IDWTBTHQ Chapter 80 - Full Metal Jacket

“C-can’t we… go back t-to the… the meditation exercises?” Marcus asked in a small voice while simultaneously gasping for air.

“Absolutely not!” Hoggs replied adamantly. “And if you have enough energy left to ask that, then you have enough energy to keep going! Give me another run! Go!”

The Vex Queen groaned and rolled his eyes, but a crackling sound and a few sparks coming from a wand that the telemancer was holding in his hands was enough to make him run away without any further complaint.

“Keep your knees higher!” Hoggs shouted. “And go faster! I want to find your breaking point, and we’re never gonna get there if you keep this snail pace!”

Marcus didn’t reply, mostly because he couldn’t spare the breath to do so, but in his mind he silently cursed at the old man, at the electrical wand he was holding and most importantly at himself for agreeing to do this training to begin with. But sadly, by now it was too late to quit, so he had to soldier on and hope that it would end soon.

Quite ironically, it hadn’t been too bad at the start. He had met Hoggs in front of the inn about an hour after lunch, wearing a sleeveless shirt and shorts (actually he strongly suspected that the shorts were just a pair of bloomers, but they worked and besides he didn’t really care about being in his underwear anyway) and the telemancer had him do a series of light exercises, mostly jogging, crunches, push ups and stretching. And despite his lack of exercise Marcus had managed to perform all these gymnastics without breaking a sweat, showing a surprising amount of stamina.

Sadly, that was when things took a turn for the worse.

As it turned out, Hoggs had given him those light exercises mostly to see how much punishment he could take, and after the Vex Queen had breezed through them the telemancer had decided to turn the difficulty up by several orders of magnitude. The usually meek, polite and almost grandfatherly old man had turned into something akin to a marine drill instructor and had started giving Marcus increasingly difficult tasks, shouting at him whenever he slowed down even for a fraction of a second. He even brought out that fiendish little wand that he used to prod the Vex Queen with miniature lighting bolts whenever he was too tired to listen to his verbal orders.

But the absolute worst thing about this situation was that Marcus knew that he could quit anytime he wanted to —after all, it wasn’t as if Hoggs had any authority over him— but couldn’t bring himself to do so no matter how much he wanted to. His own stubborn pride kept him going even while the rest of his being screamed at him to stop. These exercises were now a personal challenge, something that he had to overcome not as an individual and not as the Hive Queen, and this realization prevented him from admitting defeat, no matter how tired he felt. He simply ignored the pain and the fatigue, gritted his teeth and soldiered on.

That said, stubbornness alone couldn’t keep him going for long after he hit his physical limits, and he had already reached them a while ago. His movements became increasingly clumsy as he started to wobble around like a drunkard, until he finally lost his footing and tripped over his own legs. He fell like a sack of potatoes, hitting the ground with a painful-sounding thud, and he remained there, with no more energy left to even attempt to get up. He couldn’t even hear Hoggs’s shouting, as the sound of his heart thumped in his ears like a drum, and he was well past the point of caring about being tased by the wand. Heck, at this point, he’d gladly take the electric chair over having to get up.

He laid face down on the ground, with a pool of sweat spreading under him and turning the dirt of the road into mud, and focused exclusively on breathing, excluding the rest of the world from his consciousness.

He remained like that for a good few minutes, and when he finally opened his eyes again he found Hoggs crouched near him with a worried expression on his face.

“Well, seems like we finally found your breaking point, sir Marcus.” The old man said. “I must say that it took much longer than I’d thought.  You’re certainly  a lot tougher than you look.”

There was no response. Marcus simply kept gasping for air, too tired even to speak. The telemancer grimaced as his expression turned remorseful.

“For what’s worth, I’m sorry to have put you through all this.” He said in an apologetic tone. “But reaching your physical limits is the first step of an aura warrior’s training. The apprentices need to be exhausted in order to be able to focus exclusively on their own being.” He made a little smile. “I’d say that we’ve reached that point, didn’t we? Anyway, you should find the next phase of the training a bit more pleasant, since all you’ll have to do is meditate while you’re resting. And doing so while taking a bath would also help, so I had young Felix prepare one for you while we were here.”He paused for a moment, and then added: “However, if you prefer to rest for now and take a bath later, you’re free to do so.”

The thought of letting his body rest in a pool of warm water was enough to almost make Marcus cry of relief, so he forced himself to speak, though what came out of his mouth was more a raspy whisper than anything else.

“I… I’ll t-take the… bath.”

“Good.” The old man nodded. “In that case, I’ll tell Felix to bring you a change of clothes, and maybe some snacks.” He stopped for a moment, looking at the prone figure of the Vex Queen, and asked: “By the way, can you walk or do you need me to take you there?”

“N-no, d-don’t worry.” The Vex Queen replied weakly. “I-I’ll r-rest a m-moment here a-and g-get there myself.”

Hoggs looked at him for a moment, and then nodded.

“Suit yourself.” He said. “I’ll go to tell Felix to prepare your stuff then. But call me if you need anything, ok?”

“F-fine.”

The old man walked away, leaving Marcus laid down on the road. The Vex Queen remained there a few more minutes, during which he started breathing somewhat normally again, and would have likely stayed like this a little longer, but the increasingly chilly air, which felt icy cold against his sweaty and mostly naked body, was enough to spur him into action. Since he was too tired to get up on his own, he crawled towards the wall of a house and used the leverage to get back on his feet. Then, despite trembling like a twig from head to tail, he stumbled away in the direction of the pool.

The pool was inside a new structure, which Marcus had built just two months prior with Felix’s help. On the outside it wasn’t that impressive, just a four meters tall mold-wax dome with a single entrance that looked pretty much like an igloo, but the inside was a whole other story. A small staircase descended a couple of meters under the ground and led to a single circular room. This room was occupied almost entirely by a huge pool made out of some sort of glazed ceramic, which was actually simple clay that Felix’s fire magic had baked into this shiny, porcelain-like substance. Near the pool there was a rudimentary tap, which was connected directly to the canals near the Hive through a series of mold-wax pipes, which —as Marcus had recently discovered— somehow purified the water, absorbing all organic sediment and leaving the water crystal clear. A soft, relaxing blue light filled the room, coming from the walls and the roof themselves —another recently discovered property of the mold-wax, a variant of which was bioluminescent. The whole place felt like some sort of luxury resort, and had been Marcus’s favourite refuge ever since he had built it.

When the Vex Queen entered the dome, he immediately felt the difference in temperature from the outside, and a quick look revealed that the pool was entirely filled with hot, steaming water. Meanwhile, on a stool near the wall there were also some clean clothes, a piece of soap and even a glass of water and a plate with some beef jerky on it. Marcus smiled at Felix’s and Hoggs’s thoughtfulness, and quickly discarded his dirty clothes before cautiously entering the pool.

The water was very hot but not to the point of burning, and also had a pleasantly sparkling feel to it, something which always happened after Felix had used his power to warm up a liquid. The magic would also keep whatever had been heated warm for a few hours, something which was extremely convenient for someone who liked to take long baths like Marcus. The Vex Queen smiled even more, and then he finally let his tired naked body fall into the pool. An incredibly pleasurable sensation flushed through his body as the water surrounded him.

“Aaaaaah!” He thought with immense satisfaction, feeling his dirt and fatigue being washed away. “That’s the stuff! These hot baths are probably the best thing that happened to me ever since I’ve been born in this world!”

He focused exclusively on the pleasure and the relief that the bath gave him, excluding absolutely everything else and emptying his mind of everything that wasn’t the present moment. His worries about the future, his past regrets, his troubles and joys all disappeared as his consciousness drifted away and he got lost inside a warm, cozy limbo, floating on the water like a dead body.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, as he had completely lost track of time. It could have been a minute, an hour, a day, a year… he had no idea, and he didn’t really care. Somehow he felt that something was missing, but he was too tired and relaxed to try and pin down what it was. Only after another while he suddenly realized that he didn’t feel the presence of the drones in his mind.

“What!?!” Marcus cried in surprise and immediately tried to get up, but he slipped and fell to the bottom of the pool. He quickly resurfaced, spitting water and coughing. He tried to get his thoughts together, and as he did so the presence of his Hive immediately reappeared inside of his mind, as if it had never left.

However, this accident had left the Vex Queen puzzled and confused, and he sat on the border of the pool, trying to figure out what had happened. As he did so, he also took a couple of strips of beef jerky and started chewing them while he was thinking.

“What just happened?” He wondered. “Did the mental link really disappear for a moment or did I imagine it?”

He pondered about that for a good minute and a theory started to form inside of his mind.

“Maybe that’s the result of the training I just did.” He mused. “I mean, Hoggs said it himself, didn’t he? That the training was meant to make me focus on my own being while excluding everything else. Maybe that’s what happened. But if that’s the case, what effects did that have on the Hive? Did my drones feel something while I was disconnected from them?”

He paused for a second, mentally checking the memories of his drones for any blackout or something like that. However he found nothing. For his drones, the mental link with him had never faltered.

“Uh. That’s peculiar.” He tried to analyze the information he possessed, and then came up with a theory. “Maybe, what was disconnected was the conscious part of my brain, but my subconscious was still directing the Hive as it always does, like when I’m asleep.” He tried to think about all the possible ramifications of this process, and then smiled. “Well, that’s possible, I guess. But the only way to be sure is to use the scientific method and try to replicate this phenomenon.” His smile widened. “Which means I have to stay here a bit longer, and keep bathing as long as it takes. Well, sign me up then!”

He slid right back in the pool, and started floating once again, trying his best to relax and focus only on his being. Quite ironically it was much more difficult to do so now that he was consciously trying to. He had to struggle to exclude idle thoughts from bothering him, and the link with his drones made this even harder. However he kept on trying and eventually the warm embrace of the water, coupled with his physical exhaustion, started to affect him, slowly purging him of his conscious thoughts.

In about half an hour, his mind started to drift away once again, leaving him in a small world made of warm water and soft blue light.