by Cebelius
His cowl fell back from his head, revealing it to the light, and he immediately felt as though he were being cooked.
He squeezed his eyes shut and rolled over, shifting his head until his cowl slipped back over the crown of his head and fell to cover him.
Even that momentary contact with the light left him feeling burned.
Well, that answers that question.
'I suppose it does.'
"Well, template, here we are," Lygi said as she squatted on her heels next to him. "Even if your companions can catch up, they'll have a helluva time following us once we embark. I've taken the liberty of relieving you of your share of the automaton's gems, which will pay for our passage."
Lygi reached out and pulled up the edge of his cowl until she could see his face. The fading light still burned him and he was forced to close his eyes, but not before seeing the dwarf's cruel smile.
"The settlement masters will decide your ultimate fate, but I will have my prize first. I'd take it now, but there's no shelter until the light fades completely about four hours from now, and I can't risk you being seen down there. I'll leave you here while I secure passage. Even if you wriggle free while I'm gone and don't fry, there's nowhere to go. The forest behind us will eat you alive, and the village in front won't treat you any better than I have, or will. Get used to your new life, for however long it lasts. Who knows, if you cooperate, you may even manage to enjoy some small portion of the time that remains to you. That's more than can be said of you if you decide to try and flee. If I have to hunt you down, I'll break your arms and legs after I have your bond, then transport you to Sidastrgeil in a burlap sack. Your choice."
She chuckled darkly as she dropped the edge of his cowl.
By then her words had faded into a background of burning pain. The left side of Abram's face was now horribly burned. It was an awful feeling, and as he looked at his bars he saw that he'd actually lost a hit point just in the thirty seconds or so she'd taken to expose and speak to him.
The message was clear: if he exposed himself to the light, it would kill him in short order.
He heard her boots crunching as she walked away, and tilted his head enough to open his unburned eye to see the distant village again. He was at the edge of a cliff of sorts, and Lygi was descending a switchback road that dropped the elevation some two hundred feet onto the plain on which the village was built. The construction was wooden and the boards were splintered and worn, but the shingles that covered every roof were a deep, dusky red-baked clay. There was movement, but everyone he could see was dressed head to foot in voluminous robes.
He turned his head, doing his best to ignore the way the movement tugged at the skin of his face. Every tiny expression was painful. Nevertheless, he needed to see what else there was to see. The white dust of the road gave way on the far side to a low ditch, and a wooden pole. Abram's eye traced the pole and saw that it supported a crossbeam from which a suspended cage hung. Inside that cage was a corpse. It was blackened and twisted, grotesque and unrecognizable as male or female. It had no clothes, but the sign hung from the cage said simply: Thief.
The cage itself was constructed of flat metal stock, and was fairly coated with gristle, like a grill too heavily used and never cleaned. Even as he looked, faint wisps of smoke rose from the corpse, and he shuddered despite himself.
The road wound down a low berm and disappeared quickly into the trees. There were other cages alternating the road at intervals, but most of the corpses in those were so desiccated that the only remains were black-charred and skeletal.
The small rise he was on had been cleared of trees: he could see old stumps on both sides, and saplings were coming up to gradually fill in the gap.
Pain from his burned face made it hard to think. Abram tried, but after a long moment thought, Hantu, log me out. I need to think and I can't do it with this kind of pain.
'Are you certain that's wise? You may lose too much time. There is no way to know when Lygi will return.'
All the more reason to make most effective use of what time I have. Log me out.
'As you wish.'
Abram took the shades off and tossed them onto his desk, then put his head in his hands. His face still felt hot, and every breath he took seemed flavored with hints of burning meat.
His heart was hammering in his chest as he frantically searched for some way to get himself out of the mess he was in. That it was just a game hardly mattered at the moment: it was a game he desperately wanted to keep playing. The thought of starting over now terrified him in a way he knew wasn't healthy.
A tiny part of him told him he should quit. Smash the VR shades and return to a normal life. Celestine was an obsession that was going too far. He was being tortured, why was he still playing?!
He buried that thought, and returned to the problem at hand. There had to be a way out of the situation he found himself in. Games always had some way to win, otherwise there was no point in playing.
Not true, some games just keep getting harder until you die.
Again, he buried the thought. This game could be beaten. There had to be a way to escape. To survive, and to kill Lygi.
I could just let her take me, he realized abruptly. I would gain points. Become more powerful. It would be easier to escape.
Yet the thought only reminded him that Lygi was going to rape him anyway if he was still bound and helpless when she returned. She knew he was a template, knew about bond gifts. It was reasonable to presume she had a way to deal with him becoming more powerful. The dwarves of Sidastrgeil had somehow handled Angrboda's last template without a problem.
So that's a last resort, and a low percentage one at that. THINK, Abram. Survive, escape, revenge. In that order.
Hantu Raya could swap out his spells provided he wasn't too stressed. The problem there was that now, with his face horribly burned, the pain might actually prevent that from happening.
The thought of that burning pain gave him an idea.
It was a horrible idea. It was grotesque ... but as the seconds passed into minutes, Abram realized his chance to execute that idea was even now fading.
It was now or never.
With trepidation slowing his hands, he nevertheless forced himself to don the shades once more, and re-enter the hellscape that was Celestine.
Abram didn't hesitate once he regained consciousness. He uncurled his body, and stretched both his bound hands and feet into the light.
'Ah ... Abram, what are you doing?' Hantu asked, the pace of his text scroll matching his punctuation.
Escaping, Abram mentally replied as he gritted his teeth.
The pain was searing and intense. After only a few minutes, his limbs were shivering as he fought against what he realized must be shock. His hands were not covered, only tightly bound. His feet were secured at the ankles, but he had to expose them as well. His hands would be useless for untying anything by the time he was free.
'Abram ... this is torture.'
This is doing what I have to. I can take it. It's just a game.
Even as he thought his reply though, he felt hot tears squeezing out from between his tightly shut eyes. Hantu did not reply.
His only consolation was that he knew he was right: in the time he'd spent out of the game, he had healed one hit point. He had sunk power into regeneration and that would be what saved him ... provided his plan worked.
Eventually, his nerves fried completely and the pain went away. Abram made the mistake of glancing at his hands, then shut his eyes again and resolutely looked away. The smell of burning meat wasn't a hint now, it was the world he lived in. His flesh was burning ... and he was burning it.
Twenty minutes passed, then thirty.
By that time Abram was almost insensate. He felt intense nausea, and his body shook as his nerves sent random shocks of hot and cold through his system. Yet finally, he shifted his thighs, and heard a sickening sound. The sound of well-crisped skin sloughing off cooked flesh.
As his foot slipped free and a long strip of his roasted flesh peeled away from his foot, exposing what lay beneath, Abram lost his composure and heaved, puking violently all over himself and the road.
Yet as his guts churned and he heaved again and again, he pulled his hands apart and — just as with his feet — the now cooked skin and meat slid past each other. His bindings fell away. He was free.
He only dimly realized he was sobbing like a child as he pulled his horribly mangled limbs back into the comforting darkness of his robes, then checked his hit points.
He had six of thirteen remaining.
Had he been sitting in his chair, with headphones on and the buffer of a monitor and air conditioning between him and the situation he now found himself in, he'd have called bullshit.
Now, he was simply grateful it wasn't more. In that moment, he was vaguely surprised it hadn't killed him. His hands and feet were essentially skinless, and even now the pain was assaulting him in waves he could only hold at bay because he knew it wasn't real.
But he'd thought things through. He had three advantages. The first was that he would regenerate the damage. Within twelve hours he would have all his hit points back. The second was that he was both disease and poison resistant, and had a relatively high constitution score. He was unlikely to get an infection.
All he had to do was put up with the gut-churning pain ... pain which had only just begun.
Abram forced himself up onto his knees, then to his feet. He couldn't feel them, had to balance as though he were walking on stilts. The pain that shot up his legs was mind-boggling, but through it all he maintained firm hold of the one realization that kept him from completely losing his mind to the agony: it was all a game. He could log out anytime, and there was nothing actually wrong with him. This game implanted memories, it forced feelings upon him that weren't truly his ... but it couldn't take away the knowledge that it was all an illusion. A game that he could end any time he wanted.
With that realization firmly set in his mind, he listened to the wet, crackling sounds of his feet as he took one step after another and smiled grimly.
I am hardcore. I eat nightmare mode for breakfast. Bring it on.
'You are insane.'
Insanity hath its privilege.
Hantu didn't dispute him, and Celestine brought the pain in the form of hard light, the sickening sounds from his bloody, cooked feet, and waves of agony from both them and his hands.
Abram soldiered forward because the alternative was to lose, and failure was the one thing he wouldn't accept.
He made the edge of the trees and turned, leaving the road as he searched for some place to hide, somewhere he could recover enough to regain the use of his hands. Once that happened he would be able to fry Lygi when she came looking, take the gag from his mouth, and figure out how to make his way back to his companions.
Some distance away, Daji watched the template stumble along, her eyes wide. She had remained riveted to the sight of him for the last hour. She couldn't look away. She would never have believed it was possible for a man to do what she had just seen Abram do.
No man in her experience was that strong.
She licked her lips, and felt a delicious tingle float through her. Abram was impulsive, somewhat petulant, and very much ruled by his emotions ... what she had just seen made no sense in that context. It was the second time in a single day when she had been shocked with surprise, and her excitement continued to mount as she watched him walk.
She had invented a torture device in a past life called the Paolao. It was designed to force its victims to dance whilst the increasing heat from below gradually cooked their feet until they fell screaming to the flame. She wondered idly how Abram would have endured her favorite torment, and the curiosity made her burn with desire. Perhaps this man was as enamored of pain as she was. He had willingly submitted to pain beyond even that of the Paolao.
Or perhaps he is truly insane.
Her vulpine muzzle split with a feral smile. It was as though the man was made for her amusement. She stood, and trotted over to the discarded flesh of his hands and feet. She crouched to sniff, then consume the cooked flesh he had left behind. She was careful to savor every delicious bite.
Once she had completed her repast, she ambled off in pursuit of her quarry, myriad tails swaying happily behind her.
17
Every Bit As Good
His hands had finally stopped shaking.
Abram lay couched between the roots of a sizable tree. It was not tall so much as incredibly broad, and the bole was so thick that he imagined it comparable to a redwood, though he had no true way to compare the two. The roots he was sandwiched between actually extended from far above where he could reach, and the walls formed to either side of him were likewise taller than he was for a good five feet past where he crouched. Nothing could approach him that he wouldn't see coming unless it came from directly overhead, and if Lygi managed to climb the tree without his noticing, he figured she deserved to catch him.
At some point during the time between when he'd left the road and found this spot, Hantu Raya had updated his character sheet with a new ability:
Extreme Pain Resistance
It seemed out of character that his interface familiar had said nothing as he'd added the ability, but then again Abram had been in no mood to receive snark. His entire being had been focused on moving, on being able to move. He had no idea how far he'd come but no matter the actual distance, it had been the longest walk of his life.
Once he ensconced himself in the roots of the tree, he revealed his hands and watched as, bit by bit, flesh crept back up his arms. He'd watched the scabs flake off, watched his veins and arteries fade away under new, pink skin. His eyes had flickered constantly from the regeneration to his hit point counter, reassuring himself that it too was gradually creeping back up.
It had never occurred to him to log out because, as painful as this was, the idea of being caught unawares was worse. He was in this mess because he hadn't logged out in a safe spot. The sort of agony he'd suffered was precisely the sort of lesson he didn't ever want to have to sit through twice.
Now, as the flesh crept slowly up his palms, his vision abruptly lost color. He glanced up to note that the light from the crystal overhead was gone. He'd been so intent on the slow progress of his healing that he hadn't noticed the gradually dimming light until it cut out entirely.
Now it was pitch-black, and his dark sight was operational once more. He felt relief wash through him, for now he had a definite visual advantage over the dwarf he knew was either already pursuing him or soon would be.
He called up his character sheet and glanced over the details. Doing so reminded him of his new ability, and he mentally asked Hantu, EXTREME pain resistance?
'Abram, you voluntarily de-gloved your own hands and feet with radiation, then walked almost three miles on the bloody remains. Yes. EXTREME pain resistance. I have known monks and lifelong ascetics that would have broken down sobbing under what you just endured. I have existed for millennia, but the insane power of your conviction, and what it allowed you to accomplish just now, will be with me long after you are dust and your legend has faded.'
Unalloyed compliment. You really ARE impressed.
'Not unalloyed, but yes, I am. Now what?'
Abram dismissed his character sheet and, using his shoulders against the rough wood to either side of him, walked himself back up to his feet, which immediately sent him more pain. Just like his hands, they weren't completely re-skinned.
I want to sub one of my slots.
'Which, and with what?'
Give me the details on a spell that will detect all forms of deliberative movement within one hundred twenty feet. I don't want every falling leaf and errantly twitching branch, j
ust the consciously motivated stuff. Have each instance show up on the mini-map, dot style. Dot size to correspond relatively to the creature making the movement.
Mystic Radar: (12) reserved mana points = Automatic detection of deliberative movement within 120 feet and display of same on the mini-map
Affinities: Divination
I don't know why I'm ever surprised anymore about how expensive some of this shit is. How come none of my primary affinities apply?
'The nature of the spell falls strictly into the realm of divination in all its forms. None of the primary affinities actually apply to something so narrowly defined.'
Oh well. Knowledge is power. Slot it in place of Images, and activate it immediately.
A few moments later, Abram's mini-map began to populate. The entire map hazed slightly, and he knew that must have been because of the insects and other vermin moving around him, but a few larger dots also appeared. He rotated his map from a top down to a horizontal view, then tracked one of these until he saw what turned out to be a snake coiling slowly around one of the branches above him. He estimated it to be about four feet long.
Will it save me anything if I rule out everything under twenty pounds? Abram mentally asked.
'Yes. The adjusted spell will only cost eight reserve points.'
Score! Make it so.
'Aye aye, Captain.'
The haze cleared off his map, as did all the larger dots. Abram knew that left him in some danger, as many if not most of the threats in an environment like this would be under twenty pounds. Since none of them topped Lygi on his priority list, he decided to take the risk. He searched around, and soon found what he was looking for.
While his dark sight didn't reveal his trail, he knew he had to have left bloody footprints. Since his mini-map revealed his path in a corridor that he knew measured two hundred forty feet in width, he was able to select an ambush location that faced his temporary hideaway, yet hid him completely from anyone following his path. It was another tree much like the one he'd hidden in, with roots that rose up into what amounted to wooden walls. Wedging himself in place, he mentally settled down to wait.
