From slavery to servitude 7: A gauge of feats

The days have become more bearable for George. The pain that ached and wracked across his body gradually dulled with each meal presented to the man, either by the mistress herself or sitting by the counter. His stomach no longer had any enmity towards a man who could barely afford scraps

Doing more didn't cost him an overwhelming migraine anymore. Exerting more could no more burn his nerves to twitching pain and suffering. His step in his new duties, new life, they eat less out of him. His disposition slowly molts in his walk, his shifting, and strafing. 'See if you can be quicker, my servant. I may ask for more of your services', she mentioned one of the mornings in her absences.

"More? What more could there be?" He rummages the thoughts in his mind while sweeping and swiping at the kitchen. The place was surprisingly easy to keep clean, despite its size. Most of the rooms were. Elven folks have better dexterity than humans, the sort that applies to everything beyond combat. Cleaning up after someone isn't so hard when the use of their stencils is more efficient than he expected.

Times that his daring inclination pushed him just a bit further, he would wait behind the corner, eyes hushed from the very edge of the frame. Convinced of his concealment, George watched her cooking, still creeping on the edge...

It was like watching artisanal culinary. No movement is wasted in her sleigh of hands, hovering over the uncooked, still relatively cold meal yet to be chopped, whipped, and garnished. A stroke of grandeur visited her hands as she weaved them and the tools clutched in their fingers. No lick of cream spilled, no bit of meat dropped, nothing escaped her silky white eyes, however small they were.

If he didn't know any better, creeping behind the corner on his back in irradiated darkness, George would be thinking about how much of a show she was offering. To him? No, surely not. Definitively not. Why would a slaver demonstrate themselves in broad gestures when they could swing the lash instead? Not that she did, even once. And yet, the dark door bolted in the basement where she made a mockery of the wooden mannequins...

...had a wicked aura whenever he treaded near it. Dangerous, vicious whispers tended to his ear, offering him the trauma of metal and leather mixed into one. Marriages into many shapes, each as devious as the last one.

Parts of him drifted along, tempted to ponder what lies behind. All while blurred out to the image of the chocolate elf who long stopped in her culinary steps, hands crossed behind the counter of the kitchen, steaming plates ready and waiting.

A smirk besmirches her lips as she stares down the darkened corner. With the light of the coming day, at last, shining in higher lands, George wasn't so much securely hidden anymore...not that he truly was prior.

"Menial, you do not need to hide like a rat", she speaks, the smirk, elevated to a boastful toothless grin, one keeping her bronze lips seal still. Something about this smile seemed...content, as it was more pronounced. Like catching someone red-handed in a jar of goods.

George, however, jolted, so blurred in his thoughts that he didn't notice her staring back for a while. Looking without seeing. Said jolting is more accentuated, deeper. His heart skips a beat, one that it couldn't afford before in the famine he suffered for years. It was enamoring...and frightening.

He steps out of the halls, his chariot behind him. "No, no, you can leave that bulky thing behind." His eyebrow rises for a moment, unsure. Her grin persists, seemingly gaining the tiniest of notch within. Regardless, he does, stepping out himself to a gesturing 'come hitter'.

"Good, good. You're a bit more responsive than the first weeks here...come, come, don't be shy, now." Cautiously walking forward, the elven mistress takes one step back, revealing a duality within plates. A side mapped with a brown sauce that welcomes chiseled and simmered meat within, lying inert in its many cuts and pieces. No ounce of uncooked spots would be found within or without.

The other side is steaming rice, coated in a snow-white purity, plentiful, and dying to be dyed in brown. The pure mountain of hot rice only existed to be swarmed in its brown companion, making a new between the two.

"Good, good..." The mistress watches intently as George deliberately takes a seat tempted to dig in. He knows she has something in mind to spill out, trying to take on an attentive stance. Eyes close, she tilts her head in his dish's direction, speaking all the while "...colors finally are appearing on that unsightly skin of yours. The sloppy work of your previous masters is distasteful, to say the least. Worry not, menial, I've made sure that they would see life under a new, bent point of view..."

Previous masters? The foremen. George remembers them. Surely she must be talking of them...

~~~
...the people who enjoyed an easy turnout. Their voices and shouts, enough work for them, worth more than what George could put out in two lifetimes, much more than any of his previous colleagues could, even together. Often, they ordered more production. Often, they ordered longer shifts. No matter how broken the lackeys were in spirits or body, they conceded. George was among them.

No compensation for anyone, save for the higher-ups. No matter how much they despaired for it...
~~~

Whatever could she mean by this, he wonders. A 'new, bent point of view'? Surely she didn't--

"Anyhow..." Her voice snaps George's thoughts away, locking his attention to the mistress "...seeing that you're a bit more comfortable with your duties, at least more than when you came along, I've decided to output more on your shoulders. No need to worry about them, they are...well, I am tempted to say lesser, but, with the poor handling the 'kretins' did...that might not be the case..."

"I...what would they be, mistress?" His eating is much slower, crawled to a stop.

The boastful smile she shined in stopped, leaving a more bashful simper behind. One dissimilar to George. Painting a different face. One that someone of his stature would never have seen in his lifetime. Much less from someone of a higher...

"Simple...or it might be complicated. We'll know when we get there. But first, eat up. You'll need the strength."
---
"Here?" They descended stairs down to the side of the manor. A revelation no longer shrouded itself as the dark elf stroke the steps ever downward, waving her hand in a catalyst of a goblet between her fingers. Only slightly, barely agitating the liquid within.

It resonates with the walls facing the stairs to the basement. A basement now doubling as a second courtyard. The manor revealed its spot amidst the depth of nowhere. Surrounded by thousands of trees down in the distance, at the top of a cliff and hiding its bowels underneath, it uncloaks an illusion of foul liquid, prompted into disassembly by the agitation of her mimic chalice.

The walls become but poison lost of their illusionary solidity, now splashing the ground for a second before it coalesces into a spiraling tide. Its target becomes the goblet, to which its unfathomable amount crams into the diminutive drinking cup.

George cannot help but take several steps back at the sheer amount of poison bubbling its way to her catalyst. Locked in awe at how it undulates steadily, occasionally glimmering at the floor dries.

The other chalices standing on hip height pillars, do they convey the same prowess? Surely they must with how thick and slick with the vapors she just entombed in this similar cup.

His eyes, however, remain transfixed on the woman who lured him here, in this field whose floor he once swept. Not a moment, he took to notice the extending floor path to the abyss of the forest where the bottom is littered with endless foliage of trees. Not the alluring display of a more formless vapor swelling the marble floor in elven designs, glowing dimly. Not even the shade of the weightless power that surrounds the extremities of the extended pathway, looking to make falling hazards a banished concept.

None of this locked his eyes as much as the woman making the machination a reality. From the long, curly hair that briefly hums with particles, splendidly dangling down to her shoulders, to the posture she takes as the elven woman turns, the cup, gone.

Once more, the strange, foreign feelings he had at that week-long table 'discussion'. A flight of feathers licking the edges of his stomach. His heart, withholding a beat, maybe two. His face, consumed by burning blood grinding against the vessels of his pores.

He forces them down, lost in what to do with them and the design behind their presence. Just in time as the mistress finally turned back, hands bound in leather resting behind her back. A quaint smile adorns her lips as they move, their glistening appeal catching still the eyes of the captive George "Now...I need you  to run a few tests..."

"Hum, sure, I can. But, what sort?"

"Look around you, menial." Her hands broadcast out to the surroundings. The place he tended to and cleaned week after week was caught in a material change. The marble floor was no longer alone by itself, instead, quivering under the weight of equipment. Targets, dummies, metal, anything that could constitute exercising interaction.

His eyes wince in uncertainty. This all seemed to be a set up for her morning wake up, tearing through dummies and the sort, acrobatics and sprints. Yet, she looked none willing to go through it again. Not since yesterday.

"I want to know just how poor in shape you are from that obnoxious place you were cooped up in. See how much they neglected your physical form. Humans in factory places like this tend to be left incompetent shape. The subpar ones, at least."

George takes a second gander around. The place was set like someone's trials to every bit of their physical capabilities. Strength. Dexterity. Agility. Endurance. Anything and everything one would rely on in combat. It certainly looked like she orientated the stage for this orientation.

George sees the weapons displayed, some, planted at dummies that were otherwise pristine, ripe to tear into. Mostly daggers and swords. Though, looking at the targets, projectiles were etched into them as well, seemingly by intent. The ones hanging by the ceiling, at least.

"So, first, we are going to start with something simple..." She says, gesturing to the extension, empty, save for what looked like obstacles to leap, slide under, or otherwise. Endurance, then. Or agility. George wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much, only that she was going to gauge him. But...for what?