Six months of hell passed. Each day I truly believed that it would be my last. But, with broken arms and legs, punctured lungs and torn tendons, I was dropped into the damned healing water and renewed once more.

I would be so close to death but when my skin touched that warm water my eyes would pop open immediately. Adrenaline would rush through me and I could watch scrapes close themselves up. My bones would reattach themselves and spin into their correct positions. My energy, once depleted, would come back to me.

Twelve hours in the pool of healing and I was ready. Ready for another day of agonizing training.

Gauss was relentless in his motives in a way I’d never seen it. Not even at the Refuge had he treated us so roughly. It was like we were animals in a cage being prodded day in and day out. After nearly killing me a few times, he finally took some time to explain what he was doing. He’d said neither of us was ready for what was to come.

When we’d asked him what he meant, he would change the subject quickly. At some point early in the training, I caught him writing in a book behind the window. When I had the courage to confront him about this, he was open in saying that this dusty looking book was his contact with the outside world. Specifically, my Mother.

That’s when Deborah and I learned that we had only a year, which was only two days in the real world before whatever was coming would arrive at Auracle. When asked what it was that was coming, of course, he wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t even talk about the book after the first explanation. And so, all Deborah and I had was our training.

The first two months was what I like to recall being the era of the pillars. Gauss would use the altar to conjure up massive cylindrical thick columns and shove them over on their side. I was then instructed to push them while he and Deborah worked on sword fighting. At first, I thought she’d gotten the better deal. However, when she started being placed in the healing water hours before me with limbs that were barely attached by the thinnest pieces of skin, I knew I was wrong.

The pillars wouldn’t budge. Gauss would then conjure up smaller weights for me to move. Some were to be attached to my back and for me to run with while others were for curling. Weighted pushups became the norm. Pull-ups became like breathing to me. I made sure every time that he looked over to check on me that I was moving and moving hard. Once, he’d caught me resting and he’d crushed my hands beneath his boot.

There was no way to argue with the man. No way to protest. He had both of us here by his own will. Neither of us knew how to leave but him and he was undefeatable. Deborah and I had tried to plan a sneak attack but the man never slept, using the healing pond as his only resource for sleep. He probably knew of our ideas to overtake him, to torture him into showing us the way out.

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Still, even if we did figure a way to defeat him, I doubted there was any amount of torture that could get the answer out of him. He was just that tough. Even after six months of training, the possibility of being able to take him on was just now showing itself.

Question was, did we want to?

After three months, I was able to push the heaviest column Gauss had pulled out of the altar. I could push it all day long and even lift up one end of it. This was when the man of Roth started my spear training which was basically him attacking me nonstop. Well, he did stop at some point, but that was when my body would no longer move on its own.

On the fourth month, the quiet man spoke. He asked me, “Why have you not used your arm of hell?”

I didn’t answer right then. I’d been asking myself this subconsciously the entire time I was in the Stillness Chamber. Thinking back, I am pretty sure it was because I was ashamed of it. It felt like cheating. If I defeated Gauss with it, which I knew I could, then it wouldn’t be me that did it.

It was when Gauss said these words that my mindset changed, “The Almighty has a plan for all living things. That arm you have is a part of his plan. I don’t know why. I don’t have that answer. What I do know is, and this will be hard for you to accept Ira, and that is that your black arm is a gift from the creator.”

A few days after that, Deborah had completed her weight training. Much to my dissatisfaction, she’d been able to move the column in half the time it had taken me. I blamed the fact that I had proved that it was possible.

Gauss then had both of us fighting him and it was our turn to be relentless. Only a day of this training had passed when I was able to defeat him. Deborah had been stabbed through the gut and we had paused to dip her into the healing pond. Something about the way her eyes bulged out of her skull awakened the reality of the epidemic that was going on outside of the Stillness Chamber. If I couldn’t defeat Gauss then how did I expect to save Auracle?

I dropped my spear, hardened my demonic arm, and slapped Gauss so hard that his head spun one hundred and eighty degrees. I was shocked when the healing pond had been enough to heal him of this. I was sure I’d killed him.

That next day, Gauss was floating in the pond, his neck nearly healed. He told me that my training was just about to start.

“What do you mean it’s just about to start? It should be finished! I beat you, Gauss. We should go back to Auracle.”

“No,” he’d said, shaking his head and making a terrible cracking noise.

“What is there cannot be defeated with the skill you poses now.”

“It’s… there already?” I’d asked, but the question went ignored.

“What will be needed, Ira, is the form I saw when you were speaking to that demon. To defeat the enemy… you must become the enemy…”

“No! I can’t do that! That form was an abomination! A slight against the Almighty!” I’d turned away from him, ending the conversation. But Gauss wasn’t finished with his plan.

“And after you have mastered the form of the demon then you must also teach Deborah as you have… transferred some of your power to her… and it has manifested. I can feel it.”