Hemmer caught the bars of the cage and thrashed and the both sullen and angry Elves withdrew hastily. They were villagers. He must have been brought to one of the outlying towns closeby while the filthy black Elf and his bodyguards resupplied. It was only a matter of time before this happened and he knew it.

Ashlan was his name. He spoke it to his face thinking he didn’t know Elvish. Tilted up Hemmer’s chin and spat in his face. On the outside, it looked as if Hemmer was attacking Naleth, but nothing was further from the truth. His memories burned as he reached into his mind to touch them. It was as if he wasn’t allowed to comprehend what had taken place, but he knew it was there. He would let those things cool while he approached something else.

Escape.

He drew a deep and ragged breath. His lungs were on fire; his throat parched. The events of the previous night caught up with him in mixed bursts. The nightmares and reality all mixing together. The unrestful spirits from the great city still haunted him, tearing small pieces of his sanity away. Hemmer’s whole body ached and throbbed like he had been riding on a horse all day.

He stretched a bit and a few of the Wood Elves glanced sidelong at him. There was fear, but it was different than he expected. Not as much a fear of an unknown enemy, but of erratic change. He had seen this before. He watched one Elven woman grinding some herbs down, most likely for his own treatment. Dusk was settling in and his vision was poor, but the motion was there. The slow, methodical scraping and ebbing of her handiwork. It was precise and infinitely more refined than a human’s handcraft and it was solely by her patience. Her results were a finely minced paste that perhaps took hours to achieve.

His outburst earlier had put everyone within earshot on edge. It took him a while to see, but Hemmer’s eyes adjusted slowly to see two guards standing in the treeline at the edge of the clearing he was imprisoned in. They were stock still and silent as death. Their ashen skin absorbed the light of the fires while their eyes twinkled. A death sentence waiting to happen.

Where was Naleth?

There had been too much that passed between them. He knew that she would not abandon him, so she must be close. She must be.

Ants were crawling through the wooden floor of the methodically assembled cage. He would find one pinching into his skin occasionally. It broke his concentration while he soaked in the environment around him.

Kenna. He stopped for a moment while his heart began to burn. He wanted to disappear. My love. Hemmer could visualize Kenna’s naked frame in front of the washbasin at his humble home. He approached her from behind and touched her shoulder. He touched his face while in his mind it was the touch of his precious wife. The silken brush and the smell of her hair. She was a rich sensation and his body relaxed while his memories stole him away. But the ache was growing more and more. He wanted to have her there, to hold her. To hear his children’s voices echoing through the house. He turned her towards him to kiss her soft lips.

It was Naleth.

Hemmer jolted at the thought and the ache seemed to split him open. He braced up against the cage and slid down to sit. His cheeks were wet, eyes swollen and his memories were betraying him. He could feel Kenna’s memory slipping, but he held to her with such intensity that blood vessels rose to the surface of his forehead.

Don’t leave me!

He broke away in spirit form and launched himself after memory, but memory didn’t exist here. After the futile attempt at finding Kenna’s drifting shape, he looked around and saw all of the living things staring at him, though their physical forms remained on task. It was as if they were aware of him and staring at him, but only a part of them recognized what he was doing.

Hemmer could sense that there were even some incorporeal things that were there there as well. They did not feel malevolent, which was surprising considering almost all of his previous experience. They hovered just out of reach of his senses and watched.