I ran. Screams echoed in my ears, as a Cloaker descended on one of my pursuers.
In the Underdark, fear is plentiful and meaning is rare. I had escaped my masters but carried them inside me: in my dreams, in my breath, in the way I felt lost, without purpose and hope. I followed a tunnel that sloped upward and found a strange place.
Stone worn smooth. Platforms measured to a stride. Nothing wasted. Nothing decorative.
He was there, balanced in stillness. A Giff, vast and scarred, standing on one leg, almost motionless, barely even breathing. When he opened his eyes, I felt… weighted.
“Your body has not yet learned that it is yours,” he said.
“Sit. Breathe until it does.”
I stayed because the tunnels behind me were worse. I stayed because hunger obeyed him. I stayed because he asked for attention, not obedience, even though, looking back, I was eager to provide it then.
He granted me sanctuary. He was brutal to laziness, but patient with my failures. Words arrived only when motion failed.
“A body is a question,” he said, adjusting my stance.
“Every day you answer it poorly. Tomorrow you may answer it less so.”
Only after a week passed a thought occured to me to ask him his name. A concept of adressing him anything other than "Master" came to me suddenly. He was pleased with my inquiry.
"There. You start to unshackle." he nodded.
"Names hold power, for they summon your attention. Titles hold none, for they merely state your status, and seldom are spoken with candor."
"Hexameron." he pointed to his heart.
He believed discipline was a form of honesty. Fatigue stripped lies from the soul. Pain, properly met, revealed proportion. That true strength was never spectacular.
I once asked him why he lived beneath the world.
“The surface rushes to conclusions,” he replied.
“I am interested in premises.”
When my thoughts scattered, he set me to breathing. When my anger rose, he set me to balance. When I asked what freedom was, he placed his hand against his own chest.
“Freedom occurs when motion follows judgment,” he said.
“Slavery occurs when motion follows fear.”
In time, something strange revealed itself. When he trained, there were moments when his shadow moved incorrectly. A second form traced his strikes, larger and clearer, as though his intention had found its own body. I asked him what it was.
He considered before answering.
“When the mind no longer argues with the body,” he said,
“the body speaks twice.”
He never named it. He never praised it. He treated it as a consequence, not an achievement. When it appeared, his focus sharpened. When it faded, his discipline did not.
Time passed. Underground - concepts of night and day are meaningless and futile. At first - it concerned me, but now - I found solace in my own rhythm. My chains became memories rather than instructions. My back straightened without permission. My breath slowed without command. Then, one day, he looked me in the eye once more, just like the first time we met. He weighed me once again and for the first time in all this time - smiled.
"Time to depart. Come." he said.
When we finally found the long ascent - the stone ladder, slick with age - he did not hesitate.
The surface was blinding. Wind felt like an argument. I laughed. He stood still, eyes closed, letting the world strike him first.
“Excellence,” he said one evening, watching the stars,
“is a debt that increases with payment.”
Then, one morning, he stopped.
The road ahead split. One path well-worn. The other barely marked.
He did not explain his choice. He only looked toward the thinner path, as though listening for something.
“My strength is adequate,” he said at last.
“That concerns me.”
I asked where he was going.
“Toward resistance,” he answered.
“Wherever it has learned to hide.”
I asked if this was farewell.
“A separation of motion,” he said.
“Not of influence.”
Then he turned away, massive and deliberate, walking toward a test he could not name, certain only that it existed.
I went the other way, unburdened,
without looking back. As if for the first time in my life I felt True Freedom.
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Art @shamerli
Quenta @ArthurBrokhotsky
Character belongs to SaiOtter
