Through a haze of static and tingling muscles I heard muffled voices. My face lay flat against cold stone and it felt as though my body weighed twice as much as it should. Snippets of coherent sentences broke through every now and again, but the numbing static prevailed.

“...do I need to see them myself Chris…”

“...nothing was left? Why did…”

“...no evidence yet that may support any occupation…”

“...this treatment is undeserving of such a…”

“...worst case scenario we have two revenant…”

“...I need to know how the eye…”

“...A few more hours should….”

“...the mercenary group is becoming erratic, I don’t think…”

“Valerie, you’re needed over…”

“...send them away, if they must bother me let us not…”

“...Kadran. Shale…”

“...I can see some movement beneath his eyelids…”

“Shale!”

Water doused my head and I shrieked up from the ground with an undignified grunt. Metal rattled and clinked as I rose. I glared up to find the grey eyed mage before me. He stood behind tall, closely spaced porous stone pillars. They were fashioned as bars, like that of a prison cell. I glanced down at my arms and ankles and discovered they were bound by thick silver shackles that bolted into the ground.

I shivered as icy water ran down my back and I took in my surroundings. I was in a holding cell of some sort, that was certain. The room was cramped, musty and bland. Huge smooth blocks of stone comprised the floor and walls, similar to the mortuary where I awoke. The roof was thankfully less rotten. Large timber beams were stacked alongside each other so there was not a single crack or loose beam to prise apart.

There was no natural light source within the room, and as such no window to peer through. Nothing adorned the walls. There was no bed. The only thing present was a hole in the corner of the room I imagined was the toilet. State of the art no doubt.

That left just me, the chains which bound me, and a huge circle of dust, luminescent paint, and assorted fragments of what looked like bone. They formed a large ring around my body. Numerous symbols, looping lines, runes and fractalesque patterns marked the ring, all engraved into the stone I sat upon.

The ring pulsed with a dark blue light that could almost be black. The pulsation resembled a heartbeat, beating twice, pausing, twice, pausing, and over again. The speed increased, and I grabbed my chest in surprise. It didn’t just resemble a heartbeat. It was a heartbeat! Mine!

Before looking up at the figures lined up before my cage, I took a deep, controlled breath, and urged my heart to slow. It wearily obeyed. Sighing, I cracked my neck, rolled my shoulders, pushed away the deep pain in my muscles and sat up straight with my legs crossed.

I met the curious eyes of six people. I recognised a few of them. The red-haired commander stood by the blue haired mage and another mage with the shaved head. Standing just off to the side of the stone bars of the cell was a severe looking middle aged soldier in chainmail with shortsword strapped to his side. His face was lined with scars and there was a small triangular piece of his jawbone missing on his chin. He stared unblinkingly at me from the shadows.

Opposite that man was a frailer looking young soldier in similar armour. Though he also sported a metal skullcap, despite being indoors. He winced a little as I glanced at him.

The last presence in the room left me feeling cold. Standing behind the mages and the commander, leant against a wall harshly illuminated by bright purple lamplight was a ragged, almost bald man. He was short, almost half the size of the commander, but his muscles were thickly corded, and his savage grin convinced me of his danger. Sunken grey spots dotted his skin in patches that suggested some form of illness, but he appeared comfortable. He wore no weapons, nor armour, just some sooty trousers, an oversized shirt and a frayed brown jacket.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Someone cleared their throat. I hastily looked away from the sinister man in the back.

“Shale Kadran, good evening.” The commander had spoken.

I met her emerald eyes and flinched a little as the memory of her firing an arrow towards me, not once, but twice replayed in my mind. And the second had successfully struck me. My shackles rattled uncomfortably in the quiet room as I blindly probed my back, searching for some grizzly wound where the arrow had struck.

She resumed. “Though you are certainly worse for wear after your encounter with the Greybone Stalker, you should find yourself unharmed by the arrow from last night.”

I glared at her. “You know, I might disagree with you regarding that.”

“There is no mark, we can guarantee that. We did not intend to kill you, Shale Kadran. Merely render you unconscious.” Her words were soft and measured, despite their stark content.

My cold metal fingers found no mark. Just as she’d said. A dozen angry bruises and welts made their presence known in place of an arrow-wound, however.

The male mage spoke up, “I enchanted the arrow with a few basic spells; drowsiness, subliminal subconscious blockers, resonant astral nullifiers and other such safeguards. These rendered the penetrative power of the metal virtually nonexistent. So long as you were who you said you were of course. But they also would have done nothing on certain, rare and powerful revenants of sufficient energy levels, within appropriate bandwidths. You know-”

The blue haired lead mage clapped the man on the back, and he quieted down.

I opened my mouth, intending to say something, but nothing came. My mouth was dry and I could still feel the grit of ashy dust under my tongue and around the edge of my throat. I coughed a few times which sent a little puff of the dust into the air.

The mages groaned, and the young soldier clanged as he put his hand on the hand of his sword. I gaped at them, and the older soldier shook his head at the younger, who then slowly eased back.

“So, what now? You say you didn’t mean to execute me. What will happen instead?” I lifted the shackles up conspicuously.

The commander stepped up towards me and said, “Frankly, we’re not certain you are still who you say you are. There’s too many unanswered questions and conflicting evidence. We intend to resolve that as soon as possible.”

“How, exactly?”

“First, by asking you some simple questions.”

The beating ring increased its speed as my heart rate went up. The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“Do you take an issue with that Shale Kadran?” She enquired.

A bead of sweat ran down my face. “I do.” I answered.

“How so?”

“To put it simply, I’m currently suffering from extreme memory loss. All I can recall is my own name.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? What of the world we live in? Where are we? What are we doing here? What was your role?”

I shook my head in response.

“I see.” The commander turned, approached the blue haired mage and retrieved a thick piece of parchment and a quill. “If you please Thalia.” She added.

The mage, Thalia, bowed her head and then brought out a pot of ink from a large pocket inside her robe. She held it aloft, brushed the base with her other hand and then threw the pot into the air. It arced towards the commander, who was now sitting before me in a chair I’d not seen before, and the ink pot stopped in motion beside her left forearm.

The pot remained in place, and bobbed in the air gently as though it hung from an invisible thread. The commander smiled, dipped the quill into the inkpot and began scribbling a few notes onto the parchment.

“Now then,” she began. “Tell me everything you recall since your senses returned to you. In as much detail as possible. Do not omit anything, we will know.” She gestured to the ring around me.

I squinted at the commander, and saw her open, inquisitive eyes. The two mages stood either side of her, reserved and distant. Whilst the other three, the soldiers of sorts looked not at me, but what I could be. They fixated on my arms, the metal holding me down, my bare muddy, metal plated feet.

I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and told her what I knew.

I narrated my journey from mortuary to stronghold. I declared I had been mistaken for dead, after determining I had awoken in the mortuary. I mentioned the cadaver suspended upon the hook, this garnered a few reactions.

The commander frowned, whispered to the mages and then rubbed the back of her neck anxiously. I paused then, but she prompted me to continue as the menacing man in the background slipped out of the room. He returned some ten minutes later.

I told them of the horrible droning sound that foretold the Stalker’s coming. I mentioned the strange activities of my body, though I didn’t emphasise the sheer power and volatility of their output.

My run through the ravine raised some more eyebrows, as did my chance discovery of the explosive capacity of the fine ashy soil that topped the ground. There were a few things I kept to myself. Mainly my existence before Sorefen, my life unlived upon a planet universes apart from this one. Amnesia was the one thing I anxiously clung to. Not a pretty or likely excuse for my present circumstances, but it was the one I had thought of in the spur of the moment.

Thankfully it was at least a documented phenomenon in this world. Olindar - I managed to pick up the name of the male mage during the discussion - divulged some case studies and historical cases of amnesia.

However there was a heavy focus on the elderly, as opposed to amnesia induced via blunt trauma, which left the group somewhat dissatisfied with my explanation. But it wasn’t totally impossible to them, it seemed.

The mages hastily discussed something out of earshot as I waited. Olindar was quite animated, he breathed heavily, whilst the lead mage met his gaze coolly. When she spoke, it was only a few words at a time.

Nervous, but determined to remain composed, I continued telling my story into the night. I hoped it was the best damn story I had ever told in my life. It would need to be.