Chapter 7
This Product Was Tested as Animals
~<(0)>~
This was apparently some sort of big deal. Cassa was aware that some sort of expedition had been sent out within the last month and had ended in failure. She didn’t really understand what had happened, but suddenly she was reassigned to a brand-new project, orders from way high up. She had to pack and move everything to an old Leyline monitoring outpost and set up a wide array of scanning equipment. And apparently this all was to be done ASAP, something that was also emphasized by those higher up the chain. It was honestly a nice change of pace that she had an entire small facility to herself, compared to the cramped academic life she was used to. The accommodations were of a high standard as well, though the standard was a few centuries old. There was equipment left behind too, also quite antique. It interfaced with the modern thaumic equipment she’d been given though, so it didn’t matter too much. She didn’t really understand what the big deal was, though she had heard some whisperings that Lyrei Araphine was a part of that expedition. If something had gone wrong and Lyrei was there, Cassa could see how this would be a big deal for Lyrei. Reputation was a fickle thing after all, and Lyrei was a household name due to the sheer amount of work she had done in so many branches of science, both mundane and thaumic. There were also some crazy rumours that Lyrei had died on that expedition, which was honestly just absurd. Lyrei had been around since before her grandparents’ time, and outlived every single elf known to elvenkind. For her to die would be… well… like magic disappearing from the entire world. Not exactly impossible, but so far down the list of possibilities you might as well swear by it for things you didn’t expect to happen.
Her orders for what she was looking for were simple. “Look for any anomalous energy readings of any kind” they had said. Simple, but vague. Energy readings. Solar flares… seismic activity… thunderstorms. She had asked them to clarify a bit, and they had said she was specifically looking for anomalous thaumic energy readings, though anything else out of the ordinary was to be reported as well. The analysis equipment she had brought with her was self-regulating, figuring out what the ambient levels were on their own. This meant that all she really needed to do was keep an eye on it whenever it detected something outside of normal levels. This was supposed to get better with time, depending on her selections, but what it meant right now was that she was stuck babysitting the devices quite often as basically anything out of the ordinary happened.
~<(0)>~
Lyrei’s chambers were sealed up with her staff and sensor equipment placed inside. Almar Veiedon, the Elven Lord wasn’t sure what to do with the space or her belongings. Normally, he kept calm and impassive, but right now his emotions were all over the place. He had been alive for over a millennium, and Lyrei had always been alive, for far longer. He believed every word that the Head Monitor had said. He had always been a trustworthy elf, and he doubted that his eyes had deceived him. Still, it was difficult for Almar to wrap his mind around such a thing even being possible. Part of him still thought… still hoped that she might be out there somewhere. He had ordered an Object Bond spell be cast on the staff, but nothing came up, proving the Head Monitor report in that regard. Lyrei also didn’t have any next of kin. Her Mother and father had passed on, either through death or whatever seemed to happen to certain elves after a long life lived, as had any siblings she might have had. He ordered any form of next of kin located, even if it meant tracking down distant descendants of her siblings but couldn’t find anything. Not that it really would have made him any more willing to hand over her belongings. The thoughts alone of what she would do to him made him not even want to think about that.
He had made use of old monitoring stations to spread out a network of tracking nodes. Truth be told, he had no idea whether or not this would help find the creature, but his thaumic advisors had suggested it was the most likely to have a chance of working, and so he’d sent out the order. He didn’t want word to get out that Lyrei the great sorceress had died, so he’d issued a gag order to the expedition team. He’d heard reports of rumours… but those weren’t something he could deal with without strengthening his control to a point that people might start seeing him as a tyrant. He hoped they could track down this… slime creature before it got too far. This was honestly a disaster.
~<(0)>~
“It didn’t work…” Ophelia was disappointed, and it showed. She had split herself in two, using her core to keep the size of her second self the same as her normal self. She was able to completely control her second self just as well as her main self, though that was only as long as she kept a thread of her slime bridging the gap. If she truly cut the connection, she could still manage to control her second self, but it was far more difficult, and the further she moved from her second self, or vice versa, the less control she had. She had also been completely unable to split her core into two.
“{You seem rather disappointed by this outcome. Do you truly wish to reproduce that badly? I wouldn’t think you would have any of those kinds of… urges.}” The voice of her mother rang in her head, gentle, if a little concerned and confused.
“It isn’t that,” replied the slime, “I don’t know what it is exactly. I think it is because I am afraid of ending. Death. If I could create more of myself, the chances of that happening would be lower. If I am the only one of my kind, this would be my only method of reproduction, which means that I don’t think it’s possible.” Her voice sounded rather lonely.
“{Ophelia… the chances of you dying are… Well… Astronomically low, honestly. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure if you could even die, save for your… core somehow being destroyed.}” She could tell that wasn’t all there was to this though. “{You may be the only one of your kind, but, having eaten me… you have me.}” she laughed softly, hoping to cheer up the slime a little.
“I… Know. Sometimes I still wish that I hadn’t eaten you. Do you think I could have learned and grown to be this intelligent on my own? Maybe I could have been your test subject and you could have taught me. And it wouldn’t have come to this.”
The elven consciousness was silent for a while, before she spoke, softly. “Ophelia… you’ve seen my memories. I am now ashamed to admit that… had I captured you, I probably wouldn’t have treated you with as much kindness as you are suggesting. I would have likely dissected you, learning what I could about you. I wouldn’t have cared about the possibility of pain… or if anything I did hurt you in any way. Don’t think of my old self as… a kind, benevolent person, because I wasn’t. I was clinical, uncaring, and I saw everyone else as below myself.}”
Ophelia didn’t respond for a while, peering through recent memories from Lyrei. She knew it was the truth… a part of her hoped it wasn’t though. “I… know. You aren’t that way now though. Maybe you could have changed.” She gave a mental shrug, “It doesn’t matter now. I guess you will be with me for… forever probably… huh?” Forever was an odd thought to her. Knowing she wouldn’t be alone helped things a bit. “I’m glad that you’ll be with me. It makes my life a lot less lonely and makes me feel a lot better about… well… everything.” The unsaid words spoke of her great sin, the pain of which was eased by the fact Lyrei’s consciousness was still here, sitting on her tongue, metaphorically speaking of course. She might never be able to forgive herself for what she had done, but Lyrei’s constant presence and forgiveness made it bearable.
~<(0)>~
They had been moving some each day. Lyrei seemed to have some idea where they were, though the impetus was that continuing to move further from the Central Leyline Convergence Reserve would lessen Ophelia’s chances of discovery. In Addition to that, if they moved far enough, Lyrei said they’d move out of the Elven Empire and the Elves would be risking an international incident if they made a move on her. Ophelia was able to understand the idea of such a thing, but it was so alien to her. Really, all of civilization was, to her. Ophelia didn’t need to sleep; the idea was honestly quite intriguing to her. This meant that they were able to make steady progress, without even having to move all that fast. The time wasn’t spent doing nothing, however, as Lyrei was tutoring the slime on magical theory and spellcraft. As she had before, Ophelia was making considerable progress in this direction, moving onto more complicated ideas and methods.
During the previous couple of days and nights, however, Lyrei had been exploring another aspect of Ophelia’s abilities. It was quite clear that the extraordinary slime was able to replicate materials simply by copying their atomic structures, an ability that simply fascinated the former elf to no end. Neither were really able to nail down what made this ability possible, and while it was easy to chalk it up to ‘magic’, such a thing simply meant that Lyrei couldn’t understand it yet. Right now, though, she was interested in the breadth of Ophelia’s transformation abilities and their overall accuracy.
She had Ophelia split off a portion of her body to perform the transformations, as her core was too large to comfortably fit into most of the creatures they were testing. First up was the Cave Scorpion that was the first creature that Ophelia encountered in the caverns. Simply based on the fact that she had absorbed the creature, she was able to mimic it within seconds. However, Lyrei wanted more from her, and with the former elf’s help, the slime worked to mimic not only the overall entity itself, but individual systems, then tissues, then cells. Soon, a little pale and blind scorpion was skittering through the underbrush. Ophelia observed this with rapt attention, this being the first time she had seen the curious invertebrate with her own eyes. To her dismay, Lyrei instructed her to kill it with a simple spell, the slime balking at the idea of such a thing until Lyrei pointed out that it was important to see what would happen if it died. Besides, it was simply her inside the scorpion, it wasn’t as though she would be killing a separate entity. Thus, with a little flick of water, the scorpion twitched erratically and died. Upon cessation of the simulated life, it melted into the familiar glowing form of her slime.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Lyrei then moved on to the next animal, though Ophelia remained silent, causing the other mind to worry, “{Ophelia? Is everything okay?}”
The slime remained silent for a few moments longer, before finally speaking to her mother, “Is that what pain feels like? It was only for a moment, but it was this… unpleasant feeling that my scorpion felt before it… stopped feeling.”
Lyrei was somewhat surprised, “{You haven’t felt anything like that yet, have you? I suppose that was pain. I’m not quite hooked into your body like that, so I didn’t feel it, but the way you describe it makes me think it was pain.}” She wasn’t entirely sure what to say, but the slime still seemed somewhat distressed.
“Is that what you felt Mother? When I started to absorb you? I could read a lot of your emotions and sensations during that time, but they meant nothing to me at the time…”
The elven consciousness thought back to those final moments, somewhat fuzzy due to everything that happened so quickly. It had been like fire, or ten thousand ants biting her body at the same time. She hadn’t even realized, but her clothes must have completely dissolved in so quick a time she hadn’t even felt them leave her body. She pondered her next words carefully, not wanting to upset the slime, “{I think it did hurt, a lot. It’s… a sort of warning system for the body. It hurts to let us know something is wrong. I couldn’t do anything about it, but it was telling me that something was wrong.}” she laughed softly. It felt weird to laugh at what was essentially her own demise. “{It hurt, but as we’ve been over, I’m not mad over what happened, nor do I really blame you.}”
“I think I am glad to understand what you felt like, though perhaps in some small amount. Understanding the weight of my actions, and what happened, is the first step towards making sure it doesn’t happen again, right Mother?”
Lyrei was rather surprised by this. It was something her own mother had said to her when she was a child. It was something that she had internalized a long time ago and hadn’t directly thought about for millennia. “{Y-yes. That is correct. I hadn’t really thought about that for a long time.}”
“And yet, it was still something that you lived by. Understanding things so that you could make an informed decision on them. You worked to understand the world. You were going to try and understand me, and I suppose now you are still working towards that goal.” The slime smiled softly, “I hope that I make you proud Mother. I want to understand things too. I think it’s the least I can do, for having been placed in this world.”
The extraordinary slime managed to continually surprise her own self-proclaimed mother at every turn.
~<(0)>~
It felt weird being in what Lyrei assured her was basically functionally identical to her form before she was absorbed. There was simply so much going on inside this body. Ophelia had thought that the Scorpion was complicated. Compared to that, the fish had been even more complicated. The template for Lyrei’s body was an entire world apart from those. There were millions of little subsystems, things that Ophelia couldn’t even hope to control individually. So, she took Lyrei’s advice and didn’t, instead setting up a complex series of interfaces that allowed her to tell the rest of the body what to do. A lot of it, it turned out, was automatic, things that worked whether she was paying attention to it directly or not. The idea fascinated her and was honestly something she hadn’t even considered. Lyrei had been endlessly amused by Ophelia’s thoughts that Lyrei controlled everything on her own, causing the former elf to describe, in depth, how hormones and involuntary systems worked.
Thus, she now had things like a heartbeat, and breathing that she didn’t have to think about. Upon Lyrei’s instructions, she had made a few modifications, so it wasn’t a flawless recreation of the elf. Her Core was centered in her skull, brain matter replaced with thaumic slime. She had tweaked the digestive system so that it was more or less unnecessary, though could still be used. Her body would pull energy from her slime itself, which seemed to naturally recharge over time, so she didn’t actually need to eat if she didn’t want to. Another change was related to water, which Lyrei determined she wouldn’t actually need to survive. Thus was the urinary system modified to be nonfunctional. A few other tweaks were made streamlining the entire body to a higher degree. Finally, Lyrei determined that this body was ready, and Ophelia let her senses flow throughout it.
The experience was surreal. She was cold, but could feel everything below her, the soft breeze against her skin. She opened her eyes, the eyelids having properly blocked the light like they were supposed to. She sat up from where she had been lying and looked over her new form. Her sense of balance was really off, and she felt dizzy, but Lyrei sent her some packaged memories and things started to feel more natural.
“{How does it feel?}” queried Lyrei.
“Really strange. Is this how you felt all the time? There are so many sensations. Even with a lot of this body running itself it feels like there is so much to keep track of. I don’t understand how you managed to do this.”
Lyrei laughed “{Well, it helped that I was used to this from birth, a lot of it just falls into the background. I never thought much about the fact that I have a heartbeat, and I generally didn’t think about the fact that I had to breathe. The more that you spend time as an elf, the more you should get used to the various nuances of it.}”
“Do you really think I’ll get better at all of this?” She was struggling to draw breath, though as she continued it became easier.
“{I have no doubt you will.}” replied Lyrei reassuringly “{You have already improved so much in other aspects of your knowledge and ability. Right now, you are as a child, learning to move in a body unfamiliar to you. Children make mistakes, and so shall you. Learn from them, and improve, and those mistakes shall not be in vain.}”
Ophelia raised her hand out in front of her to look at it. It was strange not being able to see through it; She could do so at will, simply by changing the makeup of that part of her body, but that defeated the point. She would do her best to get used to the way it felt to be an elf like this.
~<(0)>~
Lyrei gazed through Ophelia’s eyes into the pool of water, seeing a reflection of… what might as well have been her a couple of weeks ago. She looked feral, honestly; Pink hair matted and unkempt. Her clothes too were rather messy, the slime didn’t seem to understand the idea of being clean or dirty. The clothes had taken a lot of convincing and explaining, and Ophelia had complained a lot about them. Well, perhaps not complained… it was more that she was overwhelmed by sensation. “{Come on. You can either wash yourself in the stream or reform both clothing and body. You look like you have been rolling in the dirt (Not an inaccurate statement), and no self-respecting elf would let themselves be seen like that.}”
“I’m not an elf though.” The apparent elf toed at the water, flinching away from it, little slivers of ice shooting away from her as she pulled back. She still remembered her experience in the pool of water quite vividly. The second time she had run into it had been far less eventful, at least as far as the water went, but the first time had still left quite the impression on her. “Are you sure I won’t… dissolve in it?”
“{You may as well be an elf now. You appear as one, and your body acts as one. And no, you shouldn’t absorb the water, at least no more than an elf would.}” she sighed, her patience running a little thin. “{Look, even if an elf were traveling for weeks, they likely wouldn’t look like this. It may not matter to you, but to an elf, to someone like me, being presentable is important. What you look like matters to people.}”
“And who is going to care what I look like? We don’t want to run into the elves again, because they’ll just try to kill me. And besides, we’re in the middle of the wilderness.” She stuck her foot in the water and watched it intently, waiting for it to triple in size and become see-through.
“{We’ve been making steady progress towards the border. With luck, we’ll end up in a town or city of some sort. I think it’s… humans this direction.}” she had to bite back the term she had been about to use. Elven taught racism went deep after all… “{They aren’t elves… but in this case that works to our advantage. I don’t know how much word may have spread amongst the elves, but elven… pride… would dictate that they don’t inform other nations unless absolutely necessary.}”
The slime paused, foot submerged in the water, forgotten for the moment. “You want us to talk to people?” a surge of panic suddenly flowed through her. “Why would you want me to do that?! How do you know that they won’t just try to kill me like the elves would?”
This response got another sigh from the former elf, “{The elves aren’t likely to cross the border, at least not in any official fashion. They will probably tell other nations when they have to, but in the meantime, it’s in our favour to ingratiate ourselves to the citizens of another nation, one that may oppose the elves. They, the elves, aren’t likely to simply attack because… well… they lost their trump card: Me.}”
“So… you want me to get help from the humans?” Ophelia’s voice had calmed down somewhat.
“{It’s not exactly as simple as that. Just… fit in… show them that you are normal and mean now harm, and then we can go from there. Currently the only people that have witnessed your existence saw you disappear with me and think I am very VERY dead. They think quite poorly of you, and well… differing opinions to that are an improvement. I’m rather selfish too, to be honest. They don’t think I’m alive, but here I am. Even if I just THINK I’m alive, I’d like to continue being able to think that, maybe even to get my own body at some point, somehow. Getting the elves, or at least SOMEONE not trying to kill you on sight, or even listen to what we have to say, to allow us… me… to explain the situation, is an improvement. Personally, I’m not fond of the humans, they are lower life forms compared to elves… but I suppose they are rather interesting creatures, nonetheless. And we have a far better chance of them helping us than the elves. Xenophobia and all that, or… lack thereof.}”
“What makes you think I’ll be able to get them to listen to me? How do you know I won’t screw everything up and I’ll just make them hate me too?” she had submerged more of herself in the water after realizing that her foot wasn’t going to wash away with the water. Her clothes were wet, but she just absorbed them into her body and turned them into the slime they originally were.
“{Well, that is why I’m teaching you to, if not be a human, at least be an elf. Elves are a known quantity, and it would make some amount of sense for one to be traveling from this direction. Being an elf amongst humans will most likely work in your favour, honestly.}”
“What do you mean? Shouldn’t I be a human to fit in?”
“{If you knew how to be a human, perhaps. But I don’t, and you don’t. And you don’t have a human template to work from. I could help design something, but it would probably, ultimately, still have the build of an elf. And I don’t think you would enjoy the idea of… obtaining a human template.}”
Ophelia froze in sudden realization and a wave of guilt. An apology hovered in her mind, before, with great effort, she swallowed it and answered. “N-no. I don’t think I want to do that. But what does that have to do with an elf being better for this?”
“{Well, despite us being near the borders, elves will still be somewhat of a rarity. Already, an elf will stand out and seem strange to the locals. If you make certain small mistakes, as long as they can be passed off as some sort of elf oddity, they won’t think much more of it.}”
“Alright Mother, if you are sure.”
“{I am positive that you will do fine. Now, let’s get you cleaned up.}”