At first, I thought something had gone wrong with my eyes. You'll sometimes hear people talk about not blinking when they take the shot, but everyone blinks. Everyone.

The difference between a regular shooter and a professional is that the professional has learned to not anticipate the blink. We can wait until the shot is taken, then we blink. So I knew I'd taken the shot. I had blinked but, when I'd opened my eye again, I saw only darkness through the scope.

Then I thought there was something wrong with my ears.

Where had the report gone? I had heard it. By now, I was used to the big, blooming roar of the ASVK. It was a stupid thing, not like the bright snap of the L115 that, at a distance, you'd struggle to distinguish from background noise. You could almost not notice the gunshot if you weren't paying attention, especially if you were in a warzone, with gunfire every few minutes anyway. But the ASVK was like standing next to a tank shot. The huge flash eliminator was there for a reason, and it kept the massive light discharge down a bit, but it couldn't do anything for the noise, even before the sonic boom.

But it was like that first wall of sound had just been shut down, switched off. I had gone deaf!

And blind?

'What the actual fuck?' I said, loudly.

I could hear myself, anyway.

'Pratoon na, ya ya moi kimponio!'

Alarmed by the sudden voice, I rolled over, dropping the rifle and grabbing awkwardly for my sidearm.

I was deployed with a full, live load-out as well as the ASVK, my Glock in a thigh holster and my reserve weapon, a US-made M4 carbine strapped to the side of my bergen, which made rolling over awkward. Normally, I would have ditched the bergen before setting up to take a shot, but up against it with time, it was still on my back as I wrestled the pistol free to point into the darkness.

But I wasn't blind, either. I could see my hands in soft, flickering candlelight, and, looming out of the darkness, the grinning, bearded face of a maniac.

Looking back, it still seems completely reasonable that I shot him. Or, at least, tried to shoot him. But luckily for him - and, it would turn out, for me as well - I hadn't cocked it. Just common sense really. Don't carry a loaded weapon with a round up the spout. And after a couple of futile clicks, I was clear-headed enough to realize what I was doing and the time it took for to cock the pistol was long enough to realise that the first impression of mania was just the effect of the long shadows cast across his face by the circle of candles I turned out to be inside.

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He continued to jabber at me as I stood up, holding him at gunpoint as I ditched my bergen.

'Who the fuck are you and where am I?'

'Ah! Kapatchupika? Samata!'

He was cautious of me. I could see that in his eyes. But he wasn't frightened. There had been no reaction from him to my attempt to shoot him in his stupid face, and no reaction from him now to the outstretched pistol.

He tapped his chest.

'Ma, Anthelion!' he said, tapping himself more emphatically. 'Anthelion!'

I knew he was telling me his name, but I had no intention of engaging with him. I crouched down and unhitched the M4, flipping its sling over my head. The pistol stayed trained on the strange, bearded man as I scanned the room.

It was, I could now see as my eyes adjusted to the room, a round space built from roughly-dressed stone and otherwise undecorated on the walls. But the floor was covered with metal strips in complex circles and geometric patterns, that gleamed with an oily, rainbow sheen where the dancing light caught them - light from fat, expensive-looking candles that burned with very little smoke. A sweet, almost pungent, scent of something like incense filled the room.

There was a door in the wall behind him and I circled him cautiously, making my way towards the exit. He held his hands up to me, palms open and empty, which I took as a sign that he wasn't planning to attack me, and he made no move to stop me as I tried three door handle and found it unlocked.

The door looked as ancient as the walls: a thick, wooden structure fashioned from slabs of wood rather than planks and pinned together with black iron. It reminded me of a visit to the Royal Armouries or the Tower of London. And the handle was a metal ring on a latch that turned easily under my hand.

I pushed the door open and glanced through the gap, keeping the bearded man - what had he called himself? Anthelion? - covered with the pistol. There was nothing to see but a corridor, but I felt a strong breeze whip into the room, making the candles gutter and shake. That meant there was a way out nearby. However I had ended up here, they wouldn't hold me long.

I pushed the door wider, slipped through the gap and pushed it closed again behind me. Then I turned to take in where I had found myself.

It wasn't, after all, a corridor but a balcony. The wall opposite have way to a metal rail surrounding a wooden walkway that circumnavigated the exterior of the room where I had begun. I was at the top of some kind of tower and, as I approached the balcony I could see that it was just one part of a rambling stone structure built into the side of a precipitous mountain. From this vantage point I could look over a deep valley plunging down towards a distant river, bordered with fields that grew verdant in the golden light of a pair of setting suns.