The Sun Blade

Metamorphosis

The pain was excruciating.

Cresana had known pain – or she thought she had – at The Institute, but this was pain of another level. It was a searing and relentless electric burn that ripped through the very center of her limbs, radiating out from her gut. No amount of training or mental preparation could have prepared her to withstand the pain. It triggered a primal part of her, the fear of a living thing so threatened as to be mortally dangerous, and Cresana found she could not override her instincts.

The first few treatments had been mild. Kirigan had told her as much. "It will start easy, but the tinctures increase in strength with subsequent doses. It will be terrible."

And it seemed he knew exactly what he was talking about. That fact alone – the detail with which Kirigan was able to explain the effects, the precision with which he delivered the treatments – was enough to confirm that Baghra's suspicions had been true. He had obviously seen this process many times before. He knew what Cresana would feel before she felt it, and he had not been even remotely misguided in any of his predictions.

The tincture had been difficult to stomach at first, not because of pain, but because of its taste. It was acrid and coated the inside of her mouth and throat in a gravelly mucous. It had taken Cresana a full day before she had been able to swallow a full dose and keep it down.

Just as Kirigan had predicted, the tincture grew easier to stomach with time.

The pain had begun as a dull throb in her gut and increased in intensity with each subsequent dose over the course of days.

Cresana had long lost count of what day she was on. Kirigan hadn't told her exactly how long the treatment would last. He had assured her that it would be easier for her if she didn't know. She had balked at this withholding of information at first, but he had been steadfast in his insistence. Yet again, Cresana knew he was correct. At this point, it was the hope that each successive tincture would be the last that kept her from going mad.

She hadn't slept in days, the pain was too great. Nor had she been able to eat. She could feel her body weakening but had been unable to hold down even the mildest of gruel that the terrified servants brought to her.

On the sixth day, Kirigan had ordered her restrained. Cresana quickly realized that the simplicity of her chamber had not been a gesture of goodwill from the General, but an act of necessity. She had lost all control of her bowels and vomit by day four, and soon most of the surfaces in the room had been covered in her sputum. After that came the fits. Cresana had experienced such a violent fit on the fifth night that her flailing had cracked one of the bed posts. To soil fine silk sheets and destroy hand-carved fine furniture would have been a needless waste.

At this point, on day ten, most of Cresana's time was passed in a delirious, feverish state. She was only vaguely aware of someone dabbing a cool cloth on her head as she thrashed about against the bare mattress. Her hair was drenched in sweat and clung to the sides of her face and neck; her robe similarly slick with perspiration. Her ankles and wrists strained constantly against the restraints, and the skin there had long since erupted in a series of bloody sores. She had cracked a tooth during one of her fits and she felt quite certain one of her shoulders was dislocated, although the pain from that injury was negligible compared to the rest of her body.

In her rare moments of lucidity, Cresana wondered if the treatment was working. She certainly didn't feel any change in her body, beyond the obvious pain and weakness induced by hunger and dehydration. She had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that something would have been different, although she wasn't sure what. It seemed too significant a metamorphosis not to have some sign of success at this point.