Thursday morning. Willow laid in bed a long time after she woke, remembering their kiss the previous night. It was everything she hoped it would be, and more. They’d eventually practiced casting, although he was unable to cast the first layer so that it would accept her essence. Even approaching the sphere he held between his own hands caused it to warp and fold it in itself.

Eventually she could barely keep her eyes open and she walked him to the door, the rest of the house asleep and only the dull coal of the fireplace providing any light. They didn’t kiss when they parted—it felt too frivolous to repeat in that doorway open to the night air. As if what they shared was a sacred thing.

Willow hardly believed that it had happened, that she’d taken him and pulled him toward her. She squirmed in bed with equal parts embarrassment and elation. What did it mean? Something wonderful, she thought.

By the time Margaret knocked on her door she was all ready to go. She had to wait at the table for Margaret to finish cooking her eggs, but the double portion filled the gnawing hunger in her gut. Right on cue as the first wisps of twilight touched the sky there was a small knock at the door.

“I think that’ll be Leopold,” Margaret said. Though he sat at the table with Willow, he refused a breakfast of his own. Margaret forced a biscuit on him anyway. Willow didn’t much like the knowing smile Margaret gave them as they headed out the door.

The world was silence as they walked in the dawn hush. Things felt awkward now between them. She hated it, so she reached out and took Leopold’s cold hand from his jacket pocket. He held hers gently, like you would hold a bird, and she appreciated him for it. She appreciated feeling normal.

Her hands were already tender and noticeably thinner, the knuckles standing out like knots in rope.

By the time they arrived at the large main doors to the Arcanum, the city had woken up around them and sleepy trolleymen were ushering their horses down the stone streets. Leopold left her at the main hall for his own class, but gave her hand a gentle squeeze before they parted. She smiled and watched as he walked away, then set out for her class in the history of magic.

🜛

“After the Third Blasted War between Asche and Durum, Raly joined in to propose a ban on warbeast development. Records tell us that Durum and Raly were eager to sign the ban, and to shoehorn Asche into it as well, as Asche’s warbeasts were of a different caliber entirely compared to what the other two could produce. But before Durum and Raly could sign the tripartite agreement, Asche fell silent. Not a single emissary has been seen from that land in the last one hundred and fifty years, and scouts report the mountains warped and violent to life from essence oversaturation. It appears as if, in the end, Asche’s prodigious skill with warbeasts was to their doom.”

🜛

When Willow entered the metrology building, she immediately sensed something different in the air. The place had the feel of a conversation suddenly hushed, and when she looked around all of the metrology graduate students were pointedly looking away. She supposed she should have expected this sooner or later with the readings she’d been getting. She just didn’t expect it to feel so alienating.

Things didn’t seem any better when she entered the small room at the back of the main building. Carl was there as were the three metrology students, but the apparatus before them was entirely different than what had come before. There was a chair turned towards a table, and on the table were two low, crystalline devices with twin pairs of metal rods sticking out of their tops. They were wired up with copper tape to Burket’s plate.

There was also what looked to be a disembodied arm laying on the table. No blood.

“Well, this looks… interesting,” Willow said. Carl, who was fussing with one of the connections to the devices, turned quickly at her voice.

“Ah, well yes. Yes it is. We’re going to be doing something… a little out of the ordinary today. I’ve got the setup from the psychology department—”

“Hardly metrological,” Burket interrupted. “I have no idea what use this little experiment will have. It’s not set up to measure her essential attributes.”

“We’ll get to those later,” Carl waved him away. “Now, I may have to explain some things to you as the test isn’t as obvious as you might think. You’ll sit here, and we’re going to have to strap this big arm onto your chest.”

“Why are you strapping this big arm onto my chest,” Willow tried to ask sans-sarcasm as she took the seat. Carl went to work gently threading a makeshift harness around her neck. He tightened it until the extra arm sat snug and heavy from beside her left shoulder. It’s elbow rested on the table for support, but from the weight of it against her chest she imagined it would probably pull her over it she stood up.

“And what is this arm?”

“Ah, it’s from the medical school. A pretty lifelike simulacrum complete with veins, arteries, bones, tendons, you name it. They use it to practice using their essence to see within another’s body.”

“I thought that you couldn’t control your essence once it passed very far from your body.”

“That’s true,” Carl agreed. “But this is a very advanced technique where they essentially create a stable vortex of essence, like a funnel, which allows them to probe deep to search for damage.”

“Huh,” Willow said. The world kept getting bigger and more interesting.

“Now, as to why we’re strapping this arm on you, it’ll make sense in a moment.”

“I doubt it,” she said, and Steph stifled a laugh from the side of the room. Daniel was helping Carl manhandle the arm into place, bending its stiff fingers around the two metal rods sticking up from the black crystalline base.

“Alright, that looks good. If you will, Willow, make your arm mirror the false arm as closely as possible as you reach forward and grab the device. Same spot on the table for your elbow, same angle, et cetra.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

She had no idea what she was doing or why, but she tried to follow his ridiculous instructions anyway. She laid her left arm beside the false arm an inch or two away, then mirrored its pose as she wrapped her own fingers around the twin rods of her own device.

Carl bent down, bobbed around like an anxious parent and touched her arm a couple of times to push her into alignment. Finally he smiled and nodded.

“Alright, bring over the box.”

“The box,” Willow asked, but at that moment Steph stepped around her side with an enormous black box a couple of feet to a side. It seemed too big for Steph to possibly carry, and as Steph moved, its black cloth sides billowed in. That gave Willow a clue. The whole thing was hollow; just a frame for the black sackcloth.

“And… right there, perfect,” Carl said, as Steph lowered the box around Willow’s real arm, which made the fake one look disjointingly realistic for a moment. It was even wrapped in a sleeve of cloth down to the wrist, which was covered by a glove. Just like her.

Carl moved to the other side of the desk and sat down. He brought with him two objects: a pencil, and a thin band of copper packed with inscriptions.

“Are we ready,” he asked. Burket rolled his eyes behind Carl’s back.

“Sure.”

“Now Willow, this is going to be a sort of strange test, as I’m sure you can already appreciate. In the psychology department they do this little demonstration to show how easily you can accidentally associate a fake limb with one of your own. They take a feather,” he raised the pencil, “and stroke both your hand and the fake hand at the same time. Eventually you start to really blur the lines about which one is your hand, which is when they bring out a hammer and smash the fake one.”

“Yeesh,” Willow said.

“Yeah, I don’t understand why they do it either, but it gave me an idea. Steph here will be helping me with her own pencil. We’re both going to be stroking your real hand and the fake hand, and after some amount of time I’m going to ask you to squeeze these two metal rods together as hard as you can. Go ahead and test that out now.”

“You mean… squeeze the rods?”

Carl nodded and the corner of Willow’s mouth quirked down. Whatever the hell they were playing at, it was above her understanding. She squeezed the rods as hard as she could before the pain from her already wasting fingers overwhelmed her ability to continue.

“Alright, I’m finished,” Willow said.

“Burket,” Carl asked.

“Eleven pounds even,” Burket droned back, as if he thought this was the drollest and most useless exercise in the world. His attitude was infecting Willow too, but she worked hard to have faith in Carl.

“And what’s that,” Willow asked, motioning to the thin band of inscribed metal with her eyes.

“That? Well, you’ll find out in a few moments.”

“Of course,” Willow said.

“Follow my lead,” Carl said to Steph, and he stroked the false hand with the tip of the pencil. Strangely enough, or not strangely at all because she should have been expecting it, Willow felt the sensation of the pencil stroke on the back of her hand as well. Steph’s eyes were locked on Carl’s pencil and Daniel was hovering behind the two of them seemingly as interested in the process as Burket was dismissive.

Carl stroked the false hand five more times, and Willow could have sworn that by the fifth time she had difficulty remembering that it wasn’t her own hand under the glove and sleeve. Then he got up, taking the band of metal as he did so.

“This is where we diverge from the official psychology playbook,” Carl said, and she felt him wrap the band loosely around her upper arm. “This band is going to make your arm go numb. It shouldn’t cause you any pain, just a complete lack of feeling. After that happens, I want you to start squeezing on the device. Start low, and increase your pressure slowly.”

“But how will I know when to stop? My muscles—”

“I’ll stop you when the reading from your hand gets back up to eleven,” Carl said. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you get hurt.”

Willow met his eyes and found nothing she couldn’t trust there, so she slowly nodded and he cinched the band down tight around her arm, just at the seam of her overcoat.

Immediately it was like someone had lopped off her arm, but without the pain. Just… nothing. Just a moment ago she had had an arm, and now she didn’t.

Then, something in her mind shifted and it was like she had an arm again. That vague sense of where your own limb is located without having to see it. But she was still missing any sense of touch or texture. Just a feeling that her arm was still there in front of her, hand wrapped around the measuring device.

“Alright Willow, now squeeze.”

She started low, just as he’d told her. What she imagined was the faintest feathering of her fingers against the device, then finally squeezing in earnest. Steph and Daniel looked at each other as if they weren’t sure anything was supposed to be happening. But Burket with the plate behind them had gone pale watching whatever it showed.

That felt good. Whatever was wrong with her, however hard it made her life, she enjoyed in a petty sort of way that it also made that asshole’s life harder as well. If he was going to be such a dick to her, then he could suffer too.

She kept squeezing. Without any sensation of pain she was starting to get worried about how close she was to her limit. She caught Carl’s eye behind the plate with Burket and he nodded.

Keep going.

She squeezed harder. There was almost no sensation of effort at all, and she supposed there wouldn’t be, not if she couldn’t feel anything. Then when would it stop? Would she just top out at a certain reading? Would she reach eleven again? She had no idea—

The device held by the false hand exploded in a burst of white glass-dust and sparking metal. Steph and Daniel shielded themselves. Willow felt shrapnel sting her cheek and she closed her eyes on reflex, raising her right hand to block her face.

In an instant Carl was at her side and disengaging the metal strap which had caused her arm to go numb. Her mind shifted again, like the ice on a pond cracking, and she could feel her arm and hand just as they had been. She unwrapped her fingers from the remaining measuring device.

“What—” Willow could barely hear her own voice. Carl was at her side dabbing her cheek with a handkerchief which came away bloody. Steph and Daniel were checking each other for shrapnel and Burket was still at the back of the room with the plate in his hands. He looked furious.

“I don’t know what the hell you think you’re trying to pull,” he roared. “But this is the last straw. No more tests, no more evaluations. She’s broken enough equipment as it is, and if you expect me to believe for even an instant—”

Carl pulled Willow up from her chair. She heard him make conciliatory sounds, something about the infirmary, and they were out through the door into the larger metrology building. The rest of the department was crowded around the entrance to their little testing room and they scattered when Carl and Willow appeared.

“My… my cane,” Willow said, and tried to look back at the room where something she didn’t quite understand had happened. Everything was blurred and stuttering, the lights in the ceiling leaving blurry streaks across her eyes.

“I’ve got it,” Carl said beside her, and when she looked at him he was grinning like a maniac.

“I’ve got it.”