Atop my hill, others stand among me...

~

My eyes opened slowly, and it took me a minute to adjust to reality. I was lying on the cold, hard ground with no clue where I was. I was waiting for my eyes to adjust, but they didn't. It was just me in this dark, empty void of nothingness.

The top of my head was touching a hard surface, presumably a wall, and I used my hands to sit myself up and lean against it.

Using my core, though? Big mistake. Something was either broken or badly damaged, and I immediately wished I hadn't moved.

The scuffling of my shifting and the grunts of my pain echoed for what seemed like an eternity, faintly ricocheting in what I now imagined to be a vast and endless space.

Where am I?

As I drifted into consciousness and left the hazy limbo of confusion I was in, I started to notice one thing: I hurt. I really hurt.

Why was I in so much pain? What did I do??

I felt my mouth start to salivate - well, try to; I was dying of thirst, and probably quite literally dying of something. I racked my brain, trying to think of what I was doing here, but I felt like a robot running on backup power, and remembering much of anything was not a priority.

My hands were wet, presumably with blood. I mean, even I'm smart enough to know that. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to remember why I was in this state, or what got me in this wherever I am.

As my heart began to speed up, I looked out into the cold and empty darkness in front of me. I could truly see nothing - not even my hands or any of my wounds, which were starting to radiate with a dazing pain.

I could hear my blood in my ears, and even my breathing echoed off of hundreds of surfaces.

There was something truly ominous and terrifying about being in complete darkness where every sound echoes for an eternity, and your thoughts bounce back at you, cutting like daggers into your soul.

But I heard something else beginning to power over the quiet feedback of my panic... it sounded like... a growl. And it was loud. There were two distinctly different sets of growls, and it reminded me of cats or dogs fighting.

The only problem was: it was getting louder very quickly, and I'm in no room to avoid whatever damage they're going to cause.

Surely enough, the growling became full-blown snarling, and I could hear the scraping of claws and an occasional yelp. I knew for sure that the animals sounded like wolves, which wasn't reassuring at all, and by now I was almost certain that they were just a few feet away from me.

I held my breath as my heart raced. My blood pressure was rapidly pounding into my abdomen and a few other places around my body, and I thought I would die if I spent another second holding in the tears and screams I so badly needed to let out of me, but I couldn't draw attention to myself.

The fighting animals were practically tearing at each other now, and after a minute or two of them brutally ripping each other apart, I heard a loud yelp, a splatter of blood, and the thud of a body hitting the ground.

One of them had won the fight, and was huffing like a victor, not an injured animal. It was ready for more.

Its breathing slowed, and it went quiet. I could hear its paws ever-so-gently touch the floor as it turned towards me.

Please don't know I'm here.

The tiniest rumble began to emanate from its throat. The beginnings of a growl.

Please don't know I'm here.

I didn't have long to panic, because a light creeped out from the distance, illuminating what I suspected I was in all along: a cave. A long, endless cave, and I seemed to be at the center of it, in a large and narrow cavern maybe half the length of a football field long and just as wide, while being maybe 10 feet tall.

I had to look away because my eyes had adjusted to the dark, but from what I saw through my squinting, a humanoid figure with brownish-black, curly horns - a demon - wearing a strange, multicolored outfit, wielded a long sword that burned with a bright yellow flame.

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I hadn't seen a demon since Lockwood, and I hadn't seen that sword since then either.

Maybe that guy is responsible for what happened to Sakari. In which case, I shouldn't feel any safer.

And it is safe to say that I definitely didn't feel any safer whatsoever.

The demon blitzed around a corner, cackling like a wild maniac with his flaming sword raised and the brightness of the blaze reflecting in his red eyes which were wide with joy. He was sprinting towards the animal, which looked like a wolf, but a bit wider and its fur was in small clumps.

Despite the wolf-looking creature's best efforts and all of its snarling and growling, it stood no chance against the demon, who had fun poking and prodding at the beast until he eventually realized it was tired and just slashed it right in half like he took a sharp knife to paper.

After so effortlessly demolishing the creature, he turned to me, his sword still dripping in sizzling blood, and my heart sank.

How did I get here?

The demon reared back and raised his sword once more, flicking the blood off of it with two clean swipes. Then, with a third swipe, the flames that once illuminated the whole cave were put out, and I was left in total darkness and fear, not knowing what would happen to me next.

As the demon before me cackled once more and the last of the flames vanished just as I was sure my life soon would, time seemed to stretch out infinitely like two mirrors reflecting back and forth.

Each reflection in the mirror showed me a tiny bit of the past few days. Sage, Fezege, Sakari, the carriage, the fire. It all came back to me.

Fire.

Just as slowly as it had grinded to a halt, time raced to its normal pace again as the demon's sword lit again and plunged into me. That was stab number two.

I tried to scream, but only ended up coughing up blood, and I was in so much pain that I forgot how to scream. I'm sure the demon could see the petrified terror in my eyes as his own maniacal face reflected back at him, and he cackled, practically dancing.

I found the strength to use my voice, and in my sheer panic, I screamed, with every last ounce of energy I had in me, a bloodcurdling "HEEEELLLPP!!!"

The demon laughed and whooped like a monkey, purely delighted that his prey was petrified, hopeless, trapped, and unable to fight back, like a little kid laughs as he steps on an ant and smears it across the sidewalk.

The demon then ripped the serrated sword back out of me.

My eyes were wide in searing pain and horror as my heart ripped and thrashed like a rabid dog in a cage and I fell over to the side. I couldn't imagine a feeling worse than this.

How did things become this in such a short time?

What did I do wrong?

Why do I deserve this?

Part of me was terrified. Like wanting to crawl in a corner and hope not even God remembers I exist. Not that he does anyways.

Another part of me felt at peace. Not just in the fact that I was finally alone, but in knowing that my life wouldn't last for much longer.

The demon likely decided I was too weak to play with, because he danced off to the distance, eventually disappearing from earshot as I relished in the return of peace and quiet.

Not that it was either quiet or peaceful. I was sure my heartbeat and moans of pain could be heard for miles.

It didn't go away. I couldn't help but replay the feeling of the sword tearing out of me, and I felt every single serration on the blade. I could feel my hands and arms covered in my own blood.

Every movement was merely a punishment. For what? I wasn't sure.

Being alive I guess.

"I hope you die alone in the dark and know that nobody on this planet gives a shit about you."

"You're a filthy dog with no place in this world!"

The voices of my past echoed in my head. I'm not sure what was louder - the ringing in my ears, the pain in my gut, or their voices in my mind.

"She couldn't stand to be around you anymore, that's why she did it!"

Maybe so... huh?

Even though my stomach was screaming for mercy, I stopped groaning and crying and just tried to get as comfortable as one can in this situation.

No point in crying. There is no help. And there's definitely nobody here to rub my back and tell me it'll all be okay.

"Is that what you think?" A familiar voice said as I felt a gentle hand on my back, moving up and down slowly.

I looked over and immediately felt a tear fall down my face.

It was Myu.

"What took you so long?" I begged with my voice cracking and warping as I threw my arms around the beautiful purple-haired girl, my pure joy and relief outpowering the utter stupidity of trying to hug someone with open wounds.

"Sorry..." she apologized earnestly, concern beginning to lace her voice. "Sorry it took me so long to get to you."

"Won't have to worry about that soon," I said as I coughed up more blood.

"You never told me you could see ghosts," she tried to take my mind off of what was happening, her voice bright and cheery as though nothing were happening.

"Sorry about that... I guess I was afraid you'd call me crazy."

While on the one hand I could tell she wanted to skin me alive for thinking I would be rejected for saying such a thing, she put the other hand back on my back and smiled.

"Don't worry about it. It makes sense, though."

Her face turned serious and apologetic, and she opened her mouth to speak, but all I got was muffled nonsense.

She kept talking, but I could barely make out what she was saying. All I could see was her lips moving. I blacked out pretty soon after that.

~

"Hey," a bright, soft voice in my head said. "Tell me what happened. All the things you've never said out loud."

This voice inside of me... has lost its breath.

I opened my eyes in the middle of the field. It was autumn, when the leaves were starting to fall and drift through the air lightly.

I was laying in the grass facing the clouds like a starfish, taking in the scent and feeling of the grass on my arms. It wasn't the hard and rocky feeling of a cave, and it wasn't the putrid and sour odor of death and fear. It was mercy.

"Where are we now?"

The voice was Lydia again, but she was gleeful. The voice she had long before her life went to misery.

"It's a field near the river, out by the edge of the city. My happy place."

My voice was peaceful. The voice I had long before my life went to misery.