Suddenly, in the medical lab of the Spear of Destiny, an alarm began to sound on several pieces of precision equipment.
“Priestess Eirian,” Eion said in concern as he examined the data flowing from the sensors monitoring Champion Zayd’s body. “His bone marrow is… collapsing. We haven’t moved beyond the pelvis yet, but the collapse is spreading rapidly throughout his body! There’s nothing we’ve done that accounts for this but it resembles a chain reaction of failure. I can’t account for this.”
“Accelerate the injection of replacement marrow,” the priestess replied, making several adjustments to her plan. “Prepare to move to the next phase. I want his chest open for me in the next thousand ticks,” she said, moving to a storage chamber within the lab and withdrawing a recently prepared synthetic organ. The deep blue and purple tissue of the lab-grown heart twitched and pulsed as it beat within its sterile field, absorbing Dark Energy from the environment with every pulse. Few Fae were as large as Zayd and the hearts of Fae were proportionally smaller than those of original stock like the new champion, but that didn’t stop Eirian from moving forward with her plan. Instead, she’d meticulously adjusted the parameters of the tissue generator to produce a Fae heart with a size that matched Zayd’s original organ. The design was much cruder than what she would have liked to produce but the extra volume should give him as much as a thirty percent increase in the amount of Dark Energy his modified circulatory system would be able to pump through his body. The risk was that the tissues themselves would fall apart under the strain of handling the excess energy but she felt that he could likely survive for at least eighteen months before severe complications began to manifest. By the time it became an issue she was certain that she’d have an opportunity to further perfect Zayd’s augmented body and the worst consequences wouldn’t come to pass.
Meanwhile, in Zayd’s limited vision, another message had appeared.
[WARNING: ORGAN REMOVAL DETECTED. ACCELERATING DESTRUCTION. ENTROPIC ENERGY HAS BEEN HARVESTED. INSUFFICIENT ENERGY HARVESTED. ANALYZING…]
In the lab, more alarms began to sound as increasingly inexplicable things happened within Zayd’s body. “How is this possible? There’s no way this should happen!”
“Explain,” Eirian snapped as she approached Zayd’s body with his new heart. “What’s happening?”
“We failed to install a bypass for his heart,” Eion explained, staring at his hand that had become covered in a thin film of red dust. “As soon as we began, his, his heart turned to dust! More than that, even the dust dissipated before we could remove it from his chest cavity. Look,” he said, turning his hand slowly. At the slight movement, the red dust clinging to his hand cracked, blowing away like a fine powder in the air circulating in the room before even that powder broke down into particles too small to be observed. “After his heart… disintegrated, his arterial and vascular systems did exactly the same thing. There’s nothing left of it, there isn’t even any blood left in his body!”
Eion’s exclamation at the end shook the other Fae assisting with the procedure. Outside of Priestess Eirian, the young acolyte was the most familiar with evolutionary modification. Seeing that he couldn’t explain what was happening gave them very little hope that the procedure would succeed, but worse, some of them began to fear that Lady Nimue’s new Champion would die on their table. If that happened, even if she didn’t blame them, could any of them live with the consequences? Across the lab, all eyes turned to Priestess Eirian, hoping she would have answers.
“That’s not,” Eirian started to say ‘that’s not possible’ only to stop abruptly as her mind reached the only conclusion that made any sense. The relic had to be responsible for this! Waving in the air she called up a holographic projection and replayed a recording of the disintegration of Zayd’s circulatory system. The lab recorders were intended to support biological research and there was a limited amount of information the sensors could provide about what happened on a subatomic level but it was clear that molecular bonds that formed the building blocks of complex tissues just… fell apart. It was like some super virus had unraveled his tissues at a fundamental level!
“It doesn’t matter why this is happening,” Eirian said after observing the phenomenon. “I want tissue printers to create a replacement circulatory system, use the same parameters I established for his replacement heart and blood. This will be more aggressive than I had planned but it may be a boon to him in the end as long as we’re able to complete the installation before he dies. Prepare micro-threaders to weave his new veins and arteries into his body and install a cerebral tap to keep his brain alive while we work,” she commanded.
All around her, members of the team began to move, regaining confidence as they executed their orders. None of them knew if this would succeed or not, but all of them had faith in their Priestess. If she said that this could benefit their Champion’s evolution then they believed.
In the drifting darkness, Zayd felt like his entire body was on fire! Searing pain flowed from the center of his chest to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet. Sharp pain assaulted his head as though someone had stabbed a knife into the base of his skull! Just like before, the sensations lasted only for a moment before numbness swept them away but Zayd’s mind couldn’t help but conjure all sorts of dire guesses about what was being done to his body while he lay here trapped in darkness.
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[ANALYSIS COMPLETE. ADDITIONAL SACRIFICE IS REQUIRED. SELECTION REQUIRED. DO YOU WISH TO MAKE A LESSER OR GREATER SACRIFICE?]
“What’s the difference? What am I sacrificing?” Zayd asked the cryptic system.
[THE GREATER THE SACRIFICE, THE GREATER THE HARVEST. YOU HAVE SACRIFICED YOUR BLOOD, VEINS, ARTERIES, BONE MARROW, AND HEART TO HARVEST ENTROPIC ENERGY. THE ENERGY HARVESTED IS INSUFFICIENT TO GUARANTEE YOUR SURVIVAL. ADDITIONAL SACRIFICE IS REQUIRED.]
“Sacrifice what?” Zayd said, his mind reeling as he realized what the system meant when it said it would hasten his self-destruction. “All Eirian intended to do was to replace my heart, bone marrow and blood so that my body would circulate Fae blood that contained a greater concentration of Dark Energy. If my veins and arteries have been sacrificed, what else can you take?”
[THE BODY REQUIRES THE ABILITY TO DRAW DARK ENERGY IN FROM THE ENVIRONMENT. DARK ENERGY CAN BE BREATHED IN WITH THE ATMOSPHERE YOU INHALE OR INGESTED WITH FOOD YOU CONSUME. SACRIFICING ORGANS RELATED TO RESPIRATION AND DIGESTION WILL ALLOW SUPERIOR ORGANS TO BE GRAFTED IN A MANNER SIMILAR TO YOUR NEW HEART.]
“You’re talking about my lungs and diaphragm or my stomach and intestines?” Zayd asked, trembling at the realization of how much of himself the system was talking about hollowing out to be ‘replaced’ by new organs.
[A SMALL SACRIFICE OF EITHER SET OF ORGANS WILL REDUCE THE CHANCE OF FATALITY TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT AND THE CHANCE OF ADVERSE OUTCOME TO TEN PERCENT. SACRIFICING BOTH SETS OF ORGANS WILL ELIMINATE THE RISK OF FATALITY AND ADVERSE OUTCOMES.]
“I only get one life,” Zayd told the darkness. “Take it all, whatever you need to ensure I survive, do it,” he commanded.
[SACRIFICING. HARVESTING…]
“Now what?” Eirian said, sweat rolling down her back between her shoulder blades. “Pulmonary collapse? His lungs are just… gone! So is his entire digestive system, stomach, both intestines, why is it doing this to him?” The priestess paused only long enough to confirm that the changes sweeping through Zayd’s body stopped before she tapped through several screens and issued her next set of commands. “If this keeps up, we may have to replace most of his organs. Start with his digestive tract, I’ll need time to develop a modified set of lungs. I don’t want to see a single idle tissue printer, once you’ve finished with the parts we know are missing, assume we’ll need to replace more and get to work growing things,” she ordered. “You’re making my team work their wings ragged,” she told the silent man on her table. “You’d better be worth it!”
“Priestess Eirian,” Eion said from the side. “We have a number of original stock humans in quarantine cells. Should we consider harvesting organs from them to replace the organs that Champion Zayd has lost? If we continue adding more synthetic tissue without a supporting genetic modification, his body will become even more unstable. His lifespan will be measured in months rather than years.”
“No, I have other uses for those humans, I can’t waste them when doing so would still produce a suboptimal outcome for our new Champion,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ll do what I can to improve his stability, after he survives this, you are to dedicate yourself to monitoring his diet and activities. What we cannot build in on this table we can seek to strengthen with after-care. He carries something precious,” she said, tracing a finger delicately along Zayd’s exposed flesh. “We have to honor him and it with a body worthy of his mission. We will not fail, Eion. Have faith.”
Several hours passed as Eirian’s team worked to keep Zayd alive through the unexpectedly extensive process of grafting replacement Fae organs to his human physiology. Despite the strangeness of his disappearing organs, once his digestive and pulmonary systems evaporated into thin air, nothing else strange happened and they were able to proceed according to the remainder of their plans.
In the darkness where Zayd drifted, another message finally appeared.
[EXTENSIVE MODIFICATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE. FOREIGN TISSUE COMPRISES GREATER THAN 10% OF BODY MASS. SUFFICIENT ENTROPIC ENERGY IS AVAILABLE. REMOVE INCOMPATIBILITY AND INTEGRATE FOREIGN TISSUE: YES/NO]
“Yes!” Zayd commanded. Why would he say no? Wasn’t that why he made the “sacrifice” demanded by the system?
[PROCESSING. INTEGRATING.]
Suddenly, Zayd felt a powerful wave of energy surging through his body. Sensations slowly returned to him as his chest heaved, drawing a shuddering breath. His heart pounded, sending fresh blood rushing throughout his body and bringing with it a strength the likes of which he’d never known. Zayd’s mind reeled, feeling like he could lift a mech with his bare hands if he wanted to! The sensations from his body were so strange that he struggled to process everything that had happened to him.
Eventually, his eyes fluttered open to reveal the exhausted figure of Eirian hovering over him. The priestess wore a look of genuine concern on her beautiful face though Zayd wasn’t sure whether she was worried for his well-being or the potential loss of the powerful relic. All he knew was that she looked even more radiant than before, surrounded by a faint green halo of vibrant energy like a goddess descended from the heavens.
“What. What did you do to me?” Zayd finally managed to ask.
“More than we intended to,” Eirian said bluntly, too exhausted from the full day spent operating on Zayd to sugarcoat her words. “So much that I’m afraid your body will tear itself apart if we can’t get you back to civilized space soon enough to correct all the damage we’ve done just trying to keep you alive.”
“Soon enough? You said the Spear of Destiny needed extensive repairs before it could make the trip back to the Stellar Imperium. How soon do we have to get back to stop my body from ‘tearing itself apart,’” Zayd asked.
“Six months,” the priestess replied. “If we can’t seize the resources we need and repair this ship within six months, even with all of the technology in this lab, there’s nothing more I can do to keep you alive.”