'I wish I could tell you this isn't personal, and to a degree, it's not. We've never met, and I don't know you. You've yet to do me wrong, so why should this be personal? It shouldn't be.'

Before me sits a man. A boy really, his face, though bloodied and bruised, emits all the vitality one would expect from a budding youth. With his arms and legs fastened to his chair, the boy desperately struggles against his bindings. Grunting, and crying, and squirming, and shaking, he does everything in his depleted power to break free from the ropes securing his limbs in place.

The gentle hiss of the gaslit lamps mounted on the four stone walls of the tailor's dungeon draws my mind away from the works of my hands, relieving a portion of the spreading sensation bubbling up from the depths of my stomach.

Since the black market, three days have passed. Sequestered in Goat's lab, I worked endlessly on perfecting a potion to alter my appearance with one goal in mind, the infiltration of the Blackshire stronghold. Not to be outdone by my diligence, the tailor went to work himself. His task, to capture the young noble of the Mohan Clan.

I should feel some remorse for the boy; no, I do feel something akin to that; it's buried, but it's there. Is it possible to be entirely removed from the suffering I've caused? I'm not Father. The boy has done me no harm. Under normal circumstances, we would never even meet.

Here we are face to face, and his life will never be the same. In the space of mere hours, he moved from being a respected master of a mid-tier Clan destined to marry a young beauty with a background even more distinguished than his own to being a captive, my captive, destined for pain, pain, more pain, then death.

It isn't fair; I know that much. This isn't how his life should have turned out, and it isn't right for me to do this. I can justify my actions a million ways, but that's all they'd be; justifications. It is wrong; I know it's wrong. And yet...

'I said this shouldn't be personal, but it is. For me, this is very personal. I'd go so far as to call this cathartic.' Inhaling deeply, I take a step towards the quivering youth. Responding to my movement, the boy squirms in his chair, in an attempt it would seem to create distance between us.

'Please, I haven't done anything to you. I don't even know who you are.' The boy sobs.

'I'm not proud of it. There's a part of me that wishes that I could rise above my admittedly petty disdain for everyone like you, but… I suppose I'm only human.' With metal pliers in my grip, I crouch down until I'm at eye level with the boy. Opening the maw of the tool, I place one of his fingers between the pincer's serrated teeth. The boy goes stiff; he raises his head and looks into my eyes, tears mingling with blood as they run freely down his cheeks.

'Please, no more. No more.' His words fall upon uncaring ears. I tighten my grip on the handle of the pliers, crushing the boy's fingers and pouring a further coat of red down onto the stone tiled floor beneath.

The boy screams. To his left and his right, backwards and forwards, he thrashes in his chair. Standing to my full height, I hold the metal posts of the boy's seat, preventing its collapse.

'How about it, are you ready to talk?' Crouching once more, I stare into the boy's eyes. Fear, anger, pain, so much pain, but also resistance. He's cracked, but not broken. Frayed, but yet to unravel.

Blood drips down from his decimated fingers, plopping into the small pools beneath the boy's bound hands.

'I have gold. I can give you all of my gold. Let me go. Let me go, and it's yours. I won't say a word; I swear it. Just let me go.' My laughter echoes through the dungeon. Walking behind the shivering boy, I grip his long, golden hair in my fist and pull his head backwards until eye contact is re-established. I feel his breath on my skin. His every fractured exhalation breathes the fragrance of terror into my nostrils.

I've almost forgotten this feeling, the feeling of absolute control over another. I can only imagine what's going through the boy's head. I can only imagine how my smile looks through his eyes.

What do you see when you look at me?

What will I see in my dreams tonight?

Will you be there?

Will you haunt me like the others?

Will I carry you with me?

Is that my punishment? Surely I'll be punished. If justice is not dead, I have to be punished, but are you to be the means of karma's retribution?

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"Justice is the will of the strong over the weak. My son, I am strong; I am the only justice you'll ever need."

Link by link, Father's words shatter the abyssal chains around my heart. I feel their hold over me break. No, they don't break, they transform. They harden because they freeze. They still constrain me; I'm still constrained but not by guilt.

I refocus my sight on the boy. I allow his gaze to be reflected by my own. I allow him to peer into the abyss; I peer back into him.

'I already have your gold. It's not gold that I want. I want you to talk; failing in that, I'll settle with your suffering.'

With a hand still pulling his head backwards, I use the other to strike the boy square in the face. His cries muffled, the boy begins to choke on his own blood, but I don't stop. With one strike after another, I reform his appearance. All elegance lost with his teeth and his blood, the boy begins to resemble on the outside what I am on the inside.

A monster.

A hand grips my shoulder from behind.

'You're going to kill him!' I turn to see Olivia's stern expression. Though she puts on the facade of indifference, she can't disguise from her face the horror that I know she's feeling. It's palpable, practically audible. I hear her screaming silent accusations; I hear her repeat my own.

"Monster."

She isn't wrong; it doesn't matter, though. The boy has something I need. The lines I wouldn't cross to get what I need... They don't exist.

'Stand back.' I say. She obeys. She has no choice but to. The terms of our spirit pledge are absolute. No matter the command, no matter how reasonable, she is compelled to obey.

I walk around the boy and face him once more. 'Are you ready to talk?' His breaths, sharp and staggered; the boy fails to say a word. With a deep sigh, I kneel to collect the pliers I had dropped, and I place their fangs on one of the boys unmolested fingers.

'You might think I'll get bored of this; you'd think wrong. It isn't a daily occurrence that I get to take out my frustrations on one of you bastards. I need you to talk, but I have to admit, I'm hoping you don't. I'm hoping you give me the excuse I need to do this all day. I will, as well, do this all day, that is. There are matters I need to attend to, but they're all reliant on your, shall we say, "cooperation."'

I squeeze my hand, increasing the pressure on the boy's finger. His fluttering breaths deepen, no doubt preparing himself for the agony he knows is coming. Not one to subvert expectations, I deliver the torment he expects. Though I don't hear it over his screams, I feel the boy's bones collapse under the force of my pliers, and I see the shattered remains of what can no longer be called a finger.

'How many is that now? More than you can count on one hand, that much is certain.' Father's laughter reverberates off of the walls of the dungeon. My heart spikes and, my blood runs cold. To hear his laughter, his cruelty from my mouth…

No. This isn't the time for weakness.

The boy renews his thrashing; the metal legs of his chair scrape on the stone ground. The scrapes mix with his screams, Olivia's gasp, and my laughter.

'This is Hell, and I'm your devil! Pray for salvation! Pray to me! Give me what I want!' I don't know if he heard my shouts over his screams, but I don't care. I fix a further finger between the jaws of my pliers. Without a second thought, I clench.

'Hold the chair!' Olivia complies. She moves behind the boy and steadies his movements.

'Three left!

'Now two!

'One!'

'I'll talk!' The words are almost lost to his cries, but I hear them. I loosen my grip on the bloodstained pliers, allowing them to fall to the ground. I nod at Olivia, and she walks to my side.

'I'll start easy. How long have you known Alicia Blackshire?' The boy continues to sob. Words come out of his mouth, but they're unintelligible. Distorted by his cries, whatever meaning there is in his every broken syllable is entirely lost to me. 'Start talking, or we can continue.'

With deep but unsteady breaths, the boy regains some composure. He looks up at me, eyes wet, pain of all kinds evident on his expression, but there's something else. He still resists me.

'I- I am to be wed with Alicia, but I've never met her. Tomorrow was to be our first meeting.'

Glancing to my left, I see Olivia's head move from one side to the other. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sigh deeply. With a nod of my head, I instruct Olivia to pass me a bottle rested on a nearby table. Tugging the cork from the bottle, I unseal the potion within. Its peculiar fragrance wafts into my nose, filling the back of my throat with its sickly sweetness.

Holding the glass over the boy's shattered hand, I rotate my wrist and allow the scarlet liquid within to pour onto the boy's fingers. Grunting and gritting his teeth, the boy inhales from his mouth and exhales from his nose. His pulverised bones reinflate and slide back into the bags of flesh from which they had burst. The bloodied, mangled mess of his appendages reconstruct themselves.

As colour returns to the boy's ashen face, he unclenches his jaw, sighs and begins to manurer his newly restored fingers.

'Thank you. Thank you so-' His screams renewed, I crush a revitalised finger within my pliers.

'A healing potion of this quality is very expensive. I would never dream of wasting something as valuable as this if I didn't take your resources in order to replace it. I really should thank you for your contribution to your own interrogation. Your gold is ultimately paying for your torture.' Placing my hands on the boy's quivering shoulders, I look deep into his eyes.

'There's something rather balanced about that, isn't there? I'm not sure how I would put it into words; "balanced" seems to be the best I can come up with.' I unhand the boy but continue to tower over him.

'Suffice to say, if you lie to me again, I'm very comfortable with the idea of using as many potions as I need to heal you as many times as I need, to torture you for as long as I need. So let's try this again. How long have you known Alicia Blackshire?'

His eyes… He's wavering.

'I've only met her once.' Olivia's swivelling head condemns another of the boy's fingers.

'I'm telling the truth!' Another finger lost.'Please stop doing this!' A hand returned to its mangled state.

'I've known her my entire life.' His fingers, restored, only to be crushed once more.

I don't know what drives the boy, but I'd be lying were I to deny that he's impressed me. Two hours of bone-crushing agony had expired before a single honest word passed through his lips.

He is, however, broken, and his secrets are mine.