Ever since we pulled that little stunt with the wheelchairs, Azura is hellbent on not letting anyone out of the room. She even tied Ryder to his bed and threatened not to heal him the next time he goes overboard with explosions. I think everyone is now seeing her strict side and no one dares to disobey. In the meantime a few weird things have been happening throughout the tower and I’m not really sure why. I hear a few knights talking in the hallway, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

“Hey did you hear? There’s been reports of people going missing throughout the city,” one knight murmurs.

“Yeah I know, I think someone’s attacking innocent people. A report from the most recent survivor was that they got attacked by a shadow with a creepy laugh,” the other knight answers.

Oh well, I’m sure if it was important Colonel Bianca will tell us all herself. In the meantime I’ve been preoccupying myself by reading (not history) books on combat and martial arts techniques. For once I have finally read a book that doesn’t cause mass destruction to the environment or harm me in any physical way, it’s great.

“What'cha reading Will?” Nazuko asks as she pops out from under my blanket.

“What the?! How long have you been under there?” I ask, confused.

“Oh you know since last night, when everyone was asleep,” she answers.

How the heck did I not notice her there the entire time?

“You need to learn how to give people personal space, nevertheless I’m reading a book on fighting techniques. Hopefully it’ll give us an edge in future battles, so we won’t get completely wrecked by guys like Sirius,” I answer.

“Ah I see, well don’t worry if we come across anymore reapers I promise I’ll save you. I’ll be your best, most reliable teammate,” she claims.

“Nazuko I hate to break it to you, but you probably did the least during our last fight. I’d rate your effectiveness at about equal to Remi’s,” I tell her.

“Whaaa! There’s no way that’s true. If that’s true then I’d be at -1 Nazuko level, that’s trash level,” she says out loud.

“Hey I heard that, and get out of Will’s bed,” Remi yells.

“Never, this spot belongs to Nazuko!” she answers.

“It doesn’t belong to anyone,” I interject.

“Azura, Nazuko is bothering Will and got out of her bed!” Remi yells.

Azura enters the room and takes one look at Nazuko.

“Nazuko, if you keep preventing Will’s recovery you are going to die,” she says in a dead serious tone.

“Eep!” Nazuko squeaks as she hopped out of my bed and into hers.

“Remi, that was a dirty move,” she says from under her blanket.

Remi now has this really smug look on her face like she accomplished something great.

As the two begin to fight again, Colonel Bianca walks into the room and calls for our attention.

“Everyone please listen, I have something I need to tell you,” she projected.

The room fell silent as soon as the Colonel raised her voice.

“We have gotten a sudden surge in missing persons reports within the last few days. The only information we have is one witness who claimed to have almost been attacked by a shadow. This young lass right here. Please tell the first hero what you saw last night,” the Colonel asks of a nervous looking young girl.

The girl looks shaken as if she saw a ghost, but considering this world there actually are ghosts from what I’ve heard from Vasavir’s lessons.

“O-okay so last night, I-I was walking down the street back to my house taking my usual path down an alleyway, when I heard a creepy laugh behind me. The noise I heard was such a creepy laugh, I heard what sounded like a maniacal cackle, a ‘ke ke ke’ noise. It sent shivers down my spine and as I turned around I saw what looked like an arm reaching out of a shadow trying to touch my throat. I was so scared I dropped my lantern, setting fire to the garbage in the alley. I think maybe the light did something so I immediately ran to the knights tower as soon as I could, it was so scary,” she tells us.

“Thank you dearie I won’t force you to relive that experience if you do not wish, but can you recall what this person who tried to grab you looked like?” the Colonel prods.

“W-well I think it was a ninja, who looked kind of tall maybe 5’11, I remember he had a pony tale, but that’s all I can remember, I’m sorry,” she answers.

“It’s okay, that’s fine, I’m sure you must be scared still. Please take a cookie and go rest in the infirmary,” Bianca suggests.

The girl does as she’s told and scurries off.

“And there you have it, someone is going around kidnapping people off the streets late at night,” Bianca disclosed.

“Someone is kidnapping innocent people, that’s horrible. I’d give this guy one of my most painful explosions, big enough it could destroy a city,” Ryder lays out.

“Please don’t do that in this city,” Azura says, taking Ryder seriously.

“Ugh, this person definitely sounds like a creep,” I expressed.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone kidnap you, I’m an extremely reliable teammate” Nazuko remarked.

“Sure you will, that’s as reliable as Remi choosing a safe quest for once,” I respond.

“Safe quests are boring and they don’t pay much,” Remi says trying to defend her bad life choices.

“Well who could do such a thing?” Lilith asks.

“We may have narrowed it down to one culprit, the thief of the reapers. That young girl's description perfectly aligns with the information we’ve received from the ‘blood samurai’ of the reapers,” Bianca tells us.

“Blood Samurai?” Remi questions.

“That’s what she requested to be called,” Bianca answers.

“Huh, that’s pretty cool,” I say unironically.

“It kind of sounds like an edgy name to me,” Remi remarks.

“Edgy or not her information is what counts. I’m informing you of this now, because we believe this thief may try a form of assasination so be on your guard at all times. We will raise the security around the tower, so try to recover quickly,” Bianca announces.

“We really need to go after this guy!” I tell everyone.

“It would be great if we could, but everyone needs to rest,” Azura declares.

“Man isn’t there something you can do to make us recover faster?” I ask.

“Well there is one thing that comes to mind, but are you willing to deal with a bit of pain?” Azura asks me.

“I’ll bear with it if I have to, we need to get out there and stop this thief guy as soon as we can,” I respond with confidence.

“Okay then! I’ll be right back,” she says as she hurries out of the infirmary.

“Will I don’t think you realize what you’ve agreed to,” Ryder tells me.

“Why? How bad could it be? As long as it heals me it's fine. It’s not like I’m going to take drugs to inhibit the pain like Quincy and Warren did,” I comment.

“Azura can make some very bitter, and horrible tasting medicines, while they do heal you, they do put you through hell,” Ryder informs.

Azura then comes back into the room and starts to mash together a few ingredients. When she’s done she starts mixing everything along with a bit of liquids. I start to see a black liquid start to form that is then bottled up. She also makes another white looking substance along with it. She brings them both over to me and puts them right on my bedside stand.

“Okay Will I need you to drink this black potion first, then immediately drink this white potion,” she instructs.

“Alright Bon appetit,” I say as I down the first black potion.

The black liquid actually tastes good, like honey sliding down my throat.

“Hey that wasn’t so bad,” I say out loud.

“Now drink the other one,” Azura commands.

I down the second potion as instructed and Oh My God. The white liquid affirms what Ryder told me about Azura’s medicine. It tastes horrible, like liquid diarrhea mixed with bleach.

“What the hell was that!” I swore as I finished the horrible tasting potion.

“Well the first potion actually does the healing, the second one fixes the first’s side effects,” Azura notifies.

“Ugh, why couldn’t you just give me the first potion then?” I complain.

“Oh that’s because it’s actually incredibly toxic. You see that jarrin root potion you first drank can lead to quick death. It’s commonly used by assassins, giving people healing potions, it actually heals the victim’s injuries completely before slowly stopping their heart about an hour later. It’s ridiculously effective at healing internal injuries. The white potion is actually the antidote for that potion. Oh and you’ll need this,” she says as she puts a bucket right next to my bed.

A few seconds later and I feel like I need to puke. That bucket is quickly filled with all manners of puke, an amount of which I didn’t even know could fit inside a person. Everyone just watches as I throw up for the next 5 minutes.

“Ughhhh, someone kill me,” I groan as I’m barely able to speak.

“Don’t be such a baby, I’ve actually force fed you those potions before, when your insides got smashed by that yeti back when we took on the mafia. You were unconscious at the time and nearly drowned in your own puke,” Azura informs me.

“I thought if anyone was going to get me killed, it would be Remi, but it's actually Azura,” I stated.

My throat feels like it’s burning and my insides feel like mush. If that ended up healing anything it might have been cancelled out by that terrible potion.

“Okay well that’s Will’s injuries healed. It’s time for everyone else’s potions to be made,” Azura says joyfully.

Everyone just looks on in fear of what’s about to happen.

A few potions later, we see Nazuko passed out on the floor after she convulsed from a potion, Remi looks like she’s on LSD, Lilith also puked her guts out, and Ryder would not stop sneezing for the next 6 hours. Everyone needed to sleep off the effects of the Azura’s medicine from hell, but on the bright side we should be back to normal by tomorrow. Now all that’s left is to find out a way to deal with that thief guy.

I’m not really sure why, but I feel as if I can’t really sleep. I’m kept up in bed thinking about what Sirius said. Will I really be able to maintain my ideals, sooner or later, I’m going to be forced to kill. I think Warren may have said something similar to me once as well. As the night passes I hear someone open the door and take a few steps towards my bed. I wonder just who that is. My eyes are closed and I’m listening closely to this anonymous person. I hear the noise of maybe a knife or a blade being unsheathed. Paranoid I use one hand to stealthily reach into my pocket dimension and grab my dagger. The figure closes in and I quickly get up and point my dagger at the person. That person looks somewhat familiar that’s ...

“Elisa is that you? Are you trying to assassinate me,” I say as I get a good look at her face.

“Huh, so you're not that easy to assassinate after all. Don’t jump to any conclusions I was assigned to be your guard for the night. I was just testing you to see if you leave yourself defenseless at night. Oh and I also brought hot cocoa, I used my knife to cut open the package,” she answers.

“Well I’m not really so aware, I just couldn’t sleep tonight, I’m getting a bad premonition,” I informed her.

“What’s bothering you?” she asks as she hands me a cup.

“Everyone keeps telling me I’ll be forced to kill, but I really want to believe that I can just keep going like everything’s been so far,” I respond.

“Let me give you some advice, don’t think about the killing, think about what you need to do. What is your goal? Who’s life is more important, who could be saved, if the answer involves taking a life to accomplish said goal, then it’s just a part of the process,” she finishes.

“Even still, I want to believe that there’s another way,” I argue while taking a drink of my hot cocoa.

“If you keep thinking like that, sparing someone who definitely needs to be killed, well all I can say is that you will absolutely regret it. Indecisive actions are what gets people killed, either way don’t think about it too hard. Just do what you need to do, and get some sleep for tomorrow” she tells me before taking a sip of her hot cocoa.

I finish the rest of my drink, and try to go back to sleep. My unease started to cease ever so slightly.