I have found that simplicity is often profound however you cannot truely recognize how profound something is until you've gone a long ways into analyzing something only to come back to it's simplest form to find it radically more complicated then you initially understood it. The more you study the more you find yourself moving in a big circle back to the beginning. This particular chapter in my life is about escape and the things you are willing to do when pushed. It is from experiences like these I argue with myself for years to come whether or not I hated it, was thankful for it.. or a combination of both.
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So here I was, deep in the bowels of the earth and bound by chains by the Hobgoblin Gaaju. I should mention this memory is not my initial capture.. This was countless days later or perhaps even longer. Time blurs when you cannot sense the passing of the sun. My deeds in battle struck a deep fear into those that had witnessed me not so much the handful of goblins I had slain and feasted on but the fact wounds would simply not kill me. The idea that something like I could exist would give anyone nightmares.
"Sakrat su oooor.." The hobgoblin growled after me as he watched me. "Gaaju tek ese enma" with an impossibly low baritone his voice boomed even when talking normally.
I responded to his growls with some of my own bearing my perfectly white teeth, my newly regrown head didn't have blood stained teeth yet my gaze never left his as if sensing the subtle nature of what the gaze stood for the first act of establishing dominance over any creature really was subjecting it to your will. I refused to yield and I earned myself a broken jaw as he delivered a devistating punch to my face for refusing to look away, this action naturally forced me to look away but I did not consider myself any less for it and after a moment passed my jaw clicked back into place to the irritation of my captor. We had several of these talks him and I ending each one like this as he tried to subject me under his will. As he stalked away I took the time to recall the various methods were used to this end.
Recalling the first day I woke, I was in this exact same spot,chained to a large stalagmite that pushed up from the ground and it was pretty much in the center of the goblin's cave allowing me to watch all of them and in turn it allowed them all to see me. Gajuu was smart, smarter then even me maybe.. He understood the fear I represented especially if there were more where I came from so he laid me out for everyone to see what happens when someone challenges him, that even though I cannot die, I was still at his mercy. The knowledge that I can regenerate from any wound did not deter him from trying to find exactly how to kill me, he went to great lengths to growl at me every day before we began he would say the same phrase over and over only rarely adding new noises although I had no idea what he was saying, I thought it simply the Hob's version of growling. It started rather tame, by that I mean he started by physically beating me and even with his great strength he quickly realized how tough my skin is and while his blows were still powerful enough to shatter bone and deliver damage a single one of these fists that could probably pulp a goblin was only managing to severly wound me, a wound that didn't last long, my ribs repairing themselves by the time the second blow struck and while each one was painful enough to draw a cry of pain from me it was nothing compared to having been set on fire, that was my new measuring post, those flames that had seared the flesh from my back and cooked my spine, my insides.. repeatedly. Compared to that then these small pains were almost laughable. Like pinching really hard. That day I considered my first win since he had given up after only a few minutes of beating me to instead stand off in the distance watching me with calculating eyes.
Several days passed as he prepared his next attempt, oh he came by each and every day to growl at me and try to stare me down, slapping me around while roaring loudly at nearby goblins but he always left shortly after to deal with something else. This gave me time to watch the goblins, I noticed there were young ones and older ones a majority of them were naked or wore flimsy loincloths and the stench was almost unbearable it was ripe with unwashed bodies and excrement. Handfulls of goblins died from sickness but they repopulated so quickly the loss was negligable at best. Instead what stuck out to me the most was none of them were ever idle for very long, a bigger goblin would always come by and start slapping them around until they began moving. I observed the various groups and noticed a pattern the strongest goblins were the ones bossing the others around they wore the skins of animals and clutched their sticks or in a rare case a bit of metal in the form of armor, weapon or shield. The rest were put to work moving chunks of meat around, sharpening sticks or rocks. More of them would take tree bark and skin it into long strips that were braided into rope to tie sharpened rocks or metal onto their sticks to make primitive weapons, tendons and guts were stripped of some kind of fiber and braided as well to make crude bows or more string. Anyone caught eating the material for weapons was generally beaten to death which happened more often then you might think.
My observations would have to wait though, because I was once again underestimating my foe. A true nemisis is someone mortally opposed to your existence someone that forces you to overcome trials in order to subdue them before they subdue you. You learn quite a bit when galvanized by conflict and Gajuu was a testiment to the sinister nature of intellect when applied with a calculating mind and if I were more attentive I would have noticed it the first time he walked away to watch me. Instead I had grown complacent with his daily beatings and stare downs I had thought I was combatting his attempts.
I was a fool.
When Gajuu arrived for his next attempt I started off by immeadiatly raising my head defiantly. I was awarded with a large Hobgoblin hand grabbing hold of my bald head and pinning it against the rock I was chained against while one of the two stakes plunged into my eye and as I howled in agony my wound healing around the stake, the last thing I saw as the second stake descended was Gaaju's ugly, grinning face. The pain subsided quickly and the only thing keeping me from healing my damaged eyes were the large peices of wood emedded in my face, which I was unable to pull out, leaving me effectivly blind while blows started raining down on me and I could find no discernable pattern. Believe it or not this was actually his one and only act of mercy he spared me, a very brief respite, a sense of normalcy with the beating and the roaring before he stalked off as he usually did.
People fear the unknown.. I am certainly no different in this regard so used to my enhanced senses I don't think Gaaju truely realized the damage he did to me. He knew, of this I am certain, that he could not battle me on a physical front so he decided to wage a war of mentality of which I was vastly outsripped. I had only just realized the potential my eyes afforded me and the ability to pinpoint living creatures to see almost perfectly in the dark and the comfort of recognizing your surroundings and yet here I was stripped of the very thing that gave me a measure of confidence. My senses are quite sharp and with my eyes blinded they almost doubled I could hear things so much more clearly that it startled me I lost track of time but every loud noise, rattle or goblin scream startled me as I was unable to cope with such a radical change so quickly my mental barriers were crashing by the time I heard the tell tale growl of Gaaju.
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"Sakrat su ooor.." He growled and I felt the heat of his breath causing me to flinch as I recalled the experience with the worgs. The reaction clearly pleased him as he laughed rather then roared "Gahhahahhahha! Gaaju tek ese enma bas tu gikn..!" His tone lowering into a hiss as he whispered towards the end.
What should have happened was he started beating me but instead I felt myself being lifted from the stalagmite and the sensation of weightlessness hit me before I realized I was flying through the air my body was not weakened from hanging there. The only pressing concern was the stakes lodged in my eye sockets and the pressing desire for food I had been deined so long. My thoughts of hunger interrupted when I impacted the ground and the loud snapping noises of bones breaking from the fall, I felt a wetness near my feet and despite the agony of my bones reknitting themselves I plunged my face into the water drinking heavily. More laughter from the deep voice that somehow made it down behind me despite what felt like a long drop.
"Cani..?" Gaju growled "Tekn gri..!" His last word was punctuated by thumping a hide covered foot into my gut forcing the air out of my lungs and causing me to heave before I found myself surrounded by water-- unable to swim and weighted by chains I didn't have much else to do but drown. I sunk into some of the nastiest water I had ever smelled or tasted a stagnant pool that suffered the neglect of goblins, I struggled and thrashed for a what felt like forever as my chest burned.. I felt like I had a hot iron thrust into my lungs before I eventually gave in and began sucking water into my lungs that were desperatly searching for air. Convulsing violently from the pain and my muscles twitching I eventually ceased movement and I lost conciousness.
This sweet release was very short lived however as I can only guess moments had passed.. or perhaps quite some time? I had no way of knowing. I was awakened as the water was forced out of my lungs still sputtering only to hear the dissapointed growling of my captor and as he spoke to me, I felt myself being dragged along the ground I was lifted up and tossed again but only a short ways before I felt the heat of the fireplace he had thrown me onto scattering a handfull of goblins, I assume, from the sounds and random touches I felt as I tried to roll away from the flames while screaming in pain. After I had crawled away from the flame I felt the tug of my chain reeling me toward whoever held it's leash, presumably Gaaju, who then grunted before I felt myself being lifted up and deposited uncerimoniously onto the original stalagmite I had only just begun to know.
Time would pass
Each day the wait between beatings would grow longer each session seemed to last forever or perhaps it was quicker.. I was loosing myself quite assuredly. It was the not knowing when it would happen that was killing me because sometimes I could hear him approach only to walk past other times he would walk up to me and roar and beat on me and I was left waiting in the anticipation of a newly visited horror not to speak of the few he had already amused himself with.. Dismembering, skinning, grinding bones, drowning and burning me. I will admit that at this point I was officially broken, but that wasn't enough for Gaaju he had to make his point that his existance was that much more superior to me. His punishments only grew more elaborate as he drove nails into my ears leaving me with only taste, smell and touch meaning I could feel things twice as acutely as before it also meant I wouldn't know when it was coming until I felt him beating me or moving me. I managed two more of these sessions before I went from broken to shattered. The powerful willpower I had built from marching out of the insect territory was left laying in peices inside of me, the meager lessons and instincts the worgs imparted onto me was useless in this case while the confidence my recent hunts and combat with the goblins developed had evaporated. I just wanted the pain to end, I would do anything for it to stop.. To be able to see again, to hunt again, to eat and drink my fill.. I was stripped of everything that it meant to be alive. Isolated in the darkness of my mind with nothing better to do then conetmplate the most recent event, reliving my torture in my sleep.
So when Gaaju approached and I felt his hand on me, I didn't bother to flinch I didn't care anymore, I was empty. He must have sensed it because the beatings started to be scaled back and like any good tyrant he mixed rewards with his punishments, he removed the nails first and for the first time in what felt like forever I could hear again I almost relished the sound of Gaaju's arrival. Again the beatings scaled back until he would only come by to growl at me before one day he pulled out the stakes from my eyes and I could hear him breathing as he waited, I felt the weighted pressure of his gaze despite not being able to see yet.. I knew what he wanted and by the time my eyes were healed he was glaring venomously at me his body language screamed for me to dare to challenge him again so when I was about to raise my head.. I hesitated.
Was it really worth it...?
I was a shattered husk my original personality.. what little I had managed to develop all but gone my conciousness had retreated into the depths of my mind to protect itself and while over the past couple of days of nothing but casual beatings some of my mind had crawled back out, I was still just too vulnerable to his manipulations.
I bowed my head in defeat and learned the next most valueble lesson, one that I cannot express how invaluble it truely is and that those who underestimate it be warned of your own folly.. I had learned humility.
While Gaaju was busy roaring with laughter at his victory over me, he would slap me around and bellow challenges knowing I would keep my head bowed. He had won.. He put in the effort and deserved the credit for it. However for all of his craftiness had he watched just a little longer he would have noted the determined look in my eyes as I kept my head lowered he would have noticed the tiny, smoldering embers of what used to be me not quite extinguished or perhaps he did see it and simply mistook it to be the reflection of one of many goblin firepits in my eyes.
I wanted to escape his clutches and I will admit I was terrified of him. So terrified I knew I could not find another peaceful night knowing he was alive.. His methods were too effective and the resultant torture I had suffered made me willing to do ANYTHING to avoid it ever again, even if it meant crawling through a river of excrement or obeying the orders of a Hobgoblin. My fear of the void of being unable to hear or see transcended my fear of him.
Of course humility was not the only thing I learned, blossoming in my heart lay the core of the heat that showed in my eyes. Hatred. Hate is a powerful word but I can rest assured even all these years later that I hated Gaaju, despite everything he provided me and taught me.
I mentioned it before, that a true nemisis will teach you many things but the only way to end your grudge is over the body of the other and I cannot die. Gaaju didn't realize it yet but he had lost the moment he started, he had won every battle only to be doomed to inevitably loose the war.