Aetheral Space

The girl in the castle flicked though the book, eyes scanning each page for only a moment before she moved on to the next. Chapters were sprinted through in mere minutes, and before the hour was out the tome had joined the piles of others she had conquered.

A bird sang outside the castle, a lone rhythmic cry. The girl's eyes flicked up to meet it. Her mouth opened to ask if, perhaps, she could just go outside to see it. Just for a moment.

Father's stick smacked against her hands, hard, as a preemptive reply. Yelping, she moved her hands back onto her lap - looked back towards the next text as it was placed before her, on the desk. Her lessons weren't over, after all. It had been stupid for her to think otherwise.

She risked a glance down towards her hands. The blow left angry red marks, but the girl knew they wouldn't bleed. Father was much too skilled for that, and much too experienced. He wouldn't make such amateurish mistakes.

"Is there a problem?" he said from behind her, voice cold. She could feel his dull green eyes drilling into the back of her head. He wouldn't let his greatest resource out of his sight, after all.

"No, sir," she said quietly, and kept reading.

By the time she was done, day had long since turned to night, and there was no birdsong to be heard.

Noel's eyes flicked open - and she screamed.

The pain was unbearable, a horrible burning agony coming from her arm and her eye. And her - and her vision was wrong, too, she could only see half the world, only half of the dim and dingy tunnel she'd woken up in. As she flailed in pain, she raised her arms up to grasp at any sort of comfort, any relief, any-

One of her arms was gone. Where her left arm had been was only a charred stump. As she blinked, she realized she could only feel the sensation of one of her eyes closing.

Because the left eye wasn't there, either.

Noel's screams intensified as she writhed on the cold metal ground, the drones that had carried her here bobbing up and down in the air unsympathetically. Her cries echoed through the tunnel, and before long it was as though the world was screaming at Noel just as loudly as she was screaming at it.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" said a hollow, metallic voice.

If Noel had been in her right mind, she would have looked around to see the speaker, to make some move to protect herself. But she wasn't in her right mind - she was in the worst pain she'd ever experienced, and she could feel it, she could feel that pain in the shape of her missing arm. It's absence was not a quiet one.

She clenched her teeth shut, but incoherent sounds of agony still leaked through. Steel footsteps came closer from behind her.

Now, finally, she glanced up.

The person looking down at her was not wearing armour. The thing covering their body could not possibly be called armour - it wasn't nearly elegant enough for that. It was like a mass of thin steel spikes, like metal feathers, covering the person's entire body. With each movement, bits of the metal snapped off, only for new spikes to emerge from the surrounding area to replace them. A suit of metal that was constantly destroying and recreating itself.

Between the slightest dark gaps in the 'helmet', two glowing red eyes could be seen - like lights at the end of tunnels.

"You're…" she forced it.

"Yes," the Citizen said, his voice reverberating throughout the metal that covered him. "I asked you a question, however. Are you in pain?"

"I…" she looked down at her burnt stump and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to withstand the pulses of agony coming from it.

The Citizen simply spoke again, calm as ever. "Please answer the question."

She forced the word out. "Yes."

"I see." With a heavy thump, the Citizen dropped something on the floor, right in front of Noel's face. It was some kind of vat, sealed shut, with the gentle sounds of bubbling emanating from it.

Hand shaking, Noel reached out for it, grasped the handle with all her strength.

"I am told it's excruciating to restore a limb with Panacea," the Citizen went on. "But if you have the resolve, it will take. Do you have the resolve?"

Noel reached past her pain and seized hold of her hatred, the fire that burnt her becoming a fire that instead burnt from her. Hatred for the bastard Skipper, hatred for Dragan Hadrien, hate for this whole damn universe - and the darker hatred that existed beneath it.

It wasn't quite resolve, but it would work just as well. Trembling fingers pushed the button on top of the vat, and it slid open, revealing the dark-red bubbling mass within, spores sliding across the liquid surface.

"Good," the Citizen breathed.

Noel plunged her stump into the mass.

"Does it make you happy," Father said, voice droll. "Behaving like such an idiot?"

The girl in the castle hung her head low, not quite daring to meet his eyes. Less than that had inspired harsher punishment in the past. Best to make it safe.

"Well?" he snapped. "Say something."

She shrugged limply - no words would come to her mouth. She already knew that no excuse would be accepted.

Father began to pace, back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. The monologue had begun. They'd performed this song and dance many times, here in the castle's indoor garden.

"I don't think you realize," he said. "What a resource you are. How valuable you are. Let's say you owned an expensive doll, ███████. Let's say it was a doll that had cost you a great deal of time, effort and money to obtain. Would you throw it out of the window on a passing whim? Of course not. You would keep it in your dollhouse, where it belongs, where it is safe, where you can properly enjoy the benefits of your investment."

This was a familiar topic. Father had wanted a Cogitant child for many years - he'd had Cogitant ancestors, but the genes seemed to have skipped many generations before emerging again in the girl in the castle. She was a miracle in Father's eyes, and miracles were not allowed to do as they pleased.

Father cast her a harsh glare, as though she were the greatest idiot who had ever lived. "Sneaking away, ███████? Like a rogue, a common thief? What if one of the other noble families had caught wind? It's bad enough you risked getting yourself hurt, but the sheer determination to humiliate your family - those who love and adore you - that's what truly angers me. The inconsiderate selfishness of it all. It's shameful. And so are you."

Tears dropped to the floor as she kept her head cast down. She knew, she understood that everything he said was designed only to hurt, but knowing the purpose of such words didn't make them any less painful.

Father came to a stop in front of her. "And still nothing to say?" he hissed.

"I'm sorry," the girl in the castle mumbled.

"I didn't catch that," Father lied.

She spoke up, just an octave louder. "I'm sorry."

Father smiled. "I don't believe you."

Noel had thought losing her arm had been the most pain she would ever experience.

She was wrong. Growing it back was much worse.

The Panacea that had latched onto her stump writhed and twisted as it adopted new forms - analyzing the creature it had attached to and determining the needed material. A great club of bone disintegrated back into red fungus, which warped into a bundle of tiny arms like a cat of nine-tails, all of them grasping at empty air. Then, it was bubbling fungus again, slowly forming into a long stretched-out mass of skin and flesh.

The worst part were the nerves. Noel could feel her nerves growing, stretching out, being twisted into new and unnatural forms. It was like losing a new limb every second.

Bile rose up in her throat as she watched it, smaller hands like those of an infant branching out from the limb the Panacea was creating, as though it were practicing to get it right. Stubby fingers grasped blindly at the air.

No, she told herself, stuffing the next scream back down inside her. This was fine. This was nothing. She'd had worse.

She'd had worse.

It was the seventh day of the girl's isolation - she'd been locked in her room for her idiocy - when the furniture started talking to her. It was a lamp first, a deskside lamp with a voice like broken glass.

"Oh, ███████…" it cooed, voice grinding into the girl's ears. "Poor ███████… poor girl… poor, poor, poor… oh no…"

The girl, huddled in the corner to hide from the moving shadows that had haunted her night hours, planted her hands over her ears. She wasn't listening to this nonsense. She refused.

But these weren't voices that needed ears to be heard.

"Perhaps you deserve it," whispered the wooden door, an unmistakable smugness in its tone. "Perhaps, perhaps. Perhaps ███████ should have been smarter sneaking out. Perhaps she should have been smarter. Stupid, stupid."

The carpet rumbled in agreement. "Idiot," it intoned accusingly. "Idiot."

She pressed her hands tighter over her ears - it felt like her head was in a vice, like she'd squeeze too tight and crush her own skull - but then at least the voices would stop. It'd be over.

The lamp cut in as if to redirect her train of thought. "No…" it mumbled. "Poor girl, poor ███████… needs to get out. Room is too small… oh, no…"

The window offered its opinion, looking out at the lush forests of the planet: "Escape again. Simple solution. Easily done. Done before. Do again. Walk away. Never return."

The girl opened her mouth to reply, only to realize that responding to these hallucinations would be foolishness in the extreme. Still, though… to talk to someone… the urge was irresistible.

"I can't just walk away," she whispered, throat dry. "They'll catch me. Father will send them."

The window wasn't deterred. "Easy solution."

"Yes," the door concurred, its words slow and inexorable. "There is an easy solution. You know where they store the knives, don't you, ███████? The solution is so easy, such an easy and simple solution."

Her blood turned cold as she realized what the thoughts going through her mind were. What truly frightened her wasn't the fact that she was thinking of something that would destroy her life forever.

It was that she was truly considering it.

"Wait until night-time," whispered her left hand, still clamped over its corresponding ear. "When everyone's asleep."

"Tucked in their beds," continued her right hand. "Helpless as sheep."

"Bring the knife down and run for the hills."

"It'll be many hours before they discover your kills."

The words oozed out of her mouth, any reluctance only half-formed. "I can't…"

A trace of admonishment entered her left hand's tone. "You can and you will, now please don't delay."

The right hand was just as insistent. "Come the next morning, it'll be your new day."

Slowly, slowly, her eyes travelled up to the lamp on the desk - the first thing that had spoken to her. It had no eyes, but she felt like it was staring at her. It had no mouth, but she felt it was smiling.

And it had no tongue, but yet it spoke.

"Teach him a lesson," it whispered.

Noel let out one final roar of pain as her new arm solidified, finally assuming a form that matched its opposite number.

Still wincing from the aftershock of the experience, she slowly wiggled her fingers - noting in amazement just how easily her new limb responded to the impulses. It really was as if she'd had it all her life. It was a little paler than the original had been, true, but she expected that it would come to match the rest of her body in time.

"You're not finished," said the Citizen from behind her.

Her eye focused once again on the vat of Panacea. Recreating an arm had been torture, so surely, surely, regrowing some of a much smaller size would be easier? Given the part in question, that was no guarantee, but it was all she had to hope for.

Gingerly, she scooped out a lump of Panacea from the vat - and in one swift movement, stuffed it against the burn on her face, right into her ruined socket.

It got to work quickly. Noel gasped in pain as she felt the mass shifting and pressing against the insides of her eye socket, but managed to suppress the screaming this time. She'd looked pathetic enough.

Colours flashed in front of her face - bright and dark and colours humans usually couldn't perceive - as the new growing eye connected to her brain, like a script plugging into a power socket.

For a moment, Noel’s new eye played a trick on her - she thought she saw the figure of a young girl with hollowed-out eyes and a green dress melting into a nearby wall, but the hallucination cleared the moment she blinked.

Arm: check. Eye: check. She'd done it. She lay there for a moment on all fours, still panting. It was bizarre to think that parts of her had, only minutes ago, been something entirely different, but she wouldn't deny the Panacea's efficacy.

"Impressive," said the Citizen, stepping back into view with a heavy clank. "Many people would have gone mad from the pain. Your will is singular."

She looked up at him, half awe-struck, half resentful. There was no doubt this man was the Citizen. But why had the bastard only showed himself now?

Noel opened her mouth to ask, no, to demand an answer - only to be interrupted by the sound of clapping from the darkness.

"That was quite a show," a relaxed, sing-song voice said - and Marie Hazzard stepped out of the shadows.

For a moment, Noel thought that she'd changed her clothes - but she realized a second later that what Marie was wearing had been drenched in dried blood, dying it a dark red.

She didn't seem to be especially bothered by the injuries Noel had seen Skipper inflict on her, presumably because those injuries were gone. She walked up without a care in the world - and as she approached, Noel could see the unconscious figure of Simeon del Dranell slung over her shoulder.

"I had a look around," Marie said chattily as she reached them, as though this were the most normal situation in the world. "But I couldn't find ol' Reyansh. Grabbed this little guy, though."

If the Citizen was surprised at her presence, he didn't show it. The two red dots that were presumably his eyes simply stared unblinking from the darkness. "I see," he said, just as calm. "It's unfortunate, but it seems we must abandon Patel for the time being. No doubt the Fifth Dead pursues me as we speak - we must continue moving."

Noel bit her lip. Leaving Reyansh behind was the best option without a doubt, but she… she didn't like the idea of the Citizen making the decision for her was all. She'd been leading the team while he stayed home and did fuck-all.

Still, though, as the Citizen turned and walked past her - and she had the chance to voice some complaint, to make some grab for power…

...she found she couldn't say anything at all.