A warm hand rubbed up and down Yushia’s thighs. “Good morning, mama.”

“Good morning, my dear,” the woman said.

With her key, she released her son from his block of limestone. He sat up and saw his mother patting her lap. He scooted off the limestone and did as he was told, fixing his skirt as he sat on her lap. Almost immediately, he felt his mother’s hot breath warming his frigid neck.

“Mama, please don’t....” Yushia spoke nervously, his eyes squeezed shut. “It feels weird whenever you do that...”

“Don’t say such things,” the woman said softly, holding her son’s waist. “That’s what bad boys say.”

Yushia’s mother rocked him nuzzled herself into him, and the worries in his mind began to vanish. Everything was quiet—peaceful even.

“We have a lot to do today.” The woman groped her son before him off her lap. “Would you like something to eat?”

Of course, Yushia nodded. She shouted for Pipi to head outside to forage for food and he came back with an armful of berries and fruit, handing them to his master. His mother sliced the fruit with a long, sharp fingernail. He thought it strange initially, but it was his mother in the end, and he couldn’t find any wrongdoings.

The fruit had a strange smell and an even stranger taste as it landed on Yushia’s tongue. His lips puckered but he still finished it. One after another, the woman kept handing more and more fruit to him: one blue and bumpy, one yellow and gourd-shaped, and another red and round. Though they tasted unpleasant, they made his stomach full.

“Pipi, are the preparations complete?” the woman shouted, peeking through the tunnel to the other room where she’d brought her son the other day.

“Yez, ma’am!” Pipi shouted back. He fixed the confines on the iron chair, making its material more durable and constricting. His master entered the room with swaying hips, holding her son's wrist behind her. Pipi bowed. “Shall I leave the two of you alone?”

The woman sent a look of disgust at Pipi, which was enough to send him waddling out the room. Alone with her son, she instructed him to sit down in the iron chair. Once he was seated, his arms, wrists, legs, ankles, and torso were strapped down, rendering him immobile. A blindfold was then placed over his eyes.

“My dear son, today you will demonstrate the limits of your powers to your mother.” The woman took a pair of scissors hanging off the rack of tools. Her warm breath exhausted from her mouth, extending into a moan as she dragged her tongue along the scissor’s blades.

A sense of foreboding engulfed Yushia’s mind as he heard a snip. A sharp, excruciating pain sent his body into shock as a pair of cold blades sliced his finger. He squirmed and screamed while trying to escape the iron chair, but it was to no avail. “MAMA! MAMA! MY FINGER!”

The wailing sent a rush of dopamine to the woman’s brain. The scissors had stopped at the bone, but a harder squeeze on them managed to break through, severing the digit. She let the blood spill, but to her disappointment, the reaction she wanted wasn’t showing. Frustrated, she cut off Yushia’s ring finger next, making his screams grow louder tenfold.

Under the threat of danger, Yushia’s body finally reacted with a blue, glowing shine in the veins of his arm. The pulsation of blue was brighter, more apparent as it raced toward his hand. Ether unlike any the woman had seen before reconstructed his bone, flesh, and nerves back together with impossible precision.

The regeneration of body parts was no easy feat for Yushia’s body, and the sprouting of his new fingers brought a pain that not even a thousand needles could rival. The grotesque noise made by the regeneration made him think he was shifting into a beast that wasn’t himself. Behind his blindfold, his eyes rolled back.

The woman smiled broadly and stepped back. “There it is! Your great powers!” She licked her lips. “Oh my, if you didn’t take that Shijin Ether drink yesterday, I’m quite positive you would have escaped from the chair.” She gently caressed his hand. “But you’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

“I’m a good boy, mama!” Yushia cried out in pain. “Please mama, stop it! It hurts... I’m going to die! Good boy! I’m a good boy so don’t let me die, please mama!”

Without hesitation, the woman snipped off Yushia’s middle finger, his thumb, and then his pinky. The terrified screams in the room were endless, and of course, his fingers sprouted back. The woman moaned and moved on to his other hand, snipping some fingers slowly while swiftly snipping others. She experimented with his toes next. Like the other parts of his body, his limbs glowed blue and worked themselves overtime to recreate his missing body parts.

Yushia’s body had been pushed to its limits. His regeneration had slowed, and while some fingers were nearing a full recovery, others remained nubs of meat.

The woman stopped and went on all fours to sniff the puddle of blood her son had made. “So rich of ether...” She moaned and stuck out her tongue, lapping up the Cerulean blood. It was bitter and rich, so rich that if she drank any more, she could’ve killed herself.

Yushia’s mind had gone blank. His blindfold was removed, and he met his mother’s loving gaze.

A mound of beige appeared in his peripheral, bathed in a pool of dark-red. His mother covered it with her body and crouched in front of it as she lifted her top, shoving the fingers and toes inside her stomach.

***

The third day came by in a flash. When Yushia awoke, he felt empty. Though he didn’t die yesterday, he felt as if a part of him truly did, but he wasn’t sure what. He averted his eyes down and found himself wearing a white dress, and surprisingly, he wasn’t strapped down to the block of limestone. His fingers didn’t hurt either and seemed fine.

Was it a dream?

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The woman waved at her sleepy son as she sat beside him. She smiled happily, though, with hungry eyes. Her son didn’t resist when his mother’s hand traveled between his thighs.

Yushia felt a strong sense of shame, but he had no say in the matter.

“Master, if you may?” Pipi said, a crooked smile on his face.

Stepping away from her son, the woman and Pipi hid behind the shelves across the room. She bent down to become level with him. “What is it?”

“The fragile children,” he mumbled excitedly. “When will you let me have my time to play?”

The woman grinned. “I suppose we are running low on Shijin Ether. We should harvest them now before the Vermillion Bird finds us.”

Pipi’s heart began beating fast at the thought of finally having his playtime. “Does that mean...”

The ragged chuckling of Pipi and his mother caught the attention of Yushia as he turned his head in their direction. A loud gagging noise came from the shelves, and what came after was a large, heavy thud. His curiosity got the better of him as he walked toward the sound. “Mama?”

Standing between Pipi and his mother were three boys and one girl piled on one another, their eyes lifeless and glazed with saliva that coated their entire bodies. Their limbs were bent out of shape, and they struggled to breathe in their positions. They all looked familiar to Yushia but he couldn’t figure out why. The girl especially with her scarred ankles was the most familiar out of the four.

The woman grabbed her son’s arm and pulled him away to the other room. Her calm and soothing voice told him to lie on his stomach on the tarped table. Not wanting to anger his mother, he obliged and rested on it. Her footsteps became distant. “I’ll be returning soon,” she said.

Heading back to the hill of bodies, the woman took one of the boys by the hand and dragged them out of the pile. She placed her hand on the boy’s chest to cast a shadow and reached her hand inside, pulling out his Shijin Orb. She threw the boy aside and performed the same process on the other three until she had an armful of dark-red orbs.

A small shadow formed on the Shijin Orb as the woman’s long fingernail dug inside to extract the Shijin Ether. Pipi rushed over with a vial and took the contents from his master’s nail.

“That should be enough for a few days,” the woman said. She trusted that her assistant took good care of the vial. “Don’t spill it, pig. If I go back to that village time and time again, the Vermillion Bird and that ethercaster will eventually catch me.”

“Maybe it wasn’t so wise to leave that boy’s body near the village,” Pipi said, referring to their very first victim. “Could they trace your ether to our hideout?”

“The past is in the past,” the woman said. Her latest venture back to collect more young Shijin Orbs had nearly gone wrong when the ether caster narrowly blew off her arm. “We have the Vermillion Bird’s wielder, and I think it soon that she crawls her way here to retrieve him. I say we wait for her arrival and have our fun in the meantime while studying the Cerulean’s ether.”

“Do you think Laplace would be happy?” Pipi asked, grinning. “Happy that we’ve done this much to the Vermillion Bird and her wielder?

“Overjoyed,” the woman replied. “I’m one step closer to learning his secret! My body can barely contain itself knowing that it lies within such a cute boy.”

“Are you really sure, master? I don’t wish to doubt you, but... When I used my ether to look into his memories, there didn’t seem to be anything special about him.”

The woman slapped Pipi across the face. “You can look inside another time. I got to see what I wanted to see—ether not from this world or ours. I say it’s time we test its limits.”

Heading back to the other room, the woman stood over her son. When she found him still lying on the table, she couldn’t help but be turned on by his attractive obedience. She blindfolded him and spread his arms and legs apart. Instead of tying up his wrists and ankles, she only strapped down his waist. Leaning into his ear, she whispered. “My dear son, did I bring you lots of pain yesterday?”

He whimpered. “Yes, mama...”

“You should know that mama is doing this for your own good, right?” the woman took a saw from the rack of equipment. “I know you’ve been a good boy, but mama found out that when you disappeared from your family and Shiashia, it was because you ran off with a crimson-haired girl.”

“No, mama!” Yushia exclaimed. “I only love Shiashia! Suzaku is... she’s just...” He paused. For some odd reason, he was unsure of their relationship. He remembered holding her hand many times, but saying that seemed like a dangerous answer. He uttered hesitantly, “...a friend...”

“A FRIEND!?” the woman pressed the cold, serrated saw blade against her son’s thigh just hard enough to allow light bleeding. “Tell me the truth! What would Shiashia think if she knew you ran off with another woman!?”

Yushia panicked. “Mama, I promise! My heart only belongs to Shiashia—”

His pleas were interrupted by his very own ear-rupturing screams as the woman worked the saw back and forth against his thigh. He writhed thrashed, but there was no escape. He reached back and gripped his mother’s arm, nails nearly piercing her flesh.

The woman smashed and pinned it on the table, nearly breaking it. As the women’s saw met bone—a problem she’d face a second time—she withdrew, letting it bleed out.

“Mama, stoooop!” Yushia’s tears mixed with the pool of snot and saliva beneath him, writhing in the mess. “I’m going to die again! Ple—”

The saw began moving back and forth against his left arm now, squirting blood all over his white dress. His loud weeping eventually came to a stop when the sawing reached his sensitive bone again, leaving him paralyzed, but that didn’t stop his mother from pressing harder.

Soon, the woman held up her son’s severed arm and shoved his fingers down her throat. The blood from the severed end ran down them, trickling down her passage. The Cerulean abilities hadn’t kicked in yet, so she made sure to savor what she could.

Her son was no longer awake. His eyes were barely open, and his jaw hung with drool trailing down his face. “That’s no good. You’re supposed to be awake. What will Shiashia think when she discovers that her husband is this weak?”

She threw the severed arm across the room, splattering blood against the walls. When she turned back, the veins in her son’s arm and thigh were already glowing blue and regenerating at a pace more rapid than yesterday. The bone was reconstructed where his arm once was, and his skin and muscles wove along it. His thighs—not severed like his arm, but still gravely injured—worked the same process, and it too made a full recovery.

With his limbs back, the woman’s son awoke again, groaning from the lingering pain. Watching them sprout like bamboo brought an even greater arousal than the fingers did, and she couldn’t help but lean over and lick the freshly grown arm.

“Suzaku...” Yushia called, barely able to say her name in the midst of his suffering. The serrated saw blade pressed against his other thigh now. He knew what was coming next.

It was during that moment Yushia’s resolve and promise began to crack. His mother’s wild moans and inappropriate touching drove him insane, and after several hours, his body became numb. Still, the endless mental and physical torture his mother inflicted was still enough for him to crave the sweet relief of death.

The sawing finally stopped. Was it over?

“The final act, my dear son,” the woman said. She lined her saw at his nape and pressed gently, teasing herself as her crotch dampened.

Secretly, Yushia hoped Shiashia was dead. If he were to die now, he’d like join her and apologize.