It's cold.
It hurts.
' What's… that noise? '
Mmn
Opening my eyes slightly groggy, I was greeted with the immediate sight of a blinding white light.
Squinting my eyes and waiting for them to adjust, I noticed that I was surrounded by snow.
As far as the eye could see, there was snow in all directions, and it was thickly packed to the point that the melted snow around my tiny legs reached up to my knees.
' Another memory… but why? '
It didn't take very long to catch onto what was happening. Turns out that these "dreams" were more like memories playing out as if to tell me something.
That's why, instead of trying to wake up, I decided to simply look around to see what this memory wanted to show me.
' Which way do I go though? '
I let out a shaky sigh as I looked around, my breath came out as a white cloud of smoke and my small body and teeth shook and chattered away noisily as I looked around at the blank canvas around me.
Shaking my head at the lack of clues, I decided to simply walk forward in hopes that I'd come across someone or something.
***
Crunch , Crunch
Haaah , haah
"Damian!"
"Young master! Please answer us!"
Tsk
' Why do we have to even look for that thing? Isn't it better if he were to die somewhere? '
Looking at the group of guards, I felt a sense of irritation.
' Why are they so desperate to save that filth? '
Tsk
Kicking the snow beneath my feet I decided there was no point in trying to persuade the adults into abandoning the search.
Instead, I came up with an idea that made a smile spread across my face as I imagined the reactions I'd receive.
' If they want to find him so badly, there's nothing wrong with helping them….find the body. '
Heh
Hehehe
***
' It's cold. '
S-so cold..
The air felt sharp in my lungs as I inhaled. Each breath, a painful reminder that this was somehow real.
Despite being a memory of some kind, I could feel every biting wind breeze brush against my cold damp clothes and nearly frostbitten skin.
I could hear and feel every crunch beneath my shoes as the snow got crushed as I walked,
And worst of all, I felt cold, hungry, and anxious, and hungry,
' Damn it kid… what are you trying to even show me, and why were you even here in the middle of nowhere in all this snow to begin with? '
Haaah
Sighing deeply, I walked, rubbing my hands together to try and keep them from going completely numb.
…!
' About damn time. '
After walking aimlessly for what felt like forever, it felt reliving to finally come across some form of shelter, a cave.
The cave was just big enough for me to enter and on the inside it was immediately obvious why.
So, this must be one of those seclusion places… a character comes here to train in seclusion away from everything that could distract them, they train or meditate and they don't leave the cave until they are finished.
'Luckily, it's unused.'
As I finished my thought, I noticed that inside of the cave, it was warm. Not so much that there was instant relief but enough that inside of the cave I wouldn't likely succumb to hypothermia.
That in itself was a miracle, though there was no food, as these places never have food or anything except for the character and maybe water if they're lucky.
Haaah
I, or well, Damian didn't despair about the lack of supplies.
Instead, he looked around for anything possibly useful and eventually he managed to gather enough dry or semi-dry, although very brittle, twigs.
After gathering all of the twigs he could, and placing all of the stones he could find both inside and around the cave, forming a wall around the twigs, he took out 3 thin talisman adjacent slips and placed one onto the small makeshift campfire.
After he did, he placed his thumb into his mouth and bit down, but after realizing how much it hurt and how hard it was to draw blood that way, stifling back tears he decided to look around for something.
'At least the kid is smart. Makes you wonder how often something like this has happened that he's remaining calm and managing to actually do anything under these circumstances.'
Eventually after looking around, even going back outside, he eventually managed to stumble across a small burrow with eggs inside.
Sitting on top of the eggs was a large black snake with three eyes, and after noticing Damian peeking inside of the hole it had burrowed into, the snake hissed protectively at Damian.
Thump
Damian didn't leave, instead he reached his hand into the hole and quickly grabbed an egg. The snake responded the way any good parent would at the threat of someone or something trying to harm your child, it attacked.
Lunging at Damian with its fangs bared angrily, it clamped its maw down on his arm, long sharp fangs pumping venom into him and wrapping itself around his arm.
Thump , Thump
The pain was overwhelming for a child. From the long sharp piercing fangs digging into his arm, to the snake tightly wrapping around his already nearly frozen arms felt less like countless pins pricking his arm at once and more like a rope made out of sharp thin metals wrapped around his arm and burying itself into his skin, burning and crushing him without remorse.
'What is he thinking doing something this reckless?'
I found myself thinking as I watched the scene. I wasn't worried, afterall, Damian wouldn't die from this, he couldn't die. Right?
Afterall, if Damian died then there would be no way for me to have inhabited his body several years in the future.
To my surprise, the next thing Damian did was quickly slamming his arm against the ground. With a loud grunt in pain and anger, he repeatedly hit the snake.
It did try to escape but instead of letting it go, Damian grabbed the snake as tightly as he could in his grasp and then continued slamming it down.
He didn't stop until a wave of dizziness washed over him, with a shudder, he bared his own small but decently sharp fangs and then without much hesitation, he bit into the snake.
There was no venom, but the force of the bite, especially after the beating the snake just took, was more than enough to make the snake freeze up and the light in its eyes dimmed as it went limp.
Only after killing the snake did Damian stop to cry for about a minute. Followed by him stumbling to stand, and he grabbed the snake with his bloodied hand, turning around and making his way back to the cave.
'It burns… everything burns, and it's painfully numb.'
Damian's breathing was ragged and uneven as he made it back to the cave, but he didn't stop. Instead he took a twig from inside of the pit and set it aside. Then, he placed his bloodied arm over the slip of paper and let it get covered in his blood.
Only then, once the blood dropped onto the paper did it start trembling as the blank paper burned with symbols and those symbols glowed a burning red colour.
The symbols burned through the paper and the room filled with a blindingly bright white light that lasted for a few seconds before disappearing. In its place, the twigs were now burning brightly with a decent fire.
Haha…
Hahaha
'What's that noise?'
I wanted to look around to investigate the noise but I had no control over the body. It was stuck in place, staring at the fire that burned the twigs with the quiet crackling and popping that should have been comforting in such a situation, yet it felt more like some kind of taunt.
The fire Damian worked so hard to make, burned effortlessly right in front of him and yet what use is a fire for someone who couldn't enjoy the warmth?
A wash of emotions enveloped me.
Anger, resentment, fear, overwhelming sadness, regret, nausea, hunger, disgust, the list could go on. I could feel all of these emotions so strongly that it made my stomach twist, but most concerningly.
Hahahaha
HAHAHA
The unhinged sound of laughter. Mad, uneven breathing, hyperventilating, yet unending laughter came from Damian, filling the cave.
'Had he lost his mind after ending up stranded and injured in a cave?'
I considered that the venom from the snake might have also caused him to start hallucinating but after giving it some thought I decided that it was unlikely. If I could see and feel everything he could, then the fact that I wasn't hallucinating had to mean that he also didn't have the issue of hallucinating anything.
Sniff
'I see. I wasn't far off it would seem.'
Damian, who had broken out into a seemingly random burst of hysterics, now had tears streaming down his face. His laughter died down as hot tears poured from his eyes, his vision blurred and his shoulders shook. No, his entire body trembled.
He felt simultaneously hot and cold, and his body was numb to the point of wanting to cry. Not to mention the fact that he was injured from that snake which didn't take long for me to realise that he must have attacked it on purpose, having no other choice, he seems to have needed blood for the slip to work, and not a small amount.
Knowing that, he threatened a defensive wild beast so that it would attack him and then he killed the beast likely so that he could eat something and not starve. Who knows how long he's been wandering the snowy mountain terrain alone, his hunger was so intense that his stomach felt as though it were debating whether or not to start eating him.
After successfully securing "food", shelter, and even the last "material" needed to start his fire, the relief he had hoped to feel never came. Instead, he only felt pain, fear, loneliness and regret. Whatever or whoever drove him to the mountain, and the life he had to take to fuel his own, these things caused stress to swell inside of the kid to the point of boiling over.
So he cried, silent at first as the emotions passed their boiling point and overflowed inside of him. Then, he began wailing loudly, sniffling and breathing roughly.
His arm had gone numb and stopped moving, and his other free arm was beginning to move stiffly as well. His body hurt all over and despite being in front of a fire, the cold that clung to him felt as though it were sticking to his bones and thus wouldn't disappear.
What followed next were these sequence of events:
Damian finished crying after what felt like an eternity, his eyes were puffy and sore and his breathing felt laboured.
He laid down on his side facing the fire, the energy he had drained completely leaving his body feeling sluggish and heavy like lead.
His vision became disoriented and he grew overwhelmingly tired. He tried to instinctively fight off the sleep that threatened to overtake him, but his eyes continued to flicker closed as his eyelids grew heavier.
All sound had faded, not muffled but completely faded away. Maybe that's why he didn't notice the approaching figure until it was too late.
Barely able to make out the face of the person, he only knew that it looked like someone not much bigger than himself had entered the cave.
And then, before he could react, not that there was much he could do, the boy delivered a blow to Damian. A hot sharp pain shot through his ribs, he couldn't even see or comprehend what happened, he just felt the pain.
It was too much, and Damian finally gave in and closed his eyes.
'...Damn it..'
***