“My Lord!”

A guard wearing banded mail armor bursts through the heavy oaken doors and hurriedly runs towards Lord Perregoth, who is seated on his throne listening to a petition.

Stepping up, he silences the guard with a wave and refocuses his attention on the scruffy haired man kneeling in front.

“M’lord, the forests around our homes has become far too populated with wolves, bears and other predatory beasts of the like. Not only have they become numerous, they also have gotten more aggressive, even going so far as to attack a family within the Ring of Grass”

“And would you recommend me to do?” Perregoth voice is deep with a commanding tone

“I beg the lord to send troops to cull the growing herds of beasts at our borders”

Perregoth muses for a second before clapping a hand to the man’s shoulder

“There are only a few I can spare at the moment but these will be sent your way to help what they can”

The man looks quite happy and thanks Perregoth profusely before being escorted out.

Sitting back on his throne, he gestures to his personal guards, who escort the rest of the petitioners out, and then gestures to the guard.

He walks up to Perregoth and kneels down in front of him

“My lord, some strange people have come to our front gates. They appeared but a few minutes ago holding old swords and wearing battered armor”

“And what does this have to do with me? If you deem them as a threat you disregard them from entering” He motions for the guard to rise so that he may project his voice better

“That is exactly what we did, and they have begun to cause a ruckus outside, saying they demand to meet our lord to explain why they cannot enter”

“I have already told you what do to about it, so why is there a need to tell me about this so urgently, what information are you withholding?” Perregoth raises an eyebrow

“They-”

“They’re called Foreigners” A familiar voice reaches Perregoths ears.

Perregoth looks behind the guard and sees the familiar face of Bishop Yan entering through the oaken doors.

“Foreigners?” Perregoth is confused as to how his Bishop knows about these strange people yet the guard who came from the outer gate does not

“Precisely. They mean you no harm so I recommend you allow them in”

Yan gave a strange grin; the devious grin that Perregoth knew his trusted advisor to show whenever a plan was at hand.

Perregoth turns to the guard and waves him out, giving him the corresponding orders.

Sitting back on his throne, he looks inquisitively at Yan.

“So, tell me more about these…Foreigners”

…

“Now come this way Disciples. Your new quarters are this way”

Brother Chad guides a small group of five new disciples down the stairwell and quickly they see the grand inside of the cathedral vanish and be replaced with a more dull appearance. The stairs aren’t dark, even though they seem to be underground as some strange blue light pulses from the slits in the walls.

All of them are bubbly and excited at the prospect of becoming priests and priestesses. Already they are chatting about which god they will choose to favour and who they’re going to party with when they become fully fledged.

Stopping at a well kept wooden door at the bottom of the stairs, Brother Chad opens it up and gestures for a bubbly brunette, with curly hair stopping just past the shoulders, to enter.

She walks inside and Brother Chad walks off with the remaining four to their own quarters.

Upon entering, she notices that the room is a lot brighter than the stairs and three very disturbing things: The first is that all in her room are men.

All three are lying still breathing deeply, one snoring. All but one are wearing the straw-coloured robes that she herself has been given to wear. The one who sticks out is wearing a small layer of white, which upon closer inspection; are a mass of bandages wrapped around the man.

He is related to the second disturbing thing: The only free bed in the room seems to be between the injured man’s and another disciple’s.

However that is a miniscule problem compared to the third disturbing thing: She has nowhere to change clothes.

Stressing silently over these things for a couple of minutes, she finally works up the courage to quickly change into her robe after checking that they’re all sleeping.

Donning her new and slightly itchy robe, she sighs in relief that they’re all still sleeping.

Stifling a yawn, she decides to head to her new bed.

Rolling around the uncomfortable mattress, she tries her best to find a spot where the insides don’t seem to pinch at her.

“You know that if you keep rolling around you’ll wake the others. They won’t be happy about that” A voice comes from her right, the non-injured disciple

*CRACK*

Reacting to the sudden sound, she sits up and looks at the man, who lazily rubs his eyes as he sits up too.

*Sigh*

“Nevermind, it seems he’s awake already” The young man, his face hidden by the dim light of the room and his hood gives a yawn before glancing to the man on her left.

He is still lying on his back, covered in bandages, but his hands are slowly moving with accompanying cracking sounds.

Turning quickly back to the other disciple she points confusedly at the injured one.

“Who is he?” Her voice is light and serene, with a tinge of poshness.

“New guy, don’t mind him though, actually, don’t look at him if you can ” The disciple looks serious about that and she shivers inconceivably.

“Ok? And who are you?”

“Oh, right. I’m Moren. The guy snoring behind me is Jacob and he’s been here a little bit longer than me. That guy, I don’t know his name either, but that’s because his jaw is broken.”

He gives a small bow from his seated position.

“I’m Yisra. A pleasure to meet my fellow disciples” She bows slightly, copying his manner. though she seems distracted by other thoughts when she says those words

“Just so you know, today is our rest day so we will spend most of today sleeping. We disciples need it so you may want to rest up too” With that, Moren lays back down and starts to breathe in a controlled manner.

Yisra, feeling slightly downtrodden that the conversation only spanned to names, lies back down and carefully tries to find a comfortable spot on the bed.

She hears Moren turn around and grins a little, because she knows at least she’s not the only one with a bad bed.

Little known to her, Moren turned round to try quieten the pounding of his heart from encountering such a beauty for the first time in his life.

Unlike her, he was accustomed to the dim light of the room and could see her crystal blue eyes, along with thin pink lips and a small nose. Not to mention her long brown curls falling over some of her face.

He suffered the relentless pounding for a few minutes, before he quietly got off the bed and started to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” Her serene voice reaches his ears.

“I’m just going to talk a walk”

“Can I come with?” She cocks her head in question

“No, no, I’m fine, I just want to walk by myself that’s all”

“Oh, okay then”

Moren leaves the room and immediately after Yisra hears a strange banging sound on the walls outside, as if someone was banging their head on the wall.

Shrugging the strange sound off, she continued to try find a good place to sleep.

Her struggle continues for another ten or so minutes, before she hears the bandaged man on her left get up and walk off the bed no longer with accompanying cracks

Lying still on her back, she watches the man walk to the center of the room and slowly unbandage himself.

She blushes slightly at the sight of nicely formed v-lines, as well as a growing four pack. His pecks aren’t bad either, and his arms and legs hold some toned muscle.

*CRACK*

She was eying the decent body quite a bit and almost missed the reason behind the resounding crack.

With a gasp, she covers her mouth and watches in horror as the man bites down on a rag before snapping his toes backwards.

Doing the same for his other foot, Yisra cowers in her bed visibly shaken at what the man is doing.

Her terror only increased, when the man sat down and began to wrap the toes and try to set them back in place.

She had thought he was crazy to do such a thing, but to her; this man is insane.

Watching the man slowly make his way up his legs, breaking them with audible cracks and then slowly re-setting them through splints and bandages, she feels quite light-headed from the view and soon falls unconscious through watching this horrifying scene.

…

A short while later, Moren re-enters the room clutching his head slightly in pain and almost trips onto the man with broken legs.

*Sigh*

“Do you need me to carry you back to your bed?” Moren asks, not for the first time since last night.

He is not a heavy sleeper and the sound of cracking woke him up multiple times in the night.

He was scared at first but due to Helia’s guidance to follow him for answers, his faith and curiousity soon won out over the terror of the man breaking himself.

He had observed the man throughout the night, although not in the literal sense; as Moren could not handle more than the sounds. And because of that he learnt that although miniscule, there was a difference in the man’s bone repair.

The first time the man broke his own bones, Moren did faint but after experiencing it many times he was able to notice that the time it took to repair his bones lessened if only by a few seconds.

He only noticed it last two times it happened though, as on some strange whim he decided to count the seconds it took for the man to regenerate after applying first aid.

Moren waited for about a minute before he actually remembered that the man had begun breaking his own eardrums since this morning.

*Sigh*

Lifting the man up, Moren looks away from the man’s eyeless gaze towards him.

Letting out a thankful groan between his own gag, the man is placed back on his bed, and continues the breaking of himself.

Moren watches the man break his jaw and begins counting as he goes to his bed and lies facing away.

It may be the rest day, but he won’t be getting any rest today.

…

“Hey, fellow disciple buddy” the oddly gentle voice interrupted the silence after so very long

“It’s Moren”

Moren is quite surprised since it is the first time the man has spoken since he had come to this room.

“Right. Moren, could you help me out here?”

“What do you need help with?” His voice had a tinge of dread, since it is probably something horrifying.

“I need you to help break my spine”

…

..

.

“No thank you, don’t involve me in any of that please” shaking slightly under his robe, he tries to forget the almost now white-noise sounds of cracking that he has had to endure for half this day.

“Please, I can’t break it myself” his voice sounds almost pleading, but the context is very worrying for Moren.

*Sigh*

“Ok, I’ll do it for you if you promise me something”

“What’s the catch?”

“I will be the only one you shall ask to do these kind of things, ok?”

“Sure, fine by me”

...

..

.

Moren looks at the ceiling, half confused as to why he said that. Although he doesn't find the answer to that, he feels as though he's being guided by something to follow this strange path he just put himself on.

In truth, he is now curious about the man because when he was counting he noticed something quite peculiar. Something that makes Moren want to watch this man grow and learn off of him for a reason he does not fully understand himself.

Getting out of bed, he makes his way over to the mans and almost jumps back in shock; the man has his eyes, can hear and his tongue has regrown too.

The man rolls over to his front

“Ok, now grab my chest and legs, and keep pulling them towards eachother.

Doing as the man asks, Moren slowly makes a U shape of the man and feels the pressure on his hands and also the release of it with a thunderous crack.

Lying the man back down on his back, he sees the man spit out part of his pillow.

“Now can you break the other parts of my body please, since I can’t”

Moren is used to the sounds, not the sight. Though since he put himself in this situation, he knows this is only the beginning.

*Sigh*

Steadying his shaking hands, he begins with a finger.

Grabbing the man’s index finger sternly with one hand, he holds the wrist with the other.

Pulling it backwards, it’s slightly harder than Moren thought it would be.

Taking a deep breath, he looks at the awkwardly bent finger and slowly gets used to the fact that it doesn’t look as bad as he thought…just quite strange since it’s unusual.

“You don’t need to wait for the pain to dull down, because I have none thanks to my broken spine”

*Shiver*

Moren, trying best to ignore the man’s crazy sounding words, continues breaking the bones of the man’s body.

After a good hour, Moren stands decently sweaty since he had to put in quite a lot of effort to break some of the bones.

Decently horrified at the man, who looks like he’s just lying down normally, but in reality has every bone except for his neck broken, Moren walks away and returns to his own bed.

He realizes that he had already started counting since long ago.

Shivering to that fact, he tries his best to sleep for the next twenty four minutes and thirteen seconds, when his final bone will be repaired.

…

Yisra, had finally woken up after what seemed like seconds of being unconscious. However, she wished that she had stayed unconscious.

She had just witnessed Moren helping the strange man break himself.

Luckily the view was blocked by Moren, but she could still hear the abnormally normal toned conversation between the two as well as the cracking sounds.

Not the faintest of heart, she still felt quite lightheaded throughout the ordeal. But as a priestess in the making she steeled her heart to remain conscious throughout as this will be things she will have to encounter.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to her, the cracking noises stopped and Moren returned to his bed leaving the man lying on his back looking no different than before.

Although this time he was not bandaged.

She may be quite terrified of the man but she is still decently amazed that he looks little different with all his bones broken which is a disturbing fact to her as well.

“Hey Moren”

“Yes?”

She can hear the slight twinge of terror in his voice, but she doesn’t know exactly why.

Moren however, knows exactly why.

“You missed a couple of places”

*Gulp*

Yisra heard the audible gulp come from Moren.

What places?

She hears and then sees Moren walk back to the man.

*Squelch*

Unbeknownst to her, Moren drops the eye onto the bed.

“Now the other one”

Moren has just two questions; How does he live through this and why? These are the two questions that are driving him even though the path is horrifying and disgusting to the point of feeling vomit rise up his throat.

Though he deson’t feel all that horrified or disgusted if truth be told.

Those questions, although seemingly insignificant even to him, still hold an unconscious meaning that he doesn’t quite understand. All he knows is that he needs to know, no matter what.

He continues on the rest of the bits that need to be broken and removed.

Yisra, wondering what Moren is doing, quickly regrets it as he leaves the man in plain sight of her.

*BLaaargh*

Smelling the slightly sour smell of her own vomit, she falls back into blackness, just like the sockets where his eyes used to be.

Moren notices the situation and shakes his head as he helps clean up Yisra as modestly as he can.

“I told her to not look at him directly”

*Sigh*

Finishing cleaning, he places her gently on her bed before lying down on his own.

Moments later, he feels that he just snapped out of a daze of some sort and fully realizes what he’s been doing.

*Blaaargh*

A thought suddenly sprung into his mind; how was he not affected till this moment?

His question is only answered by darkness as he falls unconscious in his own vomit.

…

Seven disciples are standing in the breakfast hall with Brother Danfey. One looks physically exhausted, another shakes visibly in her recently cleaned robes and stays far away from the first. A third sighs in his still damp robes and the rest just look strangely at the three who stand out somewhat.

*Clap* *Clap*

“Now, lets us begin with our morning duties shall we, disciples? But before we do that...Would anyone mind telling me where the eighth is?”