I came to sprawled on the floor of the kitchen. My head ached so fucking much. My vision was still blurry. I did a quick check to make sure all my mental faculties were there, and did a quick check of my legs, arms, head, fingers, toes, and such to verify that I had survived the ordeal in one piece.
I heard some banging around in the other room. Slowly but steadily, I rose to my feet. I felt... heavier. I was having trouble moving. With my first step, I nearly tumbled to the dusty floorboards below. Eventually, I shuffled my way into Zenotti's living room to find his corpse floating in a circle of blue light. Maladim Karunungan stood in the middle of the room, curtains still drawn, candles still lit, putting his gloves back onto his hands. With my left arm, I steadied myself against the door frame.
"Ah," the demon said with a smile, "You've come to. It's only been minutes; a lot faster than most people. How are you feeling?"
"Like shit," I squeaked out.
"That's common for most people. I would recommend a solid week of bed rest; your brain will be trying to process and understand all the changes it has gone through in the past ten minutes or so. Don't concern yourself with Zenotti's murder; I've seen to it that you won't be implicated in it--in fact, nobody here in this little town in the middle of nowhere will ever notice he's gone." Maladim chuckled for a brief second.
"Zenotti's... murder? I... can't... don't remember..."
"Good, then you're all set. Our deal is complete." The demon turned towards Zenotti, floating in the air, but suddenly stopped. "Except..."
"Except...?"
"There is still a matter of payment for me removing all those nightmares and bad memories of yours..."
In an inhuman flash of black and white, the demon closed the gap between us and grabbed my right arm tightly. Before I had any time to react, with his free hand he grabbed my bicep tightly and tore my arm clean off my body.
I have never felt so much pain before in my entire life. Dismemberment is one thing to deal with in the Citadel; in reality, the horror of seeing your arm come clean off in one tug is far, far worse. I'm not sure how to describe it without abusing every swear word known to man, elf, dwarf, orc, goblin, or god. I fell to the floor screaming, hot tears burning in my eyes. With my free (remaining) hand, I pressed my shirt sleeve down hard on it to try and stop the blood from pouring out in buckets. The thick, warm liquid quickly saturated the black cloth of my blouse top.
As casually as you would say hello, Maladim said, "Knowledge for knowledge, trauma for trauma. It's only fair." He moved back towards the floating corpse and orb of blue light before he realized that my severed arm still was attached by the quarter-inch-thick length of delyn cable that I kept wrapped around my arms for.... for what? I couldn't remember. I was drawing a blank.
"Oh, hold on a second," the demon said before wrapping his hand around the dangling length. There was a blue glow coming from his glove, and the cable melted, completely freeing my arm from my body for good. As he stepped into the blue ball of light, he waved my arm at me, taunting me. "Think of it this way, Ms. Freebird: Now you can put that new knowledge of yours to good use by building yourself a new limb!"
And with a laugh, he flashed himself out of existence, leaving me in the middle of Zenotti's living room a screaming, crying, bloody mess.
