房客(糙汉)何璐程曜坤

[Our first memories are of our house - a normal warm house - we had parents that loved us and we lived in a nice cozy village far from the large cities of any of the kingdoms – everyone there lived good, peaceful lives.]

{But then something happened.}

[Yes, something bad.]

{Very bad.}

[I remember the screams coming from the outside and mother's scared face.]

{I remember the stench of the nasty smoke, the loud sounds of explosions, and the hands of our father grabbing me.}

{Father was very worried but he tried to look calm to not make us cry, didn't he?}

[Indeed, before he hid us in the cellar under the floor and covered the entrance with the rug he said that everything will be alright and asked us to promise him not to cry until either he or mother will come back to get us out.]

{They never did.}

[No, they didn't.]

{They died.}

[They were murdered.]

{I don't know how much time has passed but after one last terrifying explosion happened, there were no more sounds of battle, but everything was shaking.}

[That was the moment when our house must have collapsed.]

{Indeed.}

[The cellar was so dark.]

{Darkness is scary.}

[Too scary.]

{I don't want to be locked up in the darkness ever again.}

[After everything has calmed down, we broke our promise with father - we started crying... a lot...]

{We huddled into each other arms and cried.}

[I remember that something was dripping from the cellar's ceiling. At first, we thought that it was rain and the cellar will fill up and will drown but that wasn't it. It wasn't raining. It wasn't water. It had a metallic smell.]

{It was blood.}

[...]

{It was blood from our parents' crushed bodies.}

[...]

{We don't know how much time has passed, but we were so weak by that point...}

[...I hated that cellar, I wanted to get out! But the only exit was blocked. I hated the earth that was surrounding us! Why won't it move and let us out!]

{Indeed. I felt the same.}

[So. in the burst desperation, we ordered the earth that was trapping us to move away.]

{And it listened to us.}

[On the verge of death, we awaken to magic.]

{We got out but...}

[The village where we lived was destroyed - everything was burned down to the ground or destroyed in many other ways. There were ice spears, as large as trees, slowly melting down. And boulders the size of horses laying around where they should not be... No one except the two of us was left alive...]

{We searched for food but before we could find anything we heard the voices of a group of people - they were talking in a language we did not understand, so we got scared and ran to cover.}

[But there was nowhere to hide.]

{So we used magic again and started digging a tunnel.}

[We went deep. Deeper and deeper into the earth.]

{And it was dark.}

[And we were hungry.]

{Before long, we were dying of thirst.}

[We lost our way, we weren't even sure about which way was up and which way was down - we confused left with right... We must have had to dig around in circles many, many times.]

{Once we found a water source, and we were spared from dying just for another awfully short period of time.}

[Mmm... I can still remember it... That water was tasty...]

{Indeed.}

[But we were still hungry.]

{We were so hungry that when we found some worms burrowing through the earth - we ate them without hesitations.}

[They wriggled in my mouth, I almost puked.]

{But you ate them in the end, and so did I. But they were so gross...}

[Indeed.]

{And we ate that mole that entered our tunnel too.}

[The raw meat felt disgusting, the bones almost broke my teeth... it felt so disgusting...]

{But it was food.}

[Sustenance.]

{We had to do eat it to survive.}

[And so we did.]

{And we did survive, so it didn't go to waste.}

[Remember? There was that one time when we found our way out from inside the earth.]

{I remember. We dug ourselves from the soil but when we came out, it was so horribly cold... everything was white and blinding.}

[It was freezing.]

{The first time we experienced winter and ice, besides seeing the ice spears in our village.}

[Indeed, a horrible first impression.]

{So we came back to earth where it was warmer and safer. And we continued to live there.}

[After some more time has passed we came outside again.]

{That time it was pleasantly warm.}

[And we even saw some other people.]

{I tried calling out to them, but where they saw us they started screaming.}

[They threw stones at us.]

{It hurt, one of them hit my head.}

[I got angry and ordered the earth to hit them too.]

{Their screams became just like the screams we've heard back in our village, so we got scared, and run back inside the earth.}

[We circled through the ground, finding food and water... we have completely lost track of time by that point. It was just an endless circle of darkness and digging.]

{Then it happened.}

[...it did...]

{We were digging through some soft earth when our tunnel collapsed.}

[The earth fell on my arms and crushed them, my bones broke like dry twigs. It hurt... It hurt so much... I haven't even thought about using my magic - I was just screaming and yelling in pain like a mindless animal.]

{I had to save you, I used all the magic I had to free your hands and made a safe cave for us to rest. But then my mana has run dry and I collapsed.}

[My mana was drained out of me, so I collapsed too.]

{Your screams woke me up.}

[I remember only pain.]

{I wanted to be a good little sister so I searched for water and food and cared for you.}

[I remember only pain.]

{Your arms were twisted and bent in weird directions, so I tried to fix them the best I could.}

[I remember only pain.]

{That time felt longer than anything before.}