Pain And Progress

I carefully avoided groaning as my mind rebooted, dim light filtering through my closed eyelids. I could feel my thoughts swirling together, piecing together my vague recollection of how exactly I wound up in what my itching skin was telling me was a small puddle of blood and saliva on a wooden floor. The moment my groggy thoughts clicked together, I wondered how and why I was still alive.

And then rage pulsed through my veins like red fire, tempered only by the iceflow of terror spilling down my spine at the memory of just how easily Rokharth put me down. My attacks were all but meaningless, my struggles futile, his response effortless…

Bitter hate settled in my gut, a familiar simmering indignation and loathing that joined the ocean of grudges and grievances that filled my memories. My thoughts spiraled in the same hateful melancholy that choked out my youth and made me into the spiteful nihilist I am.

My spiralling misery faded when a thought struck me, a difference between that ancient bitterness and this new hate. Unlike when I was an angry teen filled with directionless sadness and rage, now there was something I could actually do. In this world, all my problems can be solved with enough violence.

Well, that technically would work back home too, but acquiring that kind of power would be much harder without magic.

Here, if I just keep killing and killing, eventually I'll grow stronger. Maybe with enough blood spilled, I'll finally be strong enough to ensure my safety and happiness. With enough bloodshed, I can grow strong enough to protect myself and maybe even free myself of mortality. To be free of fear, of suffering... that's worth as much blood and pain as it takes; mine or, preferably, someone else’s.

I grit my teeth, pushing myself up from the hard floor on arms I refused to allow to shake. Blood and drool slipped through my teeth as I turned my gaze to the monster my Paranoia told me was standing above me, carefully not meeting his amused eyes despite the burning hate in my own.

He merely smiled down at me. “Ah, you hate me, don’t you? That’s fine, one day you’ll be thanking me for pushing you like this. For hurting you in ways you can survive so that one day, when you find yourself facing off against something you can't fight and can't outrun, maybe you'll have a chance of making it out alive." He shrugged his shoulders, "You won’t get the skills and traits you need to survive by not taking any risks, and it’s always better to push yourself in a controlled environment than on the field."

I blinked, pausing for a split second midway through standing up. He… had something of a point, if not a perfectly sound one. The basic idea of exposing someone to simulated danger and unwinnable odds so as to get them used to it kinda falls apart when you actually put their lives at risk. Then again, I suppose many blackops organizations would beg to differ on that; even so, taking only the cream of the crop and burning the rest isn't so comfortable when you might just be part of "the rest."

He shrugged, seemingly parsing together the general direction of my thoughts, "Well, you don't have to like me; all you have to do is listen to me, so you can get the job done and maybe survive if you're lucky.” He grinned down at me, “Now, are you going to try and cross that beam on your own or am I going to throw you onto it?”

I maintained my angry glare for a few more seconds before giving up with a sigh in the face of his unmoving expression, “Fine, I’ll fucking do it.” I turned away from him, grumbling mutinously as I eyed the slippery, whirling death trap before me. I noted that the oil (or whatever it was) managed to form a three foot deep pool despite draining into a pit with a grated off funnel at the bottom.

I raised an eyebrow, turning my gaze to the ceiling where the transparent slime flowed from a thick slit in the ceiling, “Where is all this damn oil even coming from? Why is it here?”

I heard him sigh behind me, “We have a Slorgaoth farm upstairs and someone decided to turn the leaky ceiling into an ad hoc waterfall in here; I decided to put it to use as an improvised training device.. If you want to know what we use the slime for, cross the damn log.”

I didn’t bother side eyeing him, simply Observing the flowing slime as I walked up to the edge of the testing area.

Slorgaoth Oil: A highly flammable slime produced by Slorgaothi, it can be used as a lubricant and accelerant.

Well, that gives me a pretty decent idea of what a criminal organization would want with it; there's never a shortage of things that need burning, after all.

I stared at the quote unquote "balance beam" spinning away before me for a while, trying to psych myself up for what I had no doubt would be a short and painful adventure.

Rokharth snorted, "Well, are you going to cross it anytime soon or are you just gonna keep eye-fucking it until Kthurgul takes it?"

I sent a glare his way before turning back to the task at hand, noting down the name "Kthurgul" for future reference. Knowing Rokharth was more than willing to use pain as encouragement, I decided it was best not to test his patience any further. With a long suffering sigh, I added one more grudge to my growing list and leapt forth.

The moment my paws hit the slick, spinning cylinder and the pounding fluid hit my head I knew I was right to be so hesitant. I would say I lost my balance instantly, but that would erroneously imply that I ever had it to begin with; the moment I touched down I was already slipping and falling. I had the poor fortune to fall onto the beam, taking a point of damage as I slammed back first into the rotating pillar of wood before slipping off and falling face first into the slime below.

On the plus side, it turns out Slorgaoth slime feels quite pleasant and the shallow pool was decently warm. Even more fortunately, the three feet that managed to accumulate over the grate was more than enough to ensure the fall itself didn't hurt.

Far less pleasant was just how thoroughly it soaked into my fur; the fact that up close it smelled like diluted bile certainly didn't help.

For a few seconds I simply allowed myself to float in the clear fluid, ignoring Rokharth's laughter and my own simmering indignation as I allowed my thoughts to aimlessly wonder. I pondered on how such a viscous fluid could flow so similarly to water, eventually coming to the tentative conclusion that it might be non-newtonian as I pulled myself up the slippery ladder someone had thoughtfully built into the side of the pit.

I also briefly wondered how many recruits had drowned before someone thought to install such a basic safety precaution, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant.

The moment my feet were back on relatively solid ground, Rokharth patted me on the head. "Well now, we've established a baseline for your ability to balance and found a hurdle to be worked towards." He smirked, clapping his long fingered hands, "Now onto the climbing walls."

I leveled my most disdainful deadpan stare at him for several long moments, but once more gave up with a sigh. One day bastard, one day I'll make you pay for every goddamn snicker.