I was uncomfortable. The atmosphere was tragic, and yet I felt no sympathy.
It was that contrast that unsettled me.
I'd spoken at length with Hanna — a middle-aged woman with green eyes and blonde hair. An interesting temperament, that one. Cranky, to put it mildly.
Perhaps I'm too harsh on her. After all, she was a refugee from the Great War, just like everyone here she must have gone through some rather rough times.
I have tried numerous times to to recall the history lessons from my orphanage, and I could now clearly remember that the Agraven Empire had never been mentioned in any of our textbooks. Nor was there anything about the Great War.
Strange. It made me uneasy, and suspicious of this caravan. The people themselves acted normal, yet the voice I heard before said my nightmare had begun.
I'd also spoken with the leader of the group. A memorable meeting, that.
He was a fallen noble of the Calderian Kingdom — another mysterious civilization I had never heard of. His appearance was striking: tall and tanned, lean-bodied, with long flowing black hair. Knightly.
The look of someone who had distinguished himself on the field of battle, one was clearly hailed and respected as a hero.
His voice however marked a stark contrast to his neat and tidy appearance. It was tired in a way that went past the body. And he had looked at me, at first, as though I'd done something to offend him. Surely my appearance was not that unsightly, or perhaps it was my curse?
It hardly mattered, I just had to bare with him for a couple of minutes. He'd warned me about a particular monster — one that everyone in the caravan had been warned about, and one that everyone clearly feared.
A monster that could mimic humans. One that did its best to blend in among its prey.
That was why the refugees had been so unpleasant around me. Some part of me understood that I'd only been allowed in at all because the caravan had been picking up strays along the way — people who happened to be displaced by the Great War.
My heart was restless, my mind had been racing nonstop, as I tried to make sense of any of it.
It was almost as though I'd been sent back in time, to some era long forgotten. But how could a war this large be absent from recorded history? Something that big would have left a mark.
Maybe this was a fantasy stitched together by my mind in its final moments. But it felt too real for that.
If death truly loved me, why couldn't it claim me in peace?
In the end, all I could do was speculate. I was almost certain I was reliving something from a distant past — and yet that truth gave my heart no comfort.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do. My nightmare had begun, and yet nothing outlandish had happened to me. Not yet.
Before I could follow the thought further, a loud bang and a chorus of screams shattered what little peace I had.
I rushed outside, looking for the source.
Two burly men were locked in a fight, ringed by a crowd.
One of them was clearly a guard, clad in the steel armor I had grown used to seeing around camp. The other wore tattered, shabby clothes.
"He is the monster, guard. You have to kill him."
The man who said it stood at the front of the crowd. Tall. Wealthy by his clothes alone, and carrying himself with the arrogant air of a noble. Of course this caravans had nobles.
The accused man's face had gone pale. He no longer had any control over what was happening to him especially now that there was a crowd.
The crowd would rather believe a noble before they believed some ragged stranger.
The guard studied the accused, then turned to the noble. "Do you have proof that this man is the monster?"
"Proof? Why do you need more proof? This man has been following me from a distance ever since I joined the caravan. I've heard him stalking outside my carriage at night. He even tried to break in — to eat me."
The guard hesitated. It was a volatile situation, and the rules of the caravan strictly forbade killing another traveler unless they had been convicted of a crime.
That hesitation was the wrong answer for the noble. His face darkened.
"Did you not hear what I said, guard? You will execute this foul beast."
"Sir, I cannot execute a man on accusation alone. The captain will have my head if he turns out to be innocent."
"Then fetch a damn priest and verify it, you fool."
The guard moved off in a hurry, his armor clinking into the distance.
"Quite the comical situation, isn't it, lad?"
The voice came from beside me — a tall man with short hair, speaking low.
I turned, stunned. "How is any of this funny?"
"Ah. I should have been more specific. I meant the noble. He still believes he's a noble, you see. Even though his kingdom has been ash for years now." The man shook his head. "Unfortunately, he has a blessing, so the captain tolerates him. I do pity that poor slave, though. Let's hope the priest finds him human."
A blessing. Granted by a deity. I could barely believe it. Blessings were extraordinarily rare — and yet one had been given to a man who behaved like that afterall the gods were extremely particular.
The guard returned with the priest, who wore a deceptively plain white robe. I could tell, even from a distance, that it had been made from the finest material.
"This is the man?" the priest asked, his eyes settling on the slave with open contempt.
The guard nodded. The priest sighed and produced a small stone from within his robe.
He closed his eyes and began to whisper an incantation in a language I did not recognize. A red light enveloped the stone. A loud crack rolled through the camp, and the rock crumbled into a fine reddish powder in his palm.
The priest blew across it. The powder lifted into the air and drifted toward the accused.
The guard raised his blade, ready to swing the moment it landed.The powder kept drifting.
It passed the accused man entirely, turning instead toward the crowd.
The world suddenly stood still. Some breaths were hurried and louder than the others and most people had turn pale. The powder cared for none of it. It floated on, almost as if it was a living being, until it found the monster — and settled.
Soon a long harrowing scream tore through the crowd, snapping the silence. Pandemonium soon followed. People shoved away from the chosen one, trampling the slow and the weak in their hurry.
This was the true meaning of a nightmare.
And so began the hunt for Alymur of Noone, the cursed lamb.
Who would have guessed — that the monster, all along, had been him.
His nightmare had only just started.
One that he could only hope to survive.