Chapter One: A Finger's Length
The wet snap and crunch reminded him, unfortunately, of the crispy snap peas he had eaten only minutes earlier.
"You see, Pergie, there is an element of sacrifice to all forms of power," Remeina gave a lopsided smile as she wrapped a corner of her tunic around the seeping stump after setting down the shears. "What most denizens fail to realize is how available such power is. That or they lack the stone to pay the fiddler."
Remeina carefully lifted her detached ring finger, holding the bleeding nub upright so as to loose as little blood as possible. Pergie sat nearby on a milkmaid stool he had been instructed to bring in from the barn by Remeina before they began their third lesson. Remeina, despite her many years, still maintained the appearance of vigor and youth, her dark skin lacking wrinkles and gray hair shining as if drawn from silver. She, like all the other "Lepers" of the hamlet, seemed ageless and many of the more ignorant citizens believed the Lepers to be eternal, immortal, perhaps even minor gods. Not that Lepers were revered, feared perhaps, but still few could see these practitioners as worthy of worship with the mutilated extremities in stark mockery of their more perfect faces and figures.
Pergie sat rigid at Remeina's instruction continued. "This single finger has far more potential than the pails of blood used in the crude 'magic' associated with the planting celebration. Our bodies contain many elements in opposition, and it is this tension that creates what we know as magic. Are you old enough to remember the Cynthiama Incident?"
How could he not remember that, even if he had been a babe still sucking at the breast. Much of the reason he had grown up never leaving the Four Village Hinterland was the result of the terrible geographic alterations resulting from that Incident.
Pergie nodded solemnly and Remeina grinned. "I for one am glad of the ignorance of our customers. We have enough injuries and death from the primitive tools of rage as it is." While she talked, she took a slim deboning knife and cut up the finger's length, exposing the bone and joint capsules, though not even leaving either with a scratch. Pergie had never seen such art even from the veteran hunters, and even as he regretted his inability to join them on their glorious adventures, he suddenly felt as though their tales would pale in what he was about to witness.
"Ok Pergie, I think it's time you really understood what it is to be broken." After clasping the knife blade with her teeth, Remeina suddenly lunged toward Pergie, who had only time for a sharp intake of breath. Remeina, with uncanny strength, shoved Pergie off the stool and face-down onto the wood boards of the floor, her forearm bracing his against his head and her knee pinning the back of his thighs.
"Wait, what..." Pergie gasped as Remeina yanked up his shirt and dragged his breeches below his bottom.
"It's ok dear," Remeina murmured, her words distorted by the knife in her mouth, "I know your fathers and mother despaired of any future for you, but that's why you are here and not mucking out the stables." Pergie felt the cooling flesh of the severed digit slap against his contorted back. Suddenly, it all clicked in place and Pergie began to flail frantically. His struggles fell away after the blade slid through the finger into his spine. To stunned to do anything but tremble, he felt something soft and fleshy, like a boneless finger, stroking his face. But Remeina had not removed any of her limbs from holding him down...
"There there. You are now a Leper my child. Peace."
EDIT: as instructed by those who notice things
This post has been edited by Gust Hubb: 29 May 2011 - 05:43 PM