No, I won’t do it, not now. I need to give things time to settle. A part of my brain just wants to verbally vomit all over this guy, any and all words that I have just learnt. That was one of the problems with learning something like this. His brain had gotten enough of the information gained under control that he could function but other than that, he was still reeling with the new knowledge. It needed an out, and his mouth seemed like a convenient pathway.

So without any restriction to his speech, the Slime opened his mouth, and words poured out in all the many languages he had just learned. There was no rhyme or reason behind the words, no coherent sentences or meaningful phrases or saying. Everything just fought to get out. In the audio safety of the jar he was in, he could just flap his mouth without restrictions or worries. Haemish, of course, had concluded his brief discussion with Rion, and he had flown off to ride more comfortably without craning his neck. So it was not just Haemish and his awkward captive.

Aarav could see that the man was inquisitive as to what they had caught. He was watching Aarav move his mouth closely, trying to understand what was happening in that jar. Then an idea flashed in Aarav’s head. What if he acted like he was suffocating? It would have been a fast way to get out of the jar. Eating through the bottom of it was working, but not very fast. Maybe this would be a quicker way? Then he could make his great escape! What an idiot! I should have done that immediately! Now they are probably not going to believe that I can’t breathe or that I need air now.

Still, anything was worth trying once. What was the worst that could happen? That set of the chain reaction of possible outcomes from his previous life. Death, being buried alive, waterboarding, being held over a naked flame until your skin got a little crispy, the cannibals like it that way. No! Aarav, get it together! That was there, and then, this is here and now. This is a different life. This is a life that you do not need to worry about mobsters coming to kill you every five seconds. These people might kill you when you get to the ultimate destination, but they also might not. There is also an excellent chance to get away from them if you just keep it together! No spiralling, Aarav, no spiralling! Damn!

To Aarav’s surprise, the pep-talk did the job. Bringing up his status screen, he could not help but stare at The Way Forward is…Forward. Was this some internal machination of the Skill, like it was working on him but in a more subtle way than before? Just a month ago, he would not have been giving himself pep talks, and before coming to this world, any pep-talk would not have worked. It wouldn’t have mattered whether it was from himself or anyone else. That information he knew for a fact. This is a pretty dangerous Skill. It is also phenomenal. In the wrong hands, this could destroy me. Lucky this Skill is working on me and wielded by me. In some ways, it still felt like it could be a sword that he was repeatedly plunging into his chest. Or could it be a scalpel that he was using to carve out the rotten parts to keep the healthy details healthy? It was complex and hard to fully wrap his mind around what the implications could be. I guess I can always try to excise it later if I need to. What worried him more was if this knife was being held by another hand in tandem with his own. What if the other conductor decided to take their turn playing god with his psyche or life? Was there an entity controlling the system with Stats and Skills, and Talents? Were they playing god from on high or in bottomless pits?

Aarav shuddered, the verbal tirade halting abruptly for a moment as he stared at nothing, trying to fully process what this could mean for him. Was it even something worth worrying about? He couldn’t do anything about it. Not without understanding more about this world, this system and almost immediately his current captivity and captors.

Aarav resumed the verbal vomit as he attempted to prevent an aneurism from overload. Haemish had stopped talking to Rion while Aarav had been preoccupied and now gone back to focusing on the way ahead. If he was planning to do some fake choking, now was as good a time as any. Aarav stopped speaking words. The worse of the brain dump had passed, and he began to take breaths. Using his mouth and making sure it was facing Haemish. He took breaths in and out, huffing and making a good show of struggling to get air into non-existent lungs. He heaved and shuddered, pulling harder on air that he neither needed nor had present in the jar. The pulls were calculated to look like they were getting harder and harder with each breath.

It took fully three minutes for the idiot man to even see that Aarav was struggling. If he had actually needed air, the stupid oaf would have been the death of him. Begrudgingly Aarav thought, I can’t fault the man, really. He was staring at me for a full two minutes when he first put me in the jar. I can only assume he was checking me out, not checking me out, but you know, that would have been weird. I was just too flustered to remember to pretend to be suffocating, and to his credit, once he saw that Aarav was struggling, he opened the jar post-haste. What he had not expected was for Aarav to manifest wings in a second and try to flap away!

But the Slime should have known better. With a chuckle, the man just reached out and grabbed Aarav with a single hand. He didn’t even seem to have to stretch or struggle! Also, why is someone that fat able to move that fast! That’s totally unfair! The escape attempt had obviously failed. This was ridiculously annoying. No time to yell, cry out or psyche him out either, a sigh escaped his lips, and he deflated. I am going to have to see how this plays out, aren’t I? After a brief and heated debate on the topic, Aarav decided now was still not the best time to show off his linguistic Skills. It was best to hold off and see what was happening. They hadn’t tried to hurt him yet, so that was great. They just kept stopping him from doing his own thing; not so great.

“Master Haemish, would you like it hand with that?” the scrawny idiot yelled to the man holding Aarav very much against his will.

“No, Taler, that’s quite alright! I am managing. I just need to get him another jar that he can breathe! There, that should hold him!”

“I have one here with me, sir!” Aarav sighed; the fourth idiot who happened to be the second largest of the group spoke up.

“Marteen, Taler, thank you, but I have everything handled.” To Aarav’s disappointment, he seemed to be correct. No matter what he did, how he flipped and flopped, he appeared to be at a stalemate with this man’s hand again. He produced a tin with air holes and a lot more space in it. It was not clear, though, so apart from the holes at the top, it was going to be dark.

Haemish began to slow, excruciatingly slowly, lower the Slime into the tin. Aarav knew that this guy was toying with him. I can’t be put in there, in the dark? It might be a little bigger but not by much, and the fact that it is dark makes it worse than the clear one. Its claustrophobia and then darkness on top of it makes the claustrophobia ten times worse. Now his mind was warring between not revealing that he could speak the language and telling this fat man with the quick reflexes that he absolutely could not go into that enclosed dark space. He would die from the fear of it. His brain would explode, and there would be goo all over the inside of that lovely, dark, terrifyingly small tin.

“Stop! Stop! Don’t. I can’t go in there. Stop it! STOP!” Haemish was looking around; did he think the air was talking to him? He had spoken in the man’s native Darfan, the only language he knew from this world. “Haemish, PLEASE! Stop putting me in the round metal thing!” He wasn’t sure the exact word for tin, and he wasn’t sure if it translated perfectly. In any case, the ruse worked, and by ruse, Aarav meant talking to the man.

That was when he finally turned looked down at his hand, shoving a glob into a tin can. ”What!!! You can speak!?” he looked like he was about to faint…