This is an alternate version of the "white room" opening for Summoner - this time telling the story in first person. Given the story's influences, first person narrative is either completely appropriate, or seriously overdoing it; I'm not sure. Compare it with the third person version and see which one you like better.
I wish I could tell you how it really began. I've tried to remember, and all I get are flashes: waking up on a stone slab in room full of Crowned; someone pulling cloth away from my eyes; waking again in a larger room, with a proper bed and servants to take care of me. Before that... nothing. Darkness. A sense of falling, maybe.
It seemed like we had always been here.
We were kept in a massive stone castle, half familiar and half strange. It had little in the way of furniture, and that very basic. There were no decorations: no carvings, no tapestries, no paintings. Tamol, who described himself as our "guide", called this the Citadel of the Crowned.
We didn't think of ourselves as being kept - not at the time. This was our home; we lived here. We'd forgotten our awakening, and thought little of our surroundings. The servants and guard didn't speak; or if they did, they didn't understand our languages. We barely understood each other: even when we found a common language, it seemed we spoke different dialects. No two of us belonged to the same race; that did not help, either.
There were a great many questions that we might, and perhaps should, have been asking. We never did, and to this day I cannot say with certainty why we did not ask them. I can only suggest that they simply didn't occur to us, until the day we finally left the castle.
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