"Am I buried alive?" Legant thought to himself.
It was dark. No light.
It was cold. He felt stone under him and his sword arm was pinned between him and a cold rocky wall. He freed it.
"Where? What?" He didn't even know what questions to think. His memory was missing. It was as though he had no past, just this moment he had burst into existence, except he knew his sword arm needed be freed, and needed something in its grasp.
"Why can't I remember what I'm doing here?" He thought.
There was something else. He had to find it.
Metal scraped across stone. Legant's foot had brushed something metal.
He felt around and there was a sword. It was long and felt friendly in his grip.
"Back there, ..." Someone said, but didn't say.
No sound. Even the words were quiet. It was more felt than spoken. Legant didn't know why, but he trusted what he heard. It just seemed right. A tingling went up and down his spine.
He turned and felt his way "back there". What was back there.
There was darkness there. "How can something be darker than this blackness?" He thought. "What horror awaits 'back there'?"
"Concentrate on the hilt," the non-voice said.
He felt the words. He didn't hear them. He should be able to hear real words. Why should he trust this feeling? He did. He just did. He would trust it, he decided.
He focused on the hilt of his sword, and a green light appeared. Soon his sword was blazing with a flame that felt warmer that any fire, yet did not burn him.
Something ahead shrieked. It was an deathly scream. Nothing living could have matched the sound. Legant felt it.
The emerald vaporous fire spread to his hand. It spread though his blood, making its way to his chest. He felt strong and alert. He could see the walls and floor now. It was a cavernous mansion of intricately carved stone. Figures and vines and patterns were carved everywhere he looked. There were no windows.
"This is a tomb. I smell death," he spoke aloud with conviction, not harshness or accusation. The words echoed, shaking pebbles loose from high overhead.
It screamed again. The thing that resided here. Legant pivoted and dashed for it. He saw it bent over a well armored corpse. It shrunk away from him, but not with speed. It was injured. He could tell by the way it moved.
Legant judged his opponent to be too slow at this point, and risked exposing himself. He swung his sword back over his head, bracing it like an axe. He through himself over the falled one and brought the brilliant flaming blade down on his opponent, dividing it in two.
It collapsed into the lifeless heap it should have always been.
Legant panted. His heart was beating like thunder. He turned to look back at the corpse he had leapt over, then thought better of it. It just felt wrong. He didn't want to see. The scene would haunt him. He felt it.
The green flame went out. It was dark again. That's when he saw her. She was in a flowing white gown. She was no more than a wisp, a mist, something unreachable. He could not take his eyes from her eyes. Then she turned walking down a hall he had not seen before.
He could see a little now. There was light up ahead. It was shining through her, and she was disappearing like fog in the sun. He found he was at the entrance to this underground palace. He was looking down from a craggy mountain. Even the clouds were below this place.
He turned to the woman, who was now vanishing in the coming dawn. She mouthed something. He could not tell what. He looked into her eyes a last time.
As she dissipated into the early mountain dawn, he couldn't help but feel he had lost something; a piece of his very soul. The cool morning mountain breeze felt lonely. He looked down the path. Instinctively he new he had to stay on or near that path to get off the mountain.
His memory hadn't come back. He prayed it wouldn't. He felt that he had paid a terrible price, and knowing the exact toll may rip out emotions he would rather suppress. He took a deep breath and thought of other things; things from his childhood, some of that was coming back.
Legant made his trail alone down the mountain slope with only the crunch of dead, cold shale under foot as his companion.