The Lost Runner

Chapter 3: My first dream and second mistake

I don't remember falling asleep but at some point  I must've. I dreamed for the first time since my imprisonment here. It was of a strange door. This door was the regular height and looked just like a rather elegant door, but it had an air of mystery to it.  

This door was a forest green and had a brass handle in the center. What would a door like this be doing in a place like this? I wondered. A pale hand reached out, one I did not recognise and pulled at the handle. The door opened with a creak and a blinding white light filled the gap. Everything went silent. A piercing female-sounding scream filled the air, deafening me. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. My ears rung from the scream I heard in my dream. I pushed up my sleeves, picked up my pack, took the sword out and held it at the ready. It was quiet here, but in the distance I could here a shuffling, like rocks moving, or a monster. I began getting flustered again, telling myself, calm down, take a deep breath, your gonna be fine. I headed down the rest of the corridor and took a right. 

Mistake two.

 I walked into a large containment chamber, larger than the one I woke up in. Around the walls of the large domed room were small dug out rooms with bars over the front There was also a large pile of sealed wooden boxes stacked off to my right. Half of the rooms were empty. The ones that had something in them were indescribable creatures. I'll try to describe one. It was pure black, like a shadow, its eyes were pure black; no distinguishing between white, pupil and iris.

But one was not a monster. He looked of elfin origin, like me. His ears were pointy, his skin ghostly pale like mine and grass green eyes. His hair was dark copper brown, side parted and short. He just sat in the far corner and looked at the floor, paying no attention to me. Something about him triggered a memory but I just couldn't assign a time, face or place to it. It was just a feeling that I used to know him. I had to free him. 

I frantically searched around the cell for a button or mechanism to lift the bars. There wasn't one. Frustrated, I let out a heavy sigh and ran to the middle of the room. There has to be something here to raise the bars, or how would they have gotten him in there? I looked up and studied the ceiling. Nothing. I couldn't find a trace of a system up there. 

I sat down in the middle of the floor and thought through my situation again. Or at least tried to.

I heard another blood-curdling scream. 

It sounded nearer than it did in my dream, coming from the left. I would've run for my life, but I had to save the boy. It didn't matter that I didn't remember him, he was an elf and perhaps the only company I could gain by this point.  

I jumped up and began to study the floor.