...was the echoes of my misery...

~

Sage

I was introduced to two young men, both didn't really look like they wanted to be here. Not in the way that most of the soldiers did when I was around - not wanting to be here because they didn't want to be around me - but just wanting to be somewhere else in general.

I respect that.

One of them was looking away with a look of disgust and contempt on his face, like he'd rather be absolutely anywhere but here, and the other wore pants too small for him (which was a little saddening considering the winter weather) and was looking down with a red face. Shy.

It didn't take a detective to put two and two together and realize that I was probably just getting handed the misfits of our camp and told to train them because there was nowhere else to put them.

I brought them into the Commander's little office, which he barely ever came into anyways, and sat them down. Carla and I took chairs and followed suit, though I'd learned my lesson by now and figured out how to sit with an animal's extremities growing out of you (sitting on a tail isn't exactly pleasant).

We sat in silence for a moment until I tried to break the ice.

"So, who speaks English, or are we playing charades?"

When I was met with a dull look from the contempt one and not a flinch from the shy one, I half-expected that they just didn't understand me, which was going to be rough.

I raised my eyebrows as like a "do you understand me?"

The contempt guy finally replied with a "I'm going to gag if we play charades," with a thick accent, but confident grammar. "He speaks English too."

He then chopped the shy one on the back of his head with his hand.

"Hey!" I raised my voice. "None of that."

Carla remained silent, and I was met with a glum, empty look from Mr. mood-kill, while the shy one rubbed the back of his head.

"What are your guys' names?" I changed the topic.

He sighed. "Are we really gonna do this?"

Oh boy. If I'm supposed to be his squad leader then we have a lot of work to do. I'll just have to take it as a personal challenge.

"Yeah!" I replied cheerily, trying to see if I can lighten the mood. "Like it or not, and I'm pretty sure I've gathered which of the two it is right now, I'm your squad leader, and for better or worse we're a team now. So let's try to get along a little."

He let out an even bigger huff and sigh. "I'm Xavier."

The shy one looked up for a moment and spoke up in a barely-audible voice. "Greyhat."

"I'm Sage. I'm sure you've... well... seen me around."

I tried not to let my ears droop, because they like to react to my emotions a lot and when I'm feeling shy or embarrassed, they droop a whole bunch.

"Wait so is that your actual name or..." I asked Greyhat.

He chuckled nervously, blushed, then looked away again.

This really ought to be a fun bunch.

Carla nudged me on the arm and smiled, almost laughing a little. She felt the same way.

~

Vincent

After more hours than I care to admit of laying against the moss, almost completely still, trying to sleep, I finally got up and started on my trek again. The winding maze of tunnels and channels seemed never to end. Every turn gave way to ten more, and each of those to ten more.

I thought a lot about what I saw in the lake. My new face was badass, and as much as the idea of me being a fist-throwing knife-swinging fireball-casting force of death itself whose face is the epitome of fear makes me weak to my knees, I unfortunately know I'm anything but that.

A lot of my lonesome, empty walks were kept company only by my wild daydreaming. That and me ogling over myself and my new tail, which lifted the bottom of the cloak I took from the first demon I killed a little bit.

I wondered a lot about whether or not I'd ever be able to back up my looks. I mean Lasory has only God knows how much training in terms of fighting. I have a couple wiggles from death and that's about it.

Not that I care much for the comparison game. The goal here is to be alone. I'm not putting myself in a situation where I have to be concerned with how I stack up against other people anyways, not unless it involves my ability to sink a knife into them.

Thinking about my lack of strength and direction was starting to get on my nerves though. As comfortable as I was alone, when it's just you and there's no animals or sound in sight save for the very, very long and distant echo of your own breathing and footsteps, it's hard to control where the train of thought goes. My mind was about as cavernous and maze-like as the cave I was stuck in; one tunnel opened up only to another myriad more. Just one big rabbit hole.

As time went on, minutes became hours, and my thoughts and the boring, dark tunnels became a blur that blended like a watercolor painting soaked in the sink - its colors becoming dull and lifeless.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I felt like a teapot on really low heat, like putting a huge soup pot full of water over a lighter. But even the smallest flame can boil the biggest of pots given enough time, and time was all this lighter had.

Hours became days. I think. I wasn't sure anymore. My perception of time was all but completely gone, a joke at best, and I was well past having a clue if it was day or night or how long it had been since the last tunnel of dull nothing.

It wasn't often that I saw much of anything interesting. So when time and your surroundings are all the same, trust me, you lose track of just about everything. Walking was a monotonous chore, a drone of an activity that I did on pretty much autopolilot while I grew to befriend and hate myself.

It was like I couldn't bear to be around people anymore, but being around myself led to only a host of bad thoughts and memories.

After a while I started to think about my mom.

Really for the first time since after I decided to become a Messenger for Sakari. I wondered if she was doing okay. If she missed me.

I wondered if she cared. Well, of course she did. But did anyone else? Eh, I didn't have anyone else in my life I talked to enough that they would. So it's a double-edged sword I guess.

I couldn't help but hope she was okay.

As much as I wanna play the role of the thick-skinned and heartless monster that I'll probably wind up being after long enough in this cave, it made my heart break to think that the person closest to me throughout my whole life isn't gonna be around me anymore, and that she's really probably worried sick and miserable over me every single day. That thought scares me a little.

That train of thought only brought me to the realization that I've been down here for only who knows how long, and as the time passes, I'm starting to lose my hope of ever leaving. But I don't wanna be some crazy long-bearded creature of the darkness that crawls along the walls when a new victim wanders its way into my cave. I started to realize that there really might not be any hope of escape here.

Could I really just be stuck here forever?

Sometimes my legs would get tired and I'd find somewhere decent enough to lay down - though unless I was really lucky like with the moss and pond, I was laying on some form or other of stone.

It didn't matter how comfy I was though. No matter how long I lay there, how many times I tossed and turned, or how calm I got my mind, I just simply could not fall asleep. My body and mind were tired in the sense that they were fatigued, but I just never felt the urge to sleep.

Sometimes I could close my eyes and get some calm rest per se - never able to clear my thoughts just enough for it to be real sleep - most of the time they were just long and frustrating hours of refusing to get up but suffering of boredom and my own head.

Time and the dull lighter were doing their work on the kettle, and the water was beginning to stir.

It was starting to get to me. Long endless walks topped by a complete and utter lack of sleep. And don't even get me started on the fact that I was starving. The hunger was painful. At times I wanted to gouge my guts out and then maybe I'd even be hungry enough to try and eat 'em.

Everything about this was absolutely miserable. Being stabbed by hunger and sliced open by my own boredom.

I could sense the water beginning to boil just like my blood was. I wanted to scream and shout and do a million things and not be here. I was trapped and alone, left to the voices coming from nowhere and everywhere in an endless void of dead and empty rock.

At one point, I hit a cave that was huge. It was massively open, had pathways everywhere. They were above me and beside me like I was at the epicenter of a labyrinth, surrounded by a hundred different ways I could go. Maybe one of them is my way out of this hell. All the rest just lead to more and more nothing. Less and less something.

Something.

Nothing.

Everything.

None of those words even meant anything anymore. All of them were the same. There was something keeping me here. Nothing at all anywhere besides rock and more rock and some rock with a bit more rock, and everything was another reason to be pissed off and want to KILL SOMEONE OR SOMETHING.

I too was on one of those pathways. A much wider one, sort of a carousel where the center had a hole that I couldn't see the bottom to, and all around me were holes in the wall - doorways to doubtlessly more of this hell.

My fists were clenched and my heart beginning to pump.

"GAAAAAAHHH!!" I shouted out in rage as I felt an unholy level of emotion sweep over me like a tsunami picks up a small piece of driftwood and drags it along its violent and unrelenting current.

I slammed my fist into the floor as my knees buckled over and I gripped my head while my whole body tensed up, preparing to get knocked in the face by a whole lot of driftwood.

The top on the kettle was bouncing around, and a low, sputtering whisper from its spout became a loud and demanding screech as the water entered a turbulent, raging boil that demanded to escape the confines of the metal by any means necessary.

"Why am I still here?" I demanded through gritted teeth, heard only by one person: me. A hundred times over - through the echoes it left on the dozens and dozens of surfaces all around me, seeming to scream my own demands right back at me. "Return to sender," they seemed to say, leaving me knocked to my feet by the ever-growing volume of the voices all around me, all of which were my own, yet growing ever more distorted.

I thrashed out and grunted as my anger bubbled and the kettle boiled away with nobody to take it off the heat.

"nnnRRRAAAHHHH!!" I screamed out, throwing my hands and body wildly as I was completely consumed by anger. Yet my own rage echoed right back at me, suffocating me in a tidal wave of the sound of my own emotion.

I couldn't breathe. I stood out over the edge of the hole in the center of the floor. I needed to hear something. Someone calling my name. But the only calling I could hear was the one coming back to me made of my own fury.

"Someone! ANYONE!!"

I was desperate. Pleading for an answer, a guiding hand, an end to my madness.

"VINCENT!!!!!" I shouted my name out, hoping to hear someone out in the distant void shout theirs back. "Vincent! Vincent! Vincent! Vincent!" I closed my eyes and screamed and screamed out my name, but all I got in reply was the echo of my own pleading.

"VIINCEEEEEENNTT!!!" I was screaming at the top of my lungs, begging, pleading, hoping.

I felt a stir in my pocket, and out came a familiar fiery bird. Where it had been all this time and why it never woke up was a mystery to me.

I grabbed the bird by the abdomen and tightly gripped it, causing it to screech out as it thrashed in my hand. That was a satisfying feeling in a way. I then threw it as hard as I could and it squawked and flapped its wings, trying to regain balance as it ultimately slammed into the floor.

"What are you?? Why are you here?? Why am I here?!"

The bird seemed torn between running away and staying near me.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME YOU DAMN RODENT??"

I demanded to know why it was here with me, but of course the creature was only a bird and couldn't reply.

All the energy I had to yell out and scream and throw left me entirely and I collapsed on the ground, beginning to sob.

"I just wanna die here," my timid, tired voice said. "I'm so tired of this."

But you know it's not that easy, a deeper, more serious voice, also my own, said from within.

Hunger scraped at my stomach like a thorny vermin trying to squirm its way out of my abdomen.

"I can't take it anymore."

But that was what I said before.

And I still made it out. And I took so much more.

"I don't want to anymore," the timid, tired voice of a broken man whimpered out into the cold silence, probably thousands of feet below sunshine.

"It's not like I have to," a darker thought emerged.

"I don't have a choice," I argued with myself.

"Then I'll make my own choices."

"It's no use in this endless void."

"Then I'll put everything I have into getting out."

"All just to what? To die? To get pawned by someone else?"

"To kill."