The Black Pawn • The first book of the Black Academy Series

15. Pain

AZALEA SAT IN HER CHAIR. Every muscle in her body ached in varying degrees of pain. The Selection stretched over three months. It was October now. By the end of November, the Selection would be over. And hopefully, she and her friends would be on their first ever assignments as assassins during Christmas.

To see if the students could withstand any amount of pain. And more importantly to see if they could keep their mouths shut in case an inevitable future, where humans decided to experiment on supernaturals, happened. They had tortured the students.

Each student had to pass 4 different forms of torture. Electricity. Fire. Water. And the dark. Everyone had experienced these four, but in different techniques. She'd had the pleasure of being electrocuted, having her skin burnt off, and being put in a tank of ice cold and dark water.

The last one had been a mix of the dark and water.

Even her skin hurt.

All students had been given a general remedy to heal them up. But she still couldn't function properly. She turned her head to the left. Elizabeth was slipping in and out of sleep. Neither could Elizabeth.

Elizabeth cleared her throat, she'd screamed her head off for at least 30 minutes straight, "This was much worse than the wolves could have been."

"At least the wolves know the concept of mercy." Azalea mumbled, she shifted the pillow underneath her head, "I'm sure that I saw Avaria and Faith cackling in the background when I was being electrocuted."

"I knew it! I thought I saw the both of them being best friends!" Elizabeth exclaimed, groaning a second later. She grabbed her side, "But — at least we'll be moving onto the fifth stage."

"Yeah, the fifth stage here we come."

Elizabeth whooped loudly, but then hissed in pain when her side started to prick.

"You okay — ?"

"What are you dumbasses doing?" Anna thundered upon entering the room. Elizabeth had been hacking coughs while Azalea lay there watching Elizabeth worriedly, "Did I not tell you 2 to move around?"

"I didn't move around, she was just being loud." Azalea said, "Anyways — why can you move around? Weren't you tortured too?"

"I have a better pain tolerance, and I took a pain remedy before the stage." Anna explained as she moved towards the table in the room. They were sitting in one of the empty rooms in the Academy, "I healed while being tortured. I'm good as new."

Azalea gasped, "Why didn't you give us the remedies?"

Elizabeth was not there to back Azalea up. She had passed out.

Anna rolled her eyes, she turned away from the table and pointed towards Elizabeth, "The remedy affects the brain, it dulls your senses. You could barely handle the smell of the sanitizers used last year, who knows what would've happened when you took this remedy?"

"And what about Elizabeth?"

"I just didn't ask her." Anna shrugged. She started mixing the ingredients for the recovery remedy, "She wouldn't have been able to overcome the smell of the liquid, so I thought better than to try to convince her."

•

Thump! He had hit her in the legs with the staff. She was on the floor. She could almost hear her shins cursing. Her hair was a mess, it was everywhere. She looked up at him through her hair. He was getting more and more annoying with every passing second.