by Jeremy Marr
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“Whaaa?” Jago started to say in a confused manner. He found himself rising up from the depths of an ocean within his mind, to once again walk upon land in the light, instead of swimming around in the warm, thought and sound deadening blackness where he was. It was not unlike waking up from a dream, only not realizing you had fallen asleep in the first place. He allowed his hand, holding the note, to fall to his side. "Where am...," he spat as his eyes quickly took in his surroundings.
There, directly in front of him, built into the far wall, stood a huge fireplace. Trinkets and whatnots decorated the chest high mantle. To the right side of the fireplace was a neatly stacked abundance of wood, and to the left, an assortment of steel pokers and fire shovels stood in a medal bucket sporting a shiny silver cover, resting on it from behind. Both the bucket, and the instruments contained within, were polished to such a sheen that the High Honor Guard of Darkness themselves would be impressed with the diligence. A few paces from the northeast corner of the house, along the right wall, stood a shoulder width writing desk. A lone cork-stopped, wooden bottle, full of ink he assumed, was standing guard over a writing pen made from a feather of an extremely large bird, lying down like a fallen comrade. A large comrade, he had never seen a single bird with a feather that size. Above the desk, on the wall, he made out what he thought to be some kind of decorations drawn into distinct columns. One column was directly above the desk. It stretched from the ceiling and ended either where the desk began, or continued behind it out of sight. Each line was as long as the desk itself was wide. The very top line was a dark red, and the rest were in dark black. The second column was to the right of that one by a good hand’s span, he thought, as he gazed at it from afar. It started up at the ceiling, in dark black, next to the lonely, dark red beginning of the first column. It matched the first column line for line but continued all the way to within inches of the floor.
He felt his eyes shift right again and spun to the southeast corner. He found himself looking at a closed trap door built into the floor itself. It was at least three paces wide by three paces deep, and was placed within a half of pace of either cornering wall. Continuing around to his right, his eyes were lead to the south wall. For all its length, only a lone, brave door had the nerve to blotch the otherwise empty span, well over twenty paces from corner to corner. One more right hand pivot brought the fourth wall into sight.
A light brown curtain caressed the wall as it sought to protect the shutter window behind it, as though it were made of hardened steel instead of fabric. It rippled softly as warm outside air infiltrated the house through the gaps within the shutter’s louvers. A high backed wooden chair, placed in front of the window, waited with never-ending patience for a partner to spend some time sitting with it, looking out the window. He found it hard to pull his eyes away from the window for reasons he knew not of, but once his eyes locked on to the beginnings of a large wooden table, his reluctance to keep the window in view melted away.
Never before had he seen such a beautifully crafted table, not even on his yearly trip to the military headquarters for his report on how the watching faired. Although the top of the table had been worn smooth from years and years of service, it had given to the occupants of the house, it did nothing to diminish neither the quality, nor the structural integrity of the furniture. The large tabletop, at least as long as Jago was tall, seemed to be made of one large, solid piece of wood. Being at least four fingers thick, he did not really know what to make of it. He had seen plenty of trees, during his collection of wood for the bonfire, after his Papa died, down in the valley at the very base of the mountain he was on, but not one was even close to being large enough to be able to yield a slab of this size in a single piece. The color, too, puzzled Jago even more than he already was at the size. It was deep red with beautiful black grain marks running the length of it, just under the surface. The way the smooth top seemed to pull in, like a breath, the abundance of light and then reflect it back outwards, made the whole thing almost seem alive as the markings swirled and danced their way down the table. It had a hypnotic effect on him, and he found his eyes being drawn up the length of it. They stopped as soon as they locked on the woman sitting at the end.
At almost the same time his mind whispered her name, his legs gave out and he found himself kneeling down. The pain of the unexpected fall was enough to make him involuntarily raise his hands to his eyes, as he did every morning at his watch, which allowed him to enter the complete calming darkness. As soon as his eyes registered only blackness, her face loomed within his eyelids, encompassing his entire mine. "Remember,” the vision said, and instantly things went from bad to worse. He relived in the next second what it had taken him his entire life to live. Every pain or pleasure receptor that had ever fired, every taste bud input, every sound, everything, no matter how great or small that came in contact with him since his earliest memories, came rushing out of nowhere and reenacted themselves all in that one moment of time. His brain felt as though it wished for a mouth of its own to throw up with, as it registered all the information simultaneously.
As quick as it started, it stopped. The events and such that swallowed his brain had caught up to the present. There was no more pain, except for his lower legs where they had hit the ground. There was no more pleasure; no more anything more then was there before the waterfall of his memory swept in. He was Brendon-Jago, and he had command of his memory again. This time, though, his entire life was fresh in his mind, as if it had all happened within the last hour past.
His mind screamed out, “I am Brendon-Jago! The OneWhoMustRemember! I – remember – it - all!"
He took his hands off his eyes and felt himself snarl. He remembered how she had somehow taken away his true purpose for coming down here from his cave this day. She stole pieces and parts of who he was. She then thought that not enough, so she took all of him. She made him ignore his son as he heard Brendon-Kyle scream for mercy from the child's mother. Because of that, he knew not what kind of trouble the lad would be facing at this moment from the very woman who had given the boy his birth. His snarl became a full-throated growl fueled by the fury coursing through his body.
He could feel the warmth of that anger stretch from his toes up to the wisps of hair dotting his scalp as he stood up to his full height. His hands clenched into fists when his fire-glazed eyes targeted her sitting calmly in her chair. She, the one reason he was not now with his son, the reason Kyle was not wrapped up in his arms, the single reason he would have his “bestest father” title ripped away from him by the one person he loved more than anyone, and she now had a price to pay. He started to step forward and was pleased with the way his muscles responded to his control. Physical violence was never something he practiced, and until that first step forward, even under these conditions he found himself thrust in, he did not really know if he was going be capable of it. As the heel of his foot arced up and forward, Brendon-Jago thought of one of the many life’s lessons his father had taught him
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