Sevren Denoir
I stepped over a protruding wire as it weaved through the grass like a serpent, then avoided a table I'd hastily set up to hold my miscellaneous tools. I huffed as the limp right arm of my protective suit nearly got caught on the table.
I was trudging up one of the rolling hills that surrounded the small slice of a town, making my way to my main testing area. I'd situated myself on a plateau that loomed above the rest of the area.
I adjusted my garb with a grumble, noting the stuffy full mask and air-tight seals. I'd almost forgotten to put on full mana protective gear in my haste to complete this next test, and I'd needed to fetch it from my main store of supplies back at the main house. The baggy clothing was stiflingly hot, but I didn't know what would happen as a result of this next test. The small mana beast that I held in my other arm stared blankly forward, its scaled rodent snout twitching.
I stared to the side as I finally entered the walled enclosure I'd created. On a nearby table, the results of my last experiment revealed themselves.
Toren had told me of what Mardeth had been doing in his experiments, and I'd begrudgingly realized I would need to perform a mimicry and observe the effects for true understanding. Seeing as I couldn't–and wouldn't–use people to test the blithe I had stolen, I'd needed to use the next best thing.
Mardeth had gone out of his way to use unadorned to test his sick serum instead of mages, and that distinction felt important. All people in Alacrya had cores, but an unad's was inert and dull, the mana within charged with energy but not a live wire. To try and mimic that effect, I'd used a frozen skaunter corpse with a beast core within.
The scaled rodents were a staple in modern science for testing, at least among the researchers who couldn't afford to corral men and women into their sick schemes. I scoffed internally at the thought. Most of the prominent researchers I'd interacted with viewed testing on skaunters as a sign one was poor and could not afford a slave to experiment on.
I banished those thoughts from my mind as I carefully set down the white skaunter in my hands on another table. It didn't fight and didn't resist as its legs hit the pristine metal surface, looking up at me with dull eyes.
I carefully strapped the skaunter's legs to the table, the task monotonous and difficult with one hand. As the leather straps cinched around the beast's legs, it began to shuffle a bit nervously. I stroked it on the head, cooing slightly to calm it down. It eventually settled back, trusting me.
I grit my teeth and turned away from the mana beast, quietly acknowledging the horror that was about to happen to it. I strode over to the table of my last experiment, my eyes roaming over the mutilated body. I struggled to restrain my disgust, fearing I might retch inside of my suit.
I'd injected the dead beast's core with the barest application of blithe, knowing that I barely had any of the substance to spare. The mana within a beast core was similarly dormant as a non-mage's, and sure enough, I'd seen results.
It took a long time for the effects to spread. But spread they had. The red-green substance had gradually mutated the mana within, devouring the latent mana at a brutally slow pace. Once it had fully corrupted the core, the substance, as if it had a mind of its own, traveled along the mana channels and veins of the corpse, twisting and warping everything in its path.
It had taken a painfully long time for the substance to fully spread, mutating itself along the way. Yet the results were clear.
Boils and cysts of caustic green and red substance had bubbled all along the corpse's body before bursting, the sludge that exploded forth decaying everything it touched with a putrid sizzle.
This happened to people, I thought, looking at the final result. People who were alive. People who could feel every inch of what happened.
From my testing, I knew the inner reactions had finally ceased. The blithe was no longer an active substance. I'd carefully dissected the creature using a scalpel of basilisk blood, noting that the substance within didn't seem able to spread any further. But the most curious part was that the mana, though inert, seemed to bear a changed signature. A dark and caustic accent that felt intentional to me, though I couldn't understand why.
Using a long rod, I carefully scraped the desecrated corpse into a long tub, then sealed the top. I would eventually burn it to make sure every trace of its taint was eradicated. I stared for a long time at the blood-red scalpel I'd used to cut into the monstrous corpse as it rested on the table. The material wouldn't easily wither or decay in the face of decay-aspected mana, but that sharp edge reminded me painfully of the second dagger I'd lost.
I shook my head. It was time for the next experiment.
I exhaled as I turned back to the bound lab skaunter. Its eyes looked up at me with the inbred passivity of a wogart, utterly uncaring for its wellbeing. I quietly acknowledged what I was about to do. The gravity of this action.
I hefted a small syringe, noting the churning green liquid within. Red lines like veins pulsed and moved, swirling about the caustic substance like serpents. This was almost my last bit of blithe, so I needed to make this experiment count.
I leaned over the skaunter. It wriggled slightly, seeming to sense what was coming. The beast, which I knew would have been docile under any other experiment, seemed to understand the wrongness of my slightly glowing syringe. It screeched slightly, fear growing in those once-trusting eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said, pressing the needlepoint to its sternum. "I wish there was another way for you," I added quietly as the beast began to scream in utmost terror. The blithe in my syringe seemed to react, churning faster in what felt like anticipation. I blocked out the horrible noise and slammed the syringe deep, the point piercing the mana beast's core. I slowly pressed the plunger as the screams became deafening, the monster making sounds of too-human terror. It thrashed against its bonds, trying and failing to escape.
I took a step back, thinking the reaction would take time to spread as it had for the dead mana beast. I would need to grab some of my mana-sensing tools to try and decipher what exactly had changed in the beast's mana by the end of this and compare it to the readings I'd gotten from the dead creature.
But I was alarmed as I felt the thing's mana swell. I jumped back in horror as the skaunter's cries of terror shifted to guttural whimpers of pain, green and red lines stretching along its visible skin as the blithe spread at a horrifying pace. The corruption was moving far faster than I had expected, the horrible caustic sludge racing along its channels and devouring its mana. The monster's struggles weakened quickly, its legs kicking only intermittently as hell took hold.
And then the horrible screaming cut off. My startled gaze centered on the monster's exposed gullet.
A burbling, chunky mist of green and red was amassing there. I paled inside my suit, recognizing what was about to happen from years of facing catastrophic experiments.
I engaged my regalia, Dictate of Mass, jumping back as a caustic mist erupted from the skaunter's mouth. The mist lurched toward me, seemingly with a mind of its own. I saw death in that substance as it tried to swallow me whole.
I blurred backward fifty feet in nearly an instant, stumbling on the ground as my balance–off due to the lack of an arm–made me stumble and trip. I tumbled into one of my tables, knocking a dozen instruments off as I nearly rolled down the hill. Metal flashed and glass shattered as my sloppy mishmash of items went everywhere.
But my eyes were glued on the mist as it paused for the barest instant midair once I'd blurred away, seeming to lose interest in me. It immediately jerked to the side, streaking toward the table where the skaunter corpse had rested. The red within pulsed, then dimmed. And then... the table absorbed the blithe mist.
No, I realized in horror. It's not the table that's absorbing it. The red swirls within the aerosolized green sludge–the color a bit too dark to be blood–seemed to draw it onward. Yet the mist didn't stop coming.
I got to my feet worriedly, recognizing this experiment had pushed past the bounds I'd intended. I needed to abort it somehow before it got out of control. I edged forward, looking at the poor skaunter I'd subjected to this horror.
It was still alive. It twitched weakly every now and then, a constant stream of horrid mist streaming from the depths of its throat.
The blithe is forcing its mana core to produce that mist, I realized in horror. The thing writhed in horrid pain, but it was unable to even voice its screams any longer. Until all the mana in its core is converted, it will continue to be used like a wretched battery.
I hastily searched through my dimension ring, withdrawing a prototype weapon I'd slapped together a while ago. I couldn't afford to get close to that substance. It seemed to sense whenever a person neared and changed its directive to attack them instead.
Toren had told me of the weapons of that strange land he'd visited. He'd called them guns, and he'd allowed me to hold the Relictombs' crude recreation of one of those guns. And unbeknownst to him, I'd engaged Scouring Purpose while holding it.
I leveraged my own prototype recreation of a gun, aiming down the sights toward the poor skaunter. I engaged Dictate of Mass, decreasing the apparent mass of one of the small projectiles within the chamber. I usually only used my regalia on myself, considering it was exceedingly difficult to affect foreign items the larger they grew. But these bullets were small enough.
I pulled the trigger, a chain reaction of lightning mana energizing the long barrel of the gun. The charge ignited a small, explosive powder I'd concocted, and the metal slug within shot off with the force of a rocket and a clap of thunder.
My arm was wrenched backward from the force, my shoulder nearly ripping itself from my socket as I toppled over again. The barrel of the gun in my hand exploded from the force, spraying shrapnel everywhere. My protective suit protected me from most of it, and underneath, my mana barrier shrugged off the rest. I grunted in pain, cradling my numb hand.
I looked up, blinking through the pain. And exhaled at what I saw.
The bullet I'd fired was about as large as my thumb, but I wouldn't have guessed that from the devastation it had caused. I gulped as I looked at where the lab skaunter used to be, the table obliterated. A large hole burrowed into the dirt where the projectile theoretically threaded through.
But the mist had been stopped.
"Vritra's horns, Toren," I said aloud. "What kind of weapons did they create in that land?" I asked mutely, the prototype perhaps working too well.
The original construct Toren showed me would have fired a smaller bullet and with less force, considering the moment my Dictate of Mass disengaged on the bullet once it left my range it would retain its former mass while retaining most of its hurtling speed. But still.
But I had other problems to worry about now. I loped forward, noting the smoking destruction and tinge of death in the air. Blithe left a stench behind that seemed to seep into the land itself, corrupting and tainting everything it brushed.
I looked down at the table that appeared to be absorbing the blithe mist automatically.
And my blood ran cold. It wasn't the table that absorbed that horrible mana. It was the blood-red scalpel. The basilisk-blood blade churned with inner light, a trapped vortex of ultra-condensed mana caged within. The red and green energy writhed and swirled, but it was thoroughly trapped with no escape.
"By the Sovereigns," I said, finally putting it all together. That energy was trapped. Contained. But if something pierced that prison, allowing a funnel out?
I stumbled out, recognizing the implications of all of this. This new strain of blithe was a mana plague that would spread on its own once released, hopping from mage to mage with abandon. And once it was done and had sated its fill, all that energy would funnel into the closest basilisk blood crystal.
I stumbled backward, tripping over the remains of my prototype gun. I ate the dirt, then cursed as I tore my way out of my protective suit with rabid claws. I couldn't stay here anymore. Mardeth's plans were so much worse than anything we'd suspected.
I tumbled down the hill as I tried to run for the exit portal, my balance still off from my lost arm. I scraped my arm on the pavement as my body finally reached the town zone proper, all of my equipment behind forgotten. I needed to talk to Toren. He had to know what I'd just discovered.
I forgot to engage my spellform as I rushed through the descension portal, belatedly cursing myself as I appeared in the second layer of the Relictombs. I tore my way forward, ignoring a worried receptionist trying to ask me about any relics I might have.
"Sir, sir!" she said, a note of fear in her voice as I stalked forward. "You need to be tested for relics! It's protocol! Please!"
I snatched at the pocketwatch-like inquirer in her hands with my sole remaining limb, aggressively scanning it over my body and then thrusting it back into the receptionist's arms once it came back negative. Now that I was out of the zone, I'd belatedly realized I didn't know where Toren was.
He was at that ball, wasn't he? I thought urgently. Then he'd be in Cardigan's outskirts. I need to get a tempus warp there now!
I took a few steps forward, ignoring the startled looks of the mages around me. I heard my name muttered more than once, the terms "cripple" and "wounded" popping up.
I pushed those away, lamenting this inevitable fate. I needed to–
"Sevren?" a painfully familiar voice said, causing me to freeze in my tracks.
I turned robotically, looking behind me with wide eyes. Caera's scarlet eyes were glued to the hole in my sleeve, her jaw working soundlessly. She was wearing a sleek red dress that seemed more fit for a banquet than the second layer of the Relictombs.
I hadn't seen her in months, and yet she seemed so much older to me.
"Caera?" I asked mutely, feeling a spike of something pierce through my sole focus. "What–what are you doing here?"
Her eyes bore into my empty sleeve as she opened her mouth to speak. I felt an urge to turn my right side away, shame clouding my mind. My sister shouldn't see me weak or wounded. It was my job to stop her from ever seeing something like that. I turned my body sideways, hiding my missing arm from her sight.
"Your friend," she said, swallowing, "Toren said you were hiding where none of the Denoirs would find you. And I thought about it for a while, and I realized what that meant," she said, turning a glance toward the nearby ascension portal. "I... I was going to go on an ascent. Until I found you."
I felt anger replace my earlier shame. "No, that's foolish. You shouldn't have done that, but I–" I ground my teeth angrily. "You said you spoke with Toren?" I pushed instead. "Where is he? I need to talk to him. Now."
Caera moved closer so our voices couldn't be heard. She took in my ragged appearance, darting eyes, and tense posture with a calmness I had never expected from my baby sister. I found myself unsure of how she could be so still. "Is this about Mardeth?" she asked with a whisper.
I swallowed, internally cursing Toren and his loose tongue. "It doesn't concern you," I deflected. "Just, please tell me. Was he in Cardigan, at that ball?"
"He was at Cardigan," Caera hissed, "I don't know where he is now. He left in a slump after the ball. I don't think he's there anymore. But that doesn't matter," she snapped. "You're shutting me out! Treating me like some sort of child to protect!"
I turned around ignoring my sister for the moment. I needed to. I couldn't afford to listen to her right now. And if Toren wasn't in Cardigan and he wasn't in the Relictombs, what was the next most logical place he would be?
I forced my legs to march me away from my sister. Behind me, she scoffed. "You act like you're different from her," she called after me, anger coursing through her voice. "But you're treating me just like Lenora does!"
I froze in my step, then turned back to look at Caera.
She marched up to me, a flush on her face. She seemed to no longer care for the watching eyes and listening ears as she slammed a finger into my chest. "You tell me you've got everything handled. That I don't need to worry about anything. That you'll manage it all. There's nothing I need to do. I can just sit pretty and waste away in the Denoir estate like a flower, right?"
I opened my mouth, the touch of her finger feeling more like the point of a knife.
"And you both think I don't know what this world is like. You treat me like a glass sculpture that could break at any moment! But you don't know what I've struggled with, because you don't dare ask!"
I stumbled backward again, raising my hand to my head. "Caera, you can't–" I said, the parallels stinging me more than I ever expected. "It's–"
It's dangerous? I asked myself. Is that what you were going to say?
I trailed off as I met my sister's angry eyes. I needed to see Toren. It... it wouldn't be so dangerous to take her along with me, would it?
I exhaled. "We're... we're going to Fiachra," I said finally. "That's the next place I'll check for Toren."
Caera's eyes widened. "You mean–"
"Just come on," I said harshly, already regretting my decision. "We don't have much time. He's the only one who can do something about what I discovered."
I started walking away, my own thoughts a thunderstorm. Caera's steps fell in nervously behind me like a shadow. I could feel her desire to speak. But somehow, she smothered that desire with willpower. I felt surprised as my sister adopted the air of a trained soldier focused on a mission as she walked beside me, her intent growing to match my own. The angry girl faded away as resolve took its place.
We had a mission to complete.