Interlude: Dangerous Research

“Well, well, well, look what we have here.” The tone and the grin with which it was delivered were both decidedly nasty. The speaker was a tall, slim man with a Latin American complexion. With a defined jawline under the stubble and hair that was too flatteringly messy not to have been deliberately arranged, he might’ve been considered handsome if not for the attitude of rapacious arrogance.

He was wearing mostly practical clothes for a walk in the jungle, with a few steel plates sewn on in an arrangement that was too symmetrical to be as haphazard as it was made to look. A red silk vest with obsidian studs stood out, however, as much for the visual as for the scent of magic wafting off it. A protective enchantment of some sort. Unlike his companions, he was unarmed.

Said companions were a circle of a dozen men surrounding her at a few meters’ distance. They all wore similarly practical clothing, except without the vest, but not so similar as to seem like uniforms. Red bands tied around the right upper arm of each still made for a clear group signifier. They were all holding **** rifles in an at ease stance that wasn’t quite casual enough to hide that they were displaying the weaponry on purpose.

She had only acquiesced to the pull of the trap barrier out of idly curiosity, and the scent of their auras supported what her sense of barriers told her: she was in no danger whatsoever, and could leave whenever she wanted to. That knowledge made the whole display of barely veiled threat more comical than intimidating, not that there were many things that posed a genuine threat to her.

She wasn’t really trying to hide her own aura, just rein it in so she didn’t cause mass panic among mundanes. Clearly, since they kept up their little show, none of the idiots here were particularly gifted at assensing. Or maybe the leader just wasn’t, and didn’t have a habit of listening to his minions. Given that a guy behind her to the left smelt very worried, unlike the rest, the latter seemed likely.

The leader started to circle her with a swaggering gait, talking as he went, “You’ve hereby been detained for questioning due to suspicious behavior.” His tone was one of blatant lying and clear expectation that she would play along with it anyways. From there, he segued into a just as obviously false magnanimity. “Of course we’re all reasonable people here, so I’m sure you can think of a way to persuasively demonstrate your loyal and law abiding character. A donation to the Eyes of the Empire, for instance…”

Cocking an eyebrow and without bothering to feign being intimidated, she asked, “And if I don’t have any money?”

Of course, she did have money. More than any of these rubes had ever seen combined, most likely. But they had no way to know of her hoard, much less access it.

Nonetheless, the man’s smirk widened. Apparently, this was exactly what the swaggering ant had hoped to hear. He let his eyes roam across the caramel skin and bountiful curves of her human guise before answering, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to pay through services rendered instead. Keeping a vigilant lookout for rebellious and subversive elements is stressful work after all, so you’re going to help me and my men unwind.”

Part of her was tempted to rip his spine out for the insolence immediately and be done with it. But since she was quite certain of the last laugh here, she might as well consider other angles. Part of her harvest had been moving in a clearly unnatural way since she woke, and getting a bit closer to knowing why was worth the time and a few more seconds of indignity.

That said, there was only so much of her ire it would do to spare the cretin at this point, so she put on a mocking smirk. “I would sooner lay with one of the great catfish in the river than with you lot. It is liable to be both less disappointing and less slimy.”

The pest in the vest sneered angrily, clearly displeased by this turn of events. “Teach her some manners.”

Two goons stepped inside the circle and reached for her shoulders, clearly intent to **** her on her knees. The moment they touched her, they pulled back as though burned, screaming in pain and horror as necrosis spread from the point of contact through their flesh with supernatural haste. In a matter of seconds, their flesh had completely rotten away, leaving behind clothed skeletons with fungi sprouting directly from the bone.

The goon squad opened fire immediately, with the leader of the pack launching bolts of crackling, crimson energy. She simply stood still, not bothering to avoid the attacks. And when ten rifles were all clicking empty and the leader panting from the magical exertion, she remained unhurt, standing among a pile of shattered bullets. Even her clothes were completely unscathed by the ****.

At this point, the riff-raff realized that they were in over their heads and tried to run away. She was disinclined to allow that, and so seized the barrier before they could, turning their trap back on themselves. With their escape cut off, panic set in, the worms running away from her as fast as they could, little as that would avail them.

Even the few who employed supernatural means of celerity would’ve been child’s play to catch up to if she were inclined to something as pedestrian as physical pursuit. Instead, she exercised a modicum of power.

As a side effect, characteristics of her true, dragon form slipped through. Teeth tapered into sharp points and fangs lengthened, downward curving horns emerged from the back of her skull, and the pupils in her amethyst eyes turned into slits.

From her feet, a carpet of black mold grew forth, spreading with the speed of an arrow in flight. Wherever it touched fleeing feet, necrosis scoured flesh and left behind naked bone sprouting **** caps.

In scarcely a minute’s time, the only scumbag left alive was their leader, standing in a small island of untouched jungle road amidst a lake of deadly fungi. Rather than blindly run, he tried to put on a brave facade, though it was rather undermined by the visible trembling of his extremities and the stink of fear and urine. “Y- you can’t kill me. My uncle w- will have your head.”

Rather than answer immediately, she sauntered closer, chuckling darkly when he tried to stay out of arm’s reach only to find that it would require stepping onto the carpet of killer mold.

Abandoning the pretense of mortal tongue, she spoke in High Draconic and let the inherent magic of that language impress her meaning on his mind. “And who, pray tell, would your uncle be?”

“The governor. A- appointed by the Sanguine Sovereign himself!” The man found enough spine in speaking that title to get the trembling under control. Apparently, he was convinced that the bigger monster was in his corner.

“Sanguine Sovereign. So the Aztlanti crawled back out of the woodwork while I slept. That certainly explains a few things…” Her cat-like demeanor of amused toying with prey crumbled, giving way to naked malice. “I did not bow to your abattoir lord’s ancestors when they ruled most of the world, and I have no intentions of starting now. But you can tell your uncle, and anyone else willing to listen, that they have taken something of mine and anyone who gets in my way when I come to retrieve it will die.”

With the last word, she blew out a puff of pale green spores in his face. He immediately collapsed, writhing in pain too intense to allow screaming. When she left the barrier, he was still alive, and his phone lay on his chest, conference calling every contact he had listed as family. His eyes, arms, legs and genitals, however, were a decomposed ruin, the rot having eaten all the way down to his very soul.

Soren closed the last of the messages from his fratres and filii, fellow former apprentices of Dr. Serizawa and former apprentices of his own respectively, with a sigh. While the loss of her apprentice had been a significant hit to Darya Breshnik’s personal esteem, it had done little to no harm to the cause for which she was unofficial standard bearer in their Apothecarial chapter.

It was, perhaps, not overly surprising. Dr. Breshnik’s misjudgement of her apprentice’s assignment was not in any significant manner connected to her cause. But for all that the Apothecaries prized logic and reason, public opinion within the guild remained a fickle beast. It was entirely possible that this could have cast enough doubt on her judgment in general to bury any policies she might champion for at least a decade or two.

Alas, it was not to be, and thus the debates and politicking would continue and in the process pull scores of competent researchers away from projects worthier of their time.

He could not honestly begrudge the motivation underlying her cause. Not the stated one, at least, and he did believe that she was honest in that regard, unlike some of her cause’s supporters.

No, the point of contention was one of her lacking perspective in one critical regard. Which was doubly vexing for the fact that she was, in all other regards that he knew of, a brilliant woman. But she nonetheless completely failed to grasp that while the restrictions she sought to enshrine in the chapter bylaws would prevent some deaths and suffering, they would cause far more by delaying the development or improvement of various treatments and cures, and possibly closing entire avenues of research.

He had done what he could to limit the damage of unreasoned idealism for now though. It was best to put it out of his mind for the time being so he could focus fully on his actual work. Fortunately, there was one project in particular that never failed to command his full attention, and no patients currently needed time sensitive attention to keep him from said project.

A brisk walk brought him to an elevator that was marked “staff only” both in the barrier and in the mundane version of the hospital. He shared some of the ride down with a few members of the assistant staff, but once full privacy was available, he touched his thumb against the panel of floor buttons below the bottom floor.

The panel flashed the light blue of working mana briefly, showing that his mana signature had been recognized as associated with one of the restricted basements. The elevator would take on no other riders until he was delivered, going down well past the lowest basement level in the mundane mirror of the building.

Along the way, it shifted into a separate barrier, and then gradually into three sets of nesting ones. Each shift was as seamless as they came, noticeable only if he strained his powers of assensing at exactly the right moments.

Past the elevator lay a checkpoint with a plethora of detection wards connected to a host of security and containment measures. Combined with further wards and another 2 layers of barrier nesting at each individual laboratory down here, the security was frankly excessive for what was kept. Not in terms of privacy, as some of his guild mates plainly lacked the academic integrity not to steal research to feather their own cap, but in terms of containment. In that regard it was comparable to using steel bulkheads and meter-thick armored concrete to prevent the escape of livestock.

However, Dr. Serizawa insisted on caution and given that the leader of the Apothecarial chapter only rarely pulled rank, even on matters where he had the authority to overrule the chapter assembly, he was nearly unanimously supported in this. Soren’s support in the matter was a given even if he did not, strictly speaking, see the need for the magnitude of expenses. He did bear a not at all insignificant degree of loyalty to his parens, after all. It was only proper to thus repay the man who had inducted him into the methods of rationality and medicine, and into the Apothecaries.

Passing through security was as smooth as ever and in short order he was in his personal laboratory within the restricted basements. One of two, strictly speaking, but the other project was one in which other Apothecaries, as well as some assistant staff, were involved, so while he was the lead on it, it was not a personal workspace in the way that the one he had now entered was.

First, he checked on the automated recording and data collection equipment, as well as what they had gathered since he was last here. Though not all of the processing of that data could be automated, what could be had. Even in the data’s thusly incomplete state, Soren was familiar enough with all pertinent details to tell that another priceless finding was coalescing.

In many ways, that was remarkable. For twenty years, the sole specimen of this lab had been the subject of experimentation and scrutiny at his behest. He had originally expected it to be exhausted beyond usefulness much sooner.

In this, the wisdom of Dr. Serizawa’s advice once again shone through. Acquiring the specimen in the first place had been a gamble. It did not come from a reputable source, the evidence provided for the specimen’s genuinity had been lacking, and the notes on containment highly suspect on a technical basis. Soren had not, initially, thought the potential benefits of a genuine specimen worth the risk of being defrauded.

He had not grasped the true potential that lay in its acquisition. Not even after his old mentor’s counsel, truthfully, but he had come close enough to understanding to be willing to take the gamble. And now, two decades later, the work he had done, and continued to do, with that very specimen was the cornerstone in him having become the foremost expert on spiritual parasitism in America, if not the whole world.

An expertise that had saved, at the very least, dozens of lives, though depending on whether one counted prevention of spread and how such was estimated, the figure could be well in the thousands. And if the current direction of experimentation yielded a cure, or even just a reliable preventative treatment, to the crystalline blight, a whole dwarven Kingdom could be salvaged from the brink of calamity.

With the yielded data securely collected, and the integrity of the equipment and spellwork doing the collecting ensured, it was time to leave. Before doing so, however, he decided to behold the specimen as directly as containment measures allowed.

There was little practical reason to do so, as anything his senses could tell him, his equipment could tell him with greater precision and better ability to review it later. The advantage of direct perception was in viscerality. It should not be forgotten that his field was primarily one of flesh, blood and spirit, not numbers and mathematical formulae. That way lay the foundation of mistakes that would have been easily avoided by someone who had not allowed their perspective to lapse in such a manner.

Sliding aside a metal panel on the containment unit, he revealed a window. Beyond lay a small, one room living space, albeit bereft of some of the features that an occupant of a less mystical nature would’ve required. Instead, it was outfitted with additional space for books and soothing iconography.

The being inside had the appearance of a young woman in a white hospital gown. Cutouts in the back of the gown were currently unused. Still, her inhuman nature was obvious at a glance, the white of her skin was altogether too pure for a creature wholly flesh and blood. It was somewhat ironic that that characteristic had been retained, while the first string of experiments had changed her eyes from golden to red and the current line of experimentation had put an increasingly blue tint to her black hair.

It was unclear whether she had actually been doing anything he could’ve interrupted, but regardless she looked to the window as it opened. As was often the case, her eyes spoke of great sadness, and the set of her jaw spoke of not quite successfully suppressed pain. It was not enough to quell the good mood that going through the data had put him in, but it did add an undeniable edge of bitter to the sweet.

“Unfortunately, the research still necessitates your suffering. If there was a way to alleviate it without compromising the data, it would be done.” He paused briefly. “But you can take solace in the knowledge that your anguish now will spare countless others from similar torment in the future.”

He did not wait for a response, given that even if she did speak one, he would be unable to hear it. The containment unit was meticulously warded against sound escaping to anything but built-in recording equipment.