Sounds of screaming echoed down the rocky tunnel mingled with garbled prayers and the crunch of gravel beneath his feet. Too many times he’d walked this path, too many times and too many memories.

Briefly he wondered why he’d been called once again from his sleep but shoved it back into the recesses of his brain. It didn’t pay to question things too closely, his master had taught him that long ago, his blood and flesh remembering for him.

Small puffs of breath hit the air as he neared the entrance of the tunnel, the atmosphere was humid and damp but somehow he burned hot enough to leave little clouds as he exhaled.

The floor sloped up sharply and the gravel gave way to warm yellow stone slabs leading up to a massive stone door. It was oval rather than rectangular and bound with thick bands of silver and gold, long since tarnished into dull old age. Deeply etched shapes filled with peeling and cracked pigment outlined the edge of the portal. There was no handle.

He stood there uncertain. It had always been opened for him before now and he had no idea how the door worked. Such knowledge had only been for the elders of his race. Uneasy his weight shifted from foot to foot trying to remember any fragment that would help him. The problem was his memory had faded with his slumber, only small fragments as if in a dream ever came back to him as if he died and was reborn each time he slept and then awoke. Someone had needed him. Someone had called him and he had responded as he was bound to do so.

It was quieter here by the door the only sounds the whisper of fabric against leather as he breathed awaiting some resolution. He was unarmed. His weapons were arranged on the other side, waiting patiently for his hand to give them life and purpose. What was he supposed to do?

After some time he realised that no one was coming to operate the stone and he’d have to figure it out himself. Cautiously he approached. They may be traps. About a foot from the door he stopped, examining closer.

Above the oval rock there were three small niches that held candles just within arms reach above his head. Likewise arranged vertically each side of the door three small square openings had been cut into the yellow rock to hold small lights. The door was only an inch or so taller than he was and as thick as his palm was wide. He tried to read the red letters that made their spidery oval about the edges. They looked familiar and yet alien to his eyes as if he had been taught something in childhood long ago and had dismissed the thought as childish fancy, it was hovering at the edge of his consciousness, wispily out of reach. He traced a few glyphs with a fingertip hoping the shapes would jog something.

Next were the bands holding the massive slab of rock together. Thick rectangular gold had been hammered and then thinner silver was entwined about it, the joins had been made to resemble branches of a kind curling off a little and then terminating in a tiny leaf. Black flakes crumbled as his hand gently caressed the warm metal with the tarnish of ages evaporating into specks and floating away before hitting the floor. With a sigh he realised that he had no idea how to open it. Something must be wrong for him to have been called, awaken and find the door firmly sealed. He leaned forward, the pale forehead touching the rough stone and right hand flat against the dead middle of the door. With a groan and shower of dust the hewn rock began to move outward. Leaping back he watched as it moved and shivered, the metal bands scraping as it shuddered to a halt in the position he had only ever seen it before.

Warily he stepped through, examining the ceiling and edges of the frame in case they decided to cave in unexpectedly. Sidling sideways into the antechamber to avoid the loose slab he knew was concealed a step into the room he gazed about.

The floor was thick with dust. No one had been here in a very long time. Over to his right there was a low stone altar carved from the same rock as everything else here. Laid upon the surface his weapons were arrayed as he had left them before sleep. They had been covered by someone who had considered them worth looking after with an oilcloth. He didn’t remember doing it himself, it wasn’t something that had seemed necessary, his weapons would never grow dull or tarnish like mundane one would.

The solid chair next to the altar was filled with what looked like what was left of a person. Fabric and flesh long since gone the small heap of bones clattered inwards as he touched them. Briefly he thought it odd that he could see no skull and out of some strange unknown feeling he lifted the cloth and its’ layer of white powder and gently laid it upon the remains. Turning back to the table he briefly touched each of his possessions laid out, knowing each had a name but not recalling it.

Who had woken him?