Day: 3189
Days Left: 2291
Lives Saved: 17
After the initial excitement of the new civilian, Henry, and the blood moon over, the city returned to its peaceful and uneventful state, or at least to most people it was peaceful. As a city guard, Kai could see what was going on on the other side of the walls, at the tents that practically created their own city on the other side. One small thing could upset everything, to cause all of them to stand at arms and take the city, for everything that they had built to crumble down effortlessly. That was why Kai knew whoever that interloper was he saw had to be caught. There had been a few days of searching, but there was no sign of the hound. How had it gotten past the defences and the guards unnoticed? And what was with the lights going out? Then there was that no one apart from Kai had seen it happen. Maybe the black dog was all just an illusion, something in his head. Still, Kai kept up the search, likely to give up and close the case after a few weeks unless the interloper was spotted again. During the next blood moon, he would keep a lookout at the refugee camp and make note of any canine monsters matching the description, as everyone had no choice but to transform during blood moons. Still, in the meantime, it was something new to deviate from the droll repetition of walking along the battlements and the tedious paperwork as a titled officer.
In his downtime, Kai would have spent the time with his friends if any of them were available, mostly with Dex but with Dex free from the Abyss and everyone else getting busier or slowly drifting away into acquaintances, Kai opted to spend the time alone. He headed over to the training grounds near one of the barracks and practised his archery, his aim not so straight or precise with his distracted mind. After he had a short break and some water, he returned to find that he was no longer alone in the training grounds; Sumit was there.
The training grounds was open to everyone with classes held for self defence and training masks, but it was mostly used by the guards in weekly drills. The only other reason for someone who was not a guard to be here would be to let off steam, and that was what Sumit was precisely doing. He squared up to one of the wooden training dummies, let out a long breath intake and then sucker-punched the dummy in the stomach. It was quite an impressive punch, actually, though it would have likely hurt his hand, and of course Sumit was going to prove how much more foolish he was if he continued.
And he did continue. Sumit's other fist followed through and he began wailing on the dummy, screaming and crying out grunts of pain and frustration.
Kai rushed over, stopping him as the man's knuckles were red and bleeding.
Startled, Sumit almost toppled over, exhausted physically and emotionally, then purposefully allowed himself to collapse onto the ground, his back leaning against the dummy. He was quiet, apart from his staggered breaths, and could not meet Kai's eye.
Even without that physical display of anger, Kai could easily see that lugubrious expression on the man's friend. Even after all these years, Kai supposed he was still playing therapist for his friends. Kai sat down next to Sumit but did not speak, allowing Sumit to do so first if he wanted to talk, even if it was just to tell him to go away.
"Sorry," Sumit eventually mumbled. His hands wrapped around themselves, gently caressing the cuts and bruises on his knuckles. It would heal fairly quickly as they were in The Eternal Abyss but that didn't mean that it wouldn't have stung. "I just have..." Sumit's hands balled up into fists then he opened them again, revealing flat palms of damaged skin. "I have all these emotions, frustration, stress and I don't know what to do with it."
"Because the fighting ring is gone?" asked Kai.
Sumit shifted in discomfort. "I know it was bad but it was good for releasing any pent up stress and now I don't know how to get rid of it all without hitting something." Sumit motioned to the training dummy that he was resting against.
"Have you tried..." Kai hesitated. "Talking about it instead?"
"What, therapy?" Sumit scoffed.
Kai shrugged. "There might be someone down here who is a licensed professional. Or maybe a yoga instructor, a masseuse," he joked, seeing a slight smile finally emerge on Sumit's lips and wanting to see more, so he continued, "knitting? Fishing?"
Sumit smiled for a moment but then soon returned back to his serious and sombre state from earlier.
"Have you joined any of those mediation sessions?" asked Kai. "The ones they hold after blood moons?"
"It's mandatory for me after the whole thing with the underground fight club. I need to show up for a few more weeks to prove that I'm safe and calm otherwise I'll be kicked out of the Warren."
"Oh." Kai paused. "Has it helped at all?"
"What? Sitting in silence amongst strangers and trapped with my own thoughts for half an hour? Definitely not!" Sumit sighed and looked up at the sky. "I just sometimes wish we could go back to before when there was just a small group of us. When everything felt simpler. Selfish thought, isn't it? Since all this wouldn't have existed." He motioned to the city, where so many other prisoners' lives had changed for the better by living here.
"No, I don't think its selfish," said Kai, thinking about the years before The Warren, though he thought back much further than Sumit, to when they had first built the little village in the desert, when the whole group was there; when Klei and Wendy were with them. Though it wasn't always an easy life, since they were slowly losing food every drop-off, eventually going to starve due to their refusal to fight each other, it was... less complicated and perhaps the best days of Kai's imprisonment in the Abyss. Kai didn't have to worry about the festering guilt he would have whenever he looked over the city walls, to learn to be patient in order to help everyone. And back then he could see all of his friends every day. He could see Dex...
"Do you miss him?" asked Sumit.
Kai swallowed, knowing who Sumit was referring to. "Dex is in a better place now. He'll be back with his family and friends, get to return to his life."
Sumit nodded, and then there was a moment of silence before he continued, "I don't know if I would want to return to my old life before the Abyss. I suppose I won't have a choice to have that since I lost my memories, but Rin sort of hinted that it wasn't great, best to remain blissfully ignorant." He paused. "I'd want a fresh start when I'm free. Live somewhere where no one knows me," he said this so quietly as if it was painful to say.
And it was painful to hear, that Sumit had been suffering this much after losing his memories, his identity and idea of self, breaking up with Oscar, that he would rather just have a reset of his life rather than endure it or fix it. Kai had never been particularly close to Sumit, before and after his memory loss. Whilst Sumit was quite sociably, trying to connect with everyone in the village when he could, the man still mostly interacted with Rin, Ivette, Corinna, Calixte, and Harmony. After their memory loss, Sumit and Oscar were inseparable, likely due to their shared trauma, but perhaps Kai should have made more of an effort to befriend the new Sumit at that time. Maybe it would have helped if Sumit had a friend who hadn't known him so well before the memory loss, someone who wouldn't compare him, even subconsciously, to his old self.
"I'm sorry," was all Kai could say in response to that. Though it was of course not Kai's responsibility to have stopped any of this, nor could it have been predicted nor blamed on anyone in particular, there was still that guilt of an inactive bystander to Sumit's decline.
"Why are you apologising?" Sumit forced a smile, though it was wobbly. "Or was that pity?" He swallowed, and rubbed his eyes. "No, I'm sorry for just dumping all of this on you. I seem to be doing that a lot these days, just making my own problems and issues someone else's."
Kai fidgeted with his hands for a moment. "If you want a fresh start, at least down here, I've got a suggestion."
Sumit perked up a little, listening.
"The village we made in the desert, its still there. Klei and Wendy are still there, helping the water nymphs, so I've heard. It'll be safe there, food and water too."
"Don't those two know me?" Sumit's nose wrinkled. "The old me?"
"Well, yes. But all those water nymphs don't. Some of them must be up and walking and talking by now. Their memories would have been wiped too just like you."
Sumit looked away. "I think the issue though is... is people knowing the me from before. That isn't a real fresh start."
"Ah right, yeah."
"I suppose if I really wanted a fresh start, I would have left this place ages ago." Sumit sighed and looked up at the sky again. "I'm not really sure what I want anymore."
"Well, we can always visit the place, it'll be a change of scenery at least."
"Do you want to go?"
Kai nodded. "At some point, I'd want to see Klei and Wendy again. Not sure about living there though."
After a long pause, Sumit stood up, thanking Kai for talking with him and apologising for dumping everything on him. Before he left, Kai suggested he stay for some archery practise, which Sumit agreed to, Kai hoped that the patience and calming act of drawing a bow and aiming, paired with the satisfaction of hitting a target would help Sumit's levels of frustration and aggression and it seemed to work as Sumit left in higher spirits, though the same could not be said with Kai. He continued to practise, but his aim was not as straight and precise as it usually was.
Day: 3197
It was a month of physiological, physical, and emotional torment as memories returned to Dex. They emerged random and infrequent, out of order and out of context as they eventually completed the full image of his life before the curse, before his imprisonment in The Eternal Abyss. Some were short and came as if they were just second thoughts that Dex had just misplaced whilst others were an excruciating stab that had the man reeling on the ground, wanting so badly to have any form of painkillers, of relief, however that could be dangerous as the spell was slowly released from his mind. He was alone for most of the time apart from when his assigned officer Suzy checked in on him, helping him eat and take care of him when it was all too much. Dex did his best to have a sanguine perspective on the whole affair otherwise he would give up and surrender, enduring the pain as it was just one step from seeing his son... his son who he could remember now. To begin with, it was just flashes of the boy, bits and pieces of the person that Dex devoted his life to, the smile, the laugh, even the tears and tantrums until Dex remembered everything.
He remembered everything.
He remembered everything about that night when that animalistic anger and rage controlled his body, wanting to protect, to exact revenge at what that woman did to his son. The act was supposed to save his son, and yet it cost Dex seeing him grow up. That memory was one of the worst, to relive that night of when took someone else's life, the disturbing happiness he felt conflicting with the horror of his own actions despite the monster that he had defeated with his bare hands.
It had happened years ago almost a decade ago but with the memories returning after the curse had been dispelled, it felt as if it only happened a week ago, still fresh and vivid and engrained in Dex's mind. His life in the human realm and in The Eternal Abyss overlapped, as if he had been simultaneously living two lives at once. To avoid this confusion, Suzy helped Dex map out of life on a timeline and go through it multiple times until it was no longer overwhelming.
A month of this, of the pieces slowly returning, until Dex was complete again, and then he had to pass some more physiological evaluations. Once he had passed and deemed able to re-join society, Suzy briefed him on the next steps and happily announced a meeting with his son next week. However, there was someone Dex had to meet first.
Whilst still in his early days of re-joining society, Dex had to be escorted by Suzy but Calanthe was granted permission to join them as they drove to the destination. Dex was allowed some time by himself, with Suzy watching from afar, and Calanthe beside her for emotional support.
Dex walked slowly through, knowing the route, the place so different, plants overgrowing in certain places or tamed and controlled in others. When he finally reached it, he knelt down at the grave, placing the bouquet of flowers on the ground before it.
"I'm back," he spoke to the gravestone. "Sorry that I wasn't around." Words failed for him for a moment, as his throat closed up and he couldn't even look at the grave directly. "I'm sorry that I wasn't around to look after him, I-" Dex looked down at his hands, his memories still confused, thinking that it was only a week or so ago that they were covered in blood and bruises but in reality he had been locked in an apartment, talking to a therapist.
"I think..." Dex's voice crackled, his eyes watering. "I'm scared to go see him because I..." He glanced away as the tears spilled down his cheeks. "I think I made a mistake. I needed to stay with him, even if that meant the woman- that monster stayed alive, never caught. Apparently my brother took care of him all these years, but I still should have been with him after all that happened to him. Instead I was gone and..."
Dex paused, gripping his knees, his nails digging in.
"But what if I hadn't killed her?" Dex continued. "If she had stayed alive she would have gone to hurt more people, right? Just like she did our son and... and you..." His voice wavered in uncertainty. "I don't know if I did the right thing. Even with all the evidence, she got off free because of her connections. She needed to be stopped and I-"
Dex bowed his head low. "And I stopped her. I protected any of her future victims from her... and I got revenge for you and..." He swallowed, then said in a small voice. "I just don't know if I did the right thing." He shrugged, sniffing away the tears in a failed attempt. "Maybe I could have fought for another trial or something, I don't know. I just didn't think about it-" He stopped himself. That was a lie. He did think about it. He orchestrated the whole murder, the revenge against her. It was cold and calculated up until he caught her unawares in her own home and then he was like a savage animal finally out of its cage, it was a feeling akin to a blood moon in The Eternal Abyss, where that darkness in everyone's minds finally emerged and took control.
"I'm meeting him next week," said Dex, straightening. "And I'm going to be there for him now. As I should have done, as I had promised." He rose to his feet and bowed his head in respect and in shame. Before the curse in The Eternal Abyss wiped away all of his memories, Dex had only kept on record that he had a son waiting for him on the other side. If he had made any note of his late wife, then he must have lost it but he understood why he chose not to remember her for his memory-less self. It would have been too painful, he had been in denial still that he had her lost her and almost his son. Dex had only drawn him and his son so that he wouldn't have any expectations of a wife outside of his imprisonment, because he had lost her. It felt heartless, and cruel to do so, but he had needed a motivation to survive in that place, not to mourn a loss and remain in sorrow and pain for the entire prison sentence. After apologising for this and so many things, Dex left his wife's grave and headed back to Suzy and Calanthe, Calanthe giving him a hug as she noticed how red his eyes were.
It had been almost ten years since his wife had been murdered by that monster, but to Dex it still felt new. To him, he had lost her a week ago, when in reality, it had been a decade. The rest of the world would have moved on already but Dex was so far behind with everything.
Again, apologies for the late chapter. It has still been busy at work.
Thank you for reading!