It was a surreal moment.
I stood over the woman; blood-streaked knife raised high. Time seemed to slow; every detail etched indelibly into my brain. I felt a slight tremor in my guts. Fear? Nervousness? Something Else? The braziers shuddered, dancing erratically, as the shadows in the laboratory darkened, greedily attempting to consume the last vestiges of light left. Her eyes caught mine briefly, the look in them fearful, yet inviting. Euphoric. I lowered the tip of my blade to her forehead and, indelicately, carved the profane rune into her flesh. It split so easily, that ashen skin.
The vessel's head exploded into arcing ribbons of bloody gristle and viscera...and darkness.
I knelt before the white marble obelisk, murmuring invocations to Whatever might hear my blasphemies; that might indulge my quest. My insanity.
The hour of the experiment drew near; I could hear the hushed voices and muffled footsteps of intrepid colleagues and observers down the wide hallway. Three decades of study had led to this; a direct catalogue and vivisection of a creature that was nearly a God. I felt ill-prepared by my tedious interpretations of ancient grimoires and semi-religious Profane texts. But it was far beyond the time for theory. It was time to see.
As I entered the laboratory, many were already gathered, avid anticipation predicating punctuality. After a short acknowledgement of the attending researchers, the tools were laid out. Vials, herbs, referential documents, and a knife. Always a knife.
Without further delay, I invoked the magic that still held the creature, light and smoke emanating from my quartz bottle quickly coalescing into the shape of a grossly mutated woman. A Maelshyvean Vessel.
In short order, I began making observations--and taking samples--assisted by my fellow researchers. The woman fought against those restraining her, causing no small trouble for them, but she is weak, cut off from her Mistress after Osven's sacrifice. Her struggles were not merely physical, however. She still had power, weak as it was.
While observing the pigment in her eyes, a vibrant emerald, I felt everything slow, a heartbeat stretched long, a breath held in anticipation. She watched, her pupils contracting slightly as she focused on me, and then dilated wildly as something euphoric gripped her. Her lips parted in a soft smirk, and my mind filled with images of my lost wife and child. In my head I could hear her whispers, "They could be yours again. Just let me go and I can show you."
I could only sneer at those useless attempts to save herself. Her fate had already been sealed. Her power to aid me lost. The only thing left to her was pain and the knife.
She would not give in so easily. I had no way of quantifying her psychic powers, lacking the presence of a moon mage, but what I could sense was formidable.
The scent of rose and salt filled my nostrils. I was reminded of a summer, a soft summer, so long ago, before everything, before the nightmares and pain. I found myself sinking, comforted, if I would only let go. I trembled, aching for that comfort. But it sickened me, at odds with my sense of where I was and what lie before me. The cramp in my stomach broke the delusion, a new vision replacing it: both our faces mutated with scale and horn, monstrously horrific. Ghostly wings spread wide behind her, hands deformed into triple-tined claws until suddenly, she was once again the decrepit, bleeding woman before me.
This must have exhausted her power as her resistance was feeble from then on--perhaps acceptance of the coming End. I implored my assistants to hold her tight as I cut one last sample free: one of the numerous scales from her flesh, delicately severing the connecting skin to keep the sample intact. This is what broke her. Perhaps it was merely the pain. Or maybe that combined with the inevitability of what would soon happen to her, I cannot say. But her words echo within my mind still.
She leaned back and with a deafening scream, howled, "RETURN MISTRESS THAT YOU MAY FEAST UPON THEIR FLESH AND CROWN YOURSELF WITH THE STARS!"
This gave me pause. I am unsure if it was the suddenness of it, or perhaps the expectation that, at last, Maelshyve might answer, however She could. It was short-lived, for no answer came. The vessel was abandoned.
At long last the time I had come. There was nothing left to be learned in life from this creature. I had collected the samples I could: claw, fang, hair, blood, scale. As she lay bleeding before me, panting from the pain and exertion from her struggles I raised up my blood-streaked knife...
Unyielding hands, roughly grabbing my arms, roused me. My throat felt raw and the sour, coppery taste in my mouth would have caused me to retch were my stomach not already twisted tightly into a knot. My blood or hers? Realization hit me like a stone. This laboratory and safehouse were now closed to me as surely as the beneficence of the Church.
I had overstepped. But I, we, were successful. I was no longer alone.
