Outside, the sky may have been weeping a summer rain or a storm , he could not say for deep beneath the earth, the air was as crisp as it was stale.
There was a queer, heavy warmth to the dark, a heat that seemed to seep directly from the dirt. Perhaps the hell of the Five burned so brightly that its embers could be felt through the very foundation of the world.
They would never complain of the cold again, that much was certain, though the list of their other miseries grew longer with every breath.
The darkness was the worst of it, it swallowed the eyes and stifled the soul. Not a flicker of a candle, not a stray beam from a moon-slapped window,only the night, all-encompassing and absolute.
It was a darkness that invited the mind to rot, feeding the doubts that crawled through their thoughts like maggots in a wound.And if left unchecked would rot the body.
