I must have gone unconscious about halfway down because when I opened my eyes, I was looking at the ceiling. I looked to the left and saw the broken glass laid out on the rocks that I suspected was the base of the mountain. Then I looked to the right, expecting to find the roof bashed in and totalled. That wasn’t exactly what was there. The roof was only partially destroyed, but my arm was only half there. I looked down and to the right and saw it lying there, the hand opened and the wrist slit open in a couple of places. Then the pain started to flood my body. First through the end of my arm, then travelling up to my stomach and over my chest. It felt like someone running their hands all over my body, everywhere possible. Like my stomach had been slit open, they had slipped their way inside to attack my organs. First comforting, soft, almost pleasing in a way, but that would last for only short, insensitive moments as the pain would quickly take over, driving its demonic claws over and into my thin, paper-like flesh, tearing, shredding, blood gushing out from every place those claws ran.
As I lay there, moaning, crying from the pain, I thought of home, friends, family. They didn’t mean a thing. They never did. I was glad they weren’t there to witness this, to watch as a once living, breathing, happy person was dying in pain, that oh so terribly excruciating pain. At that point, I knew I wasn’t totally alive anymore. I started to see things. Flashes of either the past or dreams. It was like a fantasy. I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was riding over a meadow of flowers, birds fleeing as the horse’s hooves touched the ground, though as light as a gentle breeze. Then, as I was blinking my eyes trying to come to my senses, one blink changed everything.
I didn’t feel the pain, I wasn’t in the car, and there was no blood and there was no blood and gore anymore. I was on that horse, that black stallion, riding as fast as I could over ground I had never seen before. I didn’t know what to do or where I was. I had ridden before, but the saddle in which I rode was not of this world. I looked at my arm and it was there, intact, and clothed in a leather, three-quarter length glove, as was the other.
I came to a path starting at the edge of a forest. I brought the horse to a stop and slid off, looking down at myself. I had sworn I had been wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater when I had gone over the cliff, but now I found myself in something I did not recognize. I was attired in some sort of armour made of silver chain link and leather. I pulled my shirt away from my body realizing why the cantering of the horse felt like it was pulling at my chest. I was outfitted in layers, first a crude sort of cotton shirt, lapped by a leather, cross-stringed jacket that was armoured along and over the shoulders. That was covered y the chain link vest, attached at the sides of my torso, which was beginning to stick into my breasts and hips. My pants were starting to get heavy, too. I soon saw why. They were layered with sheets of embossed metal. I didn’t know what the hell I was wearing, but it looked like something out of a fairytale.
This horse I had been riding started to walk away, but as I took one step to stop him, he turned on a dime to face me. I noticed he was more of a shimmering black than he had been when I was in the saddle. He had a reddish-brown mark on his forehead. I took the few steps up to his head. He just stood there, letting me trace the strange mark on his face with my finger. It was some sort of medieval weapon. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I could have sworn that I recognized it. I placed my left hand onto the handle of whatever it was that was attached to my side and pulled it out of its sheath. The weapon that seemed to have been burned to his forehead was what I held now in my hand. It was about a fifteen pound sword that had a long handle braided with suede strips and a five inch dagger hidden in the back end of the handle so that if you were to thrust it towards some one behind you, it would eject and lock in place, driving itself into your enemy’s intestines.
I knew I wasn’t here for no reason, and that horse wasn’t a match with me for no reason, either. I was here to do something, but what?
This horse still needed a name if it were to stay with me or if I were to be just dragged along with it.
“I don’t know where you came from, but you must have some purpose, something you’re useful for. But what to call you, that’s the question.” It stood there, looking at me for about ten seconds then trotted over to a funny looking tree that appeared out of nowhere. This was not any kind of tree I had ever seen before, but it definitely wasn’t real. The pattern of the bark on the tree started to move and morph, forming some kind of maze of of things I had seen before somewhere.
I had been freaked out enough already that day, and it all seemed like a dream anyways, so instead of getting freaked out again and totally losing my head, I stood there calmly, staring at that tree and what it was trying to do. ‘What is it that I’m here for, why am I here,’ was what i was thinking as this monstrosity of a tree coiled and wrapped the bark around itself tighter or looser as its form shifted. But as i stared harder into one spot on it, the lines were forming crude letters that I started to recognize.
“You are the missing link. You survived.” As I read the words and was finished the sentence, the tree became more vivid as it stood there, creaking and almost moaning, as it slowly vanished into thin air in front of my unbelieving eyes. All of a sudden, I looked up at the sky and the nice, sunny day i had been in was gone, as was the grass and the green from the trees of the forest past the meadow. All the life had seemed to wilt away.
I ran to the horse and jumped into the saddle. Automatically, as if the beast read my mind, we turned for the path that lead through the woods and flew faster than the wind through the gripping branches. As we ran through the trees, the path seemed to be getting thinner and shorter. Soon, the branches and the twigs were ripping at our faces and stinging our eyes. But this didn’t make him slow down. He seemed to know something I didn’t. He had picked up speed and was going faster than I had already seen him go, faster than any horse I had ever seen. The trees were becoming thick and heavy, weighing themselves down upon us, like we were supposed to be holding them up. I closed my eyes, wishing it would all end. It hurt so badly.
All of a sudden, the pain stopped. So had the horse. I opened my eyes and couldn’t believe where I was. The forest behind me was gone and i found myself in an empty field with the same sky that was above us before we had run through the thicket. But something didn’t seem right. The smell in the air was musty and smelled a little like old animals and death. I looked down to see my horse standing in a puddle of blood. Then, the bodies started to appear. One by one they came into sight like they had risen from the ground. Speared and ripped apart, they lay massacred on a battlefield. And as they appeared, so did the killers, running out of the mists as they advanced towards their enemies. My horse reared expecting to be attacked by the oncoming soldiers. As they began their attack, they rushed past us, ignoring us like we were one of them, one of both sides. But they were real. One of the hunched creatures threw a mace and it zoomed past my face just splitting the skin on my left cheek. It hit one of his own in the back of the head, spilling his brains liked a cracked egg.
One seemed to notice our presence, and it advanced calmly but surely, its staff in hand. This giant creature, about twice the size of my horse and I, walked like it was going to an inevitable death and had accepted the invitation. No one seemed to notice his presence either. He was covered in a long, bulky grey cloak that veiled its face. For a split second it looked up and stared me straight in the eye, his glowing red with anger. I heard a scream from my right side and whipped my head in that direction to see what it was. One of the more human looking warriors had been flung through the air and collided into me, knocking from the stallion’s back.
The last thing I saw were those red eyes and my horse, screaming wildly as it was pulled with me to the ground.
To Be Continued....
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