You are trapped.
You aren’t sure who they are, but they had cold hands and left a bitter scent. A faint light comes from a far corner of this…cave? It’s reflecting light in a peculiar way—faceted and angular. You begin to come back to yourself, feeling around you. Your hand comes back wet and stinging, with a smell of copper and salt. Everything smells like salt. Your eyes adjust to the light reflecting off the top of the cave, a soft rosy pink.
The space above your head is filled with crystals. You look at your injured hand, at the dark, seeping blood. It’s stopped stinging, at least. Your eyes continue to adjust, and you see the small area that you occupy. Your skin has taken on a blue tinge, your blood looking darker than it should. It’s hard to look away from the sight.
You become aware of a soft dripping to your left, which echoes around you, and you look over the ledge. A pool of liquid, disturbed by the droplets that fall from above. At the center of the pool, there lies a strange skull. It’s not something that you’ve seen before, it’s missing…most of its eye sockets. It only has two.
Something shifts in the darkness and begins to clink.
You crouch behind a crystal to watch. The sharp sounds stop at the base of the pool and a spindly shape moves into view. All you can make out are appendages. It’s strange to look at. You touch the crystal beside you, and your hand clanks against it. There are dark, jagged shapes surrounding your injured hand. Tapping them with a nail, the surface is hard and glass-like. And you can touch the crystals with it. You bite back fear and lay another hand against a crystal. It stings and the smell of copper fills the air.
Something below you makes a noise, like glass falling. The creature has moved, startled by something. It looks at you. You’re not sure how you know, but it does. And it’s starting to move towards you. It’s dark enough that the shape becomes almost invisible as you panic, your unfamiliar body more clumsy than helpful. You stumble against sharp crystals and your left side sears with pain, and there’s blood forming an area of glassy hardness. You start into the razor-like maze. Towards the light. That’s your goal.
You run, and the crystals rip at your skin. The cuts bleed into long glassy tendrils that trail off your skin and snap, shattering behind you. The sharp clinks behind you increase their tempo—they sound so close—you can’t seem to get away from the sounds. The pale light at the edge of the cave is the only thing you can see at this point. It’s all narrowed down to that pink glow. You stumble over a crystal, and your hand catches a ledge.
The glass armor encasing your limbs grinds together as you climb, inch by inch to the light. You can taste the relief on your tongue.
As you pull yourself up onto the final ledge to move closer to the light, you can see how dark your blood is against your skin…and that your skin is blue. Not sickly pale, but a bright, glowing blue. Your hands only have five fingers, how did you lose three digits? You reach to your face to feel a smooth expanse of skin... where... are your eyes? All you can feel is the structure of your mangled cheekbone and the delicate skin covering two horrible, horrible eyes that somehow are letting you see and when you open your mouths to scream there is only one.
Panic over your strange body replaces the panic of the pursuing creature. You try again to open your mouths. Mouths that should have long teeth and longer tongues. They are gone and you are alone, no eyes seeing the future, nothing…the light. The light will have answers.
The clinks behind you have stopped. There is a being, tall and fragile-looking, all limbs and emptiness, and a darkness wrapped around it like a cloak. It raises a thin appendage into the light to reveal a blackened, bone-like limb.
Something in your hearts recoils from it. The being begins to speak, in no language you know, but one that you feel more than understand. Reason appears where there was panic, and you understand the being is comforting you.
When the being stops its murmurs, it speaks in a common tongue. “Fear the voice that claims answers where there is no truth.” You close your weak eyes, and nod. The being quietly disappears; the bone and shadow leave behind a chalky dust and the smell of heather.
You take a breath through your single mouth, and turn towards the light. Beyond it, there lies uncertainty. You grab a crystal that hangs just before the entrance. The sharp pain and smell of copper fill your head, and you step into the light.
As your eyes adjust, everything around you seems to shiver. A voice, liquid and dark, comes from just beyond the trembling plants and creatures. You move closer to the sound, feeling the sharp glass armor surrounding you, and the advice of the being ringing in your ears. "Fear the voice that claims answers where there is no truth." This is the end, you think. The voice has become louder and clings to your jagged protection. You desperately wish for your missing eyes to see where this will lead.
The voice speaks of salt, and how it changed the ways. It speaks of how it gave them knowledge, gave them courage. The voice pleads with you not to be angry. You are the first creature it found. It tells you of how it removed your hearts, used them to heal the others…how your eyes allow them to see, your mouths allow them to speak, and in return this body is yours to live in freely.
You look around and see the creatures. They look at you in fear, eyes cold and empty. The voice reminds you of your sacrifice, reminds you of how God-like you are. You created them! It cries, and you look at your strange hands, and how sharp the glass is.
You wonder how easy it would be to take the creatures' lives, to destroy what you’ve been forced to give. What the voice has given them. Fear the voice that claims answers. Fear the reasons that it has given. It has created life that will never know joy, it has created empty shells of creation, stitched together with your hearts, eyes and mouths. “Fear the voice that claims answers where there is no truth.”
How can these creatures know what life is? Can the voice see the pain in their eyes? It took your eyes and mouths and hearts, took your skin, and created life that wants nothing but to die.
So you walk to the voice, which rises in volume, colder and darker, speaking of reasons you are now deaf to. There is no life to be created from these caves, no joy to be found. The creatures behind you stir, and you hear them, their mouths, your mouths, singing in gentle, strange languages. Urging you on. The voice is overwhelming; it begins to drown out the songs. You enter the dark space it occupies. There are no answers for these creatures, no answers for you.
You’ve been robbed of yourself, and they, of a life.
The voice has created nothing. It claims to have an answer, one that you have no interest in. You’re close enough to the voice that it has overpowered your ability to hear anything else.
The voice continues to plead with you, desperately snarling about salt, sobbing “answers” for why it has done this, and you feel nothing but disdain. Life wasn’t meant to be born from the suffering of others. It wasn’t meant to be created to feel nothing but fear. You walk to the source of the voice, and the closer you are, the more overbearing it is, begging, pleading, shrieking in fear and anger.
Then it falls silent.
The scent of fear seeps into you, a bitter smell. You reach out, and the moment your skin stings with warmth, you close your hand into a fist. A soundless death. Your hand is warm and wet, and the smell of iron fills your nose.
There are no answers here. The voice is gone. When you turn back to the clearing, the gaze of the creatures is clearer. You see your eyes and mouths, bits of your body scattered around. These creatures, you must do what you can for them. They are alive, and they are a part of you. You point to where you came from. You tell them you know someone who could help them. There are no answers here. Excuses for creating pain and suffering are not answers.