None Alone Four

4.

            It runs up my back. Eventually I stop fighting them and turn to see what it is. Whatever it is has barbs and is dark and small. I lose sight of it as it rolls up my shoulder to the base of my neck. A question forms on my lips, but once again they charge and I am called to the flashing blades and spear points. The shield on my arm begins to splinter, crack. My sword flies faster than I can keep up.

It is a pinch on the back of my neck like cactus spines. My hand reaches there before it is brought back with the sword to bat away the metal scratching figures on the surface, hot and white figures in the noonday. I taste their sweat, and my own running down my face, as I brace against the ground before pushing off, shoving them away.

There are so many. I take a leg, an arm, one's ear. One's sword goes flying, engaging itself behind their formation. I have lost my chance to move, and now they are surrounding me. I have been taught to fight them well. I succeed in clearing out a back way and shooting the gap, passing through them as almost immaterial. I do not really understand how that happens, with so many, but it does, and I find myself several yards away, looking at their gaunt, waiting backs.

They seem not to have seen me, but cluster still, as if their prey was still there. They do not know what draws across their backs. Down, all but a few. They make a call, and line up against me. I turn my head and see no one. They must be here, others came here with me, but I do not see them.

In this alone, I think. My body moves, but my mind is slow. The prickling on my neck goes sharp and deep and I shout. They step away. They think it is my battle cry. Now it seeps into my neck. I feel it disappear beneath the flesh into the bone, where it spreads more than a small dark barb to my shivering shoulders. What is it?

They rush at me before I see, and overtake me. My shield, splintered, useless, lies at my feet. I do not feel hands or biting edges against my skin, but I push outward, the darkness of my eyes growing. I kick and scream and punch and I lose my sword and feeling in my palms and see nothing. It is not nothing. It is worse than nothing because of the constriction - in or on my chest, I cannot say. It fans out around my chest and around the back of my neck with a strange network of fibers binding me in ways I do not know now.

I forgot something. I forget what I forgot. The glint of sharp edges in waking memories do not severe the thickening fibers as I look around, asking in a silent voice. The shield I had left is gone, leaving the lengthening shadows as shade for my neck.

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