The steed burst out of the mist like a leviathan lurching from the deep. So great was the mounts enthusiasm to escape the nightmare from which it had willingly followed its master, but nonetheless wished to leave, that trails of fog clung to it like questing fingers attempting to drag its victim back into its shroud. Juliette clung to the big beasts neck for dear life, her arms flung around it, feeling the great warhorses pulse thundering beneath her slender limbs. Despite a terrible urge not to look back, she found she couldn’t resist glancing over her shoulder. Even as she turned she felt the stirring of a chill ocean breeze and the fog behind them seemed to slide away like spider web before a hurricane. Juliet drew in her breath sharply. Instead of a dreadful castle or palace of evil aspect, there was nothing behind them but a promontory hill rising above the night darkened see. The moon, the normal moon under which she had been born, shone in the sky, illuminating a few lonely stones that were too square to have been natural, but had long since collapsed into vine choked ruin.
 
“Iiyada preserve us,” she breathed, though the prayer to the Goddess of Song was lost over the thundering of hooves on the overgrown slate path that lead from the ruins. Though it was doubtful the knight had heard her, the shift in her body obviously aroused his attention. Unable to look backward in his armored helmet he instead touched the reins expertly, the horse zagged to the side, with a shower of sparks from his iron shod hooves, permitting the armored man to glance backward at the impossibly empty path on which they had come. With a second tap the horse straightened and then with a gentle pressure on the bridle he slowed the big beast first to a clatter and then to a stop. They were nearly at the base of the hill that the ancient road ascended and the unrelieved darkness of a night time forest swept in front of them like a dark green ocean. Juliette slipped to the ground, conscious that wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere near the inn in which she had gone to sleep… how long ago? Hours? Days? Longer?
 
“I thank you for rescuing me Sir Knight,” she said, feeling absurdly pompous as she did so. A moment later she warped her arms around her body as the chill of the evening began to overtake her adrenaline of moments before.