He gasped as a greasy, terrible scent flooded his nostrils and felt like he was living his worst nightmare.
It twisted his stomach into a knot, and he tasted copper in his mouth.
He gagged and rolled over, coughing saliva mixed with blood onto black dirt. Only, it wasn't dirt after a second of watching it. It was soil caked with blood, scrambling footprints all over it as if a stampede had occurred here.
What was going on? Where was he?
Before he could find answers to the growing questions, he felt something soft touching his leg and looked down. Immediately, the need to vomit came back. It was a severed arm, fingers curled as if it was holding something that wasn't there anymore.
He jumped, panicked, trying to get away from it as much as possible, but found it hard to move.
He looked at his chest and saw that armour had replaced the green shirt he clearly remembered wearing in the morning. He touched it—more specifically, to touch the blood that covered most of it. It wasn't his. There was no pain in his chest where the blood was.
That thought was oddly comforting.
He took another look at the armour after pushing away from the severed hand. It was a patchwork of iron and rust. Heavy and practical. Definitely not something that would wind up in a comic con. A chainmail hauberk lay beneath a dented steel breastplate, its rings rusted in spots, stained. There seemed to be a design of what looked like a raven perched on a loop of barbed wire etched into the plate. As he looked down, he saw his legs wrapped in leather greaves.
To the side, he spotted a dented visored helmet, and a part of him knew it was his.
Once again, he asked himself—where was he? And another small part of him asked—who was he?
His memories told him he was from California, and another part of him rejected that idea. One thing was clear. He wasn't in California, or even America right now.
Was he on Earth? That question scared him.
He forced himself to calm down as anxiety gripped him., knowing this was the worst place for a panic attack. His eyes scanned the surroundings, trying to focus on them to curb his fears. But it only seemed to elevate them.
A sea of grey and red was everywhere. Bodies littered the ground in every direction he looked. Some still clutched their weapons, moonlight reflecting off them. Some men seemed to have been running away when they had been killed. That's when it hit him. All of them were soldiers.
One soldier's body was cut in half. Another had half a dozen arrows buried in his chest and throat, and another had lost his eyes, dried blood covering his face.
He took panicked breaths, wondering if he had died and been placed in hell.
This certainly seemed like it.
And just when that thought hit, he clutched his head and fell on the bloodied ground, pain filling him as if his brain were attacked by spikes.
With that, memories flooded him—scenes that had taken place just before the battle. A march into the Pascar plains filled with dungeons and monsters. Taking on the goblin tribes. Getting outnumbered and being attacked by something far stronger and tougher that resulted in an unfortunate massacre. Trolls.
Among those memories, he saw someone call him out. The man whose severed hand he had found, and a name echoed in his head.
[Rayne Frayser]
Out of nowhere, words etched themselves in the very air itself and those words—his name—covered his eyes. But it disappeared as it came, making him wonder if it was real or his brain was playing a game with him.
With all the memories in his head, it certainly seemed so.
The pain faded away after a while, and he got his bearings again, taking breaths even if he hated the very air of the battlefield he had woken up into.
Without wasting any more time, Rayne stood up.
His left leg slipped on blood, but he steadied himself as he started walking, not used to the weight of the armor he was wearing. But if the memories were right, then he needed it the most.
Those… things could still be hovering around. If his memories were correct.
Rayne soon got that confirmation as he saw smaller bodies in the sea of corpses he was trying to traverse. Bleak gray-skinned with ugly, crude faces. They were barely four feet tall, but his memories had given confirmation of how agile they could be. And ruthless.
He gulped, moving through the goblin bodies fast, scanning the surroundings to see if there was a place he could hide in. He wanted to be as far away from the field of corpses as possible.
Memories still rang in his head, coming slowly now, distracting his steps, but he took all of it better this time. There was less pain.
The goblin bodies at least confirmed that they weren't false. This was no dream. This was no prank. This was as real as it could be, and he hated himself for even accepting that possibility.
The memories didn't tell him of any army camp he could go to, but he was hoping the location of one would reveal itself soon from the memories that seemed to be downloading into his head. Till then, going away from the corpses and the foul air and infection around them would do him good.
He could see trees in the distance beyond the graveyard of bodies and made his way towards there.
But just then, something caught his eye.
As he tried to go past a pile of corpses, he caught sight of silhouettes in the distance. He squinted through the blood coating his face and saw two men at the edge of the field of corpses.
One of them seemed to be pulling a cart while the other was picking up corpses to throw in the back of it. They were probably charged with bringing back the corpses to wherever the base was. From the bits of memories he had gotten, he could at least attest that there was one nearby.
Without wasting a second, Rayne sprinted towards them, wanting to get to a man who wasn't a corpse as soon as possible. His path was barred with rock, bloodied dirt, and the endless number of bodies, but as he got close to the edge of it, there were far fewer.
One of the men noticed him coming while he was picking up a corpse and immediately dropped it to point at him. Rayne waved his hand to get the man's attention, but he only saw him taking steps back towards the cart.
Rayne's throat felt dry, and it was hard to speak, but he managed to utter words as he reached closer. "Help… me."
It was an unfamiliar language. He could tell that by just the enunciation, but he could understand it as well as English. That again told him that all of this was real. He focused on the two men and realised they wore similar armour to him now that he was close enough to make out their appearance.
At least that told him that these two weren't enemies.
But as he stepped closer, their expressions seemed to change as they glanced at each other. One of them pulled out a sword.
He stiffened, wondering if they weren't as friendly as he expected. He decided to run back to the sea of corpses if they tried anything, but the next second, something unexpected happened.
The one pulling the cart shouted loudly. "Spectre! A wailing spectre!!"
Before he could say anything to that, the man dropped the cart's handle, jumped over it, and ran away. The second soldier also did the same, waving the sword in the air—both of them shouting and screaming as if he were an abomination.
Maybe it was the blood on him? But he doubted soldiers wouldn't be used to blood on their fellows. It seemed more likely that him moving from the corpses had alerted them to think of him as some sort of monster. But he didn't keep dwelling on it any longer.
If he wanted to find a camp or a settlement, it was prudent to follow them. Rayne was sure that they were going to run back there.
So, he sprinted through the weight forcing him down to earth after them. With no corpses to move through, Rayne found himself at a steady pace, not enough to keep up with the two men, but enough to not lose sight of them.
Like that, he and the soldiers kept sprinting like a game of never ending tag.
His armour groaned and rattled, and he berated himself that he hadn't picked a sword or at least a shield out of the battlefield. He ran for half an hour and exhaustion started to creep into his body, but he kept up, scared that he wouldn't be able to find any settlement if he lost the men, and would be killed in the plains overnight by one of the wandering goblins.
Just as he felt like he would soon go down due to the weight and exhaustion, something came into view.
Stone rose from the ground to form up a large wall. He saw spikes jutting out of the top of it and through the haze of the night, he was finally able to make up thick plumes of smoke rising in the sky. More memories flooded in as he stopped and took a sigh of relief, and the name of the fortress whose walls he was looking at came into his tongue.
"Fort Algar."
The two soldiers finally escaped his sight, but Rayne was too tired to care about it now that he knew his destination.
He sat on the ground, taking a breath for ten minutes, looking at his mud and blood soaked boots and the sorry state he was in. Even now, he wanted to cry out, think back to what he was doing before he woke up on the battlefield, to find a clue as to what was going on. But Rayne knew he wasn't safe in the fields.
So he stood up again and walked towards Algar, taking slow steps this time. After half an hour of more walking, it finally came into full view and Rayne stopped for a second, looking at its construction.
Fort Algar wasn't anything grand. It was old and relatively smaller than most forts he had seen on the internet. It even looked hastily constructed and repaired every time it groaned to break away, but right now, it spoke to him in a way that even his bedroom never had.
Without another second standing on the ground, Rayne walked right up to it. And when he was twenty steps away from its entrance, he finally noticed a group of men huddled in front of the large gate. The two soldiers that had run away from him were there too, hastily pointing at him.
They were whispering and he didn't know what they said, but others around them hastily took out their swords and spears. Rayne took a step back, quickly raising his hands in surrender and noticed that a few dozen sentries were also on the walls with bows pointed at him.
He gulped, wondering if he had made a mistake by coming here. Turning back wasn't an option either since he would surely find an arrow lodged in his back.
So, Rayne simply waited, raising his hands in surrender and trying to appear as harmless as possible. For him, it was all a misunderstanding, and until he acted in an aggressive way, he was confident to get a safe passage inside the fort. At least if these men were reasonable.
His memories didn't provide him a clue on any of the faces in front of him.
"Who are you? State your name, rank and squad." One of the soldiers finally walked up to him and asked in a raspy voice, sword held in his right arm, ready to strike at any moment.
He quickly searched his memories to answer. "Rayne Frayser, common soldier and squad—"
"I recognise him! He's the bloody forsaken!!"
Before he could even finish, one of the sentries on the walls shouted and soon, he saw more murmurs spreading through the group that had gathered. Was he famous? His memory didn't show anything of that sort yet, but he felt like all the men knew him and not in a good way.
If not for the sorry mess he was in, they might have already recognised him.
"Come with me. We need to get you to the captain," the soldier in the front said, almost barking at him. "Try anything, and I'll cut you down where you stand, filthborn."
Rayne simply nodded. "I will behave."
With that, he was led by the soldier who shoved the hilt of his sword on his back, making Rayne groan in pain. But he kept walking.
The soldiers parted away as he neared, scowls clear on their faces and the one who was carrying the cart even spit on the ground in front of him. Rayne jumped over that, noting the whispers spreading around.
"He's the filthborn."
"I thought he died in the goblin raid. How hasn't Hathras taken him yet?"
"He might just be a shapeshifter. A traitor's body would be weak enough for taking over."
"We should just kill him instead of Captain Edran wasting his time."
Rayne calmly listened to each, piecing together everything with the flowing memories in his mind, but kept walking with the soldier who didn't speak, but looked like he would kill him in a second without hesitation.
The whispers faded away soon and he finally took a look around the fort. Muddy streets went in every direction and there were more wooden buildings and camps on the side. Torches lined up in each of the buildings.
It seemed to be midnight and hence, not many soldiers were around. Though, he did notice a few sitting around a campfire and playing a game of dice.
After the second turn that seemed to lead to the centre of the fort, the soldier leading him quickened his pace prompting him to keep up until they stood in front of a two storey building. Two men flanked the entrance, both bigger than him.
The soldier whispered something to them after ordering Rayne to be ten steps away. Both the guards gave stinging gazes at Rayne and took out their weapons. The soldier nodded to them before taking a step inside.
They wouldn't just kill me right?
Rayne certainly hoped not. Whatever was going on with him, he didn't want to die before figuring it out. But he had a feeling that even if he did figure it out, it was simply going to create more questions for him.
The chilly wind of the night assaulted him as he stood there and shivered, but he kept standing, not wanting to do anything that might make the soldiers more aggressive towards him.
Fortunately, he didn't have to wait for long as the soldier came back.
"Come with me. Captain Edran will see you now."
Rayne nodded and followed the man inside. The building seemed to be made of a kind of wood he didn't recognise and the entrance had a corridor that seemed to lead to a living room, but he didn't have time to look around as the soldier pushed him towards a staircase.
They took him to the second floor and he walked to the end of it before the soldier knocked on a door and a heavy voice came out from inside.
"Kundan, is that you? Send the forsaken inside and leave."
"Yes, captain."
Kundan opened the door, shoved Rayne inside, and shut it behind him with a heavy thud.
Rayne didn't even get the chance to say anything before he felt gazes register themselves on him and he straightened his back, looking at the two men and one woman.
One of the men and the woman sat on the back, wearing brown robes. The woman looked young for the army while the man was old and had greying hair and beard. He gave them a glance before his eyes looked at the person in the centre of the room he assumed to be Captain Edran.
He was a middle aged man with a brown beard covering most of his face, the same colour as his hair. He sat on a table with piles of parchments over it and wore a simple white tunic over his body. His brown eyes were locked glued to Rayne who wondered what he should even say here.
He tried to see if any of the memories he had gotten were on Edran and he found only one thing—He was a warband captain and had the blood of House Sinclair, whatever that meant.
"Rayne Frayser, it's very interesting you are standing in front of me. You know why?" Captain Edran asked, hints of amusement in his voice.
"Why?" He replied before adding, "Sir."
"It's because one of these parchments is actually about you. More specifically your death. According to it, you fell in the goblin raids yesterday. A soldier saw a short sword in your chest as he was running away. But right now, you are here, standing upright and not in pain," he said, his amusement growing with every word, but Rayne's heart only fell. "So, will you care to explain how you are alive? And without injuries on top of it. Did you get blessed by Henrexa?"
Rayne stilled, doing his best to not gulp down his saliva, his heart beating terrifyingly quickly in his chest. He saw the old man from the back eyeing him curiously, not in a friendly way, but more like analysing a threat that needed to be eliminated.
He knew that he had fucked up massively by coming here, but his memories definitely hadn't told him that he was slain by a short sword in his chest. Still, he had to say something that would let him get out of this room alive.
The more he stayed silent, the more tense the air became. But what would he even say?
Edran tapped his fingers impatiently.
"Well?"
Rayne felt dread at the urging before he opened his mouth and began to speak, hoping his answer was good enough for him to survive.