Zosime is in Osorsen’s tent but it is larger and more empty. In the corner sits a grizzled Grecian warrior with one hand on the shaft of a blood tipped spear. One eye is dead and milky white but his other eye is pale blue, clear, and trained on her. His armor is as scarred as his face and bears the brunt of many a battle. Zosime takes note of the fierce glare and grim expression of his lips.

He is familiar to her but she has never seen him before - she is sure of this. It is less his appearance but more his presence. He makes her think of practicing her sword with her brother. He makes her feel giddy in her stomach but nervous. She is eager and afraid that something bad is about to happen. She knows he is unhappy and she knows it is with her. There was a test, she realizes, and she has failed it.

“Get up.” The voice speaks in a harsh whisper but his mouth does not move. Whispers whirl around the tent on gusts of wind. They pull at her clothes and her hair and her body. They insist. Zosime does not want to go near him but she cannot look away. Now she is standing and she is walking. The warrior is huge and growing larger the closer she comes. The tent expands and she is the size of a child when she reaches his legs. He glowers down at her.

“Get out.” She can see nothing but his face, the milk white of his dead eye and its gray iris. The faded pupil blackens and darkens and widens until it is a sucking vortex. She throws up her arms to shield herself but her feet have left the ground. End over end she tumbles upward into the blackness. Whispers tear at her clothes. “Get up” they say. “Get out” the command. “Get up. Get out. Get up. Get out.”

She spins faster and faster and faster in the black. All alone the whispers turn into a chorus of bone dry voices that rise to a shriek. “Get out. Get out. Get out.”