New Dawn

Chapter 17

The families of my fallen galadhrim will have been informed of their losses by the lord and lady, so please don't burden your light fea anymore in doing so in my stead.

    I fear I am losing myself, Lumornel. There are things I can no longer remember, even you are starting to become a blurry haze. Brendyn informed me he thinks it was the enemy that affected my memory, but because of the head wound he suffered—he was knocked unconscious—he doesn't know for sure.

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L U M O R N E L
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I awoke from sleep with a start. Images of crops bathed in fire and horror-stricken realization upon the faces of strangers fled my vision, yet still seemed to be ingrained in my mind.

The room around me—it was a limestone prison cell, with chiseled cave for floor, walls, and ceiling and an iron grate for a door. I was not in Anorien, watching a young girl and her family be cowed by orcs.

I was not there.

But I trembled, confused by the so vividly real dream as light softly seeped from my skin. The cot next to me shook lightly, the thin sheet tangled with my legs seemed to shiver.

"Uhh..." said a voice—the guard standing outside the room's barred door—said. "Balo?"

"What is it?"

"... something's... happening."

A door opened from somewhere, its hinges squealing.

"How did he get in?"

Bile rose in my throat, those images flashing back, replaying so vividly that my world and the dream's reality blended into one dizzying divination—

I vomited all over the clean, limestone floor.

"Lumornel?"

Vaguely, I recognized that voice to be Legolas's.

"Open the door," he commanded, voice as stiff as hardened leather.

"But—"

"Open the door."

"I'm not—"

There was a thump and someone cried out. The iron door swung open.

"Lumornel?" A hand touched my back, unsure.

I was afraid to talk, afraid of the bile rising again, of the images that would not stop overlapping my vision—

I closed my eyes, leaving only the dream in my mind's eye. The bucket in the corner rattled.

"A dream," I managed to croak, breathing out my horrid-tasting mouth.

I felt through the air—rather than saw—Legolas still. Only for a moment.

"Before you—" he broke off, but recovered quickly. "You once had visions of things that were to come, and once a vision from the present. You may have had one now."

I shuddered, my eyes opening, and saw the food stores go up in flames right in front of me. In the cell. The smoke the fire emitted was as black as death. One did not need to believe in omens to shiver upon its sight, especially as that smoke gathered at the ceiling. I closed my eyes again but—

"It's so vivid. I—I can't seem to stop seeing."

I felt him nod and his hand settled fully on the small of my back. My eyes again risked a peek of my world. Dread shone on Sîron's face, orange light flickering upon his skin. The open cell door framed his body—