“I’m going to do you a favor,” Lady Katherine said, she stood next to him and placed a hand on the ground, a faint rumble followed her action, and Dellen started to move up.
“She’s making a slab beneath you, this doesn’t look good,” Gilgamesh said. In the periphery of his vision, Dellen could see him moving in a tight circle around Lady Katherine and him.
“A favor? What kind of a favor?” He asked, his voice high and fast.
“Well, a messy one,” she said, producing a scalpel and laying it down on the table next to him, an inch away and utterly out of reach.
Dellen could not see it anymore, but he knew it was there, he created a pulse of magnetism centered on his body, but nearby the scalpel and pushed it away. Fear made his Aether move faster and harder. He heard the scrape of the scalpel rubbing along the surface of the table, and shortly thereafter the impact of it against the wall.
Lady Katherine came back, holding another scalpel, and a glass bottle of gleaming silver. “Clever little dove, impressive for the Second Trinity, magnetism. Unfortunately for you, that won’t help you here, and well, while mercury is magnetic when it interacts with a magnetic field, I can ensure that is not a factor.”
“Is she going to pour mercury into you?” Gilgamesh asked, aghast.
“What are you doing with the mercury?” Dellen asked, feeling calmer as the inevitability of death settled into him.
“I’m glad you asked. My other subjects, all they do is scream, it’s most tiresome.” She warmed to her subject, “The mercury is a preservative agent, it keeps Aether from escaping an almost entirely unsullied core.”
“An unsullied core, you’ve already taken a core from an unforged?”
“Indeed,” Lady Katherine said, her teeth gleaming, “Now I’m going to open your chest and pour it into you.”
“I’m only Second Trinity! That will kill me!” Dellen yelled. He had dim memories of forging the alloy of time, he had been more metallic than organic, which surely made him more resistant to toxins, but also putting the alloy into his chest had been a bloodless affair. This would not be bloodless.
“Possibly, but I think it will only grievously injure you, isn’t that better?”
In a twisted sense, she was right; that was ‘better,’ but Dellen did not take much comfort from it.
“Enough talking. Are you going to cooperate, or do I have to bury your eyes in stone as well?”
Dellen felt his eyes widen, having them buried in stone sounded worse than death, “I’ll co-operate,” he said, his voice refusing to come out louder than a whisper.
“Excellent,” she said, he saw her scalpel-wielding arm move, and felt the weight of the robe peel away from the right side of his body, then he felt her scalpel pass through his shirt, running along his steelskin, but with such control that she did not break the skin. She came again with her blade, this time her movements were accompanied by pain. Dellen screamed, and she shoved a rag in his mouth.
Lines of fire bit into the right side of his abdomen. She was speaking to him, but he could not make out the words over the cut. The pain spoke over everything. Something cold and urgent splashed onto his stomach. It was heavy, and odd, pushing into him. He could feel his organs. Then came something hot. It felt like a ball of energy, pulsing. It pushed through him, Dellen’s frantic mind conjured the image of a rat scrambling through him looking for food.
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Dellen’s Spark Core spun. His mind’s eye saw Electrical Aether spilling out into the mercury, he felt the mercury spinning, swirling among his organs. The hot ball of energy repelled his Aether, it was carried through on the flows of mercury until it hit the cradle on the right side of his chest.
A pulse of Aether rippled out from the moonstone and whisper steel.
“What happened? Why did she stop moving? Dellen? Dellen?”
Lady Katherine might have stopped moving, but the mercury and Aether in Dellen’s body had granted him no such reprieve. It continued to move and spin, his Spark Core continued to pull Electrical Aether and deliver it into the mercury, the alloy of time was sending concentric waves of Chronometric Aether out, pushing against the ball of energy each time it collided with the cradle.
Dellen’s mind filled with the image of an unmoving clock.
“I can feel Chronometric Aether in you!” Gilgamesh yelled, “Is that good or bad? What are you trying to do?”
A groan escaped Dellen’s mouth, explaining that he was not trying to do anything seemed out of reach. The ball of energy, the core, that Lady Katherine had introduced into his body stuck to his lung, right next to the cradle. Dellen felt it attach, like a parasite latching onto a host. The cradle pushed Aether against it, and the core responded.
Dellen thrashed in his stone restraints. It was a new Aether, foreign and unfamiliar. It pushed against his body, buffeting him in new ways. Electrical Aether flowed chaotically unless guided, Chronometric Aether could be guided through visualization, this new Aether was like water leaking through cupped fingers. He felt the Aether rising to his skin, looking for a way out.
“Dellen, you’re steaming! It’s coming out of your eyes, your mouth, your nose, your ears, and so much is coming out from around the edges of her mercury flask.”
He had a Steam Core bound into his body. Steam Aether pushed against the cradle and rebounded. Chronometric Aether pushed into the Steam Core, and the Steam Core spun faster. Steam Aether burst forth and the Steam Core wobbled, pulled at his lung. The Aether still came, and the Steam Core wobbled more. Aether flooded out of it, more than should have come from an unforged core. A crack appeared on its surface. Then another. With each pulse of Aether the cracks lengthened and multiplied.
Dellen looked on in horror, his mind beat against the clock in his mind, pushing back against the second hand, trying to stem the tide of Chronometric Aether.
The Steam Core released another wave of Aether, and exploded.
“You have seen Thaddeus,” Imogen said, “Can we consider your time here done?”
Miss Thornbrook considered Thaddeus before giving the two women before her a slow nod, “I suppose we can, thank you for accommodating the whims of a curious guest.”
A tendon strained on the side of Imogen’s neck, and her jaw looked tight, but all she said was “Cordelia, please escort our… guests out.”
Dellen looked down feeling the lower right side of his abdomen. That had hurt, a lot.
“That was peculiar,” Gilgamesh said, “What happened to you? What were you doing with your Chronometric Aether?”
Dellen glanced at him, and tried to convey that he should wait. They would talk later. All he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes for a minute or two, maybe a week.
“Wait!” Eliza said, “Before we go,” she turned to Thaddeus, “Could you give me the names of everyone in the fleet?”
Thaddeus gave Eliza a quick nod, and listed off names which she recorded.
“Thank you, dear,” Miss Thornbrook said, turning and retracing their steps back.
Once they had left the syndicate behind Dellen spoke up, forcing the words through unwilling lips, “I know what the order wants with the unforged for.”
He retraced his steps through the evening, although he skipped the less fruitful part of his search, and waited in the hallway for Alben Tarfen to make his appearance.
“We can still leave,” Gilgamesh said, “Surely you learned everything you needed to from Lady Katherine cutting you open and setting off an Aether explosion in your chest.” This was not the first time they had argued over this point.
Dellen kept his voice low, “I know what they did to at least one of their unforged, I need to know what’s happened to the rest. I don’t want to leave people behind to be cut open.”
Gilgamesh sighed, “It is not your job to fix every problem.”
He was right, Dellen knew he was right, but at the same time, it felt wrong to leave people to die, horribly, when maybe he could prevent it.
“And why are we waiting for Alben, rather than just going in ahead of him?”
“I want to ask him questions, and that’s going to be hard if he catches us walking out of the room, or if he and Lady Katherine have some way of knowing if the door was opened.”
The hidden door in the corridor cracked open, and Alben stepped out.