If one were to be asked whether or not it was pleasant to be woken up from a deep dream with a kiss on the lips, many would return a question as an answer. Who is giving me the kiss? many would dare ask, without noticing, firstly, that in a situation like that you may not have the right to decide.

Thom was never asked such a thing. It would be strange that someone ever managed to formulate such a question in the first place. But for him, right now, it was the prevalent question, one he made to himself.

"Squuek!"

The sound that kept repeating on his head felt much more like a memory than a perception, it reminded him of the days where the rats would scare him witless while tending to the crops outside of his small farmhouse. Then his mother's nagging over how much of a coward he was, and ultimately, a valuable lesson.

Rats are disgusting animals.

what would I do if the first thing that I felt as soon as I recover consciousness was that of a kiss? His mind wandered to that question. And then, feeling that soft sensation on his numb lips, he thought shortly of who it might have been.

He extended his hand forward to touch the face of whoever was latched to his lips, but found nothing but empty air, and how incredibly heavy his arms were, as if drained of all sparse strength he possessed.

tap

But when his hands reached his chest, he felt the truth that he so dearly did not wish to discover, and every hair in his body stood up in disgust.

"Puagh!"

He violently swung his hand to the right after getting a grasp of what was at his face, a rat that made a sharp noise when it hit what seemed to be the wall.

Ignoring the squeal he had heard, he acknowledged the numb sensation spreading trough his arm and how fragile his movements had felt. It wasn't anything good, to say the least.

Then, his heavy eyes explosively opened at the dull pain that spread from his head and down his whole body. If he had to guess the origin of the dizziness he was now experiencing, it would not be hard to come to a conclusion and point his fingers at that specific place.

Having touched his head, he placed his hand in front of his face, and saw dark bloodstains that told him what he had feared:

There was an open wound on the side of his skull, and it was leaking something he preferred inside.

"Losing blood isn't new, but... This much..."

The dark black strands of hair that usually fell in front of his eyes were thinned out and stuck to his skin, drenched in that red liquid that also covered his cheeks. It was a similar sensation to dumping water on your head, but instead of cold, it was hot and sticky.

"Well..."

He tried to hoist himself up, only to quickly discover his sight was extremely blurry and obscured. He didn't notice, either, the raggedness of his breath up to that point. The only thing he had been hearing was the squeaking of the dirty and bothersome rats, which thankfully and for their own safety had not gotten closer to him.

"These are bars... At least I can be sure of that much."

To his back, to his left, and to his right. The only space that had not been covered by bars was the wall in front of him, but being made by stone, such a thing wasn't necessary to keep him in place. Then one thing was clear, he was in a cell.

Just when he thought to be alone, a hoarse cough sounded beside him. Thom slowly parted his lips to call for this person, but the still-working side of his brain told him to keep his mouth shut. Instead, he tried to clear the fog from his eyes and moved his head closer to the bars on his left.

"Ah...!"

Then a pale and skeletal man entered his sight. Writhing in filth, spitting blood every so often, and staring blankly at the cell in which Thom woke up. It was a sad visage, the perfect description and example of decrepitude expressed in human form.

"A corpse." Thom frowned on the sight of this.

"Cough..." The man forced a smile with another dry movement of his midriff. "How rude... Don't you see I'm still a young lad?"

Thom couldn't hide his surprise, but his priorities had to be put in order. He tried to move slightly closer to the bars, dragging his hefty body with his arms, and latching onto the relief on the stone floor. When his fingers finally managed to get a grip on the rusty cylinders and his breath was pushed trough, he asked:

"Hey..." He smiled while showing his bloodied hands. "Do you have a tissue?"

The man on the other side of the cell scoffed. He apparently was not expecting a question so simple. However, as if having just the best answer to his question, the man slowly took a bag from his side and placed it on his legs. He started to slowly search for something inside.

His trembling hands were called thus only because of their shape, as a claw could be more apt to describe the bony, almost skinless, dry hand of the man. His limbs were like sticks with no curves or no shape, and his lifeless eyes seemed like they could be place for the flies to lay eggs yet he would not have noticed.

Dead, spiritless eyes. And below, a semi-open mouth, with his bottom lip sticking out like a dead fish. It wasn't the face of a living human, Thom's description from before would have been much more credible- a corpse, nothing more or less.

He let go of an "Ah..." as if he had finally found what he searched for, and pulled from inside a white tissue and a small red vial with not much decor. The vial was filled with red liquid that glowed even in complete darkness, and Thom immediately recognized what it's content was.

"A potion- that's how Runa called it. If it is what I think it is, we should both agree that you need it more than me. I'm fine with the tissue."

The man shook his head, and put the vial on the floor. He pushed it with the most minimal amount of force, and it rolled towards Thom's foot. When he was about to push it back, the man held up his hand.

"I... Don't seek for healing. My companion in sin... That is a gift." The man lightly tossed the tissue at the young one's side.

"..."

Thom grabbed the bottle and inspected it, but there didn't seem to be anything different to the one he had received before from the star-gazed girl. He carefully removed the lid, and the oddly sweet but rusty smell reached his nose.

He chugged it down like a good shot of whiskey, and felt the warm sensation go down his throat. It wasn't long before a disgusting chill emerged from his belly, and made it all the way up to his head. The sound of flesh congealing itself wasn't any less disgusting the second time he heard it, but the pleasant feeling of having closed the open flesh on his skull was worth it.

"Huff..." He damped the tissue with blood after cleaning his neck, cheeks and his forehead, and placed it down on the ground again.

Since the wound had closed and the pain was gone, the numbness started to fade away from his body. The blur in his eyes disappeared, and the light returned to his vision. In that moment he noticed the light filtering through the cracks on the walls, and the festering nests of the rats, made out of bones from other prisoners.

"Hey... Help me get out of here and I'll take you out too." Thom said, finally managing to stand up from the filthy floor.

"I do not desire to escape, boy. Simply... To rot away in this unknown place. I've had enough. But life... Has given me an opportunity. No... Rather, it has given it... To you."

He pointed his index finger at the young man, and then pointed at the bag on his side. Thom shifted in place to look at that talking corpse he couldn't make a proper image of, and spoke up.

"I said I'll get you out. I don't know why you're here, but if you're gonna die, you'll at least die while looking at the outside." Thom walked towards one of the rat nests, and kicked it harshly to completely disband it.

The rats squealed and scattered around, but Thom didn't pay them any heed and picked a pair of long-enough bones. He started scrubbing them against the wall with a decided face, and a pout that indicated his deep concentration.

"Boy... Do you remember how you got here?"

"Why are you suddenly interested?" Thom smiled without taking his sight off the bones he was sharpening on the wall.

"I... Remember. But you, you may not. So I'm asking... How did you get here?"

Thom sighed, and stopped for a second. Then, sucking his lips inside to form a line, he started to scrape the bones against stone, and lifted his head.

"I was with a friend— a girl I met not long ago, she's slightly younger than me... But, ha, she's a hell of a character. I had finally gotten something to hold on to live for, but they tried to take her away from me. My village was turned to mud, but I followed her back to this place. It's hard to remember the rest, but I was somehow taken here."

The flashbacks of men clad in red robes holding the neck of that girl came to mind, and his hands started to move faster. It was a raging sensation he didn't often feel, one that meant he had made that girl a pillar of his life already, and wasn't willing to see her fade away.

"A traveler that remembers his life is only a new traveler. You're lucky... But unfortunate all together. It seems... Luck has given you a hard time."

The man dryly laughed, and started to take off the bag from his shoulder. He placed it beside his thigh.

"Hey, don't be making a tomb yet." The young one scoffed. "I said we're getting out. The people in charge of this place should have been more careful when cleaning the corpses of their prisoners."

"Don't dream so aimlessly, boy."

The decaying man pushed the bag slowly, very softly, to the side where Thom's cell was. He pushed it till he couldn't reach it, and then, he fell down.

Thump

It sounded like a pile of bones crashing down, but it was much sadder than that. Thom sighed and picked the bag from the man's trembling hands.

"Do you want to give me this? To a stranger? Isn't it important for you?" Thom said with a strangely concerned face, as if he observed the sad scene of an unknown old man dying.

"All my treasures... All my life, is there. Every coin, and every item. I give it to you... Before my last breath."

He pointed at Thom's left hand, which had a perfectly pointy bone in the shape of a dagger. Thom's eyes moved towards his own hand, and quickly understood the meaning of those words. It wasn't something he wanted— no, it was something he actively wished against.

Thom put the bag around his shoulder to show the dying man's gift hadn't gone unappreciated, and crouched beside him with the bone dagger still in hand.

"I'm not killing you, man. Hey... Don't you know? When you're tired of life, a worthy death is the last thing you can wish for. So, let's get out of here, and then, you'll get a death worthy of a human being. Deal?"

The decaying man closed his eyes, and an extremely chapped smile appeared on those dry and cut-up lips. He lifted up his body with his arms, and clutched with them the bars where Thom put his head trough. Then, he grabbed Thom's empty hand, and whispered.

"I'm glad you are a decent man, young one. But if you don't kill me..."

Grip

"H-Hey...!" Thom felt the man's hand slip to his wrist, and then, an excruciating pain started to irradiate from his bones. The feeling of being crushed— that was what it was.

Bang!

"If I told you to kill me— kill me! Damned brat, how dare you go against the will of this man, of Alrirl of Arghona! I commanded you, not asked you, to kill me! Now! Stab me, dry my blood and consume my organs, let this rotten flesh to disappear and be taken by the maggots that do not deserve it!"

"Hey, chill! Have you gone insane?! What the hell man, take your pill—"

Bang!

Thom's body was dragged towards the bars, and he was violently thrashed against them enough that they clackered and danced. The dying man didn't stop repeating the words "Kill me, kill me!", Until they would sound like a single phrase, and Thom's nervousness sky-rocketed at the moment.

"Damn! Calm down, shut it! Aghh!"

His wrist had started to produce extremely worrying sounds, and the man attempted to get a hold of his other hand, before he took it out of the way.

"Kill me! Now! Kill me! Killmekillmekillmekillmekillmekillme—!"

"You...!" Thom raised his armed hand up, feeling that his shoulder blades started to crack against the bars, and did what he wished to do the least.

"Killmekillmekillmekill—!!"

Splurt!

The bone buried deep into the man's eye, and it followed even further until Thom's hand could not bury it any deeper.

The man's body twitched, probably even more violently than the up-and-down movement of Thom's midriff, and then, it went completely stiff. The smell of ammonia reached his nose, then the smell of blood, and lastly, the realization of having killed a man that was in the last few minutes of his life.

With his ragged and rapid breath, he ignored the pain on his chest and hand to crawl to a corner of the cell, and emptied all of his stomach's contents on the stone.

An irritating and extremely sour flavor extended across his mouth, but something so trivial as the taste of his stomach wasn't a problem.

"I... Did it again." Thom swallowed while cleaning the edges of his mouth. "I... Hate you so much, Arbur..."

Thom threw his body on the ground again. The rats started to walk around him once more as if thinking he had finally died, but he wavered his hand to warn them off, and gulped.

"I'm not apt for consumption yet... Go away."

However, as soon as his hands pushed down on the stone to stand up, the bag he had been handed started to shine with a purple glow. In less than half a second, the whole cell was engulfed in a blinding light, and Thom could only cover his eyes and grit his teeth.

For less than a millionth of a second, he felt like he carried the entire weight of the universe on his shoulder.