Akira sat bolt upright. She shivered at the memories still swirling through her mind. Her back felt like it had been flayed open all over again. She wrapped her arms around herself in a effort to stop the trembling. It was useless. No matter how hard she tried, she trembled still. Sleep was rarely an option for her because of these terrors. Doctors had given her tonics to help her sleep but they only trapped her within her terrors.

She shuddered as she remembered the feel of the whip and the cat’o’nine tails. The Mother Superior’s favorite tool of punishment was the cat. And she weilded it with brillant efficiency and terrible brutality. Few who encountered it survived and those that did were horribly disfigured. Akira had been lucky her disfigurement had been limited to only her back. She’d seen others at the school who’d been hit in the face or even worse the chest. While the back and the chest were easy enough to hide, those who’d been hit in the face couldn’t hide it.

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“It was one of the few songs the nuns allowed her to sing on a daily basis,” she heard Askel say through the door.

She sighed in relief and got up. The instant her feet hit the floor and she put her weight on them, searing pain shot through her. Her knees buckled and her vision began to fade. She screamed. Then the world went black.