with some unfamiliar feeling of. . . Sadness.

When the visions fade, I lift my head to the old broken mirror hanging on the wall before me. I rise to catch a greater glimpse of myself, of whoever I may be.

There's a limp in my step but it doesn't hold me back as I come face to face with the torn man in my reflection. A sandy head of hair lays sporadic on my head, blood of black and red sticking to each strand. The thread that was once on my eyelids, now gone, but the bruised and pink flesh remain swollen. So many wounds yet I can't take my blue eyes off of the healing cut on my neck. I lift my hand up to graze the once opened puncture with my finger tips.

When I do, all I can see is that same girl from my first vision, the dark haired one. Tears weep down her cheeks as they roll from her eyes . She begs but I can't hear her, I can only feel the force of a presence behind me holding me in place. I squirm and squirm but it doesn't work. Finally she reaches for a knife in her boot and I know exactly what she means to do with it. I nod, signaling her to throw it and she does. Before the blade can reach the person behind me, I'm thrown directly into the sharp of it's metal as it cuts through my flesh and leaves me gasping for air that never comes.

Tearing myself from the distant memory, I shake it from my head. I don't know what they want from me In this place, but something calls for me to stay.

There is work for me here.