"Okay, this is good." Ruby heard a door swing closed behind them as the blindfold covering her eyes was untied.
Blinking as it fell away, Ruby found herself in a relatively small room that was dominated by… some strange piece of furniture. Was this the aura manipulator? Whatever it was, it wasn't much to look at.
The object in the center of the room was little more than a reclining chair. Made out of steel, it had straps all over it; it had one strap per limb, three along the torso, and finally one across the neck. In addition, it had countless small holes throughout it, which appeared to be connected to tubes. The tubes ran back to several large solid steel canisters which presumably held some sort of medicine.
"Not much to look at, I know, but it works. Climb in." The woman, who had still not named herself, gestured towards the intimidating chair.
Ariel gave her a little push, and Ruby reluctantly climbed into the uncomfortable seat. Leaning back, she tried to sit still as Ariel, Baurus, and the woman went about the process of securely fastening all the straps. It took the three of them only a moment to finish, and then Ariel and Baurus went to stand by the door.
The female doctor disappeared from Ruby's vision as she went behind the seat to stand by the canisters.
"From here on out, you follow my instructions to the letter. I'm controlling this with my own aura, so if you imbalance me or disrupt the process there will be disastrous results for both of us. Understood?"
Ruby couldn't nod without making the strap on her neck dig in painfully, so she simply said, "Yes ma'am." The strap seemed to hum with the vibrations of her vocal cords.
"Good. Stop focusing aura in your leg and focus on balancing it as evenly as possible throughout your body as you can." Ruby complied, forcibly controlling her aura patterns as best she could. She found it much more difficult to balance her aura than concentrate it, as it required a different kind of focus.
Concentrating aura in one area of her body simply required focusing on that area. If she needed to focus aura in an arm to punch, she simply dedicated her entire mind to thinking about that arm and forced herself to imagine the arm surging with power. To evenly balance aura was more difficult for Ruby, because it required taking in her whole being and not paying attention to any one area. In essence it was focusing on the whole while ignoring details.
Still, Ruby tried. As she did so, the doctor hummed thoughtfully. After a few minutes, the doctor spoke. Good enough. Your control isn't very steady, but I can work with it. Keep that going unless I say otherwise."
Ruby didn't bother replying, instead continuing to focus on herself. A few moments after the doctor stopped talking something strange happened though, and it threatened to break her concentration. She could feel something invading her from the chair; it was focused on her broken left leg but spread throughout her body. She couldn't physically feel anything, but her aura could feel whatever it was forcing its way in.
She tried desperately to steady her aura as it fluctuated violently in reaction to the foreign substance, attempting to repel the foreign energy. She was failing, though, as her aura gradually concentrated in her left leg where the opposing energy was strongest.
She heard the doctor curse from behind her, and the energy faded after a moment. Ruby sagged back into her chair as she realized with a start of surprise that her entire body had become tense, straining against the straps without her noticing. She let her aura drop, mentally exhausted from her brief exercise in willpower.
The doctor's face appeared frighteningly close to Ruby's own, the woman's pale, sickly skin a mere dozen centimeters away. Her dark brown eyes were piercing Ruby's own silver eyes, but Ruby couldn't look away.
"What did I just say? To keep your aura steady, wasn't it? But you failed as soon as we started. Honestly, I was told you would be more competent than this." The woman moved back while making a tsk noise, looking Ruby over closely.
"You look like you're fine. Let me ask you something, have you ever done concentration exercises?"
"Not… Not in this. I've never needed to focus on balancing my aura before."
The woman shook her head, her face set into an unhappy expression. "Crowell is going to turn you into dog food in a week if that's true. You'll never survive."
They fell silent, the woman silently staring Ruby over. Eventually, she said, "Well, shall we try again? We don't have any other choice if you want to be able to move around tomorrow."
Ruby simple nodded, feeling ashamed of her inability to control herself. The woman moved out of her line of sight once again, and Ruby focused on trying to balance her aura for the second time.
"Are you sure this will be fine? We can't risk hurting her more." Ruby heard Baurus voicing his concerns from where he stood by the door.
The doctor replied in an annoyed tone, "Well, IF she can get her aura as stable as it was before, maybe… But right now she's too busy listening to things that don't matter to concentrate." The woman's voice took on a venom Ruby hadn't heard before, so she hastily redoubled her focus on her aura and tried to tune out the voices talking around her.
As she concentrated, a peculiar feeling came over her. She closed her eyes to cut off visual stimulus and felt energy flooding into her. But the energy didn't make her jittery or fill her with random thoughts. Instead, it was as if it was all bottled up and pushing at one objective; all the energy was concentrated on what she was concentrated on — steadying her own aura.
As the energy filled her, she quickly lost track of the voices. Had they stopped? Or was she deaf? These brief wonderings flitted over the top of her mind, too inconsequential to disrupt her focus. She felt her aura form a perfect coating all over her body as it became perfectly distributed and regulated.
Again, energy began pushing up at her from underneath — just like last time. This time, however, Ruby simply ignored it. She continued to hold onto her aura with an iron grip, keeping it flawlessly spread throughout herself.
Eventually, the foreign energy faded away, but Ruby didn't mind that it was gone. Then, one thought pierced her mind.
Something other than herself spoke in her mind in a deep voice, saying, "You don't need to hold your aura anymore."
Ruby felt herself go limp as the energy left her in a rush. As though floodgates holding then energy in her had been opened it poured out of her, leaving Ruby feeling drained and exhausted.
As her aura began to fizzle and dissipate, her hearing returned, and she could hear the doctor speaking alarmingly close to her.
Opening her eyes Ruby found the doctor's face directly next to her own. Upon seeing that Ruby was back to her senses the woman stopped talking and simply grinned at her.
"You did well, really well. Tell me, how long do you think it's been since we started?"
Ruby felt surprised by the question, as it seemed an odd question to immediately ask someone who had no reason to have lost track of time.
"It's only been a few minutes, hasn't it?"
The woman leaned back and laughed, tossing her head back. "It's been a few hours actually, so you'd best get back to your room and rest."
The woman stood to the side and gestured at Ariel and Baurus. "You two can feel free to unstrap her whenever."
"Wait, has it really been hours? There's no way!" Ruby looked at them frantically, hoping desperately that the doctor was joking.
Baurus looked at her quizzically as he began undoing the strap on her neck. "There's no doubt that it's been hours. We had to stand there the whole time with nothing to do but watch the color show. It was mind-numbing."
Ariel grunted in agreement and the pair worked in silence for a few moments, releasing Ruby from her restraints. Ruby was still staring between all three of them in disbelief.
"You should see the look on your face, Ruby, it's actually funny." The woman chuckled before adding wistfully, "Wish it could have felt that short to me. If you don't believe me, check your own leg."
With this statement Ruby noticed that what had felt different since waking up wasn't because of a stimulus, but the lack of one. Her leg was no longer in any pain, and the burn on her arm also felt healed. As soon as the straps around her torso were removed, she tried to get a look at the burn, pulling on her arm and twisting her neck. Where the glyph had been there was now a smooth patch of skin, making Ruby's mouth drop open in an O.
The woman chuckled again before saying, "Oh well, I'm heading back. See you around, Ariel, Baurus." She made for the door, stretching her hands over her head as she did so.
"Wait."
The woman turned around to look at Ruby questioningly.
"What?"
"Can you tell me your name? You know mine, so I want to know yours."
"I don't really have an obligation to tell you, but… Why not. The name's Karen. Not to be rude, but I hope we don't meet again too soon… for your sake." With this she exited the room, the sound of the door clicking shut echoing in the outside hallway.
Ruby fell on her back into her bed feeling completely exhausted. The whole walk back to her room she had been able to feel her limbs gradually growing heavier, and her limbs practically felt like lead by the time she finally got to collapse.
"You have roughly six hours to rest, much more than we originally thought you would. I'll be leaving, but there will be guards outside, so don't try anything stupid like escaping."
Ruby nodded without looking at Ariel. After a moment, she heard the guard captain leave the room.
Ruby breathed a sigh of relief. But, despite her fatigue, she didn't want to fall asleep quite yet. Sniffing her armpit she made a face at the smell. She stank of sweat, which was not an odor she cared for.
She wearily stood up and made her way to the end of the bed, where she opened the large chest at the foot of the bed. To her relief, the contents were as she had suspected; the chest contained several changes of clean clothing.
It seemed to have been stocked without any care for the current inhabitant but rather was meant to suit whomsoever needed new clothes. It had changes of underwear for both genders as well as a variety of garments. There were shorts, jeans, sweat pants, t-shirts, tank-tops, long-sleeved shirts, and even a couple of hoodies.
Geh, what a selection. Glancing at the area filled with fitness equipment, Ruby mused that they were probably meant to ensure any guest could exercise in comfortable clothes of their choice. Selecting properly fitted underwear, a t-shirt, and sweatpants, Ruby carried her new clothes over to the door in the wall near the bed.
Opening the door, Ruby saw she had been correct yet again, and it was indeed a bathroom. It was rather nice, in fact. It was spacious, had tile flooring, granite countertops with a sizable sink set in, several dark cedar cabinets, and a gleaming porcelain toilet and shower. The entire room was spotless, clearly having been cleaned to perfection.
She only had to search through a few cabinets before finding a stack of fluffy white towels along with some soap and shampoo. Her limbs still tired, she slowly went about the process of hanging a towel up on the rack by the shower and placing the soap in reach of the shower before starting the water, which was ice cold as it sputtered out of the shower head.
Giving the water time to warm up she stripped before stepping into the stream of water. Too tired to enjoy the now warm water, she cleaned herself as quickly as possible before stepping back out and drying herself off.
Dressing herself in the clean clothes she had brought in, she looked dubiously at the dirty clothes she had discarded, wondering what to do with them. After a moment she decided to just ask Ariel when she woke back up, and with that she opened the door back to her room.
"Hello, Rose."
Ruby's mouth fell open at the sight of Amius Crowell, who was casually leaning on one of the bed posts.
"You took quite a while." He made this remark in an offhand tone, but his single open eye was staring at her intently.
Ruby shivered slightly. He's the creepiest old man I've ever met.
Hoping to come off equally nonchalant, Ruby spoke while moving to her bed. "It's not easy to shower quickly when you're as tired as I am." She sat down on her bed and turned to look at him. "So? What do you want?"
"Just wanted to see how you were doing with your injury. I take it our dear local healer took care of you? I can't imagine you healing it on your own."
Ruby bristled a bit from his scathing tone, replying, "What makes you say that?"
Crowell stood and began walking towards the bathroom door without replying. He reached out and grasped its handle, but then he paused.
"You couldn't have healed that on your own because your aura control is weak, and you are weak, Rose. Don't worry, though, we'll work on that."
With those words he opened the door to the bathroom and entered it.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Ruby jumped off her bed and hurried over to the door, wrenching it open.
Looking around, she was confused to find the bathroom completely empty. As she began to turn around, she heard the door on the far side of the room slam shut. By the time she could see the door, though, it gave no sign that it had been disturbed. Both the bathroom and the main room were empty, even though she hadn't seen Crowell leave.
Shaking her head in bewilderment, Ruby made her way back to the bed again. Pulling back the covers, she settled in to sleep, her mind easily slipping away in its eagerness to rest.
For the second time in a period of 24 hours, Ruby was awoken by the feeling of burning on her left arm. Her eyes flew open and she twisted her head to get a clear look at the glyph on her arm and saw it was glowing softly. Tenderly touching it, Ruby felt something like crystals under her skin.
Feeling panic rising up in her throat, Ruby gritted her teeth, put aura into her right hand, and tried to peel the skin off.
Whatever this is, whatever it does, it's not good.
With this thought she began to tear into her own skin. As her fingers touched the crystals, however, an unbelievable amount of pain surged throughout her entire body, making her go rigid and arch her back as she shrieked in pain.
The door burst open, and she heard the sound of multiple boots rushing into the room. As the pain subsided she fell back, her body limp and exhausted.
"You shouldn't have done that." A deep male voice spoke, and as Ruby sluggishly turned her head to look at the figure standing next to the bed something slammed into her face. Her jaw shattered instantly, and she lost consciousness. Again.
Author's Note: Turns out I am not dead. More writing is to come in the future!