~~
Trinity
~~
All these thoughts about souls and being stuck in hell forever were truly weighing me down. I didn't want to let the others know about it, but it was getting increasingly hard for me to think of anything else. I didn't like that. I didn't like that all I could think about, dwell upon, were these negative thoughts.
Right now, I needed to focus on getting out of here. Making sure that Hekate didn't escape hell. And getting home to my family. Why was that getting harder and harder for me to focus on?
Was it because I had been away for so long? How long had I been gone anyway? I remember when I was in the Hall of Self-Reflection, it had already been two weeks that I had been gone. That had been when I learned that time passed by quicker in the land of the living than it did here.
What felt like at most a day and a half, maybe, was two weeks. And that was what felt like an eternity ago. But even that was hard for me to judge.
It was actually really hard to tell how much time was passing here because I didn't need to sleep, eat, drink, or relieve myself while I was here in the underworld. Not having physical cues to let me know how much time was passing was making it difficult. As was the fact that there was no change in lighting. There was no night and day. It was all the same all the time.
For all I know, I could have been gone for years. The kids and Reece could have moved on without me. They might have me in a hospital waiting for me, or they could have buried me, thinking I was dead. I honestly don't even know what to think at the moment. I just know that I was finding it harder to focus on my family now that I was here in Damnation.
Maybe, just maybe, that was a side effect of Damnation itself. Maybe that sort of hopelessness and sorrow that I was feeling was what this place caused naturally. It would make a lot of sense, honestly.
And if I am telling the truth here, if I didn't have Zachary, Zander and Zayden, I would probably abandon any and all hope of ever making it out of here. Having them with me was the only thing keeping me going. They needed me, and I couldn't abandon them at all.
I battled the emotions silently, not letting the boys, Alexio and Rudy know what was going on inside of my head. As we flew on, down the hall, I also tried to avoid looking at the people in the cells. I didn't need to know who these people were. That was none of my concern. What they did and didn't do was none of my concern.
Frankly, I was just glad that I hadn't run into anyone that I kn…
"YOU!" A woman's savagely snarling voice broke my thought and made me instantly regret that I was even thinking what I had just been thinking.
"DAMMIT!" I snapped at no one in particular. Unless you wanted to count the bitch that yelled at me.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE!?" I had truly hoped that I would never have to see, or hear, this woman's voice ever again. "YOU DAMN MONGREL MUTT! I THOUGHT I WAS DONE WITH YOU! WHAT, DID YOU WANT TO HUMILIATE AND TORTURE ME EVEN MORE? OR DID YOU WANT TO WATCH ME BE TORTURED?"
Solanum's voice was filled with anger and rage. She had not changed at all since I last saw her. Since I, well, killed her.
"Granny! You're looking great. I see you found your head in the afterlife." Why, I do think that the super serious Alexio got that joke. I mean, why else did he laugh when I said that?
"FUCK YOU, TRINITY GRAY! YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON! YOU SENT ME HERE! YOU DESTROYED ME AS THOROUGHLY AS YOU COULD! YOU KILLED ME AND YOU SENT ME TO DAMNATION! YOU DID THIS TO ME ON PURPOSE. YOU WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN TO ME! YOU WANTED TO WATCH ME SUFFER. YOU PLANNED IT ALL! I KNOW YOU DID! ADMIT IT! ADMIT YOU SENT ME HERE!"
"No, Granny, you sent yourself here. All I did was end your reign of evil that you tried to unleash on the world. Your own actions brought you here. That is something that you need to understand." Her voice had sent shivers down my spine when she spoke. It was like a memory that I didn't want to have replayed for me, again. I had already so recently relived the hell that was my experience with her. And I didn't want to have this happen to me again so soon.
As I explained this to her, I looked closely at her, at how she was glowing. And I was not at all surprised to see that Solanum's soul was glowing with almost a pure black light to it. She was definitely still full of evil and all those other negative emotions that would darken her heart and soul.
"I will get out of here, Trinity. I will get out of here and I will come for you. You mark my words. I will destroy you. I will snuff you out. I will-."
In the middle of Solanum's threats, a strange black shadow moved forward and clamped a hand over her mouth. That shadow pulled her off into the back of the cell and almost immediately she began to scream.
It was too dark for me to see what was happening to her, but I think that was a good thing. If it could make someone like Solanum scream like that, then it must be horrible. Besides, there was something else that I was even more interested in.
"Alexio, what are those things?" I pointed at the strange shadow creature. I could tell that this creature was the one that was actively torturing Solanum. It didn't have a face that I could see, so I couldn't see what it looked like, or what it was feeling. Still, I got the feeling that this strange thing enjoyed its job.
"That is a reaper. They are responsible for taking an evil soul from the land of the living when it dies. That reaper then brings them here for special punishments." That was definitely not what I was expecting.
The underworld just got more complicated, and scary, all at the same time. Someone please remind me to never do something to make me come to the Halls of Damnation. I mean, you know, after I go back to living that is. I never want to come back to this place ever.
Nope, after I destroyed Hekate's soul. I was going to get out of here. And then everything will be just fine after that. That was what was going to keep me going. Hoping and praying that I would never come back to Damnation after this was over.. Hoping that I wouldn't be in a cell right down the hall from Solanum and everyone else that was here.
