Light From Above

My paw pads were burnt to shit, my fur was near totally burned off, I could feel my eyes shriveling in their sockets, and I knew that if I lost my grip on the near molten stone my cracked and burned claws propelled me up I would burn to death before I even hit the ground.

Why is this situation so damnably familiar?

The wind dying down had done me no favours, ratcheting up the ambient heat from “slow boil” to “volcanic ash” in a matter of moments. My fire resistance had gone up thrice more, each in time with my health ticking down. There is nothing quite like the feeling of watching your life tick away in real time and knowing exactly how much you have left.

My only saving grace in all this shit was that for as much as the intense heat of the stone burned my paws, it also made it that much easier to get a grip and throw myself further. Exposed flesh on glowing hot stone is a pain like no other, as my skinless paws were so keen to remind me, but at this point pain and fear were such constant companions I could drown them out with single minded focus on dragging myself further away from the heat.

Pain Resistance +1

Fire Resistance +1

HP -1

I grit my teeth hard enough to feel the ache even through the burning pain. While the decrease in pain and damage was appreciated, I don’t exactly have the health to fight a war of attrition against hot air.

I took shallow, rapid breaths as I dragged myself through the twisting, half molten tunnel; the air was hot enough that a deep breath would only burn my lungs and leave me in a painful coughing fit that may well knock me loose. Thankfully, years of experience inhaling smoke had taught me how to deal with breathing in harmful, burning gas without accidentally killing myself.

Who’da thought three decades of smoking would teach useful survival skills?

Now, I rather doubt being high on anything would be very helpful right now, but I couldn’t help wishing this burning gas would do something other than just hurt like hell.

HP -1

Killing me is not what I meant, damn it!

Pain Resistance +1

The slight, not-quite numbness that spread over my many wounds and made the pain just that much easier to deal with at that notification was welcome; though, the fact that I was still very much aware I was no less injured for the lessening pain was a less welcome thought. I wonder if a high enough pain resistance would make it so I wouldn’t even notice myself die? Would I continue functioning right up until I couldn’t anymore? Would I power through even a fatal wound because I simply didn’t realise it should have killed me? Would I slip into darkness and not even know why?

Faint, watery light on my face swept away my fatalistic thoughts. I hadn’t noticed as distracted as I was by focusing on anything but the feeling of my organs boiling inside me, but the scalding hot air had slowly come to be replaced by scalding hot steam as I ascended the gas bored tunnel.

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My grit teeth transferred into a smile and I renewed my efforts to climb out of here, ignoring the way my limbs burned entirely unrelated to the burning of my skin; exhaustion is something I can acknowledge when I have a choice besides “keep moving or die”.

As I climbed higher and higher, the air and stone became cooler and cooler; some mixture of time, distance, and the water in the air served to lower the lethal temperature to merely uncomfortable. This led to an entirely new problem however; the walls of this tunnel, besides being nearly molten hot, were also incredibly smooth. It almost looked like some grey-ish black glass surrounding me instead of mere stone; evidently the gas had polished what it didn’t melt, leaving a surface nigh impossible to cling to.

While the stone lower down was hot enough to be highly malleable, cooling it down removed this singular positive of the intense heat. Now, I’d trade burning to death for almost anything, but climbing up wet glass is about as close to impossible as anything gets; my claws may have easily dug into semi-molten stone, but the solid stuff had far less give and my burned paws could find no traction on this near-frictionless surface.

Progress by no means came to a halt, increased difficulty does not equate to impossibility here. While this stone felt so much harder than that outside Kurzebald’s lab, it was not impenetrable. Leaden limbs drove chipped claws into smooth stone with a rhythm that began to beat itself into my very brain in time with the throbbing of my muscles.

I began softening the stone with my teeth for a time before fatigue made the effort too great. The funny thing about adrenaline is that it can leave you when you begin to think you’re safe; leaving you exhausted just when you need it most. Subconsciously I associated the end of this tunnel with being safe from the flames and the thought that safety was nearby had caused my body to begin stepping down from freak out survival mode and into recovery mode.

Recovery, unfortunately, tends to involve sleep; something I’ve not done for what feels like days now (unconsciousness doesn’t count). All the exhaustion I’d buried beneath mountains of fear and rage had begun to shine through, its grey light leeching energy from my beleaguered body and making every ache and pain once hidden by the more pressing issue of my skin melting off burrow their way to the surface.

Every movement, every effort to drag myself just that little bit further, felt like I was carrying a thousand pounds; it felt as if my nearly limp body was made of uranium rather than mere flesh and bone and my eyes felt like heavy shutters slowly sliding closed. My joints did not want to bend, my leaden legs did not want to drag me forth, my claws did not want to remain clenched and bear my weight, my eyes did not want to stay open; but I knew that to succumb was to die.

Endurance +1

Pain Resistance +1

I was never a man of terribly great willpower, never one to resist temptation for long; but even I can stir myself into a terrible furor of defiance when necessary. I felt my despair, my exhaustion, my misery, and I met them with hate, with loathing, with disgust. I grit my teeth, threw my aching eyes wide, and began to hurl mental abuse at my flagging limbs and aching flesh.

How fucking dare my eyes slide closed without my consent?! How dare my arms shake and spasm as I clawed my way up!? How fucking dare my blood leak from my broken skin?! How dare my vision swim and mind slow?! How motherfucking dare my feeble flesh even so much as consider giving into something so fucking plebian as fatigue!? FUCK YOU, FAILING BIOLOGY! I’LL DRAG MYSELF OUT OF THIS HELL IF I HAVE TO LEAVE MY GODDAMN BONES BEHIND!

Skill Gained: Hate Engine

I didn’t exactly have the time to examine my stats and see what that actually did, nor was I in the proper mental space to be doing much deep thinking; all I knew or cared was that a wholly different burning was spreading through me as energy conjured up from naught but hate and condemnation drove me forth with greater fervor than ever before. I felt as if flames pounded through my veins with every beat of my roaring heart, my vision narrowed to a tunnel that saw only the faint light above me despite how wide my bloodshot eyes were; I couldn’t feel my body at all save for the burning in my muscle and the pounding wardrum of my heart.

I rocketed up the tunnel faster than ever before, not even feeling as my paws broke themselves upon the stones and my claws chipped. I didn’t even notice the tears streaming down my face as eyes that hadn’t blinked since the blaze began locked on the light with unerring focus. I didn’t care for the thin trail of blood left in my wake, didn’t feel burns and wounds reopening in my desperate rush to reach what I had no room to doubt was safety.

HP -1

Even my eyes, clouded by tears and tunneled to a needle point, could see the end in sight where watery light danced across the glassen lip of this slick passage. The flames of rage driving me forth were stoked even higher at the sight of victory so near, increasing my already beyond reckless pace even further.

And of course, as was the nature of such things, I slipped up within scant feet of escape; my strength, fueled by something as mercurial as emotion, abandoned me when I needed it most. My grip, slick with my own blood and the condensing steam that even now drifted further down, broke along with the claws on my right forepaw.

I had not even the strength to scream as I went tumbling into the void, watching the trail of blood and tears that followed after me catch the faint light from above before I plunged into darkness.