Motes of infinitesimal particle dust traversed the weakened airways down a darkened pathway, funneling through bloodied nostrils and into his system. For a while, where time was indefinable in the dark, Reed gasped at the smaller bit of air that he could scarcely muster.
The weight of whatever soil had burdened him held down his eyes, leaving his mouth dry. His eyes crusted at the edges, and his lips turned to dust. He struggled to look around, feeling only the embrace of dust and soil. Where...
Two thoughts came to mind for Reed. First, it was the stinging pain in his chest, wondering what it was or where it came from. Second was the position he was in, an assumption he made was of an unreliable conclusion.
Linette. He thought only of her after just figuring out he was alive and well in the worst way possible. The flash of memories hit him like a mule on the herbs; Blood, lots of it, black and white, tall and thin, quick and devilish. Bits and pieces reconnected slowly before his breaths thinned even more than they had been.
Reed forced every last drop of strength he had left in him and pushed forward with his right arm before halting to the pain in his shoulder. He moved his other arm just enough to get through to a thinner layer of dirt, and with that, he waved his arm back and forth, digging a pathway before light shined through dotted holes.
"Where am I?" He said to himself in a broken, dust-filled voice as he coughed heavy breaths. Sitting forward, Reed's head peeked above dried yellow grass under an orange sky. He'd looked around and recognized nothing except the familiar sky now paving its way for the former parts of the night.
He stood up and resisted the excruciating pain that washed through his body, from shoulders to legs, and from back to chest. He scanned the scenic ambiance to find himself on a lonesome hill overlooking a savannah of dried grass similar to Ashlet.
"Gods..." Reed muttered to himself, "Gods where am I."
He reached for his brown leather pouch to his side and found he grasped at nothing. It was now that Reed had realized he was in ripped trousers and a piece of torn tunic covering half his torso.
"Where is it?" He dropped to his knees and searched the surrounding grass in urgency. "No, no, no!" The ring he'd saved for three months had not been with him. He sat there on bent legs with his head down, grieved and torn from the inside to his chest.
Reed raised his hand and felt his chest. The stinging hot pain that rang at him the entire time was the scarred, dried scab across his heart. He felt it from one end to the other. With more sensitivity, he felt a burn as he traced his fingers across. He was empty of any belongings he'd once owned.
After some time collecting himself in grief-stricken moments, Reed looked around for any semblance of anyone. However, he caught something on a distant hill. He peered at the top of a building a few thousand strides south. He hadn't been buried for long, especially since he was still alive, and he used that to track any footprints from anyone. Reed discovered numerous footprints, but they were dispersed in all directions.
Three paths split into different areas. He took the ones aimed closest to where the building was.
By now the sunlit sky had dimmed to a cold purple hue, with smooth thin clouds scattering to the edges of the horizon. The building Reed attempted to reach began showing itself as he struggled severely over smaller and larger hills. What made the trek even worse was the rocky surface of the landscape. Stone mixed with soil made it tricky to move comfortably, but comfort was the last thing Reed had.
From chimney to roof, and walls to ground, the duplication of the small home of sorts revealed further past itself, and more past those until he'd found himself atop a hill overlooking a vast sea of buildings.
This was a town. No, this was more than he'd ever seen in his life. The town of Jaddis and his own Yoduhrn had not been nearly half the size of the metropolis laid out before him. Such buildings ranged from wide and short to tall and thin. Stone and wood made up most of the infrastructure. It was something he'd only thought kingdoms held, but then again, he'd never seen a kingdom's cities before. Tales of gold and white marble, a paradise of green rather than yellow.
The odd part of it all was that this place fit the atmosphere and colors of Vastilence he'd known. It was familiar in a way to him, but unfamiliar in many other ways.
There was a dirt road down the hill to the side a hundred strides where he could see a dozen people scattered across and down the path, some entering the wide archway that led into the city, if he can even call it that. He was far from the normal way of getting to the place before him, and compared to everyone that he'd seen from this distance, he was in inappropriate clothing, but that wasn't the issue at hand.
As Reed struggled to walk down the hill as inconspicuously as possible, he was bound to get a few glances, not based on where he came from, but on what he looked like. Chest full of dried crimson, auburn hair tattered and disheveled, eyes dead and red. He was not in the position to be placed according to even the smaller semblance of the lower class.
Reed tripped once on a loose rock jammed between broken twigs of a dried-out small tree. By now, he was no more than a dozen strides from the dirt road that carried people atop it. Two men had noticed him from the brambles scattered throughout the side of the path. Sparse and in between. He averted his gaze, trying not to spark any conversation. He'd known a place to rest when he saw one, and that was what he planned as he walked past everyone with a bloody visage.
No one dared to speak to him. As bloody and injured as he was, he looked like a wild animal they'd dared not to touch. With every breath, he could barely see the faint mist of dust flowing from his mouth. Residual.
The wide archway was blocked not by the walls of the metropolis, but by the four armored gatemen looking his way. The ones who defined who were worthy enough to enter the city. Three men and a woman in yellow leather vestments covered by chain mail and a short blade to each of their sides stopped Reed in his tracks.
They had ignored the two people who had walked past them and kept their attention solely locked on him. One of the male guards stepped up and placed a hand on his side as it rested on the hilt of his blade. He looked Reed up and down at the half-dead bits of him.
"What's your business in Dromair?" He asked, removing a partial covering from the lower half of his face.
Reed was unfamiliar with the name. He assumed it to be the place in front of him, but he was unsure of anything outside of Ashlet, so this was not a surprise.
"Decency..." He muttered tired breathless words to the man, gesturing at himself. "Rest."
"Hhhh," the guard sighed heavily, looking Reed thoroughly up and down and occasionally back at one of the three gatemen behind him. "I can't just let someone like you in, but I also can't have a dead body left for dead at our entrance."
He turned back at the woman and nodded before she approached and pushed Reed forward past them, past the walls, and into the city.
"Don't die!" One of them shouted before the voices of the city muted them.
Reed looked around and took in the different lifestyles of such a vast city. He'd never heard of Dromair, so he was completely unsure where he was in Ashlet. He looked at the escort pushing him through thick and thin crowds and eventually a sparse, quieter thin road.
"Where is Dromair?" He had asked.
"What the dusted hells happened to you?" She retorted in ignorance. "You don't know where you are?"
He gave it a thought before stumbling again. She caught him quickly and aided him for a few steps before he walked on his own again.
Reed thought about it and concluded it probably would not be a sufficient idea to tell her he rose from a grave. He did not have the patience for more questions, he just wanted to know his locale and situation.
"Right then." She continued, "Dromair is one of the two mass cities of Vastilence." She waited for a response, but still nothing.
"I'm unsure of what that means?" he shyly said.
It was at this time she'd begun thinking differently of him, a deeper gaze into his eyes to find out what exactly happened to him, but she contained herself.
"The north and eastern cities that hold the largest population in between the kingdoms. Do you know of that much at least?"
"I know of the kingdoms, or tales of them..." He responded
"Where are you from exactly?" She asked. There was no harm in telling her, he thought.
"Ashlet."
A few moments passed by before she grew a look of recognition.
"You're far from there." She said simply, "quite, quite far."
"How far?" He asked, fearful of the answer to that question.
"A dream length." She gave an open answer.
Far as a dream's length, endless yet not. He resisted the fear of distance and ignored it for now. He needed to get his shoulder right and his body cleaned. And maybe a touch of new clothes.
"Here we are." She stopped him by the bad shoulder, and he winced conspicuously. He looked forward at the building she'd stopped at and it was a wooden flat end-to-end home. A sign at the side read, "Yewthorn Infirmary."
"I can't afford any help from here." He told her, and she pushed him forth, ignoring him.
"Ask for Penburn." She said one last time before walking off and leaving him alone in an unknown place. He raised a hand, but it fell right back down as he looked forward.
He walked in, shame growing of past recent failure to protect, but that needed to stay locked up.