Shadows In The Dark

Awareness returned as I slowly regained consciousness; though, given the darkness didn't recede in the slightest, it was somewhat hard to tell I wasn't still unconscious.

What really sold it for me that I was awake was the burning sensation all across my body and in my lungs. The gas that had knocked me (and presumably whatever else was in here) out burned whatever it touched, though it had seemingly dissipated enough to be little more than an unpleasant itch all over.

The burn in my lungs had me coughing and sputtering, a mist of orange-tinted blood leaving my mouth and leaving me very concerned for my health.

Skill Gained: Poison Resistance: Lvl 1

Pain Resistance +1

The pain changed very little and my body barely seemed any healthier, at best the pain seemed slightly more distant. The temptation to simply lay there until the pain went away was strong, but the memory of the good doctor mentioning things being tested for their ability to hunt without sight in here had me slowly rising to my feet.

Even with my Dark Vision, the darkness around me didn't relent in the slightest. The only way I could tell I wasn't in a depthless void was Paranoia telling me exactly what was around me for eight feet in every direction. I could even feel what was going on outside the door to this pit, the not so subtle difference in the nearly sterile air out there compared to the reeking toxin and old and fresh blood and rot this place was permeated with.

A distant roar echoing around the walls quickened my thoughts; the sound was twisted in madness, hunger, and pain until it resembled nothing less than the audible embodiment of malice towards everything, including itself. Whatever this creature was, it wanted to die and it wanted me to die.

The answering cacophony of roars did not make me any more comfortable.

While I was immensely relieved to not be gutted and mutated in some glass tube, I couldn't really say being used to test the more successful results of the experience I dodged was all that much better. Well, okay, yeah it was.

Sitting around wasn't going to get me anywhere, that door's internals (which paranoia displayed to me like I was examining it with a microscope. The awareness of microbes around me when I focused on any particular spot of air made my skin crawl…) were far beyond what I could do anything about. If this place is full of monsters seeking to viciously murder me in these supernaturally dark tunnels, I need to head them up and turn things around. This place may be supremely dangerous, but it's also an opportunity to power level myself.

Sure this is a completely awful shithole filled with insane monsters and painful toxic gas, but I need to look on the bright side if I don't want to just lay down and fucking die. I've never been an optimist, pessimism has always seemed more realistic, but my normal perspective would say I'm probably going to die in this fucking shithole while that jackass laughs.

And I fucking refuse to satisfy someone else at my expense.

I

He wants to test his monsters on me? Well fuck him and fuck those monsters, I'm gonna make sure they fail their tests. This is going to be his most expensive experiment if I have anything to say about it.

I began to wander further into the tunnel, scrubbing myself down in a way that was, perhaps, just a little compulsive. I set a smile on my muzzle, years of practise simulating emotions and crafting expressions in the mirror ensuring the expression was suitably vicious and malevolent; if that asshole mage is watching (which I presume he is if he wants to collect any data on this whole mess), I want him to watch me massacre his hand crafted abominations.

Alxhaustra tapped his fingers on his desk as he monitored the screens tied to the observation spells in his labyrinth testing facility, eager to see how the strange little rodent fared against the creatures he had dumped there. The creatures he had dumped in the labyrinth were a mixed bag of nearly sales floor ready prototypes and fresh failures to be disposed of or refined; not exactly the cream of the crop, but potentially interesting.

He didn't truly expect the rat to last long, though he also didn't expect anything to sneak into his lab through the rear entrance (if he was being honest, which he rarely was, he didn't know it was possible for something to sneak past a living shadow) so he was hopeful he would be surprised.

His mind drifted away as the creature woke up and got it's bearings, idly noting it seemed abnormally aware of its surroundings for something he was sure couldn't see. His thoughts drifted back to the reason that made was so full of monsters, sales. Hmph, 'The Sales Floor', how far he'd fallen to resort to selling his creations to cretinous fools just to maintain funding for his work…

He shook his head, casting thoughts of the palace he used to live in to the back of his mind once more as he focused back on the screen, seeing the interesting little vermin crawling deeper into the labyrinth.

Interestingly, even though its body language showed extreme caution, its expression was fixed in what certainly would have been quite the fearsome snarl on a more threatening creature and it never so much as stumbled over the uneven ground or even run into walls despite the veil of darkness he had set up. A quick check showed that the veil was intact and his hairless brow rose in curiosity; how could this little rodent move in darkness even ancient tunnel dwellers couldn't pierce?

His already high curiosity rose further when the rat began to climb the walls, moving diagonally deeper into the tunnels and up the vertical surface. Rats were notoriously clever little wretches, but this level of forward strategic thinking? Actively seeking an advantage over future opponents it couldn't possibly have been sure where there at all? Unless it understood him when he mockingly told it what he was doing...

No, he must have simply been over thinking things. No way was this animal planning out its attacks; it must simply have used the high ground before or have some basic understanding that creatures tend not to look up all that often from experience. This verminous creature couldn't possibly have understood him, it must just be a naturally wary little beast.

It didn't take long for the rat to run into one of his creations, fortunately for it it was closer to the failure end of the spectrum than the successful side. The creature looked vaguely like a skinless, limbless man dragging itself along by the long, four jointed arm protruding from its mouth, several whip-like tongues feeling about the place from the lamprey-like mouth in the middle of the silver clawed hand, the trail of sticky, red slime it left behind looking much like a trail of blood or perhaps some gruesome mockery of a snail's trail.

Alxhaustra vaguely remembered creating that creature; it had originally been a Flayed he'd pulled from one of his "pet" Skinwalkers before it could be reduced to a Skinned and injected with modified Maraw fluids after a series of surgeries. He had intended it to be a sort of terraformer/area denier as it's slime was highly corrosive and carried the Rothide Plague. Clearly, it was not totally successful.

It was also blind, it's empty eye sockets weeping the same red fluid it's whole body secreted; the tear like image matched the annoying choking, sobbing sounds he could never get the damn thing to stop making. If the blasted thing had been a better success then the crying wouldn't be so much of a problem, Hells it could have been an effective psychological weapon; unfortunately, for such a miserable failure it was more of an annoyance than anything else.

What had he ever been thinking, making an obnoxiously noisy creature that constantly secreted disgusting slime? If he hadn't tossed it into the labyrinth he may well have just burned the damned thing. He couldn't stand the sterility of his labs being violated like that… not to mention his ears.

While the thing was slow, stupid, and relied entirely on touch to find anything, it was also covered in diseased, acidic slime; he wondered what the clever little rat would do about that. Normally such a slow and feeble creature would hardly be a threat, but adding the acidic disease covering it meant anything without a weapon with decent reach would be in trouble. Which, upon further thought, perhaps raised the creature a few notches closer to a success.

He expected many things, most of them fatally stupid on the part of the rat; what he didn't expect was for the actually rather large rodent to crawl across the ceiling to a large, seemingly metallic skull embedded in the middle of the ceiling and begin to scratch at the embedded portions and shake the bone looser and looser.

He vaguely remembered the creature that skull had come from, some metal fused beast meant for siege breaking on a small scale. It had turned out to be too heavy and couldn't move fast enough to survive on its own… not to mention the strange reaction that caused it to explode when struck just right.

He made a mental note to look into explosive creatures for future research.

His eyes gleamed with interest as the rodent dislodged the skull at exactly the right time to crush the far weaker skull of the crawling horror beneath it, as if the creature had the capacity to time out the abomination's speed…

He leaned back in his comfy chair, once more drumming his fingers against the armrest in thought as he idly noted the rat climbing down the wall, rushing back the way it came, scrubbing itself down, and partially burying itself in rubble and bone. The intelligence this creature had displayed was far above the norm for its race, but even that didn't outweigh the strange sense of familiarity he felt when he first saw the eviscerated creature bleeding out on his floor…

With a contemplative frown, he opened up a drawer and began looking through his research files.