CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Insidious

The brick-lined path we trudged on was long and narrow and dark so that we were forced to move in single file while Corporal Allers and the dorky-looking flashlight attached to his helmet took the lead. We could barely see anything past a few meters though as the gloom ahead seemed almost opaque in its insistence to keep us in the dark.

“Hey, Wunderkind,” Allers whispered. “Can you still sense that thing?”

I used up all the blood for the map...” The memory of those human-looking eyes gazing back at me from beyond the gloom flashed across my mind. I shook my head. “And I think it'll be dangerous if I try sensing for it again.”

“Too bad,” he shrugged. “Guess we're doing this the old-fashioned way.”

Once or twice, a rat as big as a cat would pass by and freak the shit out of Private Jenkins who was supposed to guard our rear. But the way he shrieked at the rats left me with the impression that this dark-haired, green-eyed newbie who looked even younger than Allers might not be all that reliable. Not that age was a negative factor. After all, these guys were ancient compared to me and I was pretty capable for an eight-year-old.

“Shut it, Jenkins,” Sergeant Jager hissed from behind me.

The pale-skinned, middle-aged sergeant sporting the short brown afro seemed more irritable than when I first met him, but that was to be expected considering what we were up to. There were too many unknown factors in this mission for it to be anything less than a highly stressful exercise.

“S-sorry, Sarge,” Private Jenkins whispered. “I’m just a little amped up… Excited to get my first kill, you know?”

“I doubt you could kill anything with your piss-poor aim, Jenkins,” Sergeant Jager countered.

“Ha-ha,” Private Jenkins replied. “Just you wait, Sarge. I’ll be the one to bag this fiend.”

Sergeant Jager sighed. “Just try not to shoot us in the back while you’re at it.”

Ten minutes into our trek and the brick-lined passage began to smell different. It had swapped foul sewer stench for the scent of a butcher shop’s kitchen as the iron tinge of blood saturated the air.

“Looks like we drew the short straw, Sarge,” Allers whispered.

I heard the cha-ching of a bolt-action rifle being cocked behind me.

“Congrats, Jenkins,” Sergeant Jager grumbled. “You get to try and kill something today.”

“Just what I wanted, Sarge,” Private Jenkins replied.

“Try not to get yourself killed, private.” Sergeant Jager sighed before patting me on the shoulder. “That goes for you too, Number One.”

“Don’t worry, Sarge,” I glanced over my shoulder to grin at him, “I won’t slow you down.”

“Hear that, Jenkins?” Sergeant Jager called. “This brat sounds more reliable than you.”

Ten minutes later and Corporal Allers raised his hand to stop us from moving forward.

“There are stairs here,” he reported.

We reached the end of the passage where rough-hewn steps led up to even more darkness.

“Should we hike back and get the major?” Allers asked.

“You think the fiend’s going to wait here patiently for us to take forty minutes to run for help and get back here?” Sergeant Jager countered.

“Yeah,” Allers took his first wary step up the stairs, “I figured you’d say that, Sarge.”

It wasn’t a long hike up the stairs. Barely five minutes had passed and we could see the outline of a trapdoor above us. Light filtered in through its cracks, suggesting that there might be a lit room beyond.

Corporal Allers glanced over his shoulder and placed a finger over his lips. Then he motioned that he would go first and that we were to ready our guns in case things went sour.

I didn’t have a gun, but I did have my gauntlets. And with a flash of sparks momentarily lighting up our surroundings, the iron I’d pulled out of my belt’s fanny pack was transfigured into the two-and-a-half-foot short sword I brandished in front of me.

Jenkins whistled in appreciation of my spell, earning him a slap on the shoulder from the butt of Sergeant Jager’s rifle.

Corporal Allers waited to make sure we were ready before he pushed against the trapdoor with his rifle’s muzzle. It rose an inch high without difficulty, although the creaking of its hinges made us all cringe.

Now or never… I thought while my heart raced.

Five seconds. That’s how short a time it took for Corporal Allers to push open the trapdoor and climb up to the landing above. It took another five seconds for me to scramble up and join him. And ten more seconds before our fireteam was gathered on the landing with our backs pressed together and our weapons at the ready.

“What in seven hells?” Allers breathed.

We found ourselves inside a spacious room with wooden floorboards, stone walls, and a high ceiling that reminded me of one of the institute’s laboratories. It seemed so similar that I began to feel a sense of deja vu.

Doc Schmidt's lab is just as cluttered as this place...

There were stacks of books as thick as bricks on a wooden table to our left. A myriad of glass beakers and vials, all of them filled with multicolor liquids, were on the long table to our right along with a microscope and other lab equipment. Papers were scattered all over the floor as if whoever owned this room was too preoccupied with their experiments to clean up after themselves.

“This place is messier than my apartment,” Private Jenkins said.

“Probably smells as bad, too,” Allers teased.

There were no windows so that musty smell of old books and chemicals mixed together made the air hard to breathe in. Also, the room’s only light source was the candle sconces on the walls. Not all of them were lit and the ones that were barely provided us any light, which meant there were way too many shadows around the corners for something monstrous to hide in.

Seconds ticked by while we kept our weapons trained on these shadows. But a full minute would pass and nothing attacked us, leaving us to consider that maybe we were wrong and the fiend wasn’t here at all.

“Looks clear, Sarge,” Allers reported after another minute of constant vigilance.

You could see their shoulders visibly relax like they’d let go of the knotted tension that kept them on high alert. But I knew better. The way their eyes continued to dart left and then right told me that at least the corporal and the sergeant had been well-trained for just this kind of scenario. As for Private Jenkins, well, he was the first to break ranks.

“Jenkins!” Sergeant Jager hissed. “Where are you—”

But Jenkins had already walked over to the table with the stack of books on it — and still, nothing came out of hiding to eat him. So, I guessed that meant we were safe for now.

“Sarge,” Jenkins pointed to the one book that lay open on the table, “take a look at this.”

We could all hear the revulsion in his voice.

“There's some sick shit happening here,” he added.

“How the fuck would you know, private?” Sergeant Jager growled.

“It’s got pictures and shit,” Private Jenkins reported. “Nasty stuff, too.”

I admit it. He got me curious. It’s why I’d thrown caution to the winds and joined Jenkins by the wooden table so I could inspect this book for myself.

“You’re an arcanist, right, One?” Private Jenkins confirmed. “You think you can understand this stuff?”

“I can try,” I answered as I tiptoed up to get a better look at the book's contents. It didn't take long for my eyes to widen in disbelief at what I was seeing. Seven hells… this is bad.

Jenkins had it right. Whoever owned this lab had a really insidious hobby. The pages laid open for me to read told the story of human experimentation. Specifically, enhancing a human body with parts transfigured from animals as an alternative to... “Enchantment.”

Why is it always about enchantment these days? I frowned. Isn't there some other fantastical power in this world for crazy people to gush over?

The first drawing I saw in this book was similar to Da Vinci's famous sketch of the Vetruvian Man, but with a wolf's head and paws replacing normal body parts. Scrawled underneath this drawing was the phrase, “To take the ordinary and make it extraordinary.”

I disagreed. This idea of combining different species was a perversion of the natural.

The next pages of the book had more drawings. And these were disturbing in their graphic depiction of teaching someone how to surgically implant animal parts into someone's insides.

A wolf's heart, infused with a concentrated dose of deifacted arcanite, will increase the body's physical prowess many times the ability of a standard strengthening pill. This was just one of the many notations scrawled around the drawings that I couldn't comprehend.

What the hell was deifacted arcanite? I wondered. Then I reported my findings to the others. “I think this might be someone’s work journal for keeping a record of their experiments.”

If the previous pages had been disturbing, the next pages were a whole new level of nefarious. Photographs were posted to these pages. Proof that what might have once been theoretical had already been put into practice. The worst thing about them was the fact that the body lying on the operating table in those photos belonged to a child, and more than one at that.

I heard Jenkins vomit behind me, and Corporal Allers’ indignantly yelling, “Why’d you have to puke on my boots!”

Honestly, the only reason I didn't hurl my breakfast on the floor too was that the memory of Number Fifteen's dead body was still very present in my mind that I might have become less sensitive to the gruesome deaths of other children. Yeah, I’d been through some crazy shit in this short life of mine.

The next pages were a detailed account of the many failures the writer had experienced with his experiments. They were mostly like that — the whining of a mad man. But then I read something in these pages that caused my heart to skip a beat. The words Number One were all over the latter half of the book, with the writer expressing great frustration at how they hadn't been allowed to experiment with the child's body.

The major has again denied my request to study Number One as he believes the boy would not survive my experiments even though my latest proposal is a watered-down version of its original content. The fool coddles the child, believing wrongly that Number One’s mental state is key to inducing his ability to cast enchantments. He is wrong. They all are. Only I truly understand the boy’s talent.

Enchantment is not a thing of the mind. Nor is it something outside of one’s self. It is a fact that enchantment affects the internal, and this enforces my hypothesis that the boy’s organs could hold the key to our enlightenment.

The more I read this mad man's ravings, the tighter I gripped my short sword.

The major has left Number One’s future in the hands of another fool… That arrogant welp, Wolf, who, like his superior, believes in the folly that Number One’s unique abilities are triggered by esoteric nonsense. Unfortunately, I cannot steal him away while he is under Wolf’s protection. How cruel the all-father is to bless such a degenerate with power unbecoming of a commoner. No, perhaps it is time to look elsewhere. Some of the other children might prove equally useful.

The thought that this psychopath had targeted not only me but my crib mates too, well, let’s just say I didn’t mean to zap Allers with the sparks of magic that had flown out of me then.

Another setback. The major has refused my request to use the other children. He calls them his precious resources, future heroes of the state... As if I didn’t know better. I was there when they were made special. And it was not by the major’s hand but hers. It was her guidance that led me to this truth that now consumes my waking thoughts… I must prove my theories correct. Then I will show them all. The children of the institute may be locked away, but the dregs they’d cast aside are free to serve my purposes.

“Seven hells,” I whispered.

I flipped the pages back to the photographs with my heart aching at the thought that some of the children in those photos might have been my discarded crib mates. Unfortunately, as I scanned the photographs one by one, I discovered that their subjects had already been mutilated beyond recognition.

My fingers moved, almost automatically, back to the latter half of the book where I discovered when the writer had abandoned their quest to unlock the secrets of enchantment and opted instead to circumvent the power enchantment provided by transfiguring human flesh with animal parts.

Eureka! I have discovered the answer. No, not to enchantment. That blasted art belongs to the devils of the white shores and always will. I pity the fools of the institute who still attempt to repeat the accident that is Number One. No. I have found another way. A new path for humanity to triumph over those devils. Those idiots of the Arcanist Society call it fiend, but I know better. The fiend is our solution to the great problem. The fiend will rid this world of the impure. And I shall be master of them.

And that was about all I could stomach. I turned and walked away from that insidious journal and the mad musings of someone who had more than a few screws loose.

This mission and this place... As I scanned the room, my vision began to blur thanks to the tears pooling underneath my eyes... This was all about me?

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was warm and comforting — a port in a storm of depressing thoughts.

“Are you alright, Wunderkind?” Allers asked.

I wiped away the tears with the sleeve of my coat. “Yup… I just…”

“I read it,” he said in a concerned tone. “It’s not your fault for being special, kid. There are just a lot of crazies in this world.”

But it was my fault. I shouldn’t have shown off so much… I didn’t realize there would be this kind of consequence — a psychopath using me to justify his monstrous plans. I didn’t say that out loud though. Instead, I asked Corporal Allers to bag that journal for evidence.

Corporal Allers patted his shoulder bag. He'd already put it in there. “Yeah, this will help us catch the bastard.”

“Hey, Number One,” Sergeant Jager called, “come have a look at this.”

I decided to shove my anger and frustration into a box and buried that box deep in my mind for later use. For now, I had to focus on the mission, which was now more than just simply hunting a fiend. We had a traitor in the institute, and I mean to find them whoever they were.

Sergeant Jager was waiting beside the table with all the lab equipment on it. He had a glass vial in his hand, and I guessed that was what he needed me to inspect.

“What's up?" I asked in a voice that feigned calm.

He showed me the three-inch vial and the thick blue substance in it that shone with the tell-tale sign of magic.

“All the equipment here was meant for this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

I wished he hadn't dropped the vial so carelessly into my palm as we didn't know how the substance inside would react to free fall. It didn't blow up though. Something stranger occurred.

No sooner did my fingers grasp its glass surface when I began to feel the magic within the vial call to me. An abundance of magical energy seemingly stored inside this blue substance surged into me so that I felt power crackling in my veins and then traveling to every cell in my body like a shock.

“By the all-father,” I gasped.

What was initially painful now gave me this euphoric feeling, like I could suddenly do anything I set my mind to — and that feeling terrified me. With great effort, I managed to drop the vial so that it fell onto the table with a crack.

“Seven hells, why’d you—”

The blue substance poured out of the broken vial. But instead of soaking the wood in toxic ooze, it came together and solidified into a small stone that reminded me of a lapis lazuli. Except this stone was glowing like it was radioactive.

“Sarge... I think...” My brow furrowed as I wasn't entirely certain, but I'd seen images of this substance in the research papers of the institute's library. “...I think this is arcanite.”

“Are you certain, Number One,” Sergeant Jager asked skeptically. “Arcanite’s far too expensive to find in some shithole laboratory in the middle of nowhere. Even a tiny stone of this size would cost tens of thousands of Euran.”

I dared not touch the glowing blue stone again for fear of its influence on an arcanist like me, but even untouched, I could still sense the abundance of magical energy emanating from the arcanite.

“Yeah, I really think that is arcanite, Sarge,” I answered. “We should—”

We all heard the crash from behind us, and we turned around — weapons at the ready — only to discover that Private Jenkins had accidentally discovered a hidden door by the far corner of the lab.

Private Jenkins trained his flashlight into the room. “Holy—”

“Jenkins, wait—”

But the sarge's call fell on deaf ears as the private had already stepped into the hidden room, leaving us no choice but to chase after him.

The room we followed Private Jenkins into was where we discovered that operating table that had been so prominent in those terrible photographs. And after seeing those images, I couldn't believe how clean this room was now. As if the insidious deeds made in this place hadn't happened at all.

Jenkins had already crossed over to the other end of the room to inspect the cage there. It was empty. But that was obvious because the thing that should have been inside the cage was hanging by the corner of the ceiling. It was half-veiled in shadow but I could see long limbs spread out like that of a spider hanging on the wall.

Private Jenkins hadn't noticed it, but before I could warn him, the fiend pounced.