The next day, Zayd woke feeling more rested and well-nourished than he had in longer than he could remember. The night before, when Eirian had explained the features of his suite to him, he’d learned that the futon he woke on the day before had been arranged specifically for him to prevent him from having a negative reaction to traditional Fae sleeping arrangements. Given the option of continuing to use his original bed or attempting to fit in with his new companions, he opted to try a Fae-style hammock instead of the futon. While part of him strongly desired to cling to normality where he could find it, he firmly suppressed that reflex. He’d sworn an oath. He was about to undergo a radical medical procedure to graft alien tissue to his body to allow him to use their technology. The sooner he accepted reality and gave up on human conventions, the easier it would be to assimilate into his new environment.

Once he tried the Fae’s notion of a sleeping hammock, however, he understood immediately why they’d opted to place him on a more familiar surface! While the shimmery fabric hammock looked like something that any human could string between two trees, the reality was very different once he climbed into it. The hammock moved like a living thing, wrapping around his body, enveloping him in a soft, soothing cocoon that isolated him from the outside world. The high-tech bedding went further than creating a sensory isolation pod, it conformed perfectly to his body, supporting him and his body gently enough that he felt like he only weighed a third of his actual weight. Once he was completely enveloped, the cocoon-like hammock adjusted the temperature to align with his own body temperature and provided a soft, rhythmic sound like a heartbeat heard through water. At first, it was unsettling but slowly the combination of sensory isolation, comforting support, and mildly hypnotic sound lulled him into the best sleep of his life.

Sadly, he wasn’t treated to Eirian’s cooking for breakfast or any breakfast at all. Instead, Eion fetched him directly from his suite and led Zayd to a sophisticated medical lab where the priestess waited for him along with several other Fae medical specialists.

“You look like you rested well,” Eirian praised, looking over Zayd while a holographic screen nearby displayed a wealth of data about his physical condition. “Before we begin, I need to ask you one more time, for the record and in front of witnesses. We’re going to forcefully modify your body to accept Fae tissue without undergoing supporting genetic modifications. The result will be more like a transplant than an evolution and your body may reject the grafted tissue. While my team and I will do everything in our power to ensure your survival, some of your original tissue will be destroyed in the process and we may not be able to fully restore you to your current condition if this procedure fails,” she said formally. “Knowing these risks, do you still choose to embark upon this path to free yourself from your current evolutionary shackles?”

“I do,” Zayd said formally. The whole thing felt like a bit of a pageant to him. While the priestess asked for his permission, he had no hope of success in his mission if he rejected the procedure. He had as much choice now as he’d had when his previous employer had offered him his pick of mining planets to work on. It sounded nice to have a choice but the reality was that the Rotten Egg was the only place he could repay his debts before he was an old man. He knew it, HR knew it, but they still went through the formal process of presenting alternatives and having him sign their ‘offer letter.’ Since the alternatives were unspeakably worse, the best he could do was to play along with the charade that he had a real choice and hope that the results were as good as Priestess Eirian promised.

“Good,” Eirian said, waving over one of the other Fae. “Help Champion Zayd out of his uniform and onto the operating slab. Champion,” she continued, turning to Zayd. “Once you’re on the slab, we’ll apply a series of neurological blocks that will deprive you of your senses. A chemical injection will alter your perception of time while we work but you will be fully conscious to ensure that we’re able to make appropriate neurological connections. Our systems are calibrated to work on Fae and other enhanced lifeforms. It’s possible that we won’t be able to block all sensations or that there will be delays as the system adapts. If you feel pain, you are welcome to cry out, but I don’t imagine that a champion such as yourself will lose control of himself so badly, will you?” the priestess asked with a teasing wink.

As much as he wanted to say something witty or boastful, the solemn looks on the faces of the other Fae in the room made him wonder if things were going to be as easy as the priestess made it sound last night. Maybe it was the strange, green alcohol they’d been drinking last night but he’d never doubted her confidence when she said she could transform his body to allow him to harness the power of Dark Energy to a greater extent than he currently could. Now that he looked around the room full of inhumanly beautiful Fae, he saw uncertainty in the gazes of everyone but Eirian and Eion. Those two had eyes that burned with a deeply religious fervor and any witty comments he might have formulated died on his tongue when he saw it. Instead, Zayd climbed onto the slab and allowed darkness to envelop him as seemingly magical Fae technology swept away his connection to all of his senses.

“The blocks look successful,” one of the assistants said after injecting a potent drug into Zayd’s carotid artery. “We can begin when you’re ready.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Excellent,” the priestess said, taking stock of the preparations she and Eion had made. What they were about to attempt was one of the crudest forms of evolutionary augmentation ever used in the Stellar Imperium. After her dinner with Zayd, both Erian and Eion had spent several hours reconstructing the procedure from archival documents and holy scripture. Many of the pioneers who took this leap in the early days of the Steller Imperium had died on the operating tables of the Temple, but those who survived had literally grown wings to fly, opening doors that led not just to survival but to actually thrive in environments much richer in Dark Energy than the desolate wasteland where humanity had originally evolved. For the last surviving members of the Temple of Evolutionary Ascendance aboard the Spear of Destiny, today’s surgery wasn’t just an attempt to augment their liege lady’s Champion, it was a moment to reconnect to the foundations of their faith in the uncompromising quest to reach the Apex at all costs. Failure at this juncture would be an intolerable affront to their faith and neither cleric intended to allow such a tragedy to come to pass.

“Today we bring a Champion to the Altar of Evolution,” Priestess Eirian intoned formally. “Champion Zayd and Lady Nimue have entrusted his evolution to our hands. Today, we perform our most sacred duty and bring him one step closer to the Apex of all life. We will not fail,” she promised solemnly. “Until the Apex!”

“Until the Apex,” the other Fae assisting with the procedure intoned solemnly before each moved to their positions for the historic undertaking.

“We’ll begin with the destruction of his bone marrow,” Eirian said calmly, restraining her fervor to focus on the delicate dance of replacing tissue step by step until their new Champion became Fae enough to fight alongside them. “Ensure that the replacement tissue is ready for injection and begin with targeted energy pulses on his left foot. I want to complete the replacement process in less than five hundred ticks. Once we’ve verified that there’s no immediate negative result or rejection, we can proceed more aggressively. If it looks like there’s a strong rejection that risks impacting the rest of his body, don’t hesitate to amputate at the ankle or the knee if necessary. We can always fit a prosthetic if we have to,” she commanded firmly.

“Yes Priestess Eirian,” the assistant said as they aimed a powerful directional energy emitter at Zayd’s foot before activating the precision targeting system and inputting the necessary instructions.

For Zayd, an indeterminate amount of time had passed in darkness before he felt a flash of searing heat strike his foot. The sensation stopped as soon as it started, followed moments later by dozens of stinging sensations before those sensations also vanished. If he had to describe it, it was like he’d stepped barefoot on hot pavement and then plunged his foot into a bucket of ice water.

“Looks like they were right that I’m too different from Fae to escape the pain entirely,” Zayd thought in the darkness. At least the Fae medicine or whatever it was they had used on him worked after a moment or two, he didn’t have to endure constant agony during the procedure, but the intensity of pain he felt in those brief moments was still much greater than what he’d felt at any other point in his life.

[WARNING: FOREIGN TISSUE INSERTION DETECTED.]

Despite the fact that he couldn’t see anything else in this darkness, the words from the Mech Destroyer System flashed clearly in his vision, startling him and bringing his mind out of the drifting, timeless state he’d fallen into.

[WARNING: FOREIGN TISSUE IDENTIFIED AS FAE. GENETIC MISMATCH DETECTED. ANALYZING.]

The message was frustratingly useless. Zayd knew that they were going to graft Fae tissue onto his body. The ‘warning’ didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. What he wanted to know was what the relic intended to do about it, if anything.

[ANALYSIS COMPLETE. GENETIC OVERLAP WITH FOREIGN TISSUE: 85%. REJECTION RISK: 10%. WARNING: ADDITIONAL FOREIGN TISSUE INSERTION DETECTED. REJECTION RISK 12%.]

[ENGAGE GENETIC PROTECTION PROTOCOL: YES/NO]

“Genetic protection protocol? What would that do?” Zayd asked.

[GENETIC PROTECTION PROTOCOL WOULD OVERWRITE EXISTING GENETIC DATA ONTO THE FOREIGN TISSUE, NEUTRALIZING THE CONTAMINATION.]

“If I did that, I couldn’t benefit from the operation,” Zayd told the relic. “No, don’t engage the protection. I have to do this if I want to wield enough Dark Energy to complete the Activation Mission.”

[ACKNOWLEDGED. ANALYZING. ADDITIONAL FOREIGN TISSUE INSERTION DETECTED. REJECTION RISK 15%. DIRECTIVE RECEIVED. ANALYZING. AT CURRENT RATE OF ADVANCEMENT, CHANCE OF ADVERSE OUTCOME EXCEEDS 50%. CHANCE OF DEATH EXCEEDS 20%.]

“Eff!” Zayd wanted to scream at Eirian. Fifty-fifty odds? One in five odds of dying to this? No wonder the other Fae looked so concerned, he was screwed! “Is there anything that can be done to improve my odds? I refuse to die on this table but if I engage the Genetic Protection Protocol, I lose all the benefits this operation is supposed to give me. What else can I do?”

[STRENGTH CAN BE FOUND IN YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTION. DO YOU WISH TO HARVEST ENTROPIC ENERGY BY ACCELERATING YOUR SELF-DESTRUCTION? YES/NO]

Strength? At the moment, Zayd wasn’t sure he cared. Survival came first, then strength, and right now, he needed anything that would improve his odds of survival! “Yes,” he told the system.

[INITIATING…]