You're Reality

Imagine you are a soldier at war.
A war in which neutrality is not an option.

You are fighting a powerful and ruthless enemy. Who's tactics are almost flawless, and their ability to blend in to the landscape makes them virtually unrecognizable until it's too late to escape them.

You have found yourself hopelessly and irretrievably trapped. Lost deep behind enemy lines, you know there will be no rescue party coming for you.

You are alone as you have never been before.

If there is escape to be found at all, you know it will be up to you to navigate your way to safety, but deep down you are certain that escape will be impossible except by death.

You've heard the tales of the those who have been captured, so you know that if you're captured as you inevitably will be, your enemy will not be content with simply killing you. You are sure to live a good long time desperately wishing  for the pleasant escape mere death would afford you.

You're scared, but luckily you're not alone for long, as you find that a much higher ranking officer has come looking for you, to help you.

You are overjoyed at seeing them. When you ask however they confirm your worst fears. As you suspected there will be no rescue to bring you to safety and you will not find your way out of enemy territory.

There is no escape, not in this lifetime. Your days will be spent living among your enemy. But they also assure you they can show you how to not only survive but flourish as much as one could hope to in such hostile territory.

They know the tactics, the weapons, and the traps of the enemy, where they hide, and what they look like even when they're disguised. You could not possibly have hoped for better company given the circumstance and for the first time in a long time you have hope that somehow you might just escape the clutches of the enemy, a slow inevitable death and you may even do well given the circumstances.

Your new companion warns you with great seriousness that this enemy has a mighty power and an unimaginable presence, so great that you could not possibly understand either. They fight as you never have with weapons you've never known. Their numbers are great and they are everywhere.

You must be ever on your guard if you are to survive.

You are told that your enemy's tactics are not foremost that of killing as much as that of leading those that would oppose them into a subtle and slow descent into insanity, so unrecognizable that people rarely realize the death they will willingly walk into until it's too late.

As you begin your survival training you are asked to do things which seem to have no logical application to survival. Naturally, you ask. The response you are given it's that while most of what they will instruct you to do will probably make perfect sense, there will be times that what they instruct you to do will make almost no sense to you but you must trust them if you are to survive.

It is made clear that you will need go against your natural instincts, pay attention to their instruction,  trusting and following them to the letter.

Of course, you agree.

You do what you're told and things go well for a while. For the most part nothing seems too out of the ordinary about what you're instructed to do.

You trust them fully for you have survived for sometime and gradually your confidence in them increases as you watch your own skills improving.

With a slowly increasing frequency though you notice that more and more tasks make no sense to you. That which you once enthusiastically did, now seem somewhat pointless.

Over the course of time you start to notice that whether or not you do them nothing seems to be affected. You question their purpose and point of them. When you ask, there is no definitive reasoning except to emphasize your need to trust.

Eventually though, you don't do them at all, and it doesn't seem to matter because you see no effect as a result.

You still believe that you trust your companion though...you tell yourself this and you tell your companion this as well.

But do you? or has your ease caused you to be complacent?

Do you trust the only one who could truly save you? The one who sought you out?

Really?