Lances and Daggers

3. The Amnesiac

I had thought my sleep in the wagon would be peaceful. But I was haunted by nonsensical dreams, nightmares of an unknown origin. The blond thief appeared in front of me in a dark space. Standing under a faint red light, she stared into my eyes. Her gaze filled me with confusion and unease.

"You can help us, right?" she said. "But you shouldn't. You should stay away."

Where am I?

I couldn't meet her eyes any longer, so I turned my attention to my surroundings. Was this the same cavern where I had been robbed? No, it was a darker, more forbidding place. The air was stagnant and murky. It reminded me of catacombs or burial chambers. And the gray gravel that covered the ground was like the remains of cremated bodies.

Suddenly, the red light grew strong. The dark world lit up into a vast wasteland, and hundreds of people appeared behind the blond thief. They looked at me with troubled faces and begged with scrabbling tongues.

"Please, you have to do something."

"We can't stand it anymore."

Is this really a nightmare?

There is a fine line between reality and dreams, and I lost sight of it. Everything was vivid; everything felt alive and real. The crowds cleared a path for me, and I walked through them, glancing right and left. What do you want from me? I wanted to ask, but whenever I looked in someone's face, I hesitated and stayed silent. At the end of my path, I found a dark flame that floated in the air and burned with incredible—but sinister—vitality.

"If you want to help them, surrender to me." A voice shook the ground, and the dark flame burst into an inescapable conflagration. "There is no other way."

If I want to help them, I need to surrender to you? What does that even mean?

Before I could ask, I was suddenly and abruptly thrown out of my dream. The neighs of horses resounded through my consciousness; the cat sitting next to me meowed loudly; and I returned to reality. I got up, drew my sword, and jumped off the wagon's back.

"What's wrong? Why did you stop?" I asked the driver, an elderly man named Arthur. "Has an Aberration attacked?"

"Lad, we need to do something," Arthur said and pointed at the distance.

I looked ahead. I could see a blurry figure in the light of dawn: a girl was running in the dense fog and heading toward our wagon. She was falling to the ground but clawing at the mud and rising again. The desperate look on her face said more than any cry for help could express. There was no time to think. I tightened my grip on my sword and dashed toward her.

"This time, it will be a redhead, not a blond thief." Why, Rick? Why do your predictions come true at the weirdest times?

I had a sense of déjà vu. A girl was in a desperate situation, and I was rushing to her aid without thinking. She might have been a criminal on the run; she might have been another thief. But I chose to trust her pleading eyes. Was I acting like an idiot again? Some people would think so, but I preferred to be called an idiot rather than a heartless sage.

I passed by the red-headed girl, and she looked back at me.

"Don't worry. I'll protect you," I said.

The enemy in pursuit of her consisted of three adult men. One had a pitchfork, while the other two had swords. Far from being warriors or adventurers, they wore clothes patterned with the mud and soil of vegetable fields.

"What do you think you're doing?" I stood in front of them, and they stopped.

"It's none of your business! Out of the way!" one of them bawled out.