XIII

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Heph's P.O.V.

      I forgot how to exist.

      That's not an understatement either. I forgot how long I've been lying here in the dark, trying to ignore the shuffling, clanking of bone on bone around me. I didn't know how long I'd been staring at the ceiling, or if my eyes were shut and I'd been slapped into a coma.

      My hands felt like they'd been disconnected and yet I could feel the cold air around them as an extremely detailed substance. As a test, I wiggled my fingers, feeling like i was grabbing clumps of air that mooshed between my fingers like wet play-doh.
      An involuntary shiver shot down back and I sprang into a sitting position, only to immediately regret it. The nausea that hit me made the dark wobble around me, allowing me little time to scramble on to all fours and puke my guts into the charcoal-smelling dirt. It was bad enough the air was stale, let alone mixing with the terrible stench of vomit. My stomach flip-flopped again as I gasped and threw myself back on my haunches.

      "God." My voice was gravel at the back of my throat, scratching even as I cleared it. I sat there, rubbing the goosebumps off my arms and wondering where I had gone wrong. Where Leo had gone wrong. The fact that he was the Harbinger of all things just didn't sit well in my mind. I groaned softly, wiping my mouth on my sleeve and jumped as a dark chuckle grated across my senses.

      "Silly humans, praying to a god that doesn't exist." The disgust and amusement in their voice shocked me, a faint movement caught my eye from the dark and held it there. A pair of white eyes blinked at me from behind a pair of crooked, rusted grey bars.

      "What?" I managed to eek of a whisper of a word, my eyebrows twitched along with the corners of my mouth, grimacing. My eyes had finally adjusted and the soft blue light from behind the twisted horns of an ibex caught my eye.

       Blue...

      Leo...

       "Your turtle isn't here. Not yet, at least." I was shocked to hear the confirmation from him. I hadn't even said anything...Right? The Hollow standing in front of the bars chuckled yet again.
      "No. You didn't" He snorted matter-of-factly, "Your thoughts are terribly loud." he sighed, his tone fed up, and I watched in apprehension as his shape slowly descended into a squat. It then occurred to me that I was in a cell. I looked at the crooked bars holding me in the rectangular dirt prison and felt my throat tighten up. That's all that was around me; dirt and beings who now have a say in whether I get to leave here or not.

      With an inaudible gulp, I tentatively pushed myself to my feet, tempted to feel the cold bars on my ever-itching hands.

      "Where's Eterna?" My voice shook and I wasn't sure if it was from the cold or fear. "Where's Leonardo?"

      His voice boomed from the crumpled figure crouching on the floor, the rattle of bone against bone assault on my ears.
      "Eterna. Eternal. Aeternum," he muttered the words under his breath as if thinking, boiling white eyes squinting in thought. Faker, I thought.
      "The girl."

       "Yes. The girl." I mocked and as if I were a puppet on strings, I leapt forward and wrapped my hands around the freezing bars; I had seriously underestimated just how cold they were. Though, I didn't jump back. I couldn't. I was tired of being scared of these things, these Hollows.
      I flinched as the Hollow crouching no less than a foot from me let out a barking, raucous chuckle.

      "Foolish boy, we are ancient. Older than your precious invisible god who brings you nothing but wreck and ruin. The only deity who matters is the mind," Though amused at first, his tone descended into one of pure biting annoyance. A screech echoed through the cell and a rat the size of a small cat ran up my leg. I screamed, stumbling and falling backwards onto my ass as the red-eyed rat scrambled back to perch on the shoulder of the Hollow. Again, a rough chuckle fell into the dirt.

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