The woman opened her eyes and screamed, well she tried to anyways, being gagged tends to limit such things. She was in a cellar. Her arms and legs were shackled, bound inside a circle drawn with her own blood, her face contorted in a mixture of fear, pain, and confusion. A saber was embedded in her chest, surrounded by various runes carved into her flesh and another blood-circle. Her eyes darted back and forth, between the gas lamps overhead, the saber, and the young mage clutching an odd looking cat.
“Ah, You're awake! Betcha didn't expect to wake up in a place like this with a sword sticking outta ya huh?” the mage said happily.
The woman responded with muffled screams.
I gave the girl holding me an annoyed look, Do you really need to talk to the test subjects? She's probably going to die soon anyways. Can you get it over with already? I didn't say anything though, we've rehashed that conversation to death already.
“Well 47 I'm Ren, and the cat here's Fel. You've been uhhh... volunteered to participate in my little experiment, I'm gonna rip your soul right outta ya, then I'm gonna place it into that sword! It'll be great!”
The woman responded with even more muffled screaming.
I groaned internally and reflexively glanced at the door. Did she have to tell the subject our names and plans? I'm pretty certain the experiment will fail just fine regardless of whether the subject knows our identities. Well revealing my name doesn't really matter much, but she could at least use an alias for herself. Eh, on second thought that probably wouldn't help either, there can't be that many short female mages toting around a cat in this city.
Ren started monologuing to 47, the same old spiel, history in the making yada yada, genius mage yada yada, creating living weapons yada yada, just standard stuff she's ranted off before. Also stuff she practiced in front of the mirror last night, that was pretty annoying, woke me up. She insisted that it's an honor to be a test subject for this revolutionary new process, 47 was shaking her head and mumbling something through her gag. I don't think she agrees.
In the books and plays the point where the villains start revealing their plans and identities to the victim is also the point where some jackass jumps through a window or something, often shouting something stupid like “Halt Evil-doers!” I glanced nervously at the walls, something like that never happened, and there are no windows in this room, but I can’t help being paranoid.
“Welp, say goodbye to your meat-body. Hope ya enjoy being a sword!” The bubbly mage started casting her spells. The woman thrashed against her bonds, tears flowed down her cheek as she screamed into the gag, ripping out a soul was apparently excruciatingly painful. Stuffing a soul back into a container the size of a sword was theoretically more painful still, but that step never succeeded.
Subject 47's actions were little different from her predecessors, most of them responded with some variation of muffled screaming, threats, and thrashing, this was the 46th time this scene occurred. Subject 27 managed to off himself before this point, really screwing up numbering. As a result this lab no longer contains any tin foil or citrus.
Ren furrowed her brow in concentration as she cast spell after spell, the subject was surrounded by floating spell circles at this point. 47's body gave off a faint blueish light which grew brighter with each spell cast, Her trashing and noises increased in intensity, with her mouth blocked blood flowed out of her nose and ears.
I had to stifle a yawn, this would probably play out like it always did. The experiment would fail, the Subject would expire, the sword may or may not shatter. Ren would curl up into a ball and sulk in a corner for the next few hours. I'd mock her mercilessly, mostly because it amuses me, a little bit because that's best way to recover her morale, humans are weird like that. If she’s still in a stupor by the time Cap’n finds another job he’ll come over and bribe her with meat until she’s back to normal. The team mage can’t be all depressed and sulky when there’s work to be done after all, and there’s always more work to be done. Sometimes the Mayor needs someone shot, especially prevalent around election season or during budgetary meetings, maybe some merchant needs a shipment of Artifacts from the Ruins stolen from his rival, or perhaps another insurrection in the colonies needs to be put down. At some point we’d find another subject, someone nobody will miss and who won't put up much of a fight. Typically we ambush some poor sod walking down the wrong alleyway in the Slums or one of the Refugee Districts-- places the City Watch won't usually bother entering. Then we'd be right back here where we started, maybe this time we'd vary the Orichalcum content of the sword, or try different runes or change the spells. The past few years have been pretty cyclical now that I think of it.
The bluish light emitted by 47 faded, the saber in her chest started to glow instead. Ren gasped in surprise, this hasn't happened before. I scratched my ear in confusion.
47's movements abruptly stopped, the saber embedded in her chest pulsed blue, I could sense a presence in it's blade.
“Hah! I did it! I'm the best mage ever! Suck it Tuppitz Academy, who's too stupid to study there now?! Ren exclaimed happily, thrusting a free hand into the air and shaking her fist.
You know they also rejected you because you're too poor to afford tuition and you were just a worthless-- My train of thought was interrupted when Ren squeezed me tightly in a fierce hug.
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“Ack! Too... tight! Let go! Are you trying to kill me?!” I shouted indignantly.
“Ahah hah... sorry Fel.” Ren apologized sheepishly and reduced her strength, I squirmed out of her arms and jumped to ground.
I glared at her. Her smile was unapologetic. I can see the amusement in her eyes. That hurt damn it, stupid bony human. Why is a scrawny mage able to squeeze so tightly anyways? That just isn't right, mages have no physical strength, everyone knows that.
”You know I had a ton of good insults ready for when you failed, I didn't prepare anything for success.” I sneered.
“Ahh, I'm in a good mood. I'll just take that as your way of congratulating me.” Ren replied in a chipper voice.
Not taking the bait eh? So much for that. I stared at 47's lifeless corpse, I wonder how she'd taste fried. Humans are best fried. The saber's light pulses dimmed, the time between each pulse increasing slightly with each repetition.
Ren unshackled 47, corpses don’t need restraints. She then pulled the saber out of 47's lifeless former body, warm blood dripped off its blade.
“Darn. The bond's not stable, she won't last long. Maybe a days or a weekish?”
“That’s it? All that work and she won’t even persist for longer than a week? I thought she was supposed to be in there permanently!”
“Hey I'm working off some poorly translated ramblings of a guy who’s been dead for centuries, If I wasn’t such a genius the binding wouldn’t have held at all in the first place!” Ren countered defensively.
Right. Genius. Like how the binding failed the last 45 times huh? Well this is a partial success at least, and I guess you have to start somewhere.
“So you going to test her out or what?” I said with an impatient tone. It’s been a long day and I'm getting hungry.
“Yeah yeah I'm going” Ren swung the saber—now 47 at the air. Nothing happened. “That’s strange...”
“isn’t the she supposed to burst into flames? You said that’s supposed to happen when you swing her.” Orichalcum is a horrible material to make a blade out of, if she can’t produce fire she’s inferior to any half-decent steel sword.
“Yeah… that should be happening… I guess that part of the spell didn’t work?” she continued to swing at the air, 47 stubbornly refused to set herself on fire.
“Back to the drawing board huh? I’m guessing the reason she isn’t screaming her head off right about now is because she can’t talk either.”
“Probably… Lemme borrow your amulet for a minute, she should be able to talk with that.” Without waiting for a reply Ren reached down to my neck.
“What?! Hey I need that! Besides it doesn’t give you heari---” the mage pulled the Artifact off my neck, cutting off my protests. I don’t have the vocal cords to speak Southern Common, without that amulet I can’t really communicate with her, so I glared and hissed a bit. Didn’t do anything, but made me feel slightly better.
“5 minutes tops, you’ll get it back after that.” Ren smirked, “Sides, you’re curious too. Normally you’d be carving up the body by now.”
Oh. Right. I forgot about that. I guess I should get on that. 47’s corpse is too big to fit in a pot as-is, she needs to be cut into more manageable chunks. I don’t really like skin either so that needs to go, a bunch of her organs too, I'm kinda picky.
Ren placed my amulet around 47’s hilt. The saber immediately started wailing and making guttural sounds. Ren hurriedly took the amulet off.
“Fuck that’s annoying. You hear me 47? If you’re still screaming when I put this back on ya I'm smashing you against the wall.” Ren replaced the amulet on 47’s hilt.
The blade continued to wail and noise. The annoyed mage took the amulet off again.
“Well you asked for it!” 47 was smashed against the wall, metal clanged against hard rock. After the amulet was replaced 47 started moaning, sounds of someone in pain.
“Huh? Could you feel that? Or are you just moaning for the heck of it? Hey if you don’t answer I'm gonna smash you again!” The process repeated again. Then again. When the amulet was placed on her hilt again 47 started blubbering, sounds of crying inter spaced with more strange sounds.
“Right so... I don’t think she can hear me. She can feel pain though, pretty certain of that. My arm kinda hurts now...”
I gave her a look, what were you expecting? You were swinging against rock you know. 47’s old body was cut up into decent-sized meat chunks, my claws and tail-blade are pretty efficient at this, a monster’s natural weapons are harder and sharper than good steel generally, and mine aren’t exceptions. My black fur was coated in blood, This was the only bad part of eating fresh meat, gotta clean it yourself and blood is a real pain to get out of fur.
“Ya know… I’m getting the sinking feeling that those weird noises of hers are supposed to be speech” Ren stated while bringing 47 over to me. 47’s noises got louder when she was brought near my blood covered form, still clawing at the meat chunks that was once her body.
I listened closer to her sounds. Shit. That probably is some sorry excuse for a language. Where did we pick her up again? I think it was in the Refugee District, she’s definitely from the Surface then, and she looks Southern to me. My amulet was taken off 47 returned to my neck.
“So I take it you have no idea what language that is? I asked once I could finally speak again.
“Nope. All I know is that She’s a Surfacer and a Southerner, must be from one of the more isolated or traditionalist Kingdoms if she doesn’t speak Common.”
“I thought so too. We really need to check for these things beforehand. We had her gagged the whole time too, she might not have understood anything you were saying from the start.”
“Yeah. We fucked up. Darnit! My speech! She probably didn’t understand any of it! I stayed for hours last night thinking of it!”
I glared at her.
Ren fidgeted. “Well We know she can feel pain, and I think she can see too, she got louder when I brought her near ya.” 47 was tossed into a corner. Looks like her blade chipped on the rock a bit.
Well this sucks. I suppose we did prove that ripping out a soul and stuffing it into a sword is at least possible, even if the ritual only did half of what it was supposed to.
“So… to recap, she isn’t stable. She has no powers of any kind and is inferior to an equivalent steel sword. She’s just an inert hunk of metal that can somehow feel pain and may or may not be able to see. She can’t even tell us how the process felt or how it feels like to be trapped in a sword because we don’t understand a word she’s saying. What exactly was the point of all this again?”
I'm pretty certain I know what her response will be. Plus you have to take small steps for this kinda thing, I just want to hear her say it.
“The point? The point was to prove that I could. The point was for SCIENCE!!!” Ren posed triumphantly, her voice lacking even a hint of remorse.
Yep. Called it.