Grey Regen 7

Frowning, the torturer held the flat of his blade to the back of my hand. The dagger began to glow red hot, my skin sizzling and popping and filling the cell with the stench of burning flesh.

I let my mind slip away from the pain, meditating on my core and the aether swirling around inside it, which I held onto as tightly as I could. A small stream was leaking out, half pulled toward Regis, but some traveling along my aether channels toward my hand.

When Petras lifted his glowing dagger, the scorch mark it had left behind was a deep scar in my pristine flesh. Instead of hurting, though, I only felt a kind of tingling as aether started repairing the damage, but it was working even more slowly now on the larger wound.

The torturer stuck his thumb into the raw burn and pressed hard, his black eyes absorbing every twitch, every flicker of movement from me, but the pain was nothing. His slack face curved down into an exaggerated frown.

“Minor healing abilities, even with mana choked off,” he muttered to himself. “High pain tolerance, likely due to the same ability. Yes, time to try something else.”

He tossed the dagger, its blade still glowing, into the corner, and cracked his knuckles.