A dream. You find yourself sitting in the limbs of a tree. As you look around you can see a campfire a few feet below you with a pot boiling over it. There is someone sitting next to the fire. As you look around it is obvious that the hands you hold on to the limbs with are not your own. Slender fingers of dark grey skin reach out from slim wrists and fit arms. You feel yourself begin to creep out slowly over the branch laying on your stomach as you slide along it. A few strands of long black hair fall into your view as you look down at this man sitting next to the fire. The man wears leather armor and with his hood up you can't quite see his face. He looks around camp surveying the area regularly. Peering off into the distance into the dark night that surround the small spot of light projected by his fire. The pot sits boiling over the fire, lid slightly ajar with a large metal spoon in it. You feel yourself rest heavy on the limb as your hands search a pouch at your waste and come back out with a small bottle with a thin metal wire wrapped around it with a small metal ball at the end. You slowly unwind the metal wire keeping control of the length as you do. Through the foliage of the tree you watch the man slowly stir the pot. While one hand controls the wire and bottle the other quickly reaches into another pouch and pulls out a small stone. With a quick flick of the wrist you toss the stone and its fumbles through the grass just at the edge of the light from the camp. The man looks up and a hand reaches for a blade at his waste. He stands and looks about staring deeply into the darkness. Craning his neck one way and the other to see what has made the noise. After a few seconds he settles down again. You reach and pull another stone from the pouch another toss. This one bounces off a nearby tree and skitters into some dried leaves. The man stands quickly and draws a dagger to one hand and a sword in the other and crouches slightly as moves behind a tree allowing him to get an angle to see where the sound came from. While he moves slowly around the dark shadows at the edge of the camp you quickly unravel the metal wire hanging it just above his bowling pot. You remove the stopper and run the wire over the top of the bottle and tilt it over. A dark and mildly thick liquid begins to drip out of the bottle running down the wire. You quickly look around and see the man silently slink around the edge of the camp still searching for the source of the noise. The drops of the liquid run down the wire and form a ever growing bead on the metal ball at the end of the wire. As more and more runs out of the bottle and down the wire the liquid begins to fall into the boiling pot. Drip by drip the dark liquid begins to mix into the colors of the stew brewing away inside. As the bottle empties you once again turn slightly to see the man searching the area where the stones landed. The last few drops are still making their way down the wire as he turns back toward the camp. You quickly begin to pull up the wire so that he doesn't see it. You take a cloth from the pouch where the bottle came from and use it to protect your hands as you collect the wire and the liquid that didn't make it into the pot. You can feel your head shake slightly in discuss. You remain silent and the man sits down next to his pot. He takes the spoon and stirs the pot a few times before removing it from the fire letting it cool for just a half a minute before he begins to eat. He eats for a minute or two, he cocks his head slightly to one side and coughs, and another cough, he grabs at his throat and opens up with a full coughing fit. He moves quickly to his pack and pulls the dagger from his side as he does looking around into the dark. He opens the pack and finds a small bottle inside and quickly empties the contents down his throat. He still coughs but it is lessening. He moves back over to the pot and overturns it onto the ground. He goes to his pack and with one hand still filled with a dagger digs out a small portion of meat and smells it, satisfied he goes through several other small containers in his pack inspecting the contents of each. He is breathing easier and his coughing is starting to subside. He finds a scroll in the pack and seems to weigh it in his hand before starting to unroll it.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

You feel your hands reach to your back and pull a large crossbow to bare on the man. You pull the trigger and the bolt buries itself in the mans chest, as he begins to read the text from the scroll. He drops it and pulls the sword, he faces the tree you are in and readies himself. Your hands go to the mechanism of the crossbow and begin very slowly winding the reloading mechanism. It takes quite a few seconds for you to wind it and reload another bolt. You take aim once again and loose the bolt. The man jumps out of the way and the bolt finds itself in the man's pack.

There is a flash

You look down and you see those same dark grey hands covered in blood, red crimson blood shimmering in the light of the fire. You hold the hands out in front of you and begin to shake them trying to remove the blood from them. The man face down in the grass with blood pooling from him wetting the grass. Those same dark grey hands reach down and grab a sword from the ground the same one he held.

“Stab, Stab, Stab” the blade pierces the man's armor and flesh, there is no vital reaction, no wincing no bleeding. Tears being to warp your vision your vision as the blade once again pieces him. This time you leave the blade in him. You start going through his pack.

There is another flash

You begin to walk away from the camp, your pack on your back, you turn back to the camp once more and next to the still burning fire, and now the tent and other camp-gear also alight, A wooden stake stuck in the ground and a head, freshly removed from the body stuck apon in, the features of which are skewed by blood and bruise. You lower your head and begin to walk away to let the camp burn. Let it all burn.

You wake. As you do you look down and check, and yes once again you look down and the peachy tones of your own flesh match what you know to be your own.