Post by Solomon Moon on Oct 31, 2019 17:27:38 GMT -5
Solomon
Sol was tired. It was hardly worth saying, because at the core of his being, Sol was tired all the time. He hardly slept anymore, and when he did, the nightmares ensured it wasn't for long. His daily regimen of medications, which could have outdone a pharmacy in their quantity, included several prescription strength painkillers that sapped his stamina, and drove a wedge between his conscious mind and his body. Lastly, but by no means final, because Sol could have easily filled a day listing all the reasons why he felt run down and exhausted, his body hurt all the time. Part of this latter was on account of the previously mentioned points, neither of which were strong strategies for managing chronic pain, but also because the human body didn't particularly enjoy having foreign bodies surgically implanted into its tissues. If Sol's medicine cabinet could be compared to a modest pharmacy, then the implants that had been installed to reinforce his body to tolerate the strains of his prosthesis could have been compare to an especially disorganized warehouse that split its storage space evenly between the patronage of a military surplus and a butcher's shop. And as Sol huddled beneath the makeshift shelter he'd erected for the night, he was becoming aware that his implants didn't particularly like the cold.
It seemed that having highly conductive materials bolted onto his skeleton and bulging like metastasized cancers beneath his flesh got somewhat uncomfortable when the outside temperature dropped below a certain threshold. The general ache of his implants, a constant irritant that Sol barely noticed any more, had settled into his bones as the temperature of his environment fell, and now it was like his entire right side was one big tooth ache. It was getting to the point that it would be maddening, were Sol not almost certain that he'd been at least half mad for a good long while by now. There was only so much that his usual prescription of opiates could do for it, and to try and take any more would dull his senses to a dangerous degree. They were dull enough as it was, and a one eyed man couldn't afford to take any chances when it came to his ability to perceive threats, especially when deep behind enemy lines, in territory that was near as hostile as he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot of hostility in his twenty some years.
Lighting a fire might have made some sort of difference, but seeing as it wasn't raining like it had during the last exam, thank the dead for small miracles, Sol couldn't justify giving away his position to any passing Grimm just to take the edge off the agony of his own treacherous flesh. He'd been so careful to conceal his campsite that he couldn't tolerate the idea of undoing all his work just for the sake of something as pointless as comfort. Comfort was for the weak. You didn't sharpen a sword with a pillow after all, and the thermometer that poked out of his mouth was reporting his core temperature to only be slightly hypothermic, not enough to give Sol any genuine concern. So he couldn't even argue to himself that the heat of a fire was strictly necessary.
His "Camp", which was a term for it that even Sol would have admitted was generous, even given the great effort he'd gone to in its establishment, was little better than a shallow depression in the earth, with a collection of branches and and leaves heaped up on top of a pair of forked frond that served as studs. The "Roof" of the "Shelter", slanted down to ground level on one side, while the other leaned against a steep formation of mossy stone that Sol had picked out for the purpose.
Sol didn't have a great many positive qualities, unless a black reputation for a thunderous temper and a penchant for brutality could be counted, but he knew how to pick a fortified position. You got pretty good at that sort of thing when you'd spent nearly half your life trusting your own existence to what ground you chose to fight on after all. He'd put his camp at the foot of a steep outcropping of slimy granite, which rose up several dozen feet in a nearly vertical surface crusted thickly with the pungent moss that populated so much of the forest, permitted to proliferate without threat of the sun's rays, beneath the unbroken gloom of the Haven Forest's gargantuan slouching acacia trees. This had the twin benefits of providing a landmark that was easy to trace his steps back to when he went out to forage, and more importantly limiting potential avenues of attack to three directions instead of four. Any threat approaching parallel to the rock-face would be vulnerable to covering fire, and could be driven into the deep cover of the trees while Sol made his escape, while any threat approaching from the trees would be unable to see his crude little shelter until they were nearly on top of it, hopefully giving Sol an opportunity to notice the approach and make appropriate preparations. Any threat trying to make it's way down the sheer face of the rocks, to descend upon him from above would have to account for the slick vertical surface with precious few hand holds, and even if it were possible to avoid an almost certainly fatal fall to the ground below, it would be nearly impossible to do so stealthily. Any foe making such an ill advised attempt would find it much more difficult to maintain their precarious position once Sol rose from his shelter and started throwing fire and explosive force up the wall to meet his guest.
Anyone else might have been proud of the achievement of contriving such a strongly defensible position in the savage wilds of Haven Forest, but to Sol it was just the bare minimum. The strength of his position from a strategic standpoint brought him no closer to actually completing his mission, and he had to admit he'd made very little progress in that direction. One might even say he'd made none at all. Sol had thought that assigning him to the Roses in the last exam was a thinly veiled attempt at sabotage, but now recognized just how much easier that assignment would have been for him. Sol wasn't good for much, but he was a fucking savant when it came to violence, and the collateral damage he caused when fighting in earnest was more than most could inflict on purpose, at least as far as scale went, and had his luck been just a bit better during the previous exam it would have been a paltry task to confirm a few kills and run escort duty for one of the dandelions. His failure to have achieved that goal in the previous attempt was a testament to it not being any simple task, but it would have at least played to his grim excuses for virtues, but now his objectives were so far outside his skill set that he wasn't even sure how to begin.
He'd gone through a few stages of grief at the revelation of his assignment, steadily growing deeper alongside his understanding of the magnitude of the task set before him. It had started with amusement, at the incompetence of the faculty which had so thoroughly mischaracterized him during the previous exam, to the degree of handing him what should have been an easy win when they thought they were being so fucking clever about it. This had given way to frustration as Sol realized just how ill-prepared he was for the new task he'd been given, and just how useless what few skills he had were when it came to interacting with others. This had turned predictably into anger, as he struggled and failed to understand what possible point the ability to drag personal details out of strangers was when it came to a profession that revolved primarily around one's martial proficiency. This stage of grief had lasted the longest, and had only recently given way to the most recent one.
Sol was hopeless. He had no doubt that he was going to fail this exam too, and without even making as much progress towards his objective as he had the last time he failed. He was actively debating whether he would even return to Haven, or whether he'd seek out some sort of fate fitting to a crippled failure somewhere in the depths of Haven Forest. He was debating, with more sincerity that he could admit, which of the faculty he would make pay for this humiliation, and just how much pain he planned to inflict before he tore out their still beating heart and crushed it in front of them. Probably that bitch Shadecloak, the worthless faunus cunt. How smug would that mongrel slut be with her throat cut? Fucking flea infested halfbreed, fuck her, the insolent whore. Sol would give her something to smirk about when he carved her mouth open from ear to ear and ripped the whole tongue right out of her inhuman head.
Sol found himself needing to control his breathing, left hand squeezed into a fist so tight that the knuckles were creaking. This wasn't helping. Fantasizing about taking his wrath out on a women he had never actually even spoken directly to was not productive, let alone healthy for his mental well-being, and it wasn't going to help him meet his mission objective.
It was still light out, there was at least an hour or so before it became too dark to navigate by. He had time to do another perimeter check of his territory. He could brood just as easily on the move as he could sulking in his hovel.
Sol plucked the thermometer from his lips, noted the reading, holding steady at about half a degree less than it had been when he started setting up the camp, and then shoved it back into the small first aid kit on his hip. He tore a strip of dried meat from the package in his lapel pocket, and chewed it grudgingly as he slipped out into the trees, moving as low and as quietly as he could on his steel toed combat boots.
It seemed that having highly conductive materials bolted onto his skeleton and bulging like metastasized cancers beneath his flesh got somewhat uncomfortable when the outside temperature dropped below a certain threshold. The general ache of his implants, a constant irritant that Sol barely noticed any more, had settled into his bones as the temperature of his environment fell, and now it was like his entire right side was one big tooth ache. It was getting to the point that it would be maddening, were Sol not almost certain that he'd been at least half mad for a good long while by now. There was only so much that his usual prescription of opiates could do for it, and to try and take any more would dull his senses to a dangerous degree. They were dull enough as it was, and a one eyed man couldn't afford to take any chances when it came to his ability to perceive threats, especially when deep behind enemy lines, in territory that was near as hostile as he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot of hostility in his twenty some years.
Lighting a fire might have made some sort of difference, but seeing as it wasn't raining like it had during the last exam, thank the dead for small miracles, Sol couldn't justify giving away his position to any passing Grimm just to take the edge off the agony of his own treacherous flesh. He'd been so careful to conceal his campsite that he couldn't tolerate the idea of undoing all his work just for the sake of something as pointless as comfort. Comfort was for the weak. You didn't sharpen a sword with a pillow after all, and the thermometer that poked out of his mouth was reporting his core temperature to only be slightly hypothermic, not enough to give Sol any genuine concern. So he couldn't even argue to himself that the heat of a fire was strictly necessary.
His "Camp", which was a term for it that even Sol would have admitted was generous, even given the great effort he'd gone to in its establishment, was little better than a shallow depression in the earth, with a collection of branches and and leaves heaped up on top of a pair of forked frond that served as studs. The "Roof" of the "Shelter", slanted down to ground level on one side, while the other leaned against a steep formation of mossy stone that Sol had picked out for the purpose.
Sol didn't have a great many positive qualities, unless a black reputation for a thunderous temper and a penchant for brutality could be counted, but he knew how to pick a fortified position. You got pretty good at that sort of thing when you'd spent nearly half your life trusting your own existence to what ground you chose to fight on after all. He'd put his camp at the foot of a steep outcropping of slimy granite, which rose up several dozen feet in a nearly vertical surface crusted thickly with the pungent moss that populated so much of the forest, permitted to proliferate without threat of the sun's rays, beneath the unbroken gloom of the Haven Forest's gargantuan slouching acacia trees. This had the twin benefits of providing a landmark that was easy to trace his steps back to when he went out to forage, and more importantly limiting potential avenues of attack to three directions instead of four. Any threat approaching parallel to the rock-face would be vulnerable to covering fire, and could be driven into the deep cover of the trees while Sol made his escape, while any threat approaching from the trees would be unable to see his crude little shelter until they were nearly on top of it, hopefully giving Sol an opportunity to notice the approach and make appropriate preparations. Any threat trying to make it's way down the sheer face of the rocks, to descend upon him from above would have to account for the slick vertical surface with precious few hand holds, and even if it were possible to avoid an almost certainly fatal fall to the ground below, it would be nearly impossible to do so stealthily. Any foe making such an ill advised attempt would find it much more difficult to maintain their precarious position once Sol rose from his shelter and started throwing fire and explosive force up the wall to meet his guest.
Anyone else might have been proud of the achievement of contriving such a strongly defensible position in the savage wilds of Haven Forest, but to Sol it was just the bare minimum. The strength of his position from a strategic standpoint brought him no closer to actually completing his mission, and he had to admit he'd made very little progress in that direction. One might even say he'd made none at all. Sol had thought that assigning him to the Roses in the last exam was a thinly veiled attempt at sabotage, but now recognized just how much easier that assignment would have been for him. Sol wasn't good for much, but he was a fucking savant when it came to violence, and the collateral damage he caused when fighting in earnest was more than most could inflict on purpose, at least as far as scale went, and had his luck been just a bit better during the previous exam it would have been a paltry task to confirm a few kills and run escort duty for one of the dandelions. His failure to have achieved that goal in the previous attempt was a testament to it not being any simple task, but it would have at least played to his grim excuses for virtues, but now his objectives were so far outside his skill set that he wasn't even sure how to begin.
He'd gone through a few stages of grief at the revelation of his assignment, steadily growing deeper alongside his understanding of the magnitude of the task set before him. It had started with amusement, at the incompetence of the faculty which had so thoroughly mischaracterized him during the previous exam, to the degree of handing him what should have been an easy win when they thought they were being so fucking clever about it. This had given way to frustration as Sol realized just how ill-prepared he was for the new task he'd been given, and just how useless what few skills he had were when it came to interacting with others. This had turned predictably into anger, as he struggled and failed to understand what possible point the ability to drag personal details out of strangers was when it came to a profession that revolved primarily around one's martial proficiency. This stage of grief had lasted the longest, and had only recently given way to the most recent one.
Sol was hopeless. He had no doubt that he was going to fail this exam too, and without even making as much progress towards his objective as he had the last time he failed. He was actively debating whether he would even return to Haven, or whether he'd seek out some sort of fate fitting to a crippled failure somewhere in the depths of Haven Forest. He was debating, with more sincerity that he could admit, which of the faculty he would make pay for this humiliation, and just how much pain he planned to inflict before he tore out their still beating heart and crushed it in front of them. Probably that bitch Shadecloak, the worthless faunus cunt. How smug would that mongrel slut be with her throat cut? Fucking flea infested halfbreed, fuck her, the insolent whore. Sol would give her something to smirk about when he carved her mouth open from ear to ear and ripped the whole tongue right out of her inhuman head.
Sol found himself needing to control his breathing, left hand squeezed into a fist so tight that the knuckles were creaking. This wasn't helping. Fantasizing about taking his wrath out on a women he had never actually even spoken directly to was not productive, let alone healthy for his mental well-being, and it wasn't going to help him meet his mission objective.
It was still light out, there was at least an hour or so before it became too dark to navigate by. He had time to do another perimeter check of his territory. He could brood just as easily on the move as he could sulking in his hovel.
Sol plucked the thermometer from his lips, noted the reading, holding steady at about half a degree less than it had been when he started setting up the camp, and then shoved it back into the small first aid kit on his hip. He tore a strip of dried meat from the package in his lapel pocket, and chewed it grudgingly as he slipped out into the trees, moving as low and as quietly as he could on his steel toed combat boots.
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Velvet of WW