Author: G. Jefferies
Wayland found consciousness on the journey back as the cart rumbled over uneven ground and wagon ruts baked under the sun. He was under damp sacking which offered some relief from the heat above but his body felt on fire. Strange deliriums walked across his mind. Dragons weaving and scorching the earth and strange creatures flying overhead though he knew his eyes were not ready to open. He could hear hushed voices in the front of the palanquin. They sounded concerned, almost scared.
“Faster,” said one.
“I’m trying,” replied the other.
Wayland recognised neither, lost as he was in hallucinations of the mind. The black dragon was absorbing. It swooped and sprayed flame igniting fields and a hay-barn and a man that was drawing a longbow that never got to release it’s arrow before the charred remnants of the archer fell to the ground. These things were all new to the blacksmith. He found them fearful and prophetic; real and yet in a dream. The voices in the cart carried on as the darkness claimed him once more.
It was like that four times before he awoke and silence befell his ears. The jostling had stopped suggesting the cart was stationary. The Black was perched on a ruinous building that might have been a chapel rather like the one he was going to wed someone in….his mind was not clear in that matter. He remembered going for a walk with a girl but the rest was fog. Thinking hurt so he let it by. Things were wrong, but right now he was in real trouble. This much he knew.
Next time his eyes flicked open it was dark and a ceiling look down at him in the flickering glow of an candle. He felt cold, which was a change from burning. The Black had gone from his hallucinations although he was uncertain if he was looking at reality. His corroded memory was piecing things together but kept locking onto a daisy withering in the dusk air. He tried to turn his head but nothing happened. Panic crawled in as limb by limb he found nothing moved and everything was slowing. He heard an owl somewhere outside and tried to call out. In his head it was clear please help me, is anyone here but nothing left his lips.
Terror purged through his blood but found no method of release save for the emptiness inside his mind. The Black appeared, this time on the ground. It walked ever closer standing taller than any building Wayland had witnessed. The creatures eyes were ice and all things putrified before it. He tried to shut it out but his eyes no longer wanted to close. A taloned foot descended towards his head and he felt his bladder empty. Inside he screamed as the foot came down and again his waking world fell into the abyss.
© G Jefferies and Fictionisfood, 2016. All rights reserved.