We sat, hugging our steaming black coffees, facing each other across Alex’s kitchen table, after a very late and boozy night. We had worked our way slowly through three bottles of wine and two extra large pizzas, as Alex and I told each other our stories. That said, I didn’t really get that much out of Alex.

“You’re the one who’s been off visiting another world,” she had flippantly replied when I pressed her about the stories she and her sister had written.

“We just wrote some stories, and its just a coincidence that you happened to meet someone with the same name as my sister’s heroine Carthia."

I’d argued that she, Alex, was a spitting image of the Carthia that I had met. Yet she even put that down to coincidence, coincidence and my addled brain after being transported back to Earth, and then being knocked over by a truck. No matter how I pressed she would not concede that there was more to it than that, that there was a link somehow.

But I think that deep down she knew there was something to it; that it was no coincidence that we had met in this way. Her book and its stories held the solution, I was sure.

But there was no way she was going to let me get my hands on the book; it was far too precious to her, and our relationship far too new to even be called friendship yet.

I had told her all sorts last night but had still come nowhere close to exhausted my tale. There was far too much to tell in one sitting, even a marathon like last night had been. But she had the gist of it now.

It was three in the morning before we had called a halt. Alex had crawled off to bed, and I had slept on the sofa. If you can call it sleep. Drink has always made me restless and anxious; I rarely got any beneficial sleep after a binge.

And that was before I was taken. Since my return drink always brought on the worse of nightmares. I return to him and the terrors he filled me with most nights in my dreams, but after drink they seem far worse somehow, more real, almost as if I was truly there again.

Last night, in my dreams, I had been brought before him for the very first time, and I had relived all the terror of that day, the day the Nargu had presented me to him.

***

The Nargu had continued to march towards the distant mountains. Ten days it had taken, a solid gruelling march.

They stopped only to sleep, and as we neared the mountains, even that seemed to be cut to barely a few hours at a time. They became more agitated as the journey progressed; they certainly taunted and beat me more, though they seemed to take less pleasure from it. It was almost as if beating me was a release for their own frustration and fear, rather than the sport it had been.

Then, on that last night, as we lay down to sleep, their mood seemed somehow lighter, their taunting halfhearted, almost as if they just went through the motions.

We had finally reached the foot of the great mountains we had spent so long marching towards, and tomorrow, I thought, would commence a very difficult and challenging climb, unless some passageway was know to my captors.

Since we set camp my mood had been filled with foreboding, a dark fear had filling me. As far as I could tell this night was no different from any of the others I had spent in captivity, and yet I was somehow filled with dread. The little of the Nargu’s language that Setia had taught me had not helped at all. I had learned nothing of their plans, what they intended for me or where they were taking me. I slept fitfully despite my deep fatigue.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

I awoke yoked and prostrated at the foot of a dais in a darkened and dismal room, the only light from torches set into the walls casting flickering shadows across the floor before my face.

I tried to move, but something held me pressed firmly against the floor.

Turning my head, I could see that it was the arm of a Nargu prostrated at my side. Again, I tried to move, strained to push myself up to see what was before me, but the Nargu held me firm.

As I relaxed my face against the hard stone floor, an icy chill flooded the room, and the Nargu beside me groaned even as I filled with a fear the like of which I had never felt before. Terror took my mind, yet I could not scream, could not move a single muscle, could hardly breath. A presence stood before me, I could feel it, knew it looked at me, examined me, and knew also that I could deny this being nothing, nothing at all – if it demanded my life I would have given it gladly just to end the terror.

Such fear, and yet I could not even see this creature; I could only feel its presence. I had not so much as glimpsed or heard the being that I somehow knew stood before me – what terror awaited should I somehow find the courage to turn my eyes upward?

Then came the voice, a kindly and soothing voice that faded my fears into insignificance, replacing them with trust, love and a yearning to hear more.

“Yes, this will do perfectly. He is perfect. You have done well. He is exactly as I remember his kind to be, he will suit my purposes well. Take him away, prepare him for what is to come.”

Then the terror returned, all love and trust not faded, but gone as if they never existed. Hands grasped my feet and I was dragged screaming across the floor.

***

“David?” Alex said, in an exasperated tone, startling me out of my waking nightmare.

As I met her eyes, she said, “You’ve been away with the fairies for about five minutes. What were you thinking about?”

“Sorry… I had a bad dream last night, and it shook me up a little. For some reason drink makes my nightmares much, much worse than they normally are.”

Alex reached across the table and took my hand. “Do you want to talk about it?” she quietly asked.

“Not really,” I answered. “I’ve just spent the last five minutes reliving it all over again, and that was more than enough for one day… You see, in the dreams, it's not just like remembering… all the fear and terror comes back exactly like when I first felt them… it's almost as if I was really there again, for the first time, with no recollection at all of who I am now or what’s happened since. The dreams are really, really terrifying.

Alex’s hand tightened on mine as she said, “No problem, we’ll stay away from your dreams. Perhaps we should give your whole story a rest for today and chill a little. Maybe we could watch some TV, or go for a walk or something?”

I grinned. “Yeah, like you’re going to let me off that lightly.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that?” Alex asked, her eyebrows raised.

“You? Let me alone and not badger me with questions for a whole day. I don't think so," I said, beginning to enjoy this little bit of banter.

“Well, we’ll see about that then, won’t we. I’m going to finish this coffee, and then I’m off out. Whether you’re coming or not!”

Oops, gone a little too far I thought. Quickly backpedalling, I said, “Actually, Alex, there is something that I could tell you about that might just dispel the memories of my dream. It's one of the few pleasant stories that I have to tell… Yes, if you’ll stay and listen, I’ll tell you that part of my story. And who knows, it might set the scene for some more of the same.”

“So what’s that then?” she asked, eyes alight with curiosity. And then with a smirk she said, “I suppose it really would be a nice change to hear a story with a happy ending, something that puts a little smile on that face of yours.”

“How about my escape from Dar'cen, how I finally got free from him? I can continue then with what came after, how I came by my friends.”

“Sounds good to me. Go for it,” she replied.

“Okay, but I’ll tell it as it happened then, as I then believed it to be. Later, you see, I learned that things were not quite as they seemed at the time.”

As I spoke, so my mind went back there, to that day, the day when my life was so suddenly given back to me.