Pain.

Pain was a constant in life. It crept up anywhere it wasn't wanted. Joint pain, back pain, any kind of pain. It followed people around chronically in some instances.

For me, my life wasn't full of pain. There was the occasional scrape and bump here and there, but generally, my life was pain free.

The worst was the rare sprains or bruises from when I did something particularly stupid. Sometimes while alcohol was involved. Alright, mainly when alcohol was involved. It was hard to justify some of the injuries I received otherwise.

There were a few times that stuck out in my memory that were particularly painful. Breaking my arm when I was a kid, a car accident when I was a teenager, a migraine flu combo that lasted a week in college.

After the tutorial arrived, pain was a dull constant while fighting. Wounds built here and there that now crisscrossed my body in white lines. Scars that healed from one injury or another.

A claw swipe here and a bite mark there. One of the biggest that marred my form was the mandibles that took chunks out of my side, leaving a patch of discolored skin from where it healed over.

What I couldn't see was the 3-inch vertical line that ran parallel to my spine. The thin line told a tale of a grievous wound. One that I didn't like thinking about. It reminded me of who was lost that day.

Electrical burns that covered some of my arms were difficult to think about for the same reason.

Each had their own story and by this point, I couldn't remember them all.

Learning to deal with the pain was still something I worked on. Every warrior had to learn that pain was inevitable but that was easier said than done. I had long rid myself of my urge to flinch in the face of it though. Coming a long way from the man who first entered the tutorial who flinched at the horn of a level 1 Rabbit.

Looking back on that moment made me want to laugh, if not for the mind numbing scrapping pain from ice and wind ripping into me. The me of the past had been so afraid of pain he hid behind a shield for the whole wave and did it again for the wave after.

Turning off that flinching reflex came with time and experience. I wouldn't say I was perfect at it, there was always room to grow, but I was happy with how far I had come. The scars covering me were the proof of that. Proof of my effort to become a better warrior.

Now, I got to watch as every line and discoloration was scrubbed from my body with vigorous enthusiasm. The skin broke down first before the ice and wind scraped deeper, breaking further inside.

It was excruciating.

It was also kind of sad. To keep my thoughts off the mind-numbing pain, I focused on the scars that were disappearing before my eyes. The stories that they told, the tale of survival that my family had embarked on. Been forced on.

It was possible to get rid of them while evolving, Austin had discovered that, and a particularly strong healer could do the same but I never felt the need. I wanted to keep them.

It was a reminder of what we had accomplished. What I had accomplished. It was the trophies I had of hard-won battles and victories.

Maybe that was why I liked the trophies hung in our keep.

We kept skins, claws, skulls, or anything else worthwhile of the foes we had defeated. They lined the keep, telling our story of survival and triumph. Some thought it was barbaric, Diana had been a particularly loud advocator of that stance, but most were in agreeance.

Tracy certainly hated it. Her keep didn't have any of the trophies that ours did. I had asked her about it once and she looked appalled, like the mere idea sickened her.

Something told me deer heads weren't a decoration in her house from before.

They weren't in mine either, but that was for a different reason. Deer heads weren't the same. Hunting a deer with a bow or rifle wasn't the same as battling a bear or lion in melee.

Half of the reason to keep the trophy was for the story of the battle, at least I thought so. It was a physical object to point at on the wall and say I defeated that in combat.

Maybe it was a bit vain, but I liked it, and there were so few things like that after the world ended.

The marks of battle that covered my form were all gone now. Only the deepest had hints that remained. Scrubbed away by a thousand little pellets of ice and wind.

A Wind that cut deeper every second.

No amount of effort or will was going to get me through this. This wasn't something you could grit your teeth and stoically march through.

It was hell. In every sense of the word. Tears rolled down my cheeks before those too were ground down before they had the chance to fall.

It took everything in me not to pass out. My job wasn't done and I couldn't let the technique fizzle out.

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Keeping the flow of energy in line with what the technique detailed was easy at first, but got increasingly hard as the pain continued. My head wasn't as clear, and my mind wasn't as sharp.

Slips started to occur that were hard to rectify. Lapses in control that the pain caused started to break me down. Every lapse would add time to the agony I would have to endure, taking extra time to redo that part of the body over again until I got it right.

It was like that until the first healing spell hit me from the outside. The soothing energies offered a brief respite from the pain, only to plunge me back into the depths not long after.

While working out the plan, one of the healers had a skill that could monitor my bodily functions from the outside. A mark that they put on me before the process started. Heart rate, oxygen levels, and whatnot. I wasn't sure exactly what they saw but I imagined the monitors at a hospital.

Every time it dipped toward critical, someone would use a healing spell from the outside. I had no doubt Abigail was out there fussing about, pacing back and forth waiting to launch such a spell.

The thought of her worrying made me smile before I controlled that urge. The pain was the only thing that stopped me.

Opening my mouth was out of the question. Even imagining one of the hail pellets hitting the back of my throat was enough of a threat to keep it clamped iron-tight.

No matter how many times I asked her not to worry, it was pointless. It wasn't in her nature. I had resigned myself to that years ago. That didn't keep the humor out of it though.

"Gah!" A groan escaped me.

Oh, that was rough.

The skin on my legs ripped off, causing the muscle underneath to be exposed to the full body treatment. Blood splattered out of the exposed muscle and not a second later, soothing energies worked their way through me yet again.

The healing was a balm.

It registered in my head that every time I was healed the process would take that much longer, but that wasn't something I worried myself with right now. Without the soothing energies, I would be little more than a heap of flesh.

I was barely holding it together as it was and that was with the healing every so often.

The pain wasn't like anything I had experienced before.

Pain in battle was different than this. That was endured to complete the action of fighting. There was something for me to push through. An objective to reach. A goal to work toward while grunting and grimacing.

This didn't have anything to march toward or swing my hammer at. This was the slow and brutal restructuring of my body that I could do nothing but stand and endure.

Only left to hope and pray it would end soon. Time was a figment of my imagination now. Only pain and suffering to keep me company.

Standing against the grate as I was, I could feel my spirit work through my body, invigorating it, making it stay together as best it could.

As long as I was standing, I could make it through this.

Eyes closed and fists clenched, I endured.

Blood flowed liberally out of me after every blade of wind, nip of cold, and grind of ice. My body fought to reconstitute itself while simultaneously trying to shiver from the cold.

It didn't know whether to regrow skin here or protrude goosebumps there. My teeth grunted and grit one second only to start clattering the next.

My mind didn't know whether to focus on the pain or the cold.

The constant pain was the only thing that I had to keep me company during my isolation. But even after a while, that too became only a dull reminder. The constant pain was reduced to a muffled ache after what felt like a day.

Spikes of pain reminded me it was still there and it would never truly go away, but the same level of pain got easier to tolerate the longer it went on. Like building up a resistance.

It wasn't truly building up a resistance, but portions of my body completing the process and resisting the damage better than before.

What I was left with was the chilling cold. The windchill that pierced through me that never went away.

It was funny. This was the feeling that I had been chasing when I upgraded my law and now I was experiencing it in excruciating detail.

The cold that settled into your core and seemed like it would never go away. A windchill so brutal your body starts to turn blue from frostbite.

My extremities never got a chance to harden from frostbite before being ground down by the wind.

Throughout it all, I'm still standing was the only thing I could think.

It all came back to the reason I was doing this. I needed the best evolution possible and for that to happen, I needed to do everything I could.

That included enduring asinine amounts of pain.

I endured so my family wouldn't have to. When I evolved, I would be strong enough to protect them through what would no doubt be a rocky time in history.

There was little doubt that there would be fighting in every corner of the world. Everyone would want to carve out a piece of the pie. Stake their claim on the world.

I couldn't fault others for it, for I would do the same.

That thought, above all others, was what kept me going. Imagining the city I would build. A bastion that would defend my family. An impenetrable fortress that would stand for generations to come.

Even after I was long gone, something I did would stand to defend my family. It was hard not to think about.

The impregnable fortress through history flitted through my head, Constantinople and Castel Sant’Angelo. Le Mont-Saint-Michel and Edinburgh Castle. Along with other European medieval castles and Asian fortress cities.

Even castles from fantasy made their appearance. Minas Tirith and Helms Deep from Lord of the Rings along with Storms End and the Vale from Game of Thrones.

Finding the perfect place would be difficult but I had ideas for that. Austin's profession would help tremendously.

Pain spiked and threatened to overtake my mind and I struggled to push it away. I didn't want to focus on the pain, I wanted to focus on what the pain would bring me.

Like my very own castle.

What person didn't want a castle?

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Distracting myself with my fantasies was the only thing I could do to not pass out or go insane.

I had been in this Chamber for what felt like days, yet it still continued ripping away at me. Part of me was scared that after I was out, a slight breeze would bring back memories.

After this was done, I never wanted to think about it again.

There was crying and sobbing, yelling and cursing, pleading to gods I didn't even know. Nothing worked to ease the pain.

I didn't even know what day it was.

There was a chime of something in the background but that didn't stop the assault on my body. It continued endlessly.

I didn't have a chance to program an off switch from the inside. There was only a kill switch on the outside so the people out there could turn it off if something went wrong.

The booklet that detailed the technique gave estimations of how long it would take depending on a list of different factors. My fortitude and endurance, how intense the winds would be, if there were breaks involved, things like that.

It took me a minute to connect the sound of the chime with the realization that the process was complete.

My mind was so out of it that it didn't instantly connect the two.

There was only one glaring problem. The Chamber was still on.

Without anything left to fight for, a reason to stay standing, I let the black take me.

Anywhere to get away from the pain.