I woke to the worst headache I had ever had. The throbbing pain that accompanied it didn't help either, but pain could only be felt if you were still alive so it was in a way a good sign.

I tried opening my eyes but seeing light only made my headache worse so I decided to feel out my surroundings. My hands and feet were bound by not a rope but cloth. I could probably get out of them if given enough time. That is if I could do it without the men I could hear around me noticing.

It was hard to make out the surrounding men, headache notwithstanding. Unlike I had been expecting, they were all silent, and no one was talking. The only thing I could hear was the breathing of the men near me and the soft sounds of them walking through the sand.

I couldn't make out much more from sound so I tried opening my eyes again. The dim light was still enough to make my head hurt again, but I bore with it. The pain went just as suddenly as it had come, leaving the headache and throbbing from the wound on my head. Despite the pain being now gone, the world spun in front of me slightly. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't make out anything around me.

There were three guards by me. None of them had noticed I had woken up yet and were just staring off at nothing. All three looked to be some of the types that were the worst off in Korron considering their hideous deformities. One had broken bones, another had a broken neck and his head hung loosely to one side, the last one I couldn't tell, but he held his arms across his stomach which I knew meant he was holding certain somethings in.

Other than these men there were no others immediately close by. This was good. The three guarding me weren't paying attention so I could work on freeing myself. I moved my head to get a better look at my bindings. The movement brought renewed waves of pain, but I did my best to ignore it.

They had tied my hands behind me so I looked at the bindings around my ankles. What I saw was that whoever had tied me up had torn long strips off of my clothes and used that to tie me up. My clothes were already pretty beat up and my growing body had already been trying to tear some seams so I didn't care much. They had also left the important parts intact, so that was good too.

Seeing what I was up against, I closed my eyes and started working on my bindings. They had been tied pretty tight, and I knew my wrists would not be pretty if I didn't finish this quickly. I had never been tied up before so I didn't know.

“What are you doing?” called an angry voice. I recognized it as the man that had spoken before I fell unconscious, “If you had been paying attention you would have realized she's awake and trying to untie herself.”

I hadn't done it. The bindings around my wrists were nowhere near loose and they now knew I was awake and already trying to escape. The guards wouldn't be so lax from now on.

“You can open your eyes,” said his voice above me, “No use trying to pretend you are still asleep now.”

I said nothing and did nothing.

“You must wonder why we attacked you.”

I think in this kind of situation most people would resist their attacker, “Yes, I'm wondering about that.”

“Hm, I had expected you to be too scared to say much.”

“I've been through worse, except the splitting my head open on the rock part.”

“Yes, we had wanted to get you unharmed, but that is in the past now.”

He hadn't explained why they had kidnapped me yet, “Um, I don't care about that. Will you tell me why you did what you did?”

“We were told to.”

“Told to capture me? Don't tell me you don't know why.”

“The man that brought us together told us to. We just do what we are told. He… scares even the most hardened of us if we disobey him.”

If he didn't know why had he even brought it up? I don't know what kind of man lead this group, but to even scare the worst of the lot said something about him.

“If you don't have any better reason to keep me, will you let me go now?”

“No, he said to capture you and we will keep you like this until he tells us what to do with you.”

“Fine. Now if you don't mind I want to get some rest. My head.”

“Your head? Oh! I can imagine,” he laughed, “I bet it doesn't hurt as bad as what we did to the one that injured you.”

The man left. Our conversation hadn't been a complete waste of time. I had found out that there was someone else out here that could gather a group of these mental cases.

For now, I decided that I wanted to try to fall asleep. For once I was willing to risk the dreams that came with sleep here. I still didn't want to see them, but this headache was even getting to me. I just had to see if I could fall asleep.

I had almost fallen asleep when I heard shouting. I opened my eyes to see what was going on. My head hurt even worse whenever I moved it, but it didn't stop me. I couldn't see much around me as I was in the middle of a rock field. I don't know if it was still the same one they had attacked me in, but it was most likely.

I don't know why they hadn't moved me somewhere else as Martu knew to come here. I imagine that the shouting I could hear was likely an effort to rescue me or the men here had just gotten into a fight. It didn't matter to me. I just wanted to watch. It would provide some entertainment for a little while at least.

“Hey guard,” I said to one man guarding me, “What's going on?”

He looked at me but then went back to his spacing out. I had no luck with the second guard either, but the third one talked.

“Some men are attacking. The Berserkers will get rid of them.”

Berserkers? They sounded interesting. I wanted to watch now. Martu had trained no one other than Helnion and me so most of the other Followers of Perrinu couldn't fight well. There were a few that could but not enough to count.

My stomach growled. How long had it been since I had eaten anything? There was no way these men had food, and I had left my box back in the Inner Sanctum. I would starve to death if I stayed here too long.

“You wouldn't have any food, would you?” I asked the guard that had talked.

“Food? Yes, I believe we can get you some food,” The man shuffled off slowly.

Wow, they had food. The only food I had seen here came from the boxes. Either the area we stayed in didn't have any food while others did or someone was bringing it from outside. Did it matter? Yes. I was hungry and if I could get food from any place that wasn't Usui I would take it. To be free of his influence would be nice. There was also the hope that if it was being brought from the outside, then whoever was bringing it might be able to get me out of this place.

A few minutes later the guard came back with the boss or whatever he was called around here.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to ask for food,” The boss guy placed the food next to me, before noticeably hesitating to take his hand away from it. “Have fun trying to eat that with your hands tied,” He laughed as he walked away.

Wait, I was going to ask him where he had gotten the food but it was too late now. Finding out would happen later. For now, I would eat. How I would do it with my hands tied would be interesting. If only I could dislocate my shoulders so I could bring my arms from behind me to my front…

I just ate it using only my mouth. To my great satisfaction I did it without getting too much of it on my face, not that the food was the messy type.

The food had been a welcome change from what I had been eating. Vegetables and especially fruit were nice, but this meal had meat. I had missed meat. Oh yes, I had. Delicious meat. Meat. MEAT! I couldn't tell what animal the meat had come from but it was meat and that's all I cared about. As for the rest of the meal… all I can say is that it looked like a bachelor had prepared it. Plenty of meat, no fruit, poorly prepared vegetables, some bread, and some malted drink that I dumped into the sand after taking one sniff, which made the guards whimper. I made one guard go to the boss man and get me water.

The meal had taken my mind off of things. My headache was going away now and I could sit up without getting too dizzy. There was nothing much I could do at the moment so I just sat and listened to the men around me for a while.

It was surprising how quiet it was. Hardly any of the surrounding men made much noise. I couldn't see how many of them were around me, but it was enough to fight off the rescue party that had come. To be honest, I didn't care if they rescued me, well as long as I could get myself untied I didn't care. I knew that Perrinu and Helnion would carry on without me and would probably stay out of trouble. On second thought… I could see Perrinu coming here herself to negotiate with these men.

“Could you untie me?” I asked the one guard that talked.

He looked at me for a second after I had spoken and then looked away saying nothing. I guess asking was not going to work, which wasn't a big surprise. I even asked the other two just in case but they didn't even react to me.

Then an idea hit me. The entire time I had been awake only one thing had gotten any reaction. That was when I had been brought food, specifically when I had dumped whatever that foul-smelling drink had been into the sand. They probably had orders not to touch my food, but starvation drove people into doing things they normally wouldn't do and these guys were in perpetual starvation. If things went well, I could bribe me some guards. I just had to wait until my next meal.

Time passed with nothing happening. The boredom was worse to me than being tied up. I had even tried to start a conversation with the guards but to no avail. Eventually, I decided again that sleep was the best option if it was possible. I didn't particularly look forward to having any dreams, especially if I ended up having one's like Perrinu had about her past or the past of the surrounding men.

It was strange. Until I had hit my head, I hadn't gotten sleepy even once and now here I was probably sleeping twice in one day.

While thinking about my plans, I fell asleep. Like the dream before I was watching the young family. They had noticeably aged since the last dream. The image was also clearer. I hadn't noticed it before but the previous dream looked as if it had barely been holding together, as if I had made it from a puzzle with many of its pieces missing. This time it was still very much fuzzy and incomplete but it had improved noticeably.

Aside from the image being much clearer, my head didn't feel as heavy as it had been. I hadn't noticed it before but the reason I hadn't been able to make out who these people were, yet have them feel so familiar was that their faces were hard to distinguish. Even with the improvement, I couldn't see the details of their faces well. I didn't need to.

I looked at the scene in front of me. It was a scene of the family eating breakfast. The oldest girl had already finished eating and looked to be getting ready for school with the help of her father. The younger of the two girls was eating her meal intently while the young boy playing with his food and his mother attempted to get him to eat it.

I was watching one of my memories. I hadn't realized it earlier, but this was definitely what I was now watching. I remember that this was the first day my older sister went to school, a fancy private school. My parents were so proud of her for getting into it. I, at the time, knew something good had happened, but at that age breakfast was more important to me than my sister going to a place that made you wear the same clothes as everybody else and learn boring things all day.

As if on cue, the scene switched. It was a year later. The scene was very similar to the last one, but aside from the obvious age increase, I saw my sister eating quickly at the table while my mother helped fix places on my uniform. My parents were excited that I had gotten into the same school that my sister had. For some reason my face was devoid of any detail, as it had in all the previous scenes I realized, so I couldn't see my expression. I didn't need to. I remembered how I felt. I didn't want to go and had cried to my mother to not make me go. The scene ended with me and my sister walking out of the room with our father.

The next scenes comprised some of my happier childhood memories. My father loved to build things as a hobby. Of course, he passed this on to his children. We spent many weekends in the garage building things. My father usually did most of the work, but I learned a lot from him. As the years went on my sister stopped as she made friends and started spending more time with them, but my brother had happily replaced her when my mother thought he was old enough not to hurt himself. My brother…

Aside from memories of making things, I saw many memories of games our father played with us. He was a very competitive man and while my sister went along with it at first. I always tried my best to beat her. Since she was older and bigger than I was, I was determined to beat her. At first, I never stood a chance but as time went on and she started focusing on other things more, I got my first victory. I had practiced in secret for a long time and it had paid off.

Now that I think about it, I did a lot of things in secret. At night I often went to the shed to tinker with the latest project, breaking it more often than naught. Even after getting scolded for going out by myself at night I found that it was the only place I could relax so I continued to until my parents finally got some good locks on the door.

I awoke. Nothing around me differed from when I had fallen asleep. The guards hadn't even moved an inch. I was disappointed about this. This was supposed to be a kidnapping, and so far other than being tied up and guarded, I was being treated rather well.

Even if I felt like talking the surrounding guards wouldn't be good conversation, and so like always I had to turn to my thoughts to keep me company. Any normal person would have thought about the dreams I had just had, but I had put my past behind me when I came to Calorin. I had wanted to start fresh.

A little while passed and, despite trying to forget about them, my dreams of remembrance kept coming back. To help with this, I distracted myself. I also took the opportunity to finally find out what exactly they wanted to do with me.

“Hey,” I called to the guard that talked, “I want to talk to your leader.”

The guard stood up without a word and left. It didn't take him long to return with the boss man.

“I see you finally want to talk again. Is your head filling better now?” The boss man said.

“Have you been told what to do with me yet? My wrists are starting to hurt and I've got a bad cramp in my back.”

He laughed, “Are you not the least bit concerned with what we will do to you? For all you know we have unspeakable things we are planning to do. You also have no idea how hard it is keeping these men off of the first female they have seen in years.”

“If something bad happens, I'll worry about it then.”

“You Terrans are as strange as I have heard,” His smile went away and his face changed to a more business-like expression, “Now, you wanted to know what we are planning on doing with you. So far all I have been told was to capture you and keep you here. I was not told exactly why, but I can think of why. I believe it was to keep you out of the…” he paused and thought, “Testing of the Berserkers.”

I had heard the Berserkers mentioned before. They had been the ones that had fought off my rescue party.

“Berserkers?”

“Yes, they are the reason my Master has come to this place. I do not know exactly what he is planning on doing with them once he is done testing them, but I can say one thing about them, the more they kill the stronger they get. It takes thousands of kills but it only takes a few days by the Black Water to do this. Unfortunately, it seems they lose their strength when they fall to dust and return to the Black Water.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“I believe my Master does not want you killed in the upcoming battle.”

“Battle?”

“Yes, we plan on attacking your group of men, see how well the Berserkers do in a real battle.”

“So you will attack my group just to see how well you can control a group of Berserkers? Judging by their names they don't sound like they are easy to control.”

“You are a smart one. And yes, you would be right for the most part. These men that are the Berserkers have little of their minds left. The only reason they have left is obeying my Master's wish.”

“So the reason you captured me was that you will fight my group and your Master doesn't want me to killed?”

“Yes.”

“Then what about the other two that came with me?”

“We did not try to capture them because you are the only one that leaves the safety of your rocks. They also would not interfere in battle as much as you and as long as they do not get too close to the Berserkers they should be fine. My Master has ordered that they are to be left alone if possible.”

“When are you going to attack?”

“Not for a while. My Master is still making more Berserkers and those need to kill and get stronger too.”

“When you attack, can I watch?”

I had been expecting the man to laugh when I said that, but he looked more dumbfounded.

“You want to watch us kill your men?”

“When did I ever say I liked them? All I care about is getting away from this place and back to Calorin. You can even tell your master I'll even fight for him if he promises to get me… the three of us girls out alive.”