Vayābī stared at the letter in his hands, rereading the unwelcome words once again.

If you do not aid us, harm will befall your family.

After a moment, he dismissed the missive. Crumbling it up into a ball, he launched the parchment into the slowly dying embers that still smoldered in the fireplace. Provided with fresh fuel, they quickly reignited into flames as the paper dissolved into charcoal and ash.

He leaned back in his chair, a contemplative look on his face as he pondered the threat from the Zalancthians. I wonder what poor bastards they kidnapped this time.

Even after all these years of war and conflict, of Zalancthians living side by side with and ruling over millions of Corsythians, the two peoples didn’t really understand each other. The stoneflesh were practically indistinguishable from them in appearance, but their minds did not seem to work in quite the same ways.

They possessed some sort of instinctual link to each other, a bond from birth with both their kin and comrades that only deepened as they aged. It wasn’t a hive mind, as far as the Corsythians had been able to tell. Captured prisoners were able to function just fine cut off from the rest, and the psychic bond would decay and weaken the longer they were kept from their people, with no obvious ill effects. But it led to a very different understanding of kinship and social ties than the Corsythians possessed.

Vayābī had no idea who had been kidnapped, but judging from previous experience, it was probably some unfortunate soul who once had shared a great-great-great-great-great-grandmother with him, or something to that effect. Poor bastards.

With a final shake of his head, he dismissed the thoughts, after jotting down a reminder to ask his aide to see if he could find out who had been abducted. Vayābī wasn’t going to betray the empire for some random seventh cousins, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to send some troops to rescue them if it wasn’t too dangerous.

His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door. “Come in,” he shouted, sitting up quickly in his chair. It wouldn’t do to let the men see him slacking off.

It wasn’t a soldier, though, that came stumbling through the door, but a young man with a shock of bushy red hair and the gleaming green eyes of the Fey. Still small in frame, the faint jade tattoos around his hand testified to his talents as a mage. It took a second for him to place the lad’s face, but when he did, Vayābī relaxed, sinking back into his chair.

“Ah, Bas̆mu, is it? Where is your master, lad?” He remembered the man’s last visit and the rather loud row that had ensued when the mage had had the gall to ask for double the amount of funding he had already received - funding that thus far had produced no results. Vayābī smirked. “Is your master too cowardly to ask for more money himself?”

The young man took a half-step back as a look of uncertainty crossed his face. “Uh, no, my lord,” he ventured after a moment. “Master Eṣidānu sent me to tell you that there has been a breakthrough. He believes he understands now what the Stoneflesh potion is doing.”

Vayābī was on his feet in a flash, brushing past the startled lad as he hurried down the hall.

It was a short walk down the stairs and from there out of the building. Eṣidānu’s lab was on the far side of Dūr Ṣadê, closer to the palace than the soldier’s barracks, so Vayābī set a brisk pace. As he exited the building, a burst of cold wind assaulted his face, followed by the all-too-familiar globs of rain that poured down from the rivers.

He frowned at the unpleasant greeting - the rainy season had stretched on longer than usual this year - but he bound the winds to his will with a quick twitch of his fingers. As he strode down the cobblestone roads, cutting through a few stretches of muddied yards, the winds swirled around him, flinging aside any raindrops so foolhardy as to dare aim for him.

The lab loomed tall through the downpour, a large, three-storied shale building with two expansive wings and a circular tower toward the back that rose another three flights into the sky. He swept through the doors, his feet leaving a trail of muddy tracks across the immaculately clean pavement, much to the servants’ chagrin, but Vayābī no mind to that.

Heading straight down the stairs, he was finally forced to pause at their base where something new confronted him. A thick set of doors reinforced by solid metal poles barred the way into the lab. His face scrunched up in confusion as he examined them. What the hell are these for?

The sound of running echoed down the stairs, followed a moment later by the reappearance of the ginger. He skidded to a stop at the base, panting heavily as he rummaged in his pouch. “My lord, you left so quickly I couldn’t give you this.” After a moment’s fumbling, he drew out a bronze key.

Vayābī took it, flipping it over in his hand as he turned to the large doors barricading his path. “What’s up with the door?” He questioned the lad, as he undid the first of three locks.

“There have been a few, err, incidents with my master’s experiments. They’re for the safety of the town.”

Vayābī paused in his task, looking back at the boy with a flicker of irritation mixed with concern. “Incidents? I’ve heard nothing about any incidents.”

The boy’s eyes shifted to the side uncomfortably. “I’m sure Master Eṣidānu just didn’t want to bother you,” he said, hesitatingly. His face brightened up. “Anyways, now with the doors, we haven’t had any further problems.”

He frowned but kept his thoughts to himself. Whatever his master had done - and Vayābī had a strong suspicion he was going to be angry with Ẹsidānu - the lad certainly wasn’t to blame. He glanced down at the boy. He was at that age that was hard to judge, nearly the height of a man but still lacking the bulk and strength that usually came with time. Almost the same age as my son, he guessed.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The lad offered him an uncertain smile, afraid he was about to be yelled at, but Vayābī simply smiled back. Fishing a coin out of his bag, he flipped it to the lad. “Why don’t you go get a treat from the vendors,” he suggested. “Master Eṣidānu and I need to have a private conversation.”

The boy nodded and needed no more encouragement to flee back up to the stairs. Left alone, Vayābī finished unlocking the bolts and stepped inside the lab.

It was in….far worse shape than he remembered. The usually pristine stones walls were still clean, but the large blocks were marred by deep cuts, shattered panes, and missing chunks that had not been there the last time he had visited the lab. What was that- two weeks ago?

There were other things that were new. A large space had been cleared in the center, now occupied by three massive steel cages. A number of the bars were bent and distorted, but another row of poles had been hammered into the ground around them, providing an extra layer of protection.

The cages were not empty.

Each cage held an occupant, and while Vayābī couldn’t see the faces of the prisoners from where he was, that hardly mattered. I don't remember authorizing him experimenting on prisoners. His pace quickened as he charted a coarse straight for the elderly man who had his back to him, his focus entirely invested on the cages before them.

“Master Ẹsidānu,” Vayābī voice thundered through the basement, echoing off the damaged panels. “What is the meaning of this?”

The man, so engrossed in his work that he had failed to notice the lord’s entrance, started violently, but when he turned to face Vayābī, it was not a look of fear that gleamed in his eyes but the glint of triumph.

“Lord Vayābī,” he bowed, just low enough to fulfill social expectations, “I have discovered what the the stonefleshes’ vials do.”

Vayābī paused beside the man. His eyes quickly swept over the occupants of the cage. The prisoners were in shabby condition. Large wounds on their body were wrapped in clean gauze but the eyes that stared back at him were vacant. They were also most definitely not Zalancthian eyes; these were his own men.

Anger quickened in his hearts as he bent down beside the cage. There was no sign of the second set of eyes that had appeared in the rampaging Zalancthian commander, but neither was there any indication of intelligence in any of the prisoners. He waved his hand in front of one of them, but they registered no response. Their chests rose and fell regularly, their bodies twitching occasionally in seemingly uncontrollable spasms, but they appeared to be nothing more than an empty shell.

“What did you do?” He growled, his words thick and choked with anger. Responding to his outrage, a current of wind sprung up in the dark basement, and for the first time the mage seemed to notice Vayābī’s fury. “Who gave you permission to experiment on these men?”

Eṣidānu raised his hand rather flippantly. “Calm down, my lord. Each one of these men volunteered for the work, and willingly took the risk for the sake of the empire as well as,” he grimaced slightly, “a rather large sum of money that will set up their families for generations to come."

So that’s what he needed that money for. The wind stilled as some of Vayābī’s anger dissipated, but he still scowled down at the mage. “You should have asked me.”

The man shrugged. “Perhaps, but…” A sardonic smile lifted the corner of his lips. “Is that not why you put me in charge? You needed results, and I delivered. Don’t pretend you didn’t know what sort of a man I am.”

The mage’s words burned at his gut, but Vayābī bit back the angry retort that leapt to his tongue. There was a certain amount of truth to what the man had said, and even if there wasn’t - well, there weren’t too many mages in the empire capable of working glyphs, runes, and spells. Those sorts of assets had to be protected.

Swallowing his pride, he settled for shooting another angry glance at the researcher. “I suppose the deed is done. So tell me, what do the vials do?”

All traces of irritation left Eṣidānu’s face as he turned his attention back to the caged subjects. “I believe it’s only in the experimental phase for them too,” he began, pacing back and forth across the floor. “As best as I can tell, the purpose of the potion appears to be to temporarily suppress the conscious thoughts of the individual, allowing someone else - or perhaps something else - to step through and take control of the body.”

Vayābī raised a skeptical eyebrow, glancing at the vacant eyes of the prisoner. “Temporary?”

Eṣidānu nodded vigorously. “Hence why I said the potion is only experimental. At first, the potion has no observable side-effects once it wears off, aside from extreme fatigue and, as one would expect, a certain amount of confusion on the part of mind that was suppressed. But with repeated doses, the potion’s effects become more and more exaggerated until, unfortunately, the process seems to be permanent.”

He paused in front of one of the volunteers, frowning down at the woman’s empty eyes. “Perhaps this is the effect that the stoneflesh desire; one can never be certain how their minds work. But in any case, the effect is certainly not dependable.”

He descended into a fit of coughing, his lungs gasping under the torture of an old curse he had never been able to entirely cure, until he spat out some blood. Wiping his lips clean, he finished his thought. “This poor lass, for example, snapped after merely two doses of the potion. On the other hand,” he pointed to the man in the corner. “His mind seemed entirely intact for a remarkable twenty-three uses of the vial.”

Vayābī grimaced. “So an incomplete potion. And what of this ‘other’ that comes through, the second set of eyes?” he pursued. He was surprised to see something that almost looked like fear flicker through the mage’s eyes, but it disappeared so quickly he couldn’t be sure.

“Ah, that.” The man sighed deeply. “As you know all too well, our knowledge of the Zalancthians’ very limited magical capabilities is sorely lacking.”

Vayābī nodding in understanding. As far as they could tell, only the Zalancthian nobility were capable of performing any magic - if it was even magic - and even those few wielders were quite rare.

Eṣidānu continued. “So, I cannot be certain of this, my lord, but I believe that whatever is coming through may just be one of their gods.”

The meeting with the mage continued well into the night, increasingly bogged down by the man’s arcane theories. Vayābī did his best to keep up, but he was no researcher. As much as he disliked the man, Eṣidānu was as brilliant as he was talented and the level of his magical understanding far surpassed his own. Yet another reason I have to put up with that annoying git.

The rains had finally stopped when he reached his room, and he fumbled in the darkness, undressing. It was only when the pale light of the moon peaked through his window, that he saw another letter laying on his desk.

Almost idly, he opened it up, expecting some sort of busywork for the morning. But it was another letter from the Stoneflesh, this time with the names of the abducted. He scanned them quickly, coming to a screeching halt at the second to the last name on the list.

Vayābeltī.

His heart stopped beating.