There are two types of people in research, those that do everything by the book, never break any serious regulations, and just do their job as best as they can. These types of people usually are quite reserved, in Clive’s experience, and only want to immerse themselves in their own little science world. Maybe they go above and beyond at point, not necessarily playing fast and loose with the rules but every researcher usually has one project where they don’t particularly care too closely about specific rules. Overall, however, most do what they are told to and keep things above board, as they should.

Then there is the other type. The other type has a lot of different descriptors, some call them reckless, some over enthused, some mad. No matter what you call them these people love to ignore any and all regulations regarding their specific line of work and they love to push boundaries to their breaking point.

Clive Bohart saw himself as neither, or rather both. He didn’t particularly care for most rules, but he also understood that for any safe research environment some kind of rules had to be kept to make sure that disaster didn’t strike. No matter what part of the world you research there were always dangers, the only question was if they were obvious or not.

For his line of work the danger was very obvious. Clive Bohart was a Thaumaturgy Researcher with the specific field of Thaumaturgic Biology. His main interest was the influence of magic and mana on any living organism.

To that extent he had started working in a lab that was so shrouded in secrecy that not even their own Government knew it existed. For some that would be a step too far, after all a lab like that could rightfully be called illegal, but to Clive it didn’t matter too much.

They followed the most necessary precautions, and that’s all that he felt was important if you truly wanted to explore and push the boundaries of possibilities in the field of magic.

That the lab was run by the Church was only a plus in his book. While he didn’t necessarily like the institution of the church, as a firm believer in God he thought that they still had the authority over God’s mortal creation.

And it was their duty to unravel his thought process and intentions when he created it all.

That being said even he had his boundaries he wouldn’t dare push, and the Lab was quickly closing in on those boundaries. In Clive’s eyes animal testing was a necessary evil, something that they had to content with if they wanted to push further into the unknown.

Where he drew the line though was testing on humans with no safety regulations. Especially when it came to volatile materials, unproven knowledge, and the arcane. And from what he could hear coming from the lower levels of the Lab that was exactly what was going on.

He had no definitive proof, he hadn’t seen it himself nor had he found any tangible evidence of the rumours he had heard, but they persisted and they were not exactly rare.

Of course, he had never shared his objections on the matter with anyone and he was a man of science, so unless he could nail down specifics he would focus on different matters. Not that he had any influence to stop those experiments anyways, he might disagree but he was just another researcher in the lab.

With that in mind Clive returned to his current experiment, the influence of large amounts of mana on mice in different stages of their lifecycle. In particular he was curious to see what made Monsters Monsters and what made them react the way they did, where the hostility came from, not only against humans but against everything that wasn’t the monster in question. Even family didn’t mean anything to them, which was quite the sight to see in the more social animals he had studied.

His theory was that the overload of mana would slowly erode the mind and induce a state of hysteria and rage. He postulated that once mana reached a tipping point it formed into wayward spells, a kind of proto magic, that could influence the animals in whose bodies the mana was held. The only issue was that the effects of mana injected into an already living being and one born with high levels of mana were very different.

The outcome was the same most of the time, but the behaviour of the animal in the inbetween phase differed greatly and changed from subject to subject. He also observed a difference in behaviour depending on the age of the individual that he injected mana into.

Beings born with an overabundance of mana were feral and hostile to anything and everything from the get go, they seemed to be in a constant mindless rage with absolutely no regards for anything.

If he injected mana into beings that were in their growth phase in most cases they became overactive, unable to rest, and ran around all the time, until they eventually slowed down and seemed almost drowsy before the rage set in after about three or four days, at least in mice. The time differed depending on the animals he tested it on, of course.

If the being was already in its late adolescent stage then things changed. While they still seemed more energetic they weren’t running around like crazy, instead they seemed to put their energy to more efficient use. In addition they seemed almost sapient, displaying an intellect that seemed utterly impossible. Afterwards, this time after about a week, they slowly got more aggressive until they lost any and all reason and reverted to the feral state that was common for them.

If the being was old and much further along in their lifespan they simply died of heart or brain failure within a few hours. While they did display a certain aggression towards their surroundings they didn’t act on it most of the time, preferring to lie down and suffer whatever condition was affecting them.

These findings were quite ground breaking in the field of mana influence on a living body, and he had requested more resources and maybe a magician to help him out in future experiments. Preferably a blood mage, or Sanguist as they were usually referred to in the Lab, as they had much more control over the effects in a living being, but they were rare and hard to come by.

And of course even if they had been in plentiful supply, his request would need to work its way through the bureaucracy before he would even get a response. It had been months since he submitted his request and he was already sure that it either got lost or would be denied, considering the long waiting time.

So it came as quite the surprise when he opened up his mail a few days ago and saw that his request had finally been approved. The details were a little strange, why the Sanguist in question needed a handler and the requirement he didn’t talk to them only spurred more questions, but he decided not to dwell on it.

Today was the day he would meet the Sanguist and he could finally continue his research. According to the mail he had the Sanguist available for six days, and he wanted to make the best of it. So he, being a man of thoroughness, had already prepared everything that could possibly be needed, and a few things that probably wouldn’t but still were nice to have on hand if necessary.

When his Lab door opened and a tall man in dark clothing and with a mask on his face stepped inside Clive was a little confused and suspicious, especially since behind the man trailed a short person who wore a plain coat that hid everything about their person with a hood that was much too deep to make out any facial features. The only thing that was obvious was that they possessed some form of tail, considering the bulge of their coat on their backside.

“Greetings. Are you perhaps the Sanguist and the Handler?”, he asked, deciding to be polite.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Yes”, the man said simply in a gruff voice that would make any chain smoker sound like they were in their youth and untainted by smoke.

“Wonderful”, Clive said with a clap of his hands, and decided to get straight to business. Truth be told he was a little unsettled by the pair and the man looked like he would prefer to get this over and done with anyways.

He quickly laid out what would need to be done, pointing at the tools and mice in question for the different experiments he intend to run, and gave them an abbreviated rundown of what he hoped to accomplish. He was sure they could not care any less by their body language, but since this meeting was recorded it would be important for his notes.

To that end he had placed a recorder on the table and narrated and noted all his observations while they carried out their work.

He was slightly more unsettled by the fact that the shorter person remained by the door, utterly unmoving. He glanced over to them a few times but they seemed not to care much. He was told that he was not to speak to the Sanguist and only the Handler, and given the fact that it was the man that spoke and the shorter one didn’t interrupt his conversation with the towering person, he deduced that the shorter one was the Sanguist, yet they didn’t do anything, the man was the only person who casted spells, which confused him greatly.

That was until he locked eyes with the shorter person, a fluke thing as he glanced over one more time.

He couldn’t see anything about them, anything except their eyes now. And what he saw there chilled him to his bone.

Those eyes were empty, utterly devoid of emotion, and begged him for death. Their exchange lasted only a moment, no word was spoken, nothing else happened, but those eyes haunted him.

Someone who was so desperate to die…

It made it hard for him to concentrate for the rest of the experiments but he managed, not that he paid too much attention to them anymore. They no longer mattered to his mind.

The rumours of the lower levels came back to his mind. Was this one of those people he heard about? He didn’t know, and honestly he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. What happened to them down there if that was the result?

As he went home for the day he felt… dirty. Tainted. For the first time in life he questioned his job. It wasn’t that he overly cared about proper procedure or that he worked in an illegal lab. He cared that they did that to people.

The next few days continued as they had, the Sanguist and their handler being there each day almost the entire day. They went through a multitude of different experiments, testing and retesting a number of his theories, yet despite it all he couldn’t shake his thoughts about the look in their eyes.

He should have been elated by what he learned, his research made jump after jump in his quest to figure out the secrets of the affliction caused by mana overload, yet he couldn’t really celebrate. At the end of the week, after the last day with the Sanguist he felt… drained. Mentally and emotionally.

Clive was not a good man. But that was far, far beyond his limits. Anything that induced that kind of reaction in people was something he didn’t want anything to do with.

Not knowing what to do with himself afterwards he decided he needed a distraction. He had no friends, no people he could go out with, his entire life had been dedicated to science in shady labs, so he decided to go out alone, find a pub and drown his sorrows.

There weren’t many good pubs in the small little town that was close to the lab, so he decided to venture out further to the next bigger city, which was incidentally Essen. He had lived there for a while and he liked it, it wasn’t as utterly overbearing as other cities and while he had some gripes with the infrastructure and the public transports, in general it was a nice place to be in.

He wandered around a bit, not really sure about his destination, until he found a pub that looked cosy enough, called “4Säulen”.

Inside there weren’t many people, but the music wasn’t too loud, the atmosphere relaxed and he decided it was as good as any other place. He got himself a drink and sat at the table in the far corner, wanting to be alone.

He thought about his experience over the past few days. His experiments were a success, with the help of the Sanguist he was able to conform many of his theories, most importantly the inevitability of the condition that followed the injection of mana, but he sadly didn’t have the time to fully understand why it happened and how to prevent it. If he could prevent it, he might be able to force animals to become sentient to a degree which would be a gigantic breakthrough.

But no matter how hard he tried to focus on it, he always came back to those cold, empty eyes asking for death.

Before he could once more lose himself in his sorrows he was interrupted by a commotion at the counter.

“I told you to leave me the fuck alone”, an inebriated woman shouted with a slight slur at a young man who seemed much too close for her comfort.

“Hey, hey, I just wanna keep you a little company”, he said in a friendly and calming tone.

“You can stick your company up your ass and lick it, I want to be left the fuck alone, asshole!”

The woman seemed entirely human, yet something about her struck Clive as odd. During his time at University he had been out drinking many times, and he knew how drunk people moved and acted.

While she slurred like she had one drink too many, her entire body language and movement were at odds with that, they looked precise and sober, almost trained.

The only reason he even noticed was that in his youth he was obsessed with martial arts, watching tournaments wherever he could, so he knew how they could move. He had never actually gotten into it, his lanky frame was proof of that, but it had been fascinating to him at the time.

Seeing her piqued his curiosity. Although not enough to actually do something about it. The only thing he wanted now was peace and quiet for him to drown his sorrows uninterrupted.

Trying to ignore what was going was increasingly becoming an exercise in futility, and the longer the squabble continued on, the more annoyed he got. After one more quick too many, the woman was now accusing the man of full on sexual harassment, which, all things considered, was a fair point to make, Clive had enough. He didn’t give a fuck about them, he just wanted his peace.

“Can you shut. THE FUCK. UP!”, he shouted through the pub, drowning out even their incessant complaints. There was a moment of silence as everyone looked at him. He just gave them the stink eye. He was not an impressive man, but many of his friends had told him he had a mean angry face.

“What you looking at? Shut your fucking mouth or go somewhere else, there are other people present!”, he snarled, before he emptied his mug and looked grumbly at it. While he was pissed, he wasn’t one for being in the centre of attention.

There were a few more shouted words in his favour, before the man left the pub, much to Clive’s delight.

After a moment the woman came over and sat across from him. “Thanks. The bastard was getting quite persistent.”

“Didn’t do it for you, but you’re welcome. Just hate it when people are loud when I try to drown my sorrows”, he said, kinda distracted and only noticing after how cringe and cliche it sounded.

There was a moment of silence before the woman spoke, “You look too young to drown your sorrows. What got you all bothered?”

He looked at her, “What, you a therapist now? Fuck off.”

His intention and his expectation was that she would leave, but strangely and much to his horror she looked quite interested now. Just as she was about to say something his phone rang.

With an annoyed snarl he picked up, “Yes, what?”, he asked in a bad mood.

The voice that answered him made him freeze.

“Clive Bohart, so nice to speak to you. Tomorrow we will go into the next phase. Prepare your things and prepare for lodging in the laboratory. Things will get a bit rough outside. May god walk with you, son.”

He didn’t know the name of the man who spoke, but he knew the voice. He was, at least in Clive’s understanding, the leader of the laboratory he worked in. And this message…

He wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but he also wasn’t about to go against god’s wishes, even if he started having his doubts.

Without another word and ignoring the woman who looked at him thoughtfully, he got up, paid for his drink and headed out. Whatever the lab had planned, he would be ready for it. Ready for god’s word to strike down the non-believers. He didn’t agree with the lab overseers methods all the time, and he didn’t agree with the church most of the time. But Clive would be damned if he wouldn’t do gods work.

And despite his misgivings and suspicions, this was not a question about morality. It was a question of belief. And Clive was a firm believer.