Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Nightmare ❯ The Nightmare ( One-Shot )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Where am I? I look around frantically. I am standing in a dark stone corridor with my back pressed against the rough blocks behind me. In front of me, guarding me, is a brown haired man holding a huge broadsword. The weapon is almost too large for the space we are in, but he protects me from the six blond giants that have just come up the stairs. A torch gutters in a bracket on the wall to my left, its life almost spent. My protector shouts something encouraging over his shoulder at me and it takes a moment for my confused mind to work out what he has said. There was a name! Nimue? Is that me? I put a hand to my throbbing head and feel something warm and wet. I look at my hand, the fingers covered in blood. Blood! I'm wounded. A part of my mind tells me that it probably isn't that bad, that head wounds bleed freely, but the rest of me is in shock. Is this why I can't remember anything? I look from my crimson coated fingers to the man in front of me again. Did he do this to me? Does he want me for some nefarious purpose? I shiver slightly in the chill air and only just now realize that I am standing in front of seven men that I may or may not know wearing nothing but a nightshift. A very thin one, at that. I wrap my arms around myself and shiver, trying to disappear into the wall. A moment passes and my protector looks over his shoulder again, almost like he's making sure I haven't vanished on him. My mind supplies the word 'again' to go with that statement. I blink and look at the man again, studying the way I feel about him.

I am safe. I blink again: Safe? I wait a moment and turn my attention to the men he is fighting. Fortunately, they can only come at him two at a time up the narrow stairs of this tower. Again I pause. Tower. We are near the top of one of the Keep's towers. I guess I knew something about my situation after all. Back to the Others. As opposed to my protector, they were blond and enormously huge! Saxons. They are Saxons. This Keep, my father's Keep, has been attacked by Saxons. I was dallying with the Bard in his rooms at the top of the northeast tower when the alarm sounded. The Bard... Kevin! I must have said his name aloud because he turns to look at me, "Nimue? Are you alright? Is your head better?"

I open my mouth to answer him, that his shoving me against the wall hadn't broken my head completely, that sir Lancelet bred harder heads than that, when it became a cry of denial, "No! Kevin..." I watch as he crumples in front of me. A Saxon short sword having gotten through his guard while he was looking at me. Blood spreads from his belly wound. So much blood, and much darker than what came from my head. Lifeblood... I sob and cower against the wall as the other three men come up to join their comrades, one lying as still and lifeless as my lover. Slain by none other than the Bard himself. I stare down at the cooling body of my mother's favorite entertainer, the best bard in the entire kingdom of Brittany. I move my feet a little, his blood spreading toward me, as though, even in death, he seeks to touch me. White hot anger flashes through me and I reach down, awkwardly lifting his sword, my thoughts turning toward revenge. The blade too heavy in my grasp. If only I had my own blade, left in my own suite as a snuck away for my secret tryst. My bed gown was two flights up stairs in the Bard's modest suite, forgotten in the haste to flee to safety.

The barbarians mock me. Me! Just because I am a woman! I swing the sword experimentally, it is nearly too heavy, but I believe I can manage it. The tendons in my wrists stand out with the strain of holding the blade steady and I swing. My aim is true and the sword nearly severs the head of one of the remaining Saxons. They aren't laughing anymore. But now I have four to face instead of just the two that my love, my beloved, had to defend against. I can feel the blood draining from my face. I can barely hold my own against my father's arms master, and I'm almost sure that he's been holding back against me. Suddenly the man in the middle, directly in front of me, charges. He, unlike the others, wields a true Briton broadsword. I try to evade him, but he is reckless and I am as yet too unskilled. 'Father was right.' I think, 'I should never have started learning the sword.'

And with that, I fall. The barbarian's sword sheathed in my body. My last vision is of Kevin. His lifeless gray eyes staring at me as I lay there in the pool of our mingled blood.

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She sat up in bed with a start, her heart pounding as though she'd just run a marathon. Or two. Back to back. Her delicate, pale hand pressed to her chest as she tried to calm the beating of her heart. Her hair appeared silver in the shadows of her dark room. The panther sprawled across the foot of her bed seemed just a darker shadow in the gloom of the starless night. Outside the open curtains of her window, a storm was rolling in, dark clouds billowing across the sky, obscuring the face of the moon, "It was only a dream..." Her voice sounded strange in the stillness of the room. Too rough. Almost as though she'd been screaming. The panther perked her ears in her sleep, as though checking to see if her mistress would say anything more. The girl obliged, clearing her throat first, "Only a dream." That sounded better, more human. She lay back down and rolled to face the window, murmuring to herself as she went back to sleep.

Outside, the first flash of lightning struck, illuminating the room for a split second. There, in the far corner of the room, between the closet and the door to the hallway, was a sword. A Briton broadsword covered in half dried blood up to the hilt.