BELOW: BIRTH: 13 (Patreon)

Samir says something, which I understand about a third of. Pretty good, at this point. Roughly translated as:

“Still screaming? Alive-safe?”

Butchering the translation. I am not good at his language. I know I knew a couple when I was alive, which was somewhere in the west of the world that I remember, maybe two or three, but without having names for those languages, it’s hard to compare, harder to remember. Still, the languages that I knew don’t share a root with the language that Samir speaks.

Still, a few weeks is enough for anyone to get a half-working grasp on the basics. The bare minimum, I’d guess. 

I wave at him, using an improvised set of sign language symbols that I’ve vaguely designed to mean “I’m ok”. Basic as hell, just pointing at myself, then a thumbs-up sign, shaken once, but I’m not a linguist, and I’ve been too busy to really focus on it. 

Samir nods. “Good. Hard work?”

I nod, sighing. But it’s better than doing nothing. 

Thumbs up, rising, hand flat, then a circular “o” symbol that I open wide into another flat hand, palm up this time. 

Fuck me, but I spent who-the-fuck knows how many decades thinking that I should learn sign language. Never made it past the basics, even though I knew that I should have, hell, even though I wanted to. Now here I am, improvising a game of charades to try and talk. 

It’s better than nothing, though. Better than not being able to communicate at all. Every fucking day, I wonder if I should just knuckle down and burn towards my SIN Threshold again in the hopes of getting a different fucking WOUND. 

Not likely, though. If they’re shaped by what I do, then I am most certainly going to get stuck with at least something similar, because I never stop using my Broken Gullet nowadays. 

The clock keeps dripping, telling me how long I have until I have to go back to work. It’s there, one on each of the three floors, dripping that ever-wet blood down a carved little spike that curves gently, down into a curved red bowl. The blood in the bowl at the top of the spike flows, slowed by the patterns in the rock, to drip down at a consistent pace into the bowl. 

And when the bowl fills up to the second rim carved into it, I’ll have to get back to work. 

I rub at my neck and shoulders, stretching out my malformed new jaw from the soreness of constant use, and check my stat sheet.

HUNGERING GHOUL: LOWEST TIERTHAUMIELSIN: 27

ASPECTS:

VIOLENCE: 5 (4+1)One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 6One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectlyLust’s Blinders: 

CONSUMPTION: 6 (5+1)One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 6One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 4 (3+1)One’s ability to Command and Dominate

SALVATION: N/AOne’s ability to Exist

COMMANDMENTS:YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

GNOSIS:

MANIPULATION OF SIN (1st TIER)By touching upon one’s truest essence, a SINner may drink of their vileness. One’s being is defined by SIN, but through comprehension, through will, a SINner may shape that definition, turning their acts of un-grace into specific steps, specific changes, and further distance from the ABOVE.

WOUNDS:BROKEN GULLET (COMMON)Shattered pieces of what was a face, what was a throat, forcing one’s hunger to overwhelm and allowing them to shovel anything into the wound that causes it.

MANIFESTATIONS:YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

Two weeks down here, maybe more, and I’ve gotten barely forty-five new SIN to my name. Used to be I could just sit still and breathe and get more than that, at least over two goddamn weeks, or however long it’s been. But now, there’s just no time, not when that damn drip keeps fucking telling me exactly how long I’ve got until I have to stop breathing again and get back to work. 

I wish I could blame it all on my Broken Gullet, but frankly, they keep everyone busy. The fact that I can eat rock just makes me slightly more useful than some of the others. 

The first floor of “Home” is a bustling hive of activity, punctuated by periods of rest that no one actually enjoys. Unable to sleep, trapped in constant fucking pain, rest isn’t exactly rest, and most of the comforts of the human condition feel alien down here. Hard to paint or write or move about with bodies that don’t fit right, while trapped in perpetual pain, while constantly trying and failing to decompress. In that way, a lot of the Wretches and THAUMIEL-level SINners down here have a very confusing relationship to the dripping clock.

And it is all THAUMIEL down here. Anyone with a different word on their stat sheet seems to get taken right up to the second floor, though only one has been found since I’ve been here. 

That was a relief and disappointment at the same time when I found out that everyone has a sheet down here. Apparently, so long as you move from where you first wake up, the words appear to everyone, though not everyone calls it a stat sheet. The most accepted term I’ve heard for it is “Grimoire”, which is a hint in and of itself. 

Everyone gets a sheet. Most people don’t call it that, instead using the weirder, more archaic name. And, maybe most relevantly, the classism of the Home is shared by the system.

I figured out what that was about, at least. THAUMIEL. The lowest realm, tier, whatever. All of the weakest entities sit there, the ones whose SIN threshold is 151. Like me. 

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I’m pretty sure that, given time, everyone here can breathe in enough SIN to move up a tier. I don’t actually know, though. Maybe the air down here is finite, or the SIN in it is. Either way, no one really has time. 

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Not when every waking moment, save about two hours at a time, is spent in toil. Not when every sermon gets a visit from the Masked Father. 

He never did tell me a name I could call him. His title has overtaken where it would sit, perhaps. He still looks at me on occasion, and the way that mask sits on whatever’s beneath it makes me shiver when I think of it. But in the two weeks since his little tour, I’ve kept my SIN very carefully inside my body, away from the surface of me, away from the action that last drew his attention properly. 

So I get to go to work, like everyone else. And then I go to sermons. 

I’ve been to two, and I don’t like them. 

At least the work is tolerable. Though eating the amount of rock they’ve got me digging through is a hell of a burden on my waistline, even though I haven’t seemed to actually “gain weight” yet. Just my distended gut, constantly full from all the excavation I’m doing. 

Everyone else has to dig with tools or their hands, and has to carry the stone away by hand or powder it for transport. A little easier with me, seeing as I can just swallow it.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Ugh. Impossible to focus with that noise. 

I sit up from where I’ve been laying, waving to get Samir’s attention. 

Point at him, thumbs-up and shake once, two fingers curved like a hook.

“You ok?”

Samir laughs a bit, wincing at the way the air moves in him. Then he nods at me, pointing down at his legs, then back at himself, and tapping his wrist. 

Like a watch. 

Not everyone recognizes that gesture down here. Some of the other Wretches speak in voices I’ve never heard, and seem to lack any context for certain things that seem so obvious to me. Another hint. 

Samir’s healing. His legs are pretty much back together, but his shin bones, on top of being long as fuck, are a lot lighter than I expected, meaning that the two times he’s gone out and walked without his spear-cane, they’ve made some real bad crackling noises. Still, he’s almost better. 

I’m not sure if they’ll let us keep the same space once he is. Everyone else I’ve seen “gets” their own cave. 

It’s all subtle, here. Outside of the big fuckoff commandments on the third floor, every other unspoken social rule is enforced by silences, starvation, and work orders. The ones who refuse to work don’t get anything to eat, and the ones that break the informal rules find themselves even more isolated than usual. One got so bad that everyone left the area as soon as it would walk into it, avoiding that particular SINner like a leper. 

The Masked Father came and spoke to it. That was two days ago, and I haven’t seen it since. 

I haven’t forgotten the question of where they get their food.

I eat as little as I can, filling my guts with rocks until I can’t stand it anymore. 

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Almost to the second mark. Almost time to get back to work. 

“क्या आप काम पर वापस जाने के लिए तैयार हैं?”

I get the first part, at least. “You ready?”

I groan, the sound wet and gurgling through my throat-mouth. Samir gives a chuckle, shaking his head and grabbing hold of his crutch. 

Sighing, I get up to follow after him as he starts moving. Dozens of other forms are already leaving their caves, a few minutes early, eager to have something, anything to do to fight against the constant discomfort and boredom of hell. 

The bowl hits the second mark, overflowing out of the holes carved there, the trickling sound of blood acting as an alarm. 

Obediently, the “family” gets back to work. 

I trudge along with everyone else, making sure that I’m visible, isolated without any real connections beside Samir yet. Everyone seems eager to mind their own business, forming into little cliques as we all go to our assigned work, splitting off from the main living area. 

About two thirds of us head one way, the others heading up to the second floor. The crowd of a few dozen splits, with those that have useful WOUNDS turning to assist with projects higher up, while the other two thirds break later, where the hidden half of the first floor meets a massive cave dug into the floor beneath the walkways heading up. 

Only the older SINners go towards the hidden area, accessible through only a small doorway shaped out of rock and left almost entirely lightless. Some of them have evolved WOUNDS that take out their eyes entirely, their fingers long to compensate, their ears larger, like they’ve been working in the dark a long, long time. Muscled backs, heavy and tired from work and misshapen beneath waxy skin, disappear into that darker part of the first floor. 

I used to think that was where the food came from, but no. That comes from above. Always from above, trickling down each floor until it reaches the first. I’m not sure what’s in that dark and hidden space, except that it smells of more blood than normal.

Samir and I turn towards the other tunnel, to the far more open cavern, where some people have already started digging. 

The tools are simplistic things, mostly made of bone and rock in uneven mixtures. Turns out, never-drying blood also extends to never-drying muscle, tendons, and gristle, which makes building functional tools just a tiny fucking bit more difficult than the history of tool-making would suggest. Improvised pickaxes that look like a necromancer’s interpretation of the empire that… the civilization whose name I don’t remember, which used to put obsidian into wood to make swords? 

Fuck me, this enforced-dementia shit is insufferable. 

Samir waves to me as he takes his place, closest to the entrance so his work doesn’t impact him too badly. Food stopped coming for him after the first week of bedrest, but at least they offer him that little, minimal, absolutely sub-par gift of letting him take breaks more easily. I, meanwhile, keep walking, out to the far end of the excavated cave-within-a-cave.

I don’t even know why the fuck they need this place. Seriously, what’s the point of it? Everyone has a place to live, space to work if needed, so what the hell is the point of making another cavern?

Keeps people busy, of course. Which I do think might be the entire goddamn point. 

The sound of bone hitting stone replaces the sound of the dripping, keeping time on and on to nowhere. 

I start chewing at the far end of the cavern, digging a straight tunnel. 

I’ve got an indent, large enough for a person to stand in and take a few steps forward, but not a true tunnel. Crazy, I know, but digging with a jagged hole of teeth isn’t very useful, and there’s only so much I can eat in one sitting before I have to stop and digest. 

…

Ok, I could be trying harder. Or at all, really. 

It’s a distraction. The more I work at this, the more the Masked Father might forget me. The better I am, the more attention I get, but do too little and it’ll become obvious that I’m sandbagging. Got to strike a balance. 

So I gnaw at the stone, not quite so vigorously or efficiently as I could, and make sure to take long, slow breaths as I do. 

And as I drift off, the act of grinding my face into rock gradually becoming meditative, I start to work on what’s really kept my focus the last few weeks. 

Using the pain of breathing to center myself and the agony of grinding against the stone to distract myself, I find that little sweet spot in the middle and start to work.

+1 SIN.

A point falls from out of nowhere, no clear pathway from my lungs to this visualized space, and starts to flow like molasses in water towards the center of me. Down to that place where all my SIN resides, which seems alien and so unrecognized by the system that whispers of Aspects and WOUNDS to me. 

Slowly, I guide it. I take it, shifting its weight in my mind, imagining a nonexistent hand gently moving around it. Grabbing it is pretty much impossible, I can barely grab the entire mass at once and I’m at a lower SIN total than I was when I figured that out, but it’s not just in grabbing it that it moves. Like trying to catch a leaf that’s sinking, the act of moving around it makes it move in turn, the liquid escaping my grasp to push the detritus back and forth. 

Slowly, I convince it to go in an orbit around the core of me, rather than falling straight in. I map the directions where I feel resistance, that sensation of going “uphill” that tells me it’s heading out rather than in.

My stomach growls, starving and simultaneously stuffed with gravel, distracting me enough that I can keep the dream-like trance going without losing myself to it. My teeth ache, all the way down to my collarbones.

I keep breathing, ignoring the bits of gravel that slip past my “esophagus” and down into my lungs. 

All they can do to me is hurt me, so they don’t matter. I just keep breathing anyways.

+1 SIN.

There’s more tricks to it. To moving it around. Yeah, I can just grab that strange density I feel inside, but I’m not good at it. I suspect that a few more points into Tyranny might help with that, but I’m leery of the stat, or of upgrading my stats in general. Every upgrade so far has been slow, careful, and well past the moment of each sermon where the Masked Father touches me.

I can’t tell exactly, but I think he can see my sheet. Or at least some of my SIN, maybe. I can’t think of any other practical reason why he would go between us, one at a time, touching every one of his “children” and “siblings”. 

The second mote of dark, vile oil slips into my awareness, drifting down towards my core. Again, I shift it, moving it in a pattern so it starts to orbit, falling inward but never enough to actually touch the central mass. Keeping those two in motion, shifting about inside of me, is enough of a distraction that I keep digging for…

Well. Hours, for sure. Bit hard to tell time, as is the running fucking theme of this place. 

Long enough that I don’t notice someone approaching me until they’ve placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, the fingers crawling over my skin to get a good grasp.

I’ve swung before I’ve even had time to process, my hand coming up to claw at whoever it is–

The Masked Father grabs my wrist without the slightest hint of trouble, stopping the movement so instantaneously that I can feel the force of my impact all the way up to my shoulder. 

“Goodness! So feisty, little biter!”

I flinch, then try to pull my arm back. His hand leaves my shoulder but not my wrist, keeping an iron hold on it that’s already starting to ache. 

I stare at him, doing my best not to glare or challenge but not willing to just let the fact that he’s holding me go. 

“Ah, a conundrum you are,” he whispers instead, the mask shifting very lightly as something moves beneath the pretense of a smile. “So focused, so capable, and yet, so entirely dedicated to such a simple task.”

His hand rolls my wrist over, shifting it so my palm is facing up and he’s holding the hand closer than before. His mask approaches it, as if admiring it, or looking to smell it. 

I still don’t know how he even sees through that fucking thing. Maybe his eyes are somewhere else. 

“You must inform me if you’re becoming a bit worn down here,” he whispers, his voice a little too low for me to hear without leaning forward. He assists by pulling my wrist in as he leans forward, pulling my hand up nearly to his chest. “I would hate to have you feeling like you’re being forced into such a limited role here in our Home. Don’t think I’ve forgotten your potential, dear one. That you have a task that well suits you shouldn’t mean you’re trapped in it evermore, should it?”

And to my absolute fucking discomfort, he waits for an answer. Trapping me there, in a conversation that I can barely even communicate in, as he physically holds my hand tight.

I shake my head no. 

“Ah! Perfectly understandable to me, but perhaps we should allow for others to better understand you. Why not use the signals we arranged, yes? One for yes, two for no. Simple, and it doesn’t rely on other’s sight. So! That you have a task that well suits you shouldn’t mean you’re trapped in it evermore, should it?”

And again, he waits. Fucker. 

And he’s holding my fucking hand, isn’t he, so I can’t fucking clap about it either. I have to blink, so I do. 

Blink blink. 

“Good! I’m glad we agree. Perhaps we can talk about it more soon, yes? Your presence at the sermons has been appreciated. It’s good to see you being part of the community. Perhaps you might enjoy a more active participation next time, yes?”

And he waits for an answer. He refuses to let the question be rhetorical. 

I blink twice. 

“Oh, now, don’t be like that. I’m entirely certain that your presence here will only become more valuable to you and the Home as we get to see some of that potential I see in you. And I’m sure you’ll see that too.”

He lets my hand go, and I have to stumble back from the sudden release. 

“Oh, dreadfully sorry about that, child. I should have caught you. My own fault for coming to you do very abruptly. But you really should be more confident, you know. We are in Hell together and everything here hurts oh so terribly. We must trust each other that we won’t hurt each other. I hope you’ll see soon how you can trust me.”

His smile never changes, because it’s a fucking mask. 

Mercifully, in an act of sublime manipulation that I can feel working on me even as I identify it, he doesn’t wait for an answer this time. This time, instead, he bows a little, turns, and walks away. 

Leaving me alone in the hole I’ve dug. Thinking. Focusing. Pushing past the discomfort and the fear and the anger to keep those little motes of SIN spinning. 

Right alongside all the others orbiting inside me.