III

“Chungha…”

Someone was calling her name. She gazed upon her hand and down at her feet, then up, seeing the faces of her three mentors. They were all smiling and waiting for her.

“Chungha... The rite is about to begin.”

Something was not quite right. There was familiarity to the scene, something she had gone through. And her colors were wrong, not black and deep sea blue, but the murky browns and muddy grass green of apprentices.

“No,” Chungha could see it now. The true faces of her mentors, hollow where eyes should be and a gaping hole for a mouth. “I have passed my rite, I have been victorious. Begone, you vile creatures!”

The three mentors evaporated into a thick mist, laughter encircling her. The Great Hall had gone with them, replaced by a desert of black sand and a black sky with the First shining in the darkness.

Chungha gasped, awaken from her dream. She opened her eyes to a strange ceiling and a strange cover upon her bare body. She sat up, the cover sliding down her chest and piling at her lap.

She was on her way to meet the Knights and lead a hand to their plight, when… when, what happened, she could not fully recall. Only the dampness and the cold and a terrible pain to her head. Touching her temple, there was only a phantom of an ache left, not enough to worry.

However, the fact that she was in a bed not of her own, in a room that strayed from those of a Knight’s tent, did worry her terribly.

The absence of her staff worried her the most.

“You were wet,” Chungha started. A woman’s voice she did not recognize. Were the dreams playing tricks again? “So lest you want sickness upon you, I believe I had done well.”

Chungha looked into the corner of the room, where the woman stood with arms crossed. Candles shadowed half of her face and half of her body.

She remembered now. That hideous monster assaulting her out of nowhere. Chungha hadn’t felt as powerless in a long time, defeated with a single blow. A fly on the wall, smashed under his massive hand.

“Who are you?” Chungha pulled at the cover until it reached her shoulders.

“I am your saviour.”

“That creature,” Chungha needed her staff, badly. And her dagger and robes. The woman ought to have left her at least in her undergarment. “Did it flee?”

“I have defeated it.”

There was a pause between them.

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