Caruthers slammed his hand between my shoulder blades.
Shoving me towards the training grounds. His hand dug into my spine.
Leaving me feeble.
He stomped and stormed through the camp, through the endless barrage of incoherent slurred insults. Bloodied and bruised Gimen men and boys of all ages pummelling each other into a pulp.
As I treaded along in front.
Taking in the chaos.
Inhaling the fury festering in the air.
By the time he had unhanded me, we were facing a thick wooden pillar.
"Do you want to fight? Or do you want to stay a little bitch?"
He spat the word at my chest like venom. As it melted straight through my skin.
"Would you rather remain the disgrace of your bloodline? Of your kin? The mighty Gimen?"
I stayed silent.
He did not even give me time for his words to register.
To make me feel as pathetic as they were intended to.
"ANSWER!"
"I-I want to figh—"
"Louder!"
"…I want to fi—"
"LOUDER!"
"I WANT TO FIGHT!"
"THEN FIGHT, ORPHAN BASTARD! ATTACK, NOW!" he bellowed, jabbing his finger at the pillar.
I hesitated. Then noticed his shadow looming over me.
I poked the wood with my fist. As if I were simply pressing a button that would make him stop.
He flung his head my way. Back to the pillar. My way.
Feigning bewilderment.
"…W—What is that?! Are you petting a cat?? Perhaps planting a daisy??"
My frustration was piling. As he asked questions we both knew the answer to.
"That's a HUMAN!! He's gonna kill you! He'll capture your brothers and rip them to shreds!!"
I struck it harder. A thump. A pulsating pain in my hand. I clutched my wrist like the broken spine of a baby nestling.
"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? HE'LL KILL YOUR WHOLE FAMILY AT THIS RATE!"
"YOUR BROTHERS WILL FACE TORTURE UNTIL YOUR NAME IS SEVERED FROM MEMORY!"
In a dark flash, the raider's face returned.
His twisted grin.
The way he laughed as he tore us apart.
How I could do nothing to stop him.
How I clenched my fists and dreamt standing.
Dreamt of killing him.
How I had promised him a "fate worse than death."
Suddenly I was being knelt on. Watching my brothers get hauled through the blood-soaked mud.
Dragged into their demise.
Trying to stretch an arm out to them…
That was not even close to reaching.
"RAH!"
I struck the pillar once more.
The raider's smug face.
"AGAIN!"
"RAH!"
The nestling emerged into a falcon.
Broken no longer.
At least, it didn't feel so.
A dent on the pillar.
"REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID TO YOU SUNE!"
"REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID… TO YOUR FAMILY!"
My voice. The voice that blamed me for everything that had happened.
And his.
The voice of Gimen rage.
Became one that day.
"RAUGHH!"
A current of red coated my hand.
I gave it a second glance.
Still too blurry to see.
"REMEMBER SUNE!"
"REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOOK FROM YOU!"
"KILL THEM! KILL! DESTROY THEM!"
I could sense Caruthers circling around me.
Infiltrating from all angles.
His words convulsed through every orifice on my body.
Marking his territory.
The wood morphed into flesh.
The pounding pain, the shattering of bone.
All vanished before my thirst for blood.
For vengeance.
"WHAT ARE YOU?"
"WHAT ARE YOU, BASTARD?"
"I'M A GIMEN! I'M A GIMEN!"
"WHAT WILL YOU DO, GIMEN? WHAT IS ALL THAT YOU WILL DO?"
"I'LL KILL! I'LL KILL THE HUMANS! I'LL KILL THEM DEAD! F*CKING KILLED!"
My punches degraded from punches into wild slaps and bashes.
I took no notice.
I can't speak much of Hengeist.
I can't speak of events entirely. Only emotions, abstract images that let my mind digest the horrors.
For from that very moment…
Hengeist was a blur. A half-remembered dream.
I became a person possessed by it's ghosts.
The ghosts of all the people I had lost in the village.
The ghosts of everyone Caruthers or Yorgos had lost.
The full lineage. The graveyard of the Gimen at my back.
But not truly them. The vision of them which Hengeist had forced me to see.
Envisioning them as tortured spirits yearning for a purification that only I could provide.
A blood ritual.
My own, or the humans'.
The spirits did not care.
They haunted my dreams. A curse on my thoughts.
Rallying an army of my doubts.
Implanting hatred from the inside out.
For myself, or the humans.
The spirits did not care.
Someone had to pay.
Time ceased to exist.
Days blurred into weeks.
Weeks to months.
A while into an eternity.
Some unknown stretch of time, into my life.
Into all that I knew.
I had forgotten the past and yet I was still living in it.
What made me who I am had vanished.
Yet what made me a traumatised Gimen soldier still remained.
Just as Hengeist intended.
How convenient.
The hands which I had just broken…
They never had a chance to heal. Not properly.
Able to attack became the new health.
The standard was 'useable.' In body and mind.
But only by Hengeist's decree. Always.
I was leashed like a dog with a collar of ball and chain.
While my owners claimed they had set me free.
The mirage of those I had lost kept me fighting the 'idea' of a human.
The illusion of my 'saviours' kept me from fighting against my true captors.
Both were equally non-existent.
My rage toward both became one.
Everything became nothing as nothing became everything.
I could not see what I was fighting against, as I was living inside of it.
The rage grew. Yet pointed at nothing. And everything.
And still, it was the only thing keeping me upright.
I also believed that to be true of the other soldiers.
But it was not as if I was watching them, observing them.
Just as they did not look at me, I did not look at them.
And yet the silent pact of the bastards remained.
That was what they called us.
All of us.
We were intertwined in misery.
Although we were not watching each other…
Our minds hazed into one fog.
Filled with the obscured silhouettes and shadows of Humans and Gimen alike.
And through that fog… we kept attacking.
Punching, kicking.
We were learning each technique, each stance, from the instructors.
But it did not feel that way.
They were merely a voice from the fog.
Teaching us how to defeat our inner demons.
Even we did not know who they were.
All was out to destroy us equally.
Half of a whole imploring us to go to war against the other half.
But we could not distinguish them.
Both halves were equally as cruel.
All was the enemy.
That was the source of the rage.
The rage of Hengeist.
That was what united us.
The bastards.
I said I could not speak much of Hengeist.
But in truth, I could.
Evidently, I can.
It only feels like a blur…
Because it was two worlds overlapping each other.
Both identical.
Both as much of a wormhole of black sludge as each other.
Unmistakable yet unidentifiable.
We bastards bathed in it all our lives.
In one world, or the other.
I cannot describe Hengeist in full, because there was no Hengeist.
Only life.
I can describe my old life in a few short words:
I was not so lucky to have escaped my brothers' fate.
I did not escape it at all, in fact.
We were all bastards.