Niah awoke to a world of pain, as a healer pressed a red hot-metal plate to what was left of her right arm, cauterizing it.

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She tried to scream, but there was a leather something in her mouth.

"Oros' balls! She's awake, I need you to help hold her down!!" The voice belonged to a male healer in a bloody leather apron. He had healed her wounds before, but Niah was in far too much pain to attempt to remember him.

She was in some dark and dirty room, lying on her back on a hard sturdy table.

She feels a pair of hands press down hard on her shoulders, and two more on her shins. She rolls her eye up to see one of the fighters from her team forcing her body down, another on her legs.

Niah jerked and squirmed, trying like mad to escape the pain.

"By the snowy tits of my ancestors! How the hell is this woman so strong!" The pale half-breed slave-fighter on her feet exclaims loudly.

"Shut up and hold her properly Kari!" Shouts the human man holding her shoulders down.

'Zeek! Why are you holding me down! It burns!!' Niah rages and whimpers in her mind.

"Shh, It's alright Niah, the worst part is over. The healer just needs to stitch your arm up." Zeek spoke down at her, with a soft voice.

The healer, gripped the skin of Niah's severed, burnt bicep with a pair of forceps and began to stretch her skin down over her stump. Niah screamed through her gag and thrashed at the men holding her.

"I said hold the bitch steady!" The healer snaps.

"Stay strong Las-Zioss. You met Dalos in the Arena and survived, This is - t-This is nothing compared to that. You are the 'Slayer of Zioss', this... this small flesh-wound is nothing to you." Zeek continued at her while pressing his entire weight on her shoulders, grunting with effort.

Her muscles spasmed as the healer threaded a large needle through the skin of her arm, and started sewing her stump closed. Somehow she managed to spit her gag out. Each time the Healer pulled on her skin, it sent waves of fire coursing up her arm and down her spine.

But it's starting to fade, the fiery sensations becoming dull, replaced by an uncomfortable, but far less painful chill.

She just stares at the dirty ceiling, going into shock.

The brickwork of the ceiling makes her think that they must be in the pits underneath the Arena.

Another spasm as the Healer pokes a new hole.

'Huh... I can barely feel it now...'     She thinks, feeling an odd sense of alarm and relief that the pain is fading away.

"Shit! Healer, She is cold as ice! She must have lost too much blood!" She hears Zeek shout above her head. It was odd, he sounded so far away...

"She needs a transfusion immediately" The healer in the bloody apron says quickly as he finished stitching up her arm. 'He looks more a butcher than a healer.' Niah thinks to herself as their voices start to fade ever further away.

'i would not mind a nice grilled Tarak steak, it always puts me to sleep...'

 

"Shit! Stay awake!" *SMACK*

The sharp noise and pain rouses Niah from her rest and sets her ears to ringing "Damn Zeek, your ass' mine when get you in th practice ring..." She mumbled at him, anger rousing her awake.

"Healer, do the transfusion now! Take my blood if you need!" Zeek shouts at the butcher-healer.

"No can do I'm afraid, you're human. All your blood will do is kill her" The healer says while crossing his arms.

'Whore-Born'  Niah curses the butcher-healer in her mind.

"Kari... Zeek says. Pleading at the Half-breed holding her feet.

"No way, I need my blood in my body so I can fight. She's on her own." The wiry little man whines.

"Kari" Zeek repeats, bushy eyebrows drawing down over his dark eyes, voice becoming  sharp.

...

"Fine, fine I'll do it" Sighs the little man, putting his hands up. "It ain't like I have any fights comin' up anyway..."

"c-Cold" Niah mumbles.

The Healer chimes in once more, voice starting to fade away again. "Hate to break it to you, but he is only half Bilat. It's a toss of the dice whether his blood kills her or saves her'

"Do you see any OTHER snow-skins here willing to shed their blood!? Just do it now, or I'll use Your blood instead!" Zeek roars at the Healer.  He was a man of less-than average height, but from this angle he towered over her. 

"Fine then, this should be interesting" The butcher smirks with his hands up.  He wastes no time as he sets about gathering up his utensils from his leather bag. He pulls out a wide glass bottle and two tubes with metal needles in them. And one small vial made of crystal-glass . "This isn't cheap medicine you know." The healer grumbles, shaking the small vial of white cloudy liquid, as he walks around to Niah's left.

"You, come here." He said pointing at Kari, who apprehensively moves away from Niah's legs to stand next to the Healer.

"Arm" The healer commands, not even bothering to wait for a response, he grabs Kari's arm and holds his wrist palm side up. With the odd tubes in his hand he whips and smacks Kari's arm until veins pop out. He then shoves one of the needles up into Kari's vein, drawing a sharp hiss from the man "Easy!".      He then inserts the vial of medicine in the bottle and corks it.

"What's that?" asks Zeek, while nervously brushing his dark hair back with his sweaty hand.  'Yeah, what's that white stuff in the bottle...' Niah wonders, thoughts becoming muddy.

"Anti-Coagulent" The Healer says tersely, while continuing to work. He puts his mouth on the opposite end of the tube in Kari's arm, and slowly inhales. Blood starts streaming down the tube from his suction. He quickly connects the pliable tube to one of two thin metal pipes inserted into the cork of the bottle. He connects the second tube as well, and set the glass bottle in Kari's hands with an order. "Hold this"

"Why does she need it?" Asked Zeek suspicious of the butcher.

"So she doesn't die..." The healer said offhandedly while he rounded on Niah with the Large needle in his hand.

Something about him made him seem menacing, with his work-like manner and small needle, Niah thought.

He smacked Niah's arm hard, repeatedly. 'Bastard, if I wasn't so weak I would- Her thought is cut short as she is met with the uncomfortable feeling of the large needle being forced into her left forearm.

"Uggh" She groaned.

Slowly, blood began to pool from Kari's arm down into the bottle, filling it at snail speed.

"Can't this go any faster?" Complained Zeek.

"Nope. We'll find out in a few minutes whether the blood will take and she wont die. The medicine wasn't cheap, it'll cost you fifteen silver... I'll uh - I'll leave an invoice with your master..." The Healer said with a noticeably different tone at the end when he saw Zeek's expression.

'Bastard, I hope he gets enslaved so I can meet him in the Arena.' Thinks Niah, starting to feel a little warmth spread into her body from the crimson trickle going up into her arm.

The healer goes back to inspecting the stitches on Niah's arm.  "You, 'big-man'." he said pointing at Zeek "Make sure she cleans her arm regularly, with very strong alcohol. Don't let this wound get infected or she will likely die."

"Find a couple chairs or something to set that blood bottle on, your friend here is going to start feeling a little weak, and I can't have him drop my only transfusion bottle.  Also, get him something to eat soon - he'll be hungry."

Zeek nods and leaves without hesitation, practically slamming the heavy wooden door closed in his hurry.

Niah was becoming increasingly drowsy, as the warmth from her arm spread to the rest of her body. She could no longer keep her eyes open...

...

..

.

"THIS IS TARAK SHIT!!! - I PAID GOOD MONEY FOR YOU TO COME OUT AND FIX MY FIGHTER!"

'What is this annoying noise...' It seemed like she had only been asleep for a few seconds when Niah was rudely awakened once more.

"DON'T TELL ME THAT YOU CANT FIX HER ARM, USE YOUR MAGIC!"  The angry man raged again. Niah recognized it now, it belonged to Albrecht, her Master of four years.  

"Lower your voice eschanti. You forget with whom you speak."  The other voice was one that was completely unfamiliar, a woman's voice - stern but rich.

Curious, Niah ignored her heavy drowsiness and cracked her bleary eyes open to get a look at the mystery woman.

As she looked around, She realized she was no longer in the same room as before.  She was on her cot, in her cell.  The morning sun shone through her tiny window and hit her eye, causing her to squint.  When her vision cleared enough to see what was going on, she saw the figure of her Master, a slender, well-dressed man in his forties with a styled forked beard.   He was currently red-faced and glaring with his beady eyes at a dark woman in white and gold priestess robes.

The woman - priestess, was stern-faced, with a somewhat large nose that made her look a touch like a bird of prey.

With a voice much more muted but still struggling with anger, her master spoke once more "Lady priestess, forgive my rudeness but why can't you reattach her arm? I have seen a priest attach a severed arm once before.  It happened right in front of my eyes, so I know it can be done! I even saved the arm!!" He gestures at the priest with the limp white severed hand in his grip.

Niah's stomach lurched into her throat.  She hadn't seen the arm till now.  She looked down at her own right arm to find it missing.  

'Dalos...  He cut my arm off in the Arena'    The memories her mind was blocking rushed back to the front of her mind.

She continued to stare at her bandage wrapped stump, while lying in bed. Trying to come to terms with what happened.

"Yes, that is correct. It CAN be done."  The priestess responds to her Master.

  Upon hearing this, Niah's pointed ears perked up.

"IF the severed arm is reattached immediately, and a priest is nearby to immediately heal the wound.  Even then, there can be... complications. That-" She said while pointing at Niah's severed bloody arm in her Masters hand "-is just a dead piece of meat." 

She turned her head to look at Niah where she was laying and watching.  There was no warmth in the woman's gaze.

Niah's heart sank. The Oros Priestess would not help her.

Her Master's head hung low, and he mumbled out "But the money I paid you..." 

"Is a Fine donation to The Orosian Church. You have the Blessing of Oros, a much more valuable currency. Wouldn't you agree?" The priestess interrupts him, with her hands on her hips. Face daring him to challenge her.

No one could challenge a priest to their face, they could kill any normal person as if they were a toddler with their magic.

"-I ... Yes, lady priestess..."  The stern woman nodded and without another word, turned on her heel and marched out of Niah's cell through the heavy wooden door.

Master Albrecht just stood there, chin on his chest, bald head getting redder and redder.   Holding a dead arm.

...

Eventually, he just drops the arm in the middle of Niah's cell floor and stalks out of the door in a silent rage.

Leaving Niah to stare at her own severed arm.

 

 

*****

 

 

"Fuck, I feel like shiiiit..."  I say to no one in particular in my cell.

 For the first couple nights - days?  It's hard to tell time in here...  For the first few days I felt fine, but after the third day, I had brutal stomach cramps, followed by me puking my guts out into the shit bucket, then after that a horrible bout of diarrhea.

It must be something in the food, or maybe the water was bad.

Whatever the reason, I was sick for three days after that.

Which brings me to where I am now, currently weak as a kitten, with an ass that's chapped and raw from cleaning it with hay.

The other men avoid me now, even the blonde man.

I don't blame them.

Nobody would want to get sick in this place.

I shift my legs, and the jagged length of metal I have hidden in my briefs pokes me.

I ignore it. I can't show the other men my secret, I have no idea what they will do - if they would fuck up my only chance of escape.

I would have used it by now, but the big albino guards were always here, always watching.  They traded shifts, so there was never a time when they were missing from their posts.

So for now, the makeshift lockpick stays hidden.

I'm too damn weak to escape anyway...

 

Instead, I spent my time trying to learn the language from the little conversations the blonde man had with the skinnies.  

I THINK 'Tu' is their word for 'you'.  I might be wrong, but its the word they use to address me mostly.  

It's usually followed after an 'Oyy', which I assume works like 'Hey' or 'oi' in english.

And then there is 'Tarro', which is what the guards call me. I am almost positive it is an insult, but for what? I'm currently leaning towards idiot.   The big white guards chuckle when they see my confused face and then call me 'Tarro'.

Whatever.  Its better than them hitting me.

I don't think they are torturers or Hostel sadistic psychos anymore now.  Aside from an occasional beating by a guard, none of the other prisoners have been hurt.

I also don't think they kidnapped me to ransom me back to my father anymore. They don't seem to understand who I am or who my father is.  They treat me with the same treatment as the other prisoners.

*Grrrrble*

My stomach rumbles, I'm hungry.  But I can only seem to keep down a little bit of water or food. If I try to drink or eat anymore than that I get severe stomach cramps.  

Yeah, I think it might be the water - not the food. The food is as bland as bland can be. It's just boiled grain.  The other prisoners seem fine, so it can't be the food.

That leaves the water.  Maybe it doesn't make them sick because they are used to it?

*Tap, Tap, Tap*

I'm pulled from my thoughts by the sound of light rythmic footsteps tapping on the stone floor.

This wasn't a guard...