A dream

Your mind drifts to dark places. Flashes of faces dominate your mind. People you've killed. People you've lost. The worst one of them all is a young girl, an 11 year old child still learning how the world was. Your sister. Her fiery red hair, her adorable smile when she did something clever. Taken from the world by bandits, slain in the forest one fateful night as you wandered taverns throughout town and your brother was away traveling the lands. The person you failed. Your only sister, lost because of your flaws. Your brother never forgave you, your father disowning you and cast you from your childhood home. Your mind pulls forth the dark memories of that awful night, the yelling your father berated you with and the silent anger that followed. You shift uncomfortably as you sleep, your body aching in strange pain.

You roll over, bringing you to even darker memories. The day your village was raided. A group of imps ransacked your home village only days after the **** of your sister. As much as it saddens you to remember, you hid and wept silently as your mother was dragged away. There was nothing you could do to stop it, but the pain of the memory is unbearable. The sadness in your fathers eyes haunts you to this day. The memory gave you strength and pushed you to becoming a hero, fighting for the weak and helpless like you once were.

The aches grow stronger as you sleep, your chest and groin hurting above all. Your back feels like it's constricting and everything is pain for many moments. Then as the dawn approaches and peaks above the pines and the snow capped mountains behind them, you awake in bliss.