The reality of true fear is setting in now, just as the wind drops, just as the world seems to die in the depths of the night. The silence is deafening. My heart's aching screams seem to echo through the vast forrest. I feel my spirit waver as cold moonlight creeps down my spine. I've never felt so alone in my life, never more than this. Heat rushes through my chest as I hear the snap of a branch behind me. Time dilates. I spin fiercely to locate the origin of the sound. 'just an owl'. With immense relief and without thought the words escape my mouth. Unfortunately, the reprieve, although necessary, is all too brief. Quick as light, a shadow drips from a branch directly overhead. Desperately I try to evade. I see a metallic glint in the centre of the raven figure, staring directly at me like an inverse iris. Not yet I think, please not yet. I falter, there is a whistle in the air as their blade, a slender needle, spears my left shoulder. Pain erupts from the wound before being muted by adrenaline. I try to keep a cool head, anger has it's moments. But, now is not one of them, if I succumb to it I am done. If I falter again, it very well may be over. Matching their pace, I step backwards, then twist my body clockwise, applying pressure on the blade, stopping them retrieving their weapon from my limb. In the same instant I reverse the grip of my sword and stick it in their liver and twist. I feel their grip loosen, so I roll, kicking my blade upwards as I do. Not letting go. But, knocking my sword upwards to cleave through the shadows flank. Assassin's do not scream as this one does, men do not scream as this one does. My blood runs cold.

The tone and texture of the voice resonates with a forgotten memory. This entire time I have known whom I was fighting to see again, I have always remembered that clear as day. However, their faces have been lost to me what seems like decades now, voices longer still. Those I fight to protect have long been hazy specters in my dreams. My beloved phantoms. This has been my truth. Until, this very instant. I know this voice, I know this girl. She lays panting in front of me from my deathblow as I labor to a knee. Breaths growing shallower by the second. She is winding down now, as her crimson life blood, black in the moonlight; feeds the forrest. In these fleeting final moments dying things try to contemplate what is happening to them. All stuck creatures do, man and beast alike. Eyes turn skyward as they glaze and they know they have lost, they know they are lost. I know, I have seen this look hundreds of times and I know I am mere instances from seeing it again tonight. Placing my hand on my attacker's hood I force a whisper, but a sliver of a question

"know you?" To which I receive not a reply of words. But, the gentle touch of one slender hand on mine. I recess the tattered fabric, unavailing, one of my beloved phantoms. No more words are shared in this moment. A stillness takes the forest as a look shared between us stretches a second into a lifetime of Shared memories. And as quickly as it came, it is over. I stand over the body of Tear. This is my older sister. Tear Gallo. I am, once again, bleeding on my knees. Still I am alone, and Yet still, I know not why. I want to scream but I can't risk drawing in another attacker. My shoulder injury is shallow compared to the pangs of my heart but I am in no shape for another confrontation. I can't think straight. Memories are flooding through my mind. My vision is blurring, head pounding, every last muscle in by body seems to be in spasm. I allow myself to fall on my knees, it is taking all I have not to pass out from hyperventilating.

Why was my sister here?

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I can't stop my head from pounding.

Why did she attack me?

I lose focus. I let the disparity around me invade my mind.

What kind of a man kills his own sister?

Black drowns my vision, leaking from the periphery, untill nothing.

I am nought but a thought, floating in an abyssal expanse. A singular truth existing separate from all physicality.

I must return home. I have to, I need to return home.

Spears of light piercing the trees of the wind serenaded forest awaken me. Seeing the sun, feeling it's rays grace my skin, my body tells me I have not stood in daylight for a very long time. How long it seems, time stretches in the darkness. Spaces grow larger, sounds grow colder.

I guess this still doesn't count really, I'm not stood, I'm not even vertical.

I'm laid on my back like a bloody pixie. My eyes drift to my left shoulder scanning for the location of my wound. It is absent. I am recallIng more now, the fog shrouding my mind is slowly subsiding.

I was a member of the kings guard, the highest martial force in the realm. King's guard answer only to the hand of the King, the only man closer to the monarch than my father; in status and position only. The hand is not a clever man, but shrewd. He knows how to read a room exceptionally well, his instincts for politics were bred into him. Much like his uglyness, in both physicality and mentality, another family trait.

I carried out many, services for the hand, for this Kingdom, it's security, it's welfare.

Our king is a noble monarch, I've always admired him. I never had to serve, I chose to. I'm of noble blood but in truth I detest it. Not that of my family of course, that of the other Nobles however is a very different story. My father has been an advisor to the King more than 40 summers, and I besides only having seen 30 myself, was my father's favourite to inherit the right to his position. Our king however it seems has ideas of his own. Since my younger sister was born, his eyes have been cast in her direction, tidally locked. His interest in her stemmed from the fact that she was born faetouched. This is a sentence of death, during childbirth or shortly after, painfully. However, for Shera, it was a sentence of pain in perpetuam. She was doomed to live. She was born, mind already filled with all the knowledge and experiences our parents had obtained throughout their lives. Imagine never having lived more than a day and remembering smells, sites and sounds that were not yours, that were alien to you. And containing sorrows, regrets of decisions you could have never changed and a whole heap of horrors to boot.

She was mute till the age of nine. Out of choice she later revealed. Born with more knowledge than the average citizen could ever dream of obtaining in a lifetime. More still than most of the noble families combined. This knowledge gave her insight but she wanted to make her own mind up about the world. I remember thinking her admirable when she, called a family meeting and announced all of that to us. Upon later reflection, I thought her quite formidable.

My family business is secret knowledge. Spymastery and compiling all knowledge And technology, of the old worlds and the new. I assure you, this business my parents take very seriously. I can't remember the last time I saw them, I do not know if they are safe. I can't just lay here and miss them. If they are alive, they will be at our home. High in a mountainous region, our estate is a hidden fortress. Guarded by a ring of jagged rock faces, stretching to the sky around the perimeter and a solid stone gate entrance. Made from the very rockface it was carved, it blends seamlessly when closed.

My resolve, now properly tempered beneath, is reforged a new. I have to survive, I will survive at least until I succeed. I will get back to the house in which I grew up, I will find whomever is left and I will find out what the hell is going on before I draw my final breath. I Barton Gallo, swear it with every fibre of my being.