12.I

It is the thirty-fourth day of my investigation into the use of transmutation and flesh shaping as a cure for the sorcerous malady.

The sow is now of the correct proportion, weight and posture of my chosen patient. The blood and other humors are that of a human woman. All the digits are proportionate and correct. All viscera is as I know it should be. The face and hair are a poor match however.

From my previous attempts I believe that the features of the skull and the flow of the fluids within it are a vital element so I shall endeavor to perform these exactly as I can feel them within the patient.

It is the seventy-sixth day of the work and I have found disquieting and disturbing results. An accurate and complete matching of the flow of blood and humors within the skull and the meat and fats therein has created a truly wretched creature.

While lacking in the speed, strength, or resistance to sorcery that the afflicted possess it lacks not the hunger that defines them.

When I came to check on the transmuted sow this morning it had expired, having bit off and swallowed its own tongue, then swallowed blood until it expired.

I shall have to try again.

It is the thirtieth day of my fifth attempt at this avenue of investigation. After consulting with Fizzbunches, Urul and the methodology documented by Gorragata I have concluded that symptoms of the malady are being conveyed by the shaping of the tissues within the skull. This subject will be marked by a total absence of attempts to perform any alterations within the skull of the sow.

First day of my sixth attempt. Leaving the tissue within the skull completely untouched through the transmutation of a pig to a human is fatal. I shall focus on trying to find the minimum needed.

Ninety-second day of my eighth attempt. By first shaping the sow into the image of a peasant girl of similar age and build to the patient including the tissue within the skull, then shaping the result into that of the afflicted but leaving those tissues carefully untouched, progress has been made.

First Year and twenty days of the ninth attempt of finding a cure for the malady through investigative transmutation.

The sow appears exactly as the victim once did, but is beset with tremors, incoherent strangled crying, difficulty breathing and incontinence of all bodily functions.

I am missing something.

Second Year and four days of the ninth attempt. With constant care, attention and gentle sorcery applied within the skull, neck, and face focusing especially on restoring vitality within the blood the sow has gained powers of speech, mobility and fragmentary memory.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

However said memory is not of the original afflicted despite external appearances and near identical shape and form within the body (excepting of course the interior of the skull and the healing and growths which followed).

This discrepancy brings the transmuted sow great distress.

Third Year and nine days of the ninth attempt. I am finding it difficult to continue this research. But for the sake of my patients I must strive onward.

The girl, for I cannot in good conscience still call her a sow or pig despite her origins, speaks, feels, remembers and acts healthy if mildly disoriented. I have performed delicate adjustments to the shapes within her skull in an attempt to match to those my truth recalls from the afflicted before their expression of the disease.

But it is very slow, if too much changes while she is awake she grows terribly distraught or begins to express seizures and great pain.

But if equivalent changes are performed while she sleeps or is unconscious she does not wake.

Progress is much slower now as I have had to reverse course numerous times to avoid wasting all my work so far.

I am both saddened and relieved that things have progressed to a point she no longer is pained by clear memories of either the peasant girl’s family nor yet showed signs of knowing the family of the afflicted.

Fourth Year and fifty days of the ninth attempt. Bathory has finally approved the feeding of one of the afflicted so they regain the powers of speech and thought.

Cooperation with the patient was exceedingly difficult to secure. Restraints remain a requirement. A Bribery of blood has managed to maintain a semblance of engagement and adherence to procedure at my request.

Proximity between the girl and the afflicted has so far shown no signs of transference of the curse despite both having what appear to be near identical memories.

I will need to work carefully when moving onto more direct interactions and verifications.

Fourth Year and sixty days of the ninth attempt. I had to undo the girl’s memory of today. The afflicted recognized what she was and what she knew. No signs of transference of the disease but my patient found ways to drive the girl to a panic despite this.

As already noted all attempts to undo the afflicted’s memories failed. My sorcery as always struggles to even touch them.

Fifth Year and five days of the ninth attempt.

I can’t do this anymore.

Everything I’ve tried my patient seeks to subvert. And besides contact with the girl makes the afflicted’s condition worse. Hunger that would normally have taken months to express can be brought upon in hours under particularly stressful interactions.

The accusations have also cut even deeper than normal.

I will not put to paper what was said to me.

This entry shall mark the abandoning of this line of inquiry. Transmutation does not hold the answer I seek.

The girl has been released to the family of my original patient with a pardon for her crimes and more than enough dispensation to see her comfortable for the rest of her life. I will check in every few years but I expect she will do fine. The tears of relief when she embraced her father seem proof of that.

If only I could give my charges the relief from suffering as she will have.

-Research notes of Jaksa the Red, Court Wizard of the Countess Bathory of Viznove.