[Server error. Please try again later.]
[Server error. Please try again later.]
Unfortunately for Mars, she got to do just that. Which meant he could only find answers in this absolute horror show. As the villain made rounds of his lab, Mars could only gawk at the scene. The laboratory was bigger than some convention centers, with different experiments sectioned off. The resources devoted to Akakios' work was truly a marvel. On Earth, scientists were seldom given access to so many tools, lab assistants, and test subjects. A grant that could cover this would have made his old "Intro to Biology for Non-Majors" professor a joyous heart attack. She could join Mars in the grave at the peak of her life.
But this great feat of science was at the cost of any semblance of morals and ethics. All of this was funded by the villain with his fast fortune of blood money. Which, to be fair to Lyharke, was not unique to this country or world.
Take Elon Musk and his father's South African emerald mines for example. Earthen tech billionaires weren't exactly virtuous. And while the tests in this lair were more akin to torture than board-approved experiments, it would not surprise Mars if that rotten-peach faced nepo-baby would match Akakios in cruelty given a smidge less oversight.
Actually, Musk might be worse. At least Lyharke's notorious villain seemed to grasp basic scientific concepts, like the scientific method and how to read data. Akakios even listened carefully to his underlings and their lab assistants, which Musk was too busy succumbing to his own ego to try. The demon discussed their current experiments, and made suggestions for the next stages rather than demands.
It was only in the contents of those discussions that his villainy showed. He had apparently been studying soul transference for a while, but unwilling souls made wreckage of their new bodies. Mars was privileged to bear witness to that fact.
One experiment left the test subjects seizing in their straps, foaming at the mouth, until their bodies succumbed to whatever the test had inflicted. "What was that?"
Akakios didn't have to answer him, as the researcher in that section, who hadn't even introduced himself, already started to explain, "Rejection was faster this time. This is only the sixth trial, but I'm noticing that bodies with similar features and/or dispositions are slower to reject. Which, of course, runs contrary to the animal transference trial's success in section B6."
Mars was not a scientist, but they were talking bullshit magic science. Comprehending dense fantasy worldbuilding at even his lowest, when dopamine and serotonin refused to even allow him the strength to leave his bed, was one of his specialties. So it didn't take him long to start piecing together what these experiments were about.
"I've studied B6's trial closely. They're currently writing up their report, but there is a clear trend in the data. In conjunction with B7, who has been measuring the soul power of different creatures and test subjects, we have noticed that weaker souls are easier to displace but harder to maintain in an alternate form, and the reverse is true when you adjust the data for 'willingness.' That might apply here as well. Humans and demons have the largest range of spiritual power out of all the creatures we have tested. I suspect that a willing human with more power is more likely to survive transference than a willing human with less, so we might want to adjust this experiment and start testing that."
That was one thing Mars couldn't wrap his head around. They couldn't find a single soul willing to switch bodies? Even back on Earth, it would have been his dream.
"If only the prisoners were willing." The scientist nudged one of the bodies, forever limp in those bindings. His name was Dr. Hasting Graves, which Mars was never to learn but would have found a little on-the-nose.
"Hmm, yes that has always been the issue."
The scientist started fumbling through his data tables. He scanned the initial questionnaire they used to track that variable. None of the subjects wanted to go through the procedure, but the two who reported an extreme disdain for the concept were currently strapped to the test tables, still as the grave. They were two priests, zealots the villain had captured in their attempt to raid his lair. They were all too willing to die during a poorly thought out and terribly executed mission. And once they were prisoners, they were begging for their deathbed. That was the quickest trial failure out of the previous six. He flipped to the questionnaire of their only test subject still breathing. She had written in the "Other questions and comments" section, "After the experiment, will I be released? I just want to see my family."
There was a pattern.
I will take a moment to tell you a tale of one Dr. Hasting Graves, just three weeks prior. While the lesser demon was an underling to a cruel demon lord, he was not heartless. And the subject who later made a full recovery was a product of unluck. She made a minor transgression against his master, stumbling into the small section of his territory that leaked into the mortal world. A few months ago, mortals like her wouldn't be worth the demonic patrol's time. They would have let her go. Now, with such a high demand for test subjects, even the smallest sleight would lead to one's capture. But what if she survived the test?
So he had taken this young maiden to the side, where the other prisoners couldn't hear, and held up her questionnaire. He was going to play the valiant hero. Well, he was going to play "good demonic scientist," which was his best approximation. Despite his efforts, and his very clear attempt at conveying the message, the girl didn't understand. She had been taken to a side room in the dungeons by a pale man with too-sharp teeth and too-black eyes. Naturally, she was too scared to speak.
He spoke first instead, "I will help you get home."
That jolted away her thickest layers of dread, and her eyes widened. "You will?"
"Not before our tests. We are experimenting with soul transference. Do you know what that means?"
She pointed to the questionnaire. "Is that what that sheet was asking about?"
He shook his head "yes," and explained, "We are going to transfer your soul to another body."
"You can't do that."
"We will do that. I'm just uncertain if you will survive. There's a low success rate."
She was horrified again. Which was not how she should have responded to her valiant hero. Then again, he was never made for such a part.
He continued, "I don't want you to die. I'm just stating facts. Most of our test subjects die. But our experiments are our attempt to eliminate that nasty side effect."
"Has anyone survived?"
"Yes, actually. There was just one thing they had in common."
Her emotions were playing a bouncing ball in her flesh, but she maintained herself through sheer effort. "What is it? Do I have it? I want to live. I need to see my family again. My brother's birthday-" she momentarily choked as she fought tears back "-I have to go home."
"You might be in luck then. What you need is will."
She scrunched the delicate eyebrows she was bound to lose in a few short days. If she could only hold on, she would look completely different. But she would be alive, and that was the important thing. "Just... will?"
"You need to be willing to transfer bodies. In lieu of desire, just fighting to stay alive might be enough. I want to see if..."
"...if?"
Dr. Graves chuckled to himself. "I'm a nasty scientist, fucking with my own variables like this. But I think keeping as many subjects alive is more important than eliminating all the other discrepancies this time around. Don't you agree?"
She didn't fully understand, but she agreed anyway. She valued her life after all. She would fight for it, to the end.
And that, dear reader, is what she did. But the minion would never admit to fucking with his experiment, directly coaxing that will into his text subject. Not to Akakios, of all people. The demon liked hearing new suggestions, but hated going behind his back. If the scientist had only changed his experiment explicitly, his hands wouldn't be so clammy now. But inspiration had struck, or maybe a sick bout of empathy. Either way, he hadn't the forethought to write his alterations down, and bringing that up would not serve him well now.
So he didn't explain. He just got straight to the point. "I can write up a report based on these past six tests and then put my efforts into coaxing the prisoners. I genuinely think I could increase that 'willingness,' variable. I have a few ideas that might work."
"Let's hear it." Akakios raised an eyebrow.
"They're scared, in pain, and don't want a new body, right? A2 and A3 have already tested pain and fear reduction. Their medicines, sedatives, and pain inhibitors have greatly improved the success of a large portion of our tests. But we need people to want to leave their body. That's not common."
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Mars would have snorted. "I'm right here!"
"I know you are, hush." Akakios thought to him.
Outside of their skull, the scientist continued his pitch. "If we can't get them to want a different body, the next best thing is to remind them to live."
"But everyone wants to live!?"
Mars would have snorted, again.
The scientist explained further, "That's too simplistic. It's not that they don't want to live, but when your soul is thrust into a body you don't want without care or much warning, it's going to forget that fact in its confusion. It will be too focused on rejecting its vessel than on the consequences of that rejection. Remember, it is not an active mind. The mind doesn't start functioning until it has embraced its vessel. And even a conscious subject would be too disoriented to fully understand what's happening. But I think the soul is able to remember, even if it is unable to think. I believe making a mind more willing will help the soul do the same."
Mars was too stunned in trans to snort.
"Fascinating hypothesis. You still haven't explained the process."
"We give them a body they want, for one. Like I've said, I noticed people with similar features are slower to reject."
"But they still reject?"
"Most of them. But then, I think we might be able to reason with our prisoners. Explain what we are doing and how they might be able to make the best of it."
"The best of what? You're taking their bodies from them and what happens if they survive? Imprisonment?"
"What if we promised their release, if we worked with them," Akakios said, in response to Mars. The human was kind of proud.
Dr. Graves, on the other hand, was surprised the demon lord had suggested it. He was going to wait for the results of his next few trials to mention it himself. "I definitely think that might work. And what if we promised to transfer them back when the experiment concludes. Again, I'm uncertain how much the soul retains. But I do believe they carry some degree of mindless reason."
"That's an oxymoron," Mars was good with fantasy bullshit logic, but this soul stuff was testing his nerves a bit. Just because he could follow the bullshit didn't mean it wasn't the shit from a bull.
But, without hesitation, the demon lord agreed with his underling's proposal. "Just make sure to do multiple trials to test individual variables this time. You need a solid control. I don't care how many subjects have to die to get one. Oh, and wipe that girl's memory before you send her out."
Dr. Hasting Graves froze. "What girl?"
The demon lord just winked, and left the underling with the sinking realization that his master knew exactly what he had done.
Mars, however, was in the dark. "What was that wink about?"
"He thought he got away with something."
"...did he?"
"He's still alive, isn't he?"
"Okay, sure. But what did he do?"
"Saved a prisoner. It happens to the worst of us."
"Would you like to be less vague?"
"No."
"..."
"It's his affair. I'm not going to spill the messy details just because you asked."
Which was unreasonably reasonable and unfairly extremely fair, because Mars really wanted to know those messy details. But he also wasn't getting anywhere with the questions. So he went back to poking The System.
[Server error. Please try again later.]
[Server error. Please try again later.]
The demon lord spoke to various underlings to the point they all blurred together, like reading the same trope in the same genre over and over until all ten series you inhaled in the past two weeks became one giant story with no start and no end.
With the blessing of hindsight, I know how to skip to the end. It may have been the most important experiment debriefing in the entire cavern of a laboratory. But how was Mars to know that? As the duo approached a seemingly random section of the lab, Akakios called to a seemingly random scientist.
Despite her seeming randomness, Mars perked up a bit anyway. This character would have driven the furries in the Font of Demons fandom wild. She was an anthropomorphic cockatoo. In furry terms, an "avian." In Mars' terms, a "feathery." To the human's relief, she wasn't cartoonish or mascoty. He couldn't imagine the horror of a photorealistic furry-style creature, with sparkling eyes bigger than an orange and those mammalian-specific features implying this! Bird! Is! A! Woman! The reason Mars guessed she was a "she" was simply that her clothes matched the style of female characters in this world.
Narrator's Note: Of course, it was only a guess, as Mars in particular was very much aware. As I am able to reach into the mind of more than just the human, I can confirm she was, indeed, a woman and extremely proud of it. Moreover, she was confused why anyone would desire to be anything else. While she was receptive to Akakios' torturous experiments, his appreciation of the male form eluded her.
Mars couldn't remember many character names or plot details from the original novel, but the fanworks were burned into his memory. M.X. Brady detailed the cultural intricacies of different regions of the world with a feverish incessance. The author also spent more time describing the biology and anatomy of various kinds of demons than exploring the personality of any individual creature. His work sometimes read more like a fantasy encyclopedia with a weak power-leveling and harem-acquiring plot as a boring throughline. Gavin-what's-his-last-name (the hero) was the least interesting part of this story that was barely a story. It was why most of the fandom studied his text religiously despite very loudly hating it.
The point is, while the fanfic shamelessly strayed from established canon, the fan art was surprisingly pretty faithful. And Mars was particularly fascinated by the SouthAsian-inspired culture of Southeast Lyharke, which is why he was able to recognize the style of her dress immediately. The feathery wore a blue Nauvari1 sari which hit her ankle, her talons on full display beneath it. The drape was masterfully executed, allowing her full range of movement to perform her duties as a scientist and underling.
As Mars was distracted by the beautiful clothes, she and Akakios started planning the next stage of torture the experiment.
"The last test subjects were unable to fully integrate. Half of their soul remained in each body, which after two hours of screaming proved fatal," the cockatoo told him.
The corners of Akakios' lips drooped in thought. "I want to explore that issue a bit more before we return to the initial purpose of the experiment. Can you think of a way to test if the subject died because of their dual-spirit or because their souls were split?"
Mars' attention withdrew from the lovely feathery. He was very aware of why his headmate would want to veer off in that direction. It was his fault, after all. "Do you think we will die if we stay like this for too long?"
Before the feathery could answer her boss' question, the villain answered Mars, "I have not found any indications of stress to either of our souls, but I am not one to shirk precautions."
His underling tilted her head in confusion, angling one of her eyes directly at him. "I'm sorry, sir... what!?"
"Oh, I have another soul inside my head right now. He asked a question."
She stared at him speechless.
"We do not seem to be experiencing any current issues, but I will start a journal to track any new developments," he continued.
"..."
"Is there a problem, Dr. Vaidya?"
"When did this start?"
"This morning."
"Sir, this is bad."
"That is why we are going to put our efforts into studying dual-soul manipulation. Having another person in my head is less than convenient." Akakios was a big fan of understatements.
"Do you think this was a planned attack against you?"
"Who could possibly have more expertise in soul transference than the people in this lair?" he asked, rather than answering her question.
"You mean it was an inside job?"
"We have not gotten to a stage where we can transfer souls of humanoids to other humanoids, clearly," he said, nodding to Dr. Vaidya's last test subjects who were laying on the cold, stone floor at an impossible angle. "I doubt anyone on this floor was able to execute even this flawed transference. At least, not without any outside help. No, I think someone is able to perform this task beyond our current capabilities. This is the perfect opportunity for study that they kindly laid in our lap."
"But what are that someone's plans? We don't know what game they're playing. Again, this could be an attack."
"If it's an attack, it was poorly thought out. I'm still in complete control of my body. And the other soul, Mars, is harmless. He can barely hold it together just standing in this room, with all the death and gore. If he is some sort of master operative, I will be shocked."
Mars would have glared at him. "That's rude."
But the cockatoo just hummed in thought.
"Look, we don't know the mission of that other entity. But we do have clues. You're a scientist. Tell me what you think our next steps should be."
"We need to observe, study, hypothesize, experiment..."
"And that's exactly my plan. So no need to worry."
She didn't seem convinced. This is because she was not convinced. When your demon boss' mind was invaded by a random soul with no warning, it was hard not to worry. But Akakios was rarely phased by such things, and recently, despite his disaffected act, he's been downright reckless. It was a subtle change. It wouldn't surprise Dr. Veidya if she was the only one to notice. But it was significant enough to be worrying. It was on full display now, with that feigned indifference that could quickly fester into a rabid mania if given the chance. "Master Akakios, it may not be my place to mention such things, but I know you haven't been yourself since that apprentice–"
His glare cut her off before his words. "You're right. It isn't your place."
She just had to give it the chance... fuck. She said the exact wrong thing. That stare might kill her before his hands got the chance. She backed off immediately, and also literally with two uncertain steps away from him. "Apologies. I was out of line. Please forgive this underling."
Mars felt the anger simmering in his shared chest. Though he couldn't parse the demon's thoughts, he knew for certain the demon was going to hurt her. As Akakios' hands started to morph into those large, sword-sharp talons, the human screamed in their head "WAIT!"
Surprise gave Mars a few extra seconds. He was able to fight his case before the demon could shut him up. "You need her to get me out!"
The demon and his headmate had observed many experiments already, and had spoken with many of the scientists about their work and their next steps. Everyone seemed competent. Many were already working on dual-soul manipulation. There were certainly others who could shift to this new experiment. But he entrusted Dr. Vaidya with this new task. He had divulged his dual-soul issue the moment she asked. This feathery wasn't just any random researcher. (As I had said with my privilege of hindsight.) He clearly placed a lot of faith in her.
Mars was only guessing, but it was a good guess. I can confirm he was correct. There was no researcher in that laboratory that could match that bird in aptitude and ability, and she was the only one he afforded enough context. In a few days, when he cooled down, he would have her directly observe him. He would let her poke and prod at his dual-soul. He would hand her his detailed notes on his condition and sift through the written contemplation of those private recesses of his mind.
So, despite the anger flaring in the demon's shared body, he paused. His talons went back to hands. While his fists were clenched, his teeth were still grit, and his eyes were still dark, he didn't attack.
Mars could have sighed in relief. Actually, that time he did. It was just a little slip as Mars forced the body to relax. Then, when all the tension left his body, Akakios snatched control back, blocking the human from his own synapses. Sharing a body was frustrating, but at least that body wasn't beating his best bet out half-to-fucking death.
"You're smart, Doctor. You know what to do."
The villain stormed out of the section, a clear destination in mind, which filled Mars with a reasonable amount of dread. He was pretty sure they weren't headed to a unicorn petting zoo. The human wanted to ask about his headmate's old apprentice, to understand what could provoke such ire, but he didn't dare mention it. So instead, he asked, "Where are we going?"
Akakios trekked five yards before he put in the effort to answer. "Dungeon."
"..." Mars said.
"..." the demon said back.
"...this isn't the dungeon?"
"This is my lab."
"...is the dungeon worse?"
In spite of himself, the demon almost laughed. "Oh, much worse."
When they got to the dungeon, Mars was not the least bit pleased to find out that was true. The dungeon was, in fact, worse. Much worse. Much, much worse.
bloated. It also means I'm pretty close to done with chapter 4, but we'll see how that goes. I was worried I was going to have to split what was going to be one chapter into three! But finally I was able to end this one at a place I felt worked.