“Darien cut the shit, you want me to do what?! After being a no-show? Oh, I should throw you out of the gods-damned tree for this one!”
This was not the greeting Darien wanted at close to midnight at Missy’s family home tree, and she was going to wake up the rest of her extended family if she was not careful with keeping her tone down. Missy however is just not able to be controlled by anyone, and she knows it with her piercing blue eyes and dark brown hair that always seem to act like it's catching some stray breeze. Missy wasn’t even letting him get a word out because she was pissed at him for missing their date. Except this one really hadn’t been his fault.
Falling asleep at his work desk a couple of times had been, however. She’d accused him of already being married to his work, and he couldn’t exactly refute that statement considering he had taken to his studies and research with a passion. The secondary education had given him a chance to stand out from his older siblings, already well entrenched in their own fame or questionable excesses.
Marielle is sitting there looking more and more annoyed based on the way she taps her foot, plays with her wristwatch, and tosses her hair back away from her face. Eventually she just gives up pretense and intervenes. “Hey, Missy, he missed your date for a stupid family outing! It’s not his fault mom made him go, and we didnt’ exactly have a good time with Grandpa keeling over dead for whatever reason!”
“And why is your sister here?” Missy adds with a bit of a sass. “Don’t have any sidekicks from academia?”
“No. I don’t. She’s cooler than most of the academics I hang out with anyway, she’s not afraid to poke questions at things that we take for granted.” His rather dry and subdued response lowers the temperature of the conversation just a little, But Missy is still going to make him pay for this transgression at some point or another, he realizes with resignation. “Look, I came here not because I came to apologize. I came here to find answers for Marielle and my father. They’re going to return Grandpa to the earth in record-breaking time. It’s like they don’t care about my father’s wishes.”
“Imagine that! A bunch of stuck up elves not caring when someone dies in an overpopulated town!” Missy huffs. “I’m still sharing a room with my sister. Do you know how embarrassing that is, Darien? It’s awful.”
“Yes, Missy, I am aware of the awkwardness of being fifty years young and still bunking with an older brother. It’s either that or abandon the town and go join the industrial revolution going on everywhere else in the universe,” he added with a bit of a snark. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. And now with this situation, I’m going to have to dig the hole deeper. I need your help with an autopsy.”
“You’re going to poke your grandfathers not-even-cold bones, to do what?”
“Find answers. He was healthy. This shouldn’t have happened. He was either poisoned by someone from one of the wars held over the past thousand years, or he had some underlying condition that we didn’t properly diagnose. I already scrabbled through what files I could get out of my father's filing cabinet, he kept them because Grandpa would toss them and not want paperwork clutter. And I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing this for the family. And my own desire to find answers too.”
Missy lets out a soft sigh when Marielle peers at her with a puppy-dog expression, all bright eyes and wavering on the edge of tears, and she adds just the smallest hint of a squeak. “Oh fine, to E’laith with you two! Not like I could lose my job or anything by breaking into a place where I do my medical work or anything!” she growled and threw her arms up in resignation.
“You are awesome Missy! But um, when you’re poking around, can I um…just not look?” Marielle asked anxiously.
“Don’t worry. We are doing this for knowledge only, we’ll be respectful. Though my autopsies have been on plants, not people,” Darien added in a moment of reflection. “Can we go as soon as possible?”
“Let me get my bag. We’ll go right away, and remember, if we get busted, this is on your ass, Darien. I’ll tell them you forced me to do science in the name of stupidity,” she threatened.
“So we’re all on board. Great, awesome, let’s go carve up a deceased family member in the name of science then.” Marielle and Missy glared at him. “Too on the nose?”
“Yeah, brother. Maybe save that part for after we do this?” Marielle said with a twitch of her ear.
***
Getting into the building hadn’t been a problem. Nor had been unlocking the morgue which had a chill of cold air blowing nonstop that froze Darien in the absence of the summer heat outside. What was stopping him was the fact was that he was going to be present for an autopsy for his own grandfather, and Marielle was sitting outside, peering in from an observation window. Missy has already put on a surgeon apron and gloves and goggles, and he reluctantly does the same. He can’t hesitate now, they’re already breaking the rules and he won’t back down after making a promise.
“Darien. Tell me why we’re doing this. The real reason.” Missy has dropped her angry attitude and is at least speaking to him with only a note of discontent. It’s a step in the right direction. “You wouldn’t do this for Marielle. You’re doing it for your obsessive quest for answers or a morbid curiosity.”
“I’m part of an illegal autopsy of my own grandfather, Missy. Do you think I want to be doing this in the slightest? Because I don’t. I might need a favor, I…don’t think I’ll have steady hands for this.” He took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. “Alright, I’ll take notes and observations. Let’s proceed.”
“Guess we’re past the point of no return already Darien,” she growls before hitting the recorder. “Date is Auctern 17, 1986. Deceased is Verner Salthani, approximately 1000 years of age, a Wildling of southern US descent.” She pulls the wrap off and Grandpa is there, silent and unmoving in death. The clothes have already been removed, as it is custom. Darien tries not to stare, but allows himself to observe, study, and annotate. “Doctor in training Missy Therison is performing, assisting me in a blunderous–forgive me, assisting me is Darien Salthani, grandson of the deceased.” She pauses for a moment while she takes a breath.
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“Initial examination. The subject is male, 1000 years of age, reasonably good self-care based on body proportions, weight, and health of the tissue, along with old, well-healed and faded scars across twenty percent of his body. The scarring is concentrated on the left arm, left chest, and torso. Muscle mass indicates an active lifestyle, and there are no recent external wounds or any outward signs of distress. Rigor mortis is…strangely not present. Odd.” Darien notes these as fast as he can write on the blue copy paper with his pen. “Darien, any comment on his last moments? Anything unusual?”
“Since we’re recording our crimes, sure. He seemed healthy. Maybe he was moving a little slower–old war wounds. He…talked of revisiting his seedling tree. It had been years since he’d seen it and revisited it. I spoke to him briefly at the party, maybe half an hour before–ah, before life seemed to just float out of him.” He tapped the pen against the clipboard softly before jotting down the notes. “Continue.”
They took more notes on the externals. Nothing in his clothing or articles on his persona seemed unusual. Darien did note that his skin seemed a little…blue. “Missy, signs of bluing on the skin, just a touch. What can cause that?”
“Hmm…lack of oxygen, bad circulation. Possible poisons. We’d need to take a closer look to be sure or take some samples of the blood.” She took a syringe from the blood that had pooled near the bottom of the body, and frowned at the vial. “Odd. kinda dark. I’ll have to test it later.”
“Blood sample to be analyzed,” he transcribes into the papers. She takes a surgical scalpel, and he winced. This was the part he was not looking forward to. Not just because Grandpa meant something to him, but for seeing a procedure like this, up close…it was unsettling. Missy had nerves of steel to have such calm and confidence in the room. “Making an incision cut, normal cut past the–oh dear Elders,” she gasps and fumbles with the scalpel after gently pulling back the now loose flap over his grandfather’s chest.
Darien pales when he sees what’s inside. There’s a leaking blue fluid that can only be one thing: raw mana, coming out of solution from the blood and organs of the body. There’s also the off-putting smell of something foul, something dark and rotten. Missy has to turn her head for a second and took a few deep breaths before continuing. “Darien, this is–not normal. Is it?”
“The mana in our bodies comes out of solution–it’s our magical lifeblood in essence, and it degrades over time too. But this is…” he tries to not retch from the stench of death. This is too much, too soon. “This shouldn’t happen for days, and usually it is reconverted by predators when they–I’m sorry, the smell Missy–”
“Don’t you dare throw up in here! Are you good?” she asked when she looks him right in the eye. He took a second to nod. “Good. Let’s continue. Now why is this unusual?”
“It should have congealed with the rest of the body. It’s coming out of solution with the body in real-time. This was happening while he was still alive.” Marielle looked through the window, and made a revolted face.
“Is he a zombie? Or some undead horror now that we will now have to lay to rest?” Her voice was all muffled through the glass.
“No. But…I’m not sure what’s going on. This is…something I only see in the Colossus trees. When they’re dead, the mana starts coming out of solution in the sap,” he explains to Missy. “Elves aren’t plants. Plus the trees themselves can take decades or even centuries to fully die at that scale, pockets of it can survive and even brand new trees can bud off and re-root. But this is…not something I know all the answers to.”
“So we still don’t know what killed him,” Missy says unhappily. “This could be a toxin that could cause mana to come out of the bloodstream. Poison. This could be foul play, a delayed toxin that could have caused the mana to come out of solution. I’ve seen it, this is what they used in the First World War, not just chemical attacks. This caused wildlings to die gruesome, horrible deaths. just like this. the magic leeched out of their bodies and their organs shut down. It's in the textbooks.”
“I think we need something else.” He steps away from the body before glancing at the window. “Let's finish taking notes. Then tomorrow we’re going out to the forest. I’m finding Grandpa’s Seedling tree. Maybe there’s something I can infer there. There’s been a theory in my head that barring anything else, what impacts the tree, impacts the elf. So if something killed or somehow damaged his tree–Look, don't give me that crazy look. I've studied the subject matter. There is evidence and documentation to indicate a causal relationship between wildling and sapling, regardless of distance. A connection we don't quite understand yet for all our thousands of years of 'immortality' going to waste, and not bothering to hunt down the answer like we should have.”
“But…how?”
“I don’t know. But it’s another lead. I saw trees nearby that were turning early. Far too early for this time of year, like they were sickly or diseased. And in far greater numbers than statistical chance.” Missy glares at him.
“First, mutilating a corpse, plus breaking and entering. Now you want to walk through a dangerous primeval forest of two hundred meter tall trees filled with deadly predators to go find one tree out of billions. Great, Darien, you’re cracked in the head.”
“I thought you liked my academic curiosity,” he replied with a wry smile.
“I’ve got your grandpa’s blood on my hands.”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“No, literally,” she growled and effectively killed the mood. “Alright Professor Oak, let’s go do this and not get eaten by monsters tomorrow. Because this is turning into an utter shit week so far.”
“Hey, bad words!” Marielle protests through the glass. Missy finally chuckled softly.
“Sheesh. Remember when we were that young? I miss those days. Humans say you’re only young once, boy, they aren’t kidding when they say that." Even when she's mad at him, she doesn't stay mad for too long.
“Yes, well, youth really doesn’t have meaning when you’re old enough to have witnessed entire empires rise, peak, and catastrophically tailspin. Are we just weird for questioning why anyone would want to live forever?” he asked.
“Nah, it just means we’re young. Ish.”