Part 2

Despondent, she trudged between the ancient bookshelves, staring at all the titles she couldn’t read. She looked down at her hand, and the metal shell that encased it, “Guess you think this is so funny, huh?”
Knock!
The gauntlet tapped the bookshelf lightly.

“...Hang on. You can understand me?”
Knock!

“Was that a yes or a no?”
Knock!

So… That was the same answer three times. Either it was a yes, and that means the glove can understand her, and that she answered yes, it can understand her.
If it was a no, then that means the glove cannot understand her, and answered no to the question it didn’t understand. And it also means it doesn’t consider her misfortune hilarious…
“Wait, so you do understand me!”
“Sssssh!”

“Knock once for yes and twice for no. All right? “
Knock!

“Great… So here’s the deal. I help you to find the rest of your body, and then you leave me alone. Sounds good?”
Knock!

“All right. So… you don’t happen to know where the rest of you are, do you?”
Knock!

“Wonderful. Now we’re getting somewhere. It doesn’t happen to be in the castle does it?”
Knock, knock!

“Figures. What about in the city?”
Knock, knock!

“...In the country?”
Knock, knock!

“All right, this is starting to be less and less helpful. Do you know anyone who can take us to it?”
Knock!

Lisette perked up again, “Now we’re back on track!”
“Sssssh!”
“Do you have any way to come in contact with them?”
No knock that time. Instead it reached towards a table in the distance. One with an ink bottle, along with a quill and a parchment. Lisette walked up to the desk, and once within distance the gauntlet snatched the quill, pinching it between the thumb and the metal mitten. The tip flowed across the parchment into a seamless text. The handwriting was much prettier than anything she could write. Of course, as she couldn't write anything at all she couldn't exactly say she was outclassed. She had to imagine she could write at least as good as anything without any fingers.
“Tell them to meet us at the north gate at night. They’ll be able to meet us tonight, won’t they?”
Knock!

“Fantastic!”
With a flourish, the gauntlet finished the letter.
“So who do I give it to?”
No one expected the gauntlet to answer, but it also seemed to have no such intentions. It merely folded the parchment into a crane. One ideal for floating through the air.
“So… What? We just toss it out the window?”
Knock!

Lisette wasn’t nearly as surprised by that answer as she expected. After all, monsters have abilities that humans could not even imagine. She left the library, looking for a window. The one she found overlooked greensward stretching across the landscape as the sun dipped below the mountains in the distance. The gauntlet grabbed the crane, then flicked it out through the window. It flew speedily across the sky and vanished into the final lingering sunbeams of the day.
Lisette sighed in relief, “All right. I suppose we better get ourselves ready.”

She turned around, finding Sergeant Sister Mikaela awaiting her, a two-handed ax in her hands. Eyes fixed on the metal glove.
“Uh, wait.” Lisette waved both her fleshy and non-fleshy hands, “I can explain.”
“Fear not, maid. ” Mikaela said with a smirk, “I know all about your predicament.”
“You do…?”
She nodded, “I overheard you speaking with the physician.”
“Ah.”
Figures.

“Worry not, maid. I am yet to tell anyone, and I will have it stay that way. Your secret is safe with me.”
Lisette’s eyes lit up with gratitude. Never before had she been so happy to hear six simple words.
“In fact, I’m here to help you out with your troubles here.”
“Listen… You’ve got no idea how happy I am. Really, I could use a pair of helping hands, cause this one’s been quite the handful… So what we’ve done now is…”
Swish…
CLANG!

The gauntlet intercepted the ax-head mid-swing, before Lisette even knew what was going on.
Mikaela smiled at her, “It’s simple. All we need to do is lop off your hand, then we’ll take them to the Council of Priors in Josephburgh, and they’ll have it destroyed. Everything wrapped up. Nice and tidy.”
Mikaela raised the ax over her head, her eyes burning with delirious fervour.
“Uh… Yeah?” Lisette backed away. Slowly. She stumbled down, and started crawling backwards, “But… But I need my hand… For cooking, and stuff. So what if we instead just look the other way? Pretend we didn’t see anything? And that the gauntlet just so happened to slip by to its previous owner. How does that sound?”
“Hmmm, we could do that… I suppose.” She let the ax fall down at the poor kitchen maid while she was helplessly pressed against the wall.
CLANG!

Having picked a sword that hung from the wall above a chivalric crest, the gauntlet received the shaft of the axe with the strong side of the blade.
“But…” Mikaela said as she tugged her axe free, “Then I wouldn’t get the chance to show off my skills and bravery to the Priors. Who knows? For my valiant efforts, they might even consider promoting me to a knight-sister. So you get to be free from that bloody glove, and I get to climb out from the dirty trenches and start making a name for myself. Win, win, win.”

Lisette clenched her teeth shut, shuddering at the prospect of being an armless cripple.
She stepped back to her feet, backing off as the Sergeant Sister kept swinging her axe, one devastating blow after the other. The gauntlet, evidently having more combat experience than none, easily deflected the weapon, causing Lisette herself to recoil from each heavy blow.
“Yeah… As much as I love that plan…” Lisette cleared her throat, “It doesn’t look like the glove here is on board. Sorry. Not in control.”
Mikaela let out a clearly unstable laugh, “No, no. It’s fine. A deft swordarm? That’s nothing a bit of quick footwork can’t fix. So let me just…”

She slipped into the range of the swordarm, receiving the blade by hefting the shaft between them as she shifted herself forward, up close and personal to Lisette. With that move, she grabbed her Lisette by her gauntleted bicep and slammed her against the wall. At that distance the gauntlet couldn’t do much against an armoured target.
“There we go!” Mikaela laughed at Lisette’s futile attempts to resist, “Nice and easy. You might want to bite down on your hair. This might sting for a bit…”
The Sergeant Sister choked the shaft to the head, holding the ax like a butcher would a cleaver. She raised it over her head. Her deranged smile reached from ear to ear…

She felt someone tap on her shoulder.
She peered behind her, and found the young nobleman who had been smitten by Lisette, standing with a chamber pot.
He wrapped the pot over her head and banged it over and over with a ladle. The sound rang out loudly. Inside the pot must be unbearable.
“AAHHH! I’ll get you you snotty little…” Mikaela tried walking towards the nobleman, but was too dizzy to even find the ground with her feet and toppled down. She stayed down.
Lisette looked down at the snoring Sergeant Sister, then back at the handsome young nobleman. Her expression shifted from one of abject terror, to shock, to relief, to gratitude, before settling on exasperation.

“My lady, are you hurt?” He asked.
“No… No, I’m not. Riled up? Sure, but I got out of that one without a scratch. Thanks to you.”
“But of course. I could not well leave a remarkable woman such as you to her fate. You had me utterly entranced back at the dance hall.” He took the gauntleted hand and held it gently aloft.
She withdrew it, “Yeah… That’s sweet and all, but look… I need to be honest here. Back there, it wasn’t me who pulled off all them moves. I’m just a kitchen servant. That was all the glove’s doing. It’s magic.”
“I see…” He said, “But then let me ask you, did you enjoy living it up at the dance floor with me regardless?”
Lisette started to search her head for any excuse, but suddenly found that she didn’t need to, “Yeah. I did enjoy it. Not what I’d usually do. But it was fun. Very fun, actually.”
“I thought so,” He smiled, “I myself am a hostage in this castle. A mere pawn, to ensure the Meruvean Knights that their treaty with Progneria will be respected. Not all that occurs to us are in our control, but we can learn to enjoy the ride.”
“Yeah… Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“What then would you say to learning to enjoy our situation… Together?” The nobleman extended his hand towards the kitchen servant.

Lisette looked between his hand and his handsome face. She then looked outside. The last rays of twilight had almost escaped, “I think, maybe I’d be into that, sure. But right now I kind of have somewhere to go, so… Whoa…”
The gauntlet grabbed his hand, and pulled them together into a hug. It was nice. Everything Lisette needed for that day. She leaned into the moment. And kissed him.
“Hey?” She started, “Reginald?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“...Is the gauntlet squeezing your bum?”
“No. No, that’s your other hand.”
“...Sorry.”

Eventually Lisette made her way to the hill where the contact was waiting. A large man clad in silver armour rode a black horse. She could tell from the elaborate design it was the very armour that the gauntlet belonged to.
“You have something that belongs to us, Lady of the Order?” The man spoke with a deep voice almost like thunder. Lisette was a bit afraid to approach, but she reached her gloved hand towards him.
“Yeah… It’s been a bit more than a handful, I must say.”
He laughed, “What more can you ask from your right hand?”

The glove vibrated, before shooting out towards him and snapping around his hand. He looked at it through his visor as if only just then had he been complete.
“My wife is most grateful. She tells me you are a woman of wit and courage.”
“Yeah,” Lisette answered, chuckling awkwardly, “I’d say something like that about her too.”
He tossed a bag of gold at her feet, “I wish you well on your journey, but we cannot stay. Farewell, Lady of the Order.”
As Lisette picked the bag up, she saw him ride into the blackness of the nightly forest. She waved after him.

As she turned around, she saw Reginald, the nobleman from earlier, riding atop a smaller but still glorious stallion of reddish brown coat.
“What do you say, my dear maid?” He proposed, holding on to the reins as the steed huffed, “Will you join me for a ride tonight?”
Lisette beheld the beast. Apart from the knight just then, she had never so much as been near a horse before, “The thing is, today has been… Quite hectic. Like, six weeks crammed into a few hours.”
“So?”
“So… I’d say one last adventure for the night would be the perfect way to round it off!”
Reginald laughed. He pulled her up on the horse, seating her behind him. Lisette wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. With that, they rode into the forest, off to their very own adventure in the night.