"Are you ready....?"

Coming to my senses, I found that I had been returned to the bed I had awoken in a little earlier in the day. I couldn’t tell what time of day it was as the guest room had no windows in it. There was just an artificial light created by light crystals. Flashes of memories from the actions I had done came rushing to me, snapping me out of my mild confusions.

Did I really do that? Did all of that happen? Seeing as I was still in bed and just awoke, maybe it was all a dream. I can’t remember anything that had happened after that. I must have awoken right after that part of the wretched nightmare.

“Are you awake my lady?” A familiar voice asked me.

Looking around in a panic, I tried to find this voice. I saw it belonged to a familiar turquoise maid. The sight of her made my dream feel more and more real, as she had been in it. But maybe I’ve seen her before. Maybe when I was talking to Clauffer she had been there somewhere and had just ended up in my dream. That has to be it!

“Please hurry and get ready my lady, we need to start the experiments today or else Clauffer will get upset.” The maid informed me.

“Oh, right.” I respond, slightly distant.

I quickly got ready, and just like in my dream, she had helped me clean myself. Everything in my dream seemed to be playing out the same way as before. Getting out of the bathroom, I saw my cleaned sundress in the room. I walked over to it in order to examine it for any stains. However, there had been none, which obviously meant it had to have been a dream.

“Would you like some help getting dressed?” She asked me.

“Uh, no, I can do it.” I answered her question, still trying to keep to myself.

From the response I gave, the maid looked slightly sad that I had rejected her offer, however, I was not ready to trust her just yet. Seeing her in that dream forced me to be weary of her. The dejected look she had now made me want to go and comfort her, but I was reluctant to approach.

I quickly dressed myself so as to not cause her more difficulty than I already had. She then began escorting me to the place to do the experiments. This had differed from my dream however, as in my dream we had first met Clauffer before going.

“Aren’t we going to go see Clauffer?” I asked her, calling the noble by his name without adding his title.

“Sir Clauffer is very busy and would prefer if we did the experiments on our own now.”

“Now?” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Uh, nothing.” I responded, stopping her from inquiring further.

While the path had been different, we ended up at the trap door which looked exactly as it did in my dream. From the way the door opened to the limestone used to make up the stairs and walls, it had all been the same. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

“Go in first. I’ll close the door behind us.” The turquoise servant spoke while gesturing me in.

“O-okay.” I agreed with some reluctance.

Going in ahead of her, I followed the long staircase down. There wasn’t a great amount of light, but it was just enough to see. Eventually we finally reached the bottom where the tunnel, the cells, and the stone composition were exactly the same as in my dream. This sight made my heart start to quiver.

This time the maid grabbed a lantern ahead of time, and once again went to grab something from the side. The item she grabbed was a cleaver which I felt as though I recognized, however, she held it right in my view. She further escorted me into the tunnel, right to where we had stopped last time.

The cell had been lit before the time we got there. A familiar man with white hair was tied to a table in the middle of the room, but he had been missing an arm. Maybe the maid had cut off his arm and I just imagined I was the one doing it.

“Go on in.” She told me.

“R-right.” I replied.

I approach the man on the table with white hair. When he made eye contact with me, he started screaming in despair and fear. It was as though he knew that I would be experimenting on him.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME!” He cried out.

“W-why?” I tried to figure out what was happening.

“‘WHY’! WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘WHY’? WHY WOULD I WANT TO SEE YOU?”

“I don’t understand.”

“WHO WOULD WANT TO SEE THE PERSON WHO DID THIS TO THEM!” He looked towards his arm.

“I-I wouldn’t do something like this!” I replied while trying to look at the maid for confirmation.

“Of course you would! After all, you did it just yesterday.” She replied.

Yesterday? But yesterday I met Clauffer didn’t I? The thoughts of that dream I had came rushing back to me. But that was just a dream! It couldn’t have been any more than that.

“Please no more.” The man had begun begging and sobbing.

“Huh, n-no, I-I…” I couldn’t put together the words I had wanted.

“My lady, hurry with the experiment. We have so many more people to experiment on.” The maid whose name was presumably Requa pushed.

“O-oh, right.”

I saw his limp arm on the ground. It had been detached from him with a lack of precision. The cut wasn’t clean, but instead more like someone had ripped a piece of paper with their hands. I reached for the arm so that I could reattach it to the man.

As I touched the limp limb, my heart started beating harder and harder. The realization that this arm had been separated from its owner by me caused me to shiver and feel ill. I persisted through the feeling, picking up the arm and bringing it into the view of the man.

“AAAAAAAAH! MY ARM, MY ARM!” He called in pain.

“H-huh?” I was confused at his sudden increase in volume.

“GIVE IT BACK! IT'S MINE!”

“Wait, I'll reattach it. Please wait.”

“GIVE IT BACK NOW!” His desperation came though.

His yelling and crying caused a wide pit to tear itself open inside of my stomach. I was going to be sick. The walls of the room had started shifting around and it was getting harder and harder to balance myself.

“Didn’t you say we needed to start the experiments today?” I asked Requa, hoping I could still find out if it was a dream.

“Yes. Since you never healed his arm yesterday. we couldn’t say the experiments officially started.” She explained.

In mere moments, my hopes that this was not due to my actions had been snuffed out as though it was a candle that had been lit far too long. My breathing started to speed up as my last piece of hope came shattering in front of me. My stomach had started to feel even worse and the shifting of the room only got faster and faster.

Bringing the arm to the man’s stump, I placed it in the area where it had been removed from. The screaming from the man had not stopped all this time, but the beating of incessant drums in my ears made it impossible for me to hear him. It had felt as though I had run across all of Milarch in the last ten minutes given the speed my heart was going.

“AAAAAAAAH!” He let out a sharp noise, shattering through the protection my ears had.

I pushed the limp arm too deep and strongly into his open wound. It was as though the pain he felt was being shared with me as my arm started hurting intensely, causing me to recoil away from him and dropping the arm on the table. In my recoil I had finally lost my balance and fell backwards to the ground.

I pushed myself backwards with my feet across the ground until I finally hit the wall. Curling up into a ball, bringing my knees to my chin and wrapping my arms around my leg, I rocked back and forth. I can’t do this! I won’t do this! Healing is one thing, but to see the type of pain my presence alone is causing him was too much.

I kept rocking in the ball trying to figure a way out of this. I need to run! I need to get away! There’s nothing I can do. I’m not some prodigy. I can’t save someone when I’ve injured them in the way that I did. The people were right, I’m a monster!

“Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster. Monster.“ I whispered to myself while staying in my ball.

“My lady, we don’t have time for this.” Requa finally cut in.

“I can’t do this Requa.” I pleaded for her to understand.

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

“You must.”

“I can’t!”

“Then he will die.”

“What?”

“We can easily let a spy die. With one arm, what good will he be?”

“W-wait, you can’t.”

“We certainly can.”

“P-please don’t.”

“There is a way to stop me.”

“H-how?”

“Heal him.”

“I can’t.”

“Then there’s really nothing we can do, can we?” She took the cleaver and started getting closer to the man.

“W-what are you--?”

“Disposing of the trash.” She replied, cutting me off and bringing the cleaver to his neck.

“DON’T KILL ME! I’LL TALK! PLEASE DON’T!” The man begged for his life.

“It’s far too late to start speaking. Anything you say now we don’t really care about.” She coolly answered his pleas as she lined up the cleaver and swung it above her.

“WAIT!” I called to her.

“Yes my lady?” She halted her swing.

“I’ll do it.” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“I’ll do it, damn it!”

“Oh, well that’s good.” She replied, bringing the cleaver back to her side and going back to her original position.

I stepped over to the man on the table as he began to calm down a little. I picked up his arm with my right hand, and aimed my left at his open stump. I have to do this for him or he will die. I really hope this works.

I gave him a minor shock in multiple areas around the severed section. Some caused him to shake and others caused him to not react at all. Taking note of the areas where he reacted, I did the same thing to the limb, trying to see in which areas the shock caused some sort of reaction.

This has to work. I placed the arm where it had been, trying to keep a loose pressure to the area so as not to cause him more pain. I began healing the opening by attaching the two parts together. I imagined what I believed to be nerves linking together, thin white wires like the ends of a cut string coming together and fitting themselves inside the arm. After fifteen minutes of sheer concentration, it looked like it was finally finished.

“Unstrap his arm and let him test it out.” Requa commanded.

I followed her orders and unstrapped only his arm from the table.

“Try to move it.” She ordered the man while pointing the cleaver at him.

“I can move it again! My arm is really moving again!” He exclaimed at the sight.

Relief came across my face at how well it had worked. I wiped the sweat from my forehead, momentarily blocking my eyes. When my arm had dropped back to my side, my relief had turned into horror at the sight in front of me.

As he tried to bend his elbow, it went in the direction it wasn’t supposed to. At the sight and the pain, the man started screaming again as though it looked like his arm was planning to tear itself off. His screams echoed loudly throughout the whole dungeon, causing me to cover my ears and duck for cover as it pierced me.

While I was blocking out the sound, Requa walked past me and towards the man. She silently approached him and with a quick motion that only took seconds, slit his throat, stopping his screams.

“Why did you do that?” I asked fearfully.

“He was screaming far too loud and bothering you.” She responded.

“I didn’t say we should kill him.”

“My lady, with his arm the way it was, he wouldn’t have been able to be sold at all.”

“But Clauffer wanted all his prisoners alive!”

“He gave me special permission to kill the ones which had no chance of fetching a large price.” She calmly refuted what I had said.

Seeing her so relaxed after everything had happened caused the pit in my stomach to finally catch up to me. I ran out of the cell where everything was happening. As I got out of the cell, I hunched over and began to throw up due to everything that had happened.

However, there was one more factor I could contribute to this. Requa had a wide smile when she killed him. The smile looked too pure for what she was doing.

She came out to me to pat me on the back and help me feel better while throwing up.

“Are you ready to go to the next person?” She whispered into my ear as she rubbed my back.