He was dreaming of comfort and safety.

He was sitting at the base of an old tree, beside an old man. The old man was his mentor, his master. The old man was showing him something, carving marks into the soil with a stick in one hand and waving about in the other. They were both laughing. There was a skinned rabbit on a spit over a little campfire beside them. He remembered this day. It was one of the first days away from his family and eating something other than rations prepared by his Mother for the long journey. He thought he would enjoy his life as the apprentice to a wise old Wizard. He hoped one day he could make children laugh as well as his master did.

And then he woke up, the dream fading like laughter in the wind.

His senses were quite overwhelmed. He had a very bad headache. He could smell dirt, a very strong smell of dirt, no, wait, he could also taste the dirt, there seemed to be some in his mouth. How did that get in there? There were overlapping sounds of adults and children shouting in joy, hatred and even rapture.

His vision was very blurry. Opening his eyes, even a bit, took great effort. He felt that someone was dragging his body through mud, dirt, and quite a lot of pebbles. It was actually hurting quite a bit, he wondered if his surprise chauffeur was purposely aiming for the stones. He felt almost as wet and miserable as he did in the lake, it seemed it was raining heavily right now. Every now and then a small stone or clod of dirt impacted his body.

He manged to open his eyes a bit further, moved his head a bit and realized it probably was a mistake waking up.

He was being dragged through the mud. He was belly up, his arms trailing behind him, two men dragging him by his feet. His head was painfully bouncing up and down as it hit seemingly every stone and pebble possible.

His boots were gone. Well, no they weren’t they gone entirely, they were just gone from his feet. One of the men dragging him was wearing the boots. He even took the socks. The boot-thief and body dragging partner were the two men from the beach. They seemed to be almost exhausting themselves from dragging the Wizard.

The Wizard looked around and realized his situation was a lot worse than mere boot-theft.

He was being dragged through a village. The sun was gone, hidden behind a grey overcast sky, raining hard. Villagers lined his passage, throwing insults and jeers and also throwing mud and stones. They didn’t seem to hit him very often, or very hard at all, certainly not for a lack of effort. Their limbs looked quite thin. Their clothing was in a very terrible state, closer to vegetable sacks and rags. None of them seemed to be wearing shoes, except of course, for a certain boot-thief.

The villagers weren’t just standing by. They were walking several feet behind the Wizard and were uncomfortably starting to resemble what looked very much like a mob. An angry mob.

The buildings of the villages looked like old garden sheds forgotten about for decades. Roofs covered with broken shingles, tree bark and mostly thatching. Doors were just suggestions, wooden boards in front of holes for windows, and not a drop of paint in sight. The dirt between houses and in the center of the village quickly turned into mud with the heavy rain. Deep mud. The villagers seemed fine enough squelching through it with bare feet.

The rain was falling even harder now, splattering against his face. This mud would destroy his robe.

His robe? His robe was gone, he realized. And his hat. And even his belt. The other man dragging him was wearing the belt. The Wizard could only imagine the nightmarish stains the mud were leaving on the back of his shirt and pants. At least he was being dragged feet first without a belt through an angry mob. Otherwise his pants would probably be pulled down from the friction, revealing underwear, and then the angry mob would start laughing as well. That would be humiliating. His reputation would be dragged through the mud.

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He giggled a bit at his own joke. A clod of mud hit him in the face.

He realized he was quite calm about all this, spitting out the mud. Was this the result of even more damage to his brain? Did the shovel hit him that hard? Was this a breakdown of his fight or flight response? He suddenly had another memory float up into his mind. He was a child, walking through the loose farm animals on the family estate. His older sister was showing him a trick with some of the goats, it was a bit cruel, but it was just too funny to not be done once in a while. Shout too loudly at the goats, and they would just flop, rolling over and lying still with limbs pointed out straight.

An observation popped into his mind. Perhaps it was simply the upside-down angle he was viewing them from, but the villagers seemed to be fairly short. Noticeably short.

He felt like he was drugged. A concussion maybe, probably, that’s what the apothecaries from the Medical Wing called it. They would prescribe rest with limited activity, nothing mentally tasking to be done, and one of those awful tasting alchemical solutions to be drank. It didn’t need to taste awful, there just wasn’t enough funding for the extra ingredients to make it appetizing and flavorful. That’s what the the Chief Apothecary said, but she did seem to find enough money from somewhere to buy those gaudy and expensive robes of hers-

They stopped moving. He wasn’t being dragged anymore.

Now was the time for a heart-felt plea, perhaps appealing to their sense of morality and common dignity. Maybe he should just try to bribe them outright, or save that for after the pleading, nobody wants to come off too pathetic when bargaining for freedom.

It took only a split-second of thinking, but he knew exactly what to say to them to make them stop this and return to the rational world. The two men were standing over him again, looking him in the eyes.

The Wizard was ready to speak.

He opened his mouth and issued his statement.

“Bleehhrg.”

Uh oh. That wasn’t what he meant to say at all. He definitely was not fully conscious. He really did worry for the state of his brain.

He was flipped over, face pressing into the mud. It didn’t taste great. Then they pulled him up. He didn’t have the strength to stay upright, but the two men were helping him stand. That was quite kind of them.

Wait no, they weren’t being kind. He was spun around, his back slamming into a thick wooden pole. They were doing something to his hands. His fingers felt like limp sausages, just flopping around of their own free will. Then they were done, and there was something very scratchy and itchy around his hands, which were on the other side of the pole as his body.

Ah, they tied rope around my hands, he thought. He was tied to a stake. He was tied to a stake in the middle of a village surrounded by an angry mob. There were no torches held by the mob, but there were quite a few rusty pitchforks.

He was in danger. This was something out of a nightmare.

That thought sent his heart beating faster and seemed to help him sober up. Well, a little bit. There was still a pounding headache, blurry vision, slurred words and all the other classic flavors of head trauma running through him.

The crowd of villagers stopped throwing things at him. That was a good change.

Wait, no, now it was worse. They were gathering sticks, branches, moldy logs and shattered furniture and piling it up around the stake, and therefore around him.

They all seemed so happy about it. There were whole families out, adults carrying armfuls of wood, children running underfoot and tossing little scraps onto the pile. A bit away from the pile, beside the houses, there were some adults bringing out caskets of some very watery ale and starting to cook some food from what looked to be berries, mushrooms and root vegetables gathered from foraging. They weren’t cooking enough food to feed the village, just a couple bites per person. The main food source looked to be a large iron cauldron carried by several men before being set on the ground. An old woman whispered a few words to the cauldron and it started to fill up with a disgustingly plain gruel, as if welling up from an unseen pipe.

The sight of the gruel being magically generated triggered a memory. Was that a Cauldron of Plenty? The item in his memory could feed about three dozen people, but nearly a hundred villagers were eating from the one here. A real Cauldron of Plenty was modestly built with few decorations, but the villagers’ version looked almost rusting and dilapidated. Instead of a hearty porridge there was something barely edible.

It was like a twisted village fair and he was the main star. Whenever the wood pile started to bury his feet, they pushed him further up the wooden pole until his feet were above the new height. Got to give the audience the full exhilarating experience, he supposed.