Hardt was there in a moment, dragging the wailing thing off me and throwing it to the ground. I have no doubt he could have crushed its skull in his giant hands, but Hardt wanted nothing more to do with violence or death. Too much blood on a person's hands can do that. Blood never washes off. It sinks into the skin and stains a person's soul. I didn't know it then, but Hardt was stained the deepest of crimsons. I was relatively clean of it at that point, though I soon managed to change that.
I saw then the creature was one of the Damned we had met down in the ruined city of the Djinn. It was small and stooped at the shoulders with grey skin and wispy hair on its head and arms. It wore no clothes and I could see yellow puss oozing from a number of wounds that looked to be caused by tooth or nail. The poor man, and it had obviously once been a man, writhed on the snowy ground. It clawed at its face and shrieked loud enough to raise the dead. And believe me, it takes quite a din to bring anything back from the grave.
We stood there for a while watching the thing roll about and wail. I think none of us knew what to do. Hardt had already killed so many of the poor creatures and I could see the guilt written in the dirt-smeared lines of his face. I've always thought it foolish to feel guilt over killing the Damned; they're little more than beasts and I wouldn't feel guilty over killing a lion before it killed me. Tamura obviously felt no guilt either, by the look on his face he was probably thinking about jumping down beside the creature and joining in with the thrashing about. The crazy old man likely thought it looked a lot of fun.
"What's wrong with it?" Hardt asked, his voice a deep rumble like drums in the distance. "I didn't hit that hard."
"Absence followed by excess. It is easy to drown when you don't know how to swim," Tamura said with a grin before turning away from the writhing creature.
I could see Hardt's jaw clenching. He finds Tamura vexing, always has. Some people don't like riddles, and Hardt was one of them. Unfortunately, that's just the way Tamura speaks. I decided to put myself between them lest the misunderstanding grow. It's probably worth repeating that Hardt had just lost his younger brother. The big man was putting on a brave face, but there was grief festering below the surface and I know first-hand how grief can cloud judgement.
"It has spent its entire life underground," I said. I should have left it at that, but I foolishly thought I could ease my friend's pain. "Even before that, imps come from the Other World and there is no sun there. It's a place of darkness. And wonder."
"It's not an imp." Hardt caught me in the lie designed to spare his feelings. Lies are useful things, especially when designed to save others, but lies can sour a friendship within moments, almost as quickly as betrayal. Luckily Hardt has always been wise enough to see the reason behind my lies. I wonder which of us is more at fault there. Me for telling so many falsehoods, or Hardt for excusing them.
"It's never seen the light before," I said, forging on before either of us could dwell on my mistake. "It probably burns. We should go. Before it gets dark." It's strange to think back on it, but my voice sounded different even to my own ears. I still had the slight croak given to me by Horralain the first time he tried to strangle me to death, but there was something else now. I sounded… older. One more thing I could thank Chronomancy for; due to the magic of time, I no longer recognised my own voice. Change is like that. When it happens over time it's insidious, subtle alterations here and there, you don't even notice it. But when there's a catalyst for sudden change, it feels so wrong and alien. We resist sudden change, perhaps because we fear it.
I turned towards the forest in the distance and started walking. I expected them both to follow without question. I had gotten used to being in charge, to the others responding to my leadership, and my decisions being final. Tamura fell in line, dancing his way through deep snow just as a child might, stopping to marvel at the sight of his own footsteps in the powdery white. Hardt remained, staring at the creature now quieted to a low mewling.
At first, I thought Hardt might kill the thing, reach down and end its suffering. It was a miserable looking creature even in the dark, but out in the light it was truly pitiful. Small limbs, wasted by malnutrition, and cracked grey skin. A stench of rot and decay rising off it that even we could smell, and I assure you none of us smelled pleasant. It had been so long since I last bathed I couldn't even remember the true colour of my own skin. The Damned might have been terran once, but too many generations underground, inbreeding and infighting, feeding off imps and each other… There is nothing terran about the Damned anymore. Perhaps there never truly was. They are a plague upon the dark places in this world.
Hardt reached down and picked the little creature up as though it weighed nothing. It screamed and thrashed, yet Hardt gave it no time to strike, he threw it towards the cave mouth and into the waiting darkness. Then he turned and walked past me. I hurried to catch up, eager to be away from the cave. Somewhere inside, deep within my mind or heart, Ssserakis mourned the loss of the dark. I felt it as a strange pull, like a rope stretching between myself and the cave, trying to drag me back as it pulled taught. Resisting that pull was hard. But I would not go back. I could not go back.
I stole one final glance back towards the cave. For so long it had been my focus, my way to escape the torture of the Pit. It had been my path to freedom and my glimmer of hope. Now, as I looked back, it seemed a portal to my past. A dark place that held some of the worst mistakes of my life. I once again saw Isen's ghost staring back at me.
For a long time, none of us spoke. Unless you count Tamura's humming and occasional muttering. We were, all three of us, exhausted. It's probably not surprising. We lived in a constant state of fear and tension down in the Pit, never knowing when we might wake to find that day our last. Never knowing when Prig or Deko would decide they had had enough of us. If anything, things only got worse in the Djinn city. Surrounded by the dark, the unknown, trapped down there with the imps and the Damned and chased by Josef and the overseer's cronies. Now the tension was gone and I felt weariness flood me in its wake. I believe I could have slept for days. But we had no time for that. We had to get ahead of those chasing us. We had to get away before the overseer sent more of his minions to find us.
We aimed for the forest as the sun made its slow daily routine across the sky, warming our backs. Maybe it was the weariness or maybe I misjudged the distance, but it was almost night by the time we reached the first of the trees. That was when my strength finally gave out. I collapsed into the snow, ankle deep in powdery cold, and felt myself slump. The last thing I remember seeing was Hardt rushing towards me, then everything tilted sideways and went black.