Eternal Beasts

In the Hole

Only the jolt of him hitting the cold, hard ground was enough to jerk Jared back to awareness, blood seeping from his mouth, nose and ears. Blink as he might, he couldn't focus the eye on the side of his head where he took the blow, or make his body obey his commands to move. With his other eye pressed against the ground, the young man was effectively blinded. Not that he had much to look at. The hole was a simple pit dug deep into the ground, two metres in diameter and three deep, its ragged opening covered with a rusted metal grill. Little light penetrated to its depths, cold and dank even in the heart of summer.

A slight shift from where he landed in a pool of stagnant water sent a ripple of pain coursing through Jared's body, blood in his mouth barely muting his agonized cry. It was more than enough to send any man back over the edge and into the blessed relief of unconsciousness. Jared, however, found himself clinging onto that edge, keeping the darkness at bay with sheer will. He used the pain to goad himself into action, somehow focusing it to return strength to sapped muscles and clear away the fog wrapping his mind in a dull blanket of insensibility. Carefully rolling over in the foul water covering the pit's floor, he used the muck walls to claw his way back to his feet.

Once there, he cast a quick look up at the grate covering the hole and grimaced. To say the situation had gone from bad to worse would've been the greatest understatement of all time. An almost overwhelming feeling of hopelessness washed through Jared before he could stop it, its forceful power nearly sending him to his knees. Barely stopping himself, he leaned instead against the cold mud sheathing the dirt wall, staring with his one good eye at the murk enveloping his feet.

Just what the hell was going on here? Jared's lips curled with another quick grimace. Scratch that; he knew what was going on here. Ignorance no longer ruled his memory and thought, as the Watcher lamented. He didn't know whether it was the beating that filled his muddled mind with what he now understood, or the Watcher's brief touch. Either way, he now knew: It was war.

War, both brutal and uncompromising, fought between two diametrically opposed sides for thousands of years. Whether by choice or fate, he was now thrust into the very center of it. Spitting out the blood in his mouth, Jared ran a trembling hand through sweat and blood-matted hair. 'And I've nobody to blame but myself,' he darkly mused. 'Because I and nobody else, agreed to accept my fate and help the people of the burning city.'

Another glance upward yielded the sky just visible through the grate was beginning to darken and Jared had to fight off another wave of hopelessness. Of course it was going to be rather difficult to do that, locked into this putrid hole. With one eye already swelling shut, he dropped his chin onto his chest and closed the other. 'I'm going to die down here, alone and on some alien world.' A muscle twitched in his jaw from the violence of thought that stormed through his mind in the wake of his consideration. When the third wave of hopelessness came in its shadow, he resigned himself to it.

And watched in stunned amazement as his will once more brushed it aside without his conscious control. 'Not today.' A voice that was his, and yet not, whispered deep into his mind. 'Not ever.'

The whisper, both alien and completely familiar, was a soothing balm to his frustrated mind. Without words, it promised he would not only fail to perish in this hole, he would escape to realize the destiny he had embraced. The promise was quicksilver, rushing even greater strength and hope into his agonized frame.

Jared looked once more up at the grate, a grim smile somehow finding its way onto his lips. 'Okay, so I won't die down here. I'm going to escape. But I'll have to bide my time, wait until the moment is right to do it, or I will truly die.' His eyes dropped one last time. What to do in the meantime, as he waited for that chance, was the question now. His grim smile broadened as the answer was immediate. 'The book,' he thought. 'I now speak an Ethaeron language, thanks to the Watcher. Maybe I speak them all now. If I do, then I can understand the language of the book and, with enough study, will actually understand everything that's going on here.' He nodded tightly, the motion enough to make his head swim from his recent concussion, but not enough to deter him.