Carabas

I'm in an in-between place - shallow pools of water, tall dark cliffs with broken statues and bronze mirrors, and a single whole statue: a hooded figure in a position that reminds me of Mary in the Pieta. One of the bronze mirrors I think of as still working after all - it shows an image of a woman from the turn of the century, and her image moves and looks at me. There's an association with 'a mother' here, though I'm not thinking of her as my mother. I can use her functioning mirror to escape. But first, there's a small vial here of brilliantly white light that I associate with 'love' in some way, which is needed for later, for something after I've escaped; it's the reason I came here.

There's a house at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea, very pleasant, and with a forge attached. A friend of mine is working in the forge right now, helping out the man who lives here, a man who is brilliant at designing certain things but who can't work in the forge himself. Because of him, there's a sword of sorts that's been reforged - there's an association here with a legend about light, and the sword itself is yellow and semi-transparent - and I'm about to take it to a woman named Iliona. But I'm concerned about my friend working in the forge. The designer has just told me that the spirits have already released my friend from his vows to the hold - there's no need for him to help the designer with the forge anymore. But my friend says to me, "I took his brother from him. I can do this much."

Iliona lives in a small town, and as I'm walking down the hill into town, I'm openly carrying her sword in my hand. I'm met by a man who knows me well and his wife, Iliona's daughter, and they block my path, not trusting that I really am who I appear to be. I break the weapon that he's raised to me, and speak to him so that he sees I'm still myself. They let me through; they don't like it, but they defer to Iliona.

A setting based on the early 1900s. I'm sitting at a dinner table, with my POV character's mother sitting somewhere to my right, and a woman who I'm having an intense argument with to my left, at the foot of the table. We argue frequently, I enjoy it; and I realize that although we're stating how much we hate each other, we're using words usually associated with passion or love.

Dinner's over, the woman is gone, but my mother and I are still in the same room, standing now. I'm talking about breaking my engagement to someone else. I've never met the girl I'm engaged to - she lives in (either New York or Boston, can't remember which - I thought of it as far away), and our fathers had arranged it between themselves, before my father died. My mother is warning me about possible consequences. She describes the girl's father as "the power behind the throne."

I'm tied up in a chair, and this guy who was interrogating me is now struggling with another guy who wants to get me out. The guy on the rescue mission was carrying a needle, and during the struggle, the contents of the needle wind up getting sprayed into the air - they're behind me at the time, so I don't see it, but I can feel the spray, and I don't hear them fighting anymore.

The guy on the rescue mission's been captured. It turns out he got a small dose of the contents himself during the fight. This will cause something that we refer to as 'hunger', and he believes this is something he'll be able to use, to focus on his enemies. Having experienced it myself in the past, I know he's mistaken, and that it'll make it more difficult for him to think clearly.

We're both taken out of the building. Outside, we're in a junkyard, and there are a few men with guns escorting us. The guy on the failed rescue mission is starting to have a hard time walking, and one of the guards is shouting at him about it. I'm remembering a time in the past when I'd been out of it and he'd carried me. I'm aware I should do the same for him now, but I don't. I don't want to be associated with him.

Switching to third person, there's a kid watching us from a distance, out of sight. He leaves, gets on a computer and reports what he saw to a woman who I think of as the mother of my POV character, though she looks too young for it - long brown hair, upper-class British accent. In the kid's report to her, he mentions a "guy that you call the Judge" who's holed up in the woods nearby.