Recoiling from the knife as if Mason threatened me with the blade, I collapsed into one of the only unbroken bits of furniture in the room. For a moment, I stared at the leather-wrapped hilt and the oddly delicate fingers holding the black painted steel before my gaze was drawn to Mason’s grey eyes. There was a second of concern, of empathy, then it faded, and all that was left was a man who had killed a lot of people and knew he would be killing more before the night was over.

Our tableau was broken as the still stuck man's breathing started to hitch and struggle. His folded body unable to draw enough air while unconscious and pinned by the thin walls.

“Mason, pull them out. I’ll get some gear, and then we can do this,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

With a shrug, the old man grabbed an errant foot and began to pry the body loose. To my eye, his actions were none too gentle, but then, I was guessing these men wouldn’t last long after we questioned them. While I walked to the kitchen, and the secret entrance into the basement hidden there, I realized that somehow I thought things would go this way eventually. A Grandmaster throat slitter pulled from retirement by the Baron wouldn’t be bothered just to train the Baron’s daughter. If that had been the plan, he would have had him out of his little forest cottage before this. It was only when the Barony and his daughter were in jeopardy that he made a request of Mason.

Kicking the baseboard close to the back door away from the wall, only one side being nailed in place, I slipped a finger in a knothole that served as a handle. The trapdoor folded upward and away from the wall, leaving a drop into the basement. The ladder on the wall was only rough planks nailed into the framing of the house, but it served to hold my weight.

My heart fluttered at a staggering rate as I considered everything I would need to perform my act. I knew that I would be cutting my attackers. They would die tonight. There were no two ways about it. The Baron had let loose his killer to find the threat to his daughter, and he would be allowed to work as he willed. They wouldn’t know this at the start, but somewhere between the first slice and the last, they would figure it out. The key was to extract the most we could between now and then.

Emotions roiling, I tried to focus. An idle part of my mind noted the side effect of [Meditation] overuse was a lack of emotional control. Still, it would need to be tested to be confirmed. The last few days hadn’t been typical, and I could just be losing my equilibrium from the whiplash of changes in my life. Gritting my teeth, I tried to think of only what I needed and ignore anything else.

Equipment. Resources. Plans.

From my alchemy gear, I snagged the few potions I thought could be useful. A poison that caused itching, a couple of low-grade healing potions, smelling salts, a tight focus heating device. A length of rope from when I was trying and failing to earn cordager Skills. Then I gazed around, trying and failing to find anything else that would delay my return. Upstairs there was the sudden sound of an impact, less than that of a body hitting the floor but more than what would come from a simple punch. Carefully I climbed the ladder to be sure the healing potion wouldn’t slip from my grasp as I clambered up. Kicking the trap door closed, I shoved the baseboard back near the wall and made a note to tack it back later with some potato starch glue. It had worked the last time to keep it held on, but it was easy enough to rip it away without tools.

When I returned, Mason was relaxing on one of the worn wooden chairs while the two men were lying in the front room, with one bleeding from the face.

At my look to the bleeding man Mason said, “I had to sing him back to sleep.”

Shaking my head, I laid out my equipment and then spent a moment listening to the men’s breathing. One had a subtle wheeze and gurgle that concerned me. Being unconscious for any period was a danger, and repeated trips to the land of bludgeoned slumber was a quick way to brain damage. I pulled out my cord and started to bind the more injured man, all the while comforting myself with thoughts of Skills that would make this easier. All the different Skills I did not have and likely would never develop, but it was a distraction all the same.

When I successfully tied one man up, I grew annoyed that I would need to cut my rope just to tie up the other. It was a bit of cordage that had been sitting in my workroom for months. It was a rope that I had no personal attachment to except the effort to make it, yet I was still angry to have to cut it to deal with the two men who had invaded my home and had tried to hurt me. That I was unreasonable was obvious, even to me, but I didn’t really care, and it would make it easier to do what I needed to do.

There was a fundamental moral difference between torturing someone for their own good with the explicit goal to make their life better…and what I was planning. The acts may remain the same, but the goals and the reasons were different. One was arguably good, the other was not. I knew it, and I couldn’t find it in myself to care. Still, I tried to avoid it.

“Why do you want me to do this, Mason?” I asked, my hand trying not to shake as I prepared a watered-down version of the healing potion to pour down the bleeding man’s throat in hopes of stopping his bleeding. If only for a while.

“Wincome won’t do it. Has this honor thing. It’s why I didn’t think he was the traitor. He might have had some gambling debts, but he wouldn’t betray the Baron,” Mason said, his eyes drifting to the front door and outside where Sir Wincome was still stationed.

Sitting back on my heels, I resisted the urge to tap my hands or wrap my arms around my body for comfort. That I could torture the two men laying in front of me was clear. I knew it. I had done the same actions before, and I would do them again. The first time I had helped someone gain [Pain Resistance] was sickening, but by the sixth or seventh, it had become routine. Where to aim the knife to cause pain but little bleeding. How to damage the body in ways that a low-grade potion could heal quickly without scarring. These became the focus and not the act of drawing a blade through the skin.

Mason gave me a surprisingly haunted look as he said, “My Skill causes…problems. The more they try to distance themselves from the torture, the less they notice me. Men go insane from torture if they have no possible escape from the pain,” Mason said. Then he continued in a whisper that I wasn’t sure I was supposed to hear, “they can’t answer questions if they can’t hear me ask.”

I tasted bile for a moment but swallowed back my disgust. I couldn’t judge Mason if I was planning to do the same shortly. Directing the older man, I had him use the rest of my rope to tie our two captives to chairs so they could see each other. One on each side of the room.

Once the stage was set, I breathed deeply until I reached a modicum of calm. The siren call of [Meditation] sang to me, but I avoided the temptation. I would be [Acting], and I was already too tired to perform both at once and deal with the pain. My exhaustion from the day, no the week, tried to weight me down, but I refused. With a smirk, I relaxed my hands and worked to set myself in the right mindset. The smile was the start, it always led from the face, but soon the body and the stance followed.

Smirk. Relaxed. Entertained. Excited.

Without moving, I nodded to myself once I reached the right mental state and posture, then retrieved my hollowed needle. It was a medium gauge knitting needle hollowed through and a miracle of the smithing arts and exceedingly expensive. But, with it and a bit of treated pig’s intestine, it was possible to inject a healing potion into the body rather quickly. Ingesting the medicine worked, but a direct application to a wound or the bloodstream, worked orders of magnitude better. Stabbing into the gurgling man’s chest, I let some of the potion drip into his lungs.

Anatomy has advanced to 38.

The sudden Skill increase made my grin widen, though it wasn’t a happy smile. [Anatomy] gave me an intuitive sense of a body and its structures. This was useful when putting sharp things into tender areas without cutting into other, sensitive pieces. It did not make me happy to know that to improve my Skill I might need to stray into more delicate parts like the lungs or heart.

The man’s quick gasp, his body arching as his lungs finally filled, interrupted my thoughts. His wide, frantic eyes scrambled around as he tried to free himself from his bindings to no avail. He was surprisingly silent. I interrupted as he inhaled to scream by shoving a cotton cloth wrapped cord that I then tied behind his head, gagging him but still letting him mostly breathe. His breaths were still labored from the broken nose and clogged blood. Clinically, I ripped away from his nose the clotted blood as he tried to throw off my hands, then I held his head back against the wall as I washed his nose with a bit of cloth covered in the potion. It would take a few seconds, but it would stop the bloody nose and make it easier to breathe.

Ignoring the man and his confused look to my kindness, I turned to the other man who had been unconscious this whole time. The one with internal bleeding was skinny with a thin face and a sizeable sharp nose. His unconscious partner was large and bulky, his mass sitting solidly in his gut, but his arms said he was not unfamiliar with labor. The cuts and scratches on his knuckles laid claim to the exact type of employment he was known for.

The most important alchemical component I removed from the basement was smelling salts. These were distressingly useful. Unconsciousness being a recurring method of escape from training for my clients.

When both men were conscious and staring, their gags in place, I took the floor between them and began my performance.

Smiling wide, I casually looked back and forth between my two audience members as I spoke, “Welcome! It seems you boys took a wrong turn and ended up in my living room!”

Condescension, confusion, distraction. These would help me before I started with the pain. An off-balance opponent was useful no matter the realm of the battle. Economic, political, physical, mental, it didn’t matter. The best way to leave them unsure and worried was for me to seem unbalanced myself. Speaking down to them as if they were naughty children was just one button I intended to push.

“It seems that I need some answers. So we are going to play a little game, the three of us. Can you guess what part you two will play?” I said while holding up the knife that Mason gave me.

The thick-set man frowned through his gag but didn’t scream or move. It seemed to me that he thought he would tough things out. He wouldn’t. Everyone breaks. It’s how torture worked and why it was so often useful in developing a Skill. It forced the mind beyond its limits, it broke them, shattered them, and left a different person in its wake.

Skinny and bug-eyed began a high-pitched keening sound through his gag. The noise drew a derisive look from the large man, but I captured his attention again as I moved toward him with the drawn blade.

“Now, now. He’s just afraid. You can’t blame him, really. He obviously hasn’t played this game before. The screaming comes later, the cutting comes first, and the answers are after. Then it’s more cutting and screaming since they never answer the first time truthfully. Silly, really,” I said while holding eye contact with the hefty man. My words obviously concerned him, the macho mask slipping as he began to sweat.

Skinny went silent from my words while my position hid his view of the knife and the larger man’s reaction.

“Since you have obviously played this game before, let’s show him how it works. Yes? A practice round. Oh, don’t worry. You can keep the gag in. Let’s just show him how it’s played. Oh, this should be fun!”

The sweaty man shook his head, but he wasn’t able to stop me from laying the blade flat against his cheek. For an extra level of discomfort, I straddled his lap while the chair groaned beneath our combined weight. There was a certain kind of man who could handle blood and pain, to a limit, but another man being too close made them uncomfortable. I didn’t know if either was uncomfortable in such a way. Still, blatant and almost intimate body contact would work on them both no matter what.

I felt unclean from the sweat of his face pooling in my hand as I held his jaw tight and returned the blade to his face above the gag. My position forced me to lean over the man as he pulled back, trying to get as far from me as he could.

“Don’t worry. This is a practice round,” I said, my words silencing the gagged man below me, “it’s alright. Shuush. Just a practice round. No questions. Just blood this round.”

Then I started to cut.