Page 1 of Lost in the Fog

Chapter One

Pandora choked as shewas held by her neck over the chasm. “Don’t. Please.” She tried to say it, but her voice came out in frantic whines and hoarse croaks.

The Elite holding her grinned. “He’s going out of his mind on the other side of that barrier. Can you hear him?”

She clawed at the arm holding her and kicked at the man who was going to kill her. She didn’t doubt that for an instant. She could hear roaring and shouting but was preoccupied with the distance below her.

She finally made it through the leather on his wrists and clawed at his skin. She stopped trying to talk and kept her breath for fighting. Grey and red filled her vision while he taunted her, and she kept fighting.

He frowned and started to shake her. She heard him yelling, but blood was flying, and he had let her go, and her own nails and fingers were now inside his skin and still clawing. He cursed, and she dropped but kept hold of him. Her kicking feet caught the edge of the cliff as he knelt to use his other hand to pry her away. She pushed hard at the edge, and he came with her. He screamed, and she breathed as they fell end over end into the darkness.

The howl of despair came from above, but it faded as she fell.

The world was different. She was different. She looked around, and it wasn’t seeing with eyes, it was sensing. The dead Stronghold Elite was nearby. He had shattered on impact. She was in one piece, but it was odd. She was everywhere in a cool layer of mist and fog.

She had survived the fall, but she was flatter, and while she covered the entire floor of the cave, she couldn’t climb higher. The air wasn’t moving.

She searched the cave for an undetermined amount of time. Time didn’t mean anything. She needed a way out. She was stuck. One day, the wall of the cave cracked, and she didn’t hesitate. She flowed out through the opening and into the night. The wind caught her, and she tumbled away, pushed from place to place as it dictated.

She didn’t care. She wasn’t in the cave, she wasn’t pulling sustenance from the Elite’s corpse, and the wind took her from one city to the next. The world was open to her... she just wished she could remember who she was.

She moved around the world, skimmed across one ocean and then another. Eventually, the lure of energy pulled her back to a city that felt familiar. She stayed in the city, strong enough to resist the wind now.

She had a routine. She hid in some of the local ponds and fountains during the day, came out at night, and moved until dawn. Seeing people and places that few folk could go was entertaining. She did it for quite a while until one fateful night...

She was rising out of a pond near a newly built structure. Her fuzzy brain told her it was a castle, but no one was building castles nowadays. Were they?

A woman came out with a little girl and walked toward the pond. She tickled their toes as they went to swim in the pond and remained nearby, watching them. The little girl shrieked and played with what seemed to be her mother in the moonlight. The sun was still going down, so there was a reddish cast to the world around them.

When the little girl cried out, she moved deeper into the water and lifted her out. Her mother was close to them, and the woman was startled. “Oh. Someone was in there.”

She moved to the edge of the water and set the little girl down. The girl appeared to have a leg cramp, so she rubbed the small limb, and the crying stopped.

The mother reached out to touch her, and to her shock, she made contact. She gasped as a body formed where mist had been as far back as the cave.

The woman looked at her in surprise. “Pandora? Pandora Mycroft?”

She stared. That felt like her name. She pressed her fingers to her chest.

“Yes. You are Pandora. I know your face. I have been looking for you. You are the missing piece. Come inside. We will get you something to wear.”

The woman wrapped a towel around Pandora, and she removed it and wrapped it around the little girl. The woman smiled. “My name is Regis, and I have a story to tell you.”

Still not sure how to talk, Pandora walked with them, using mist to wrap her body. They headed to the castle, and it was inside that Pandora began to remember. Walls and warmth and two people, who jumped up and came around to try and touch her. Regis waved them away. “It’s okay. This is Pandora Mycroft. She’s been missing from the Stronghold and presumed dead.”

Pandora looked around at a very large kitchen with long worktables and a few stools.

Regis smiled. “Can someone get her a robe to wear?”

The older of the two darted away and came back with dark grey fabric. Pandora looked, slowly took it, and slid her arms into the sleeves, tying it shut. She looked at Regis, “Right?”

Regis smiled kindly. “Right. I had no idea you were there in my back yard.”

“Wasn’t.” She swallowed. “Only a week.”

“You remember speech. That is very good.”

“How long... gone?”

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