Tests

Alice bit her lip, a torn look set on her face.

In front of her squirmed one of the live screechlings she had caught a couple hours before, its weak limbs pinned down by a couple of rocks as it incessantly hissed at her.

She was gripping one of the newly harvested spider fangs; the metallic, dagger-like tooth still glistening with a thick coat of venom.

“I’m sorry little guy, but I need to know,” she said as she carefully cut into the thin thigh of the animal which, for a moment, doubled its frantic movements in an effort to get away from the weapon before quickly freezing mid hiss. She lowered the fang and gently touched its chest, feeling a slow heartbeat under its soft fuzzy skin.

“That probably confirms it. It’s a paralytic effect, a strange one too since it doesn’t seem to stop the heart or the lungs. I guess the spiders use it to capture their prey and keep it as fresh as possible for the longest period of time. I’ll wait to see if Specimen A survives before checking a higher dose on Specimen B. I want my computer. Or a notebook. And to not feel bad about it.” she murmured as she inspected the little creature.

A bit more than twenty minutes passed before the small bat slowly started moving again. Alice immediately removed it from its bindings and, together with a piece of the spider carcass, carefully put it in one of the enclosures she had hastily constructed in the cave.

She proceeded onto the next subject of the line, progressively adding more venom to each specimen and checking its effects on their body. Somehow, none of the screechlings died after receiving their dose and she only found a steady increase in the duration of the effect, or so she thought, given the lack of good ways to measure time in the unchanging stillness of the caves.

“That’s strange. But good. I guess it’s time for the next stage of the experiment. I’m an idiot but I must know if I’m right,” she muttered as she raised the fang once more, wincing a bit as she lightly stabbed herself in one of the open cuts on her stump.

Alice ground her teeth, trying to ignore the sharp pain as the same numbing sensation travelled from the cut throughout the arm; before disappearing almost as quick as it had come. She waited around an hour before doing the same to a wound in the other arm.

This time, the numb sensation progressed far quicker; her forearm, arm and shoulder completely losing sensation for more than a minute, even with the relatively small dose she had inoculated.

“I knew it! The glimmer cells are doing something to the venom. If I get bitten there, I’m gonna be resistant to it. Poison Resistance obtained, baby!” she triumphantly pumped her stump into the air.

After testing the venom of the spider, she proceeded to carefully coat the cleaned tip of the prosthesis with it, hoping to have an advantage on the first hit for any future fight she got caught in. Next, she inspected the fang itself, noticing how it was composed of the same smooth and shiny metal that capped each of the spider’s limbs.

She sat down, carefully playing with the sharp object as she mulled over those peculiar creatures.

I wonder how they managed to evolve into metallic spiders… magic maybe? They certainly are scary. And not stupid. Not too much at least. I’ll need to remain careful.

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Dropping the fang, the satisfied smile disappeared and her face scrunched up in concentration as she thought about the next steps. She didn’t like them at all.

Alice had obtained eight screechlings from her hunting trip, seven of which had survived the rough trip and fight, the last one having apparently been bitten to death by its siblings.

After butchering and morosely eating its lean meat, she distributed the remains to the other creatures before starting to experiment once more.

Her eyes swept through the cave space, lingering briefly on the almost consumed carcass of the first spider that was still sitting in the glowing pool, until they settled on the only screechling still held in position.

“I guess it’s your turn, little guy,” her voice was resigned and a bit sad; still, she rose from her seat and walked to the tied animal.

When she finally stood over it, her expression was blank, her voice steady and emotionless.

“Test number two on Specimen G. I’ll add a small amount of glowing liquid to its diet. I think that the organisms of the pool might give effects on the creatures ingesting it, as seen with the salamander. If the animal survives, obviously, given the effects the specks had on my own immune system.”

She dipped one of the remaining scraps of the dead screechling into the shimmering pool, waiting for the flecks of light to completely cover the meat and sinew before carefully offering the bite to the blind bat, which quickly gulped it down. Alice quickly grasped the hissing little flier and put it in its new cage before she went on with her day.

One day later, Alice worriedly stared as the infected screechling writhed on the ground, weak hisses escaping from its mouth, together with blood-tinged saliva.

With a guilty expression, she kept looking at the animal. “Same reaction as me. Its body can’t hold the changes,” she said as she got closer, pressing a hand on its tiny chest and focusing on her power, trying to move her focus away from her body and towards the new one. She focused on the knowledge she had obtained during the many dissections of the little bat, how its body worked and felt.

“Hemostasis”.

She felt the warmth of her well leaving from her hand and suffusing the twitching body of the screechling, momentarily blocking the damage its immune system was causing to its own body and causing the wounds to knit over, momentarily stopping the internal blood loss.

“You need to keep going.” She ordered the twitching creature, her eyes almost pleading, “If you do, I promise you won’t be used again,” she then promised, her voice soft as she watched a few specks of green light appear on the skin covering the panting bat’s throat.

Over the following hours, Alice kept using her word of power on the little monster, easing the damage the glowing microorganisms were doing to its body, knowing that she was also prolonging its pain.

While healing it, she tried using her power in different ways, focusing on numbing its pain receptors to try and ease the agony of the process she had herself lived through.

It didn’t work, the energy losing its cohesion as soon as it left her own body. I’m not good enough for this. Yet.

An incredibly long time had passed since then.

She had been awake for the entire time, in the final hours barely conscious enough to cast more of the blood clotting magic as a huge migraine, caused by her almost empty well of power, slowly ate away her resolve.

I’ll keep it up as long as you do. It’s the least I can do after doing this to you. She silently promised the squirming animal.

And then, almost suddenly, the screechling stilled, its now glowing body unmoving on the cold surface of the stalagmite.

With a croaking voice she exhaled the words she had come to fear during her experiment, “It was for nothing. The infection results in death. I’m not gonna try again,” she left the body there and squeezed herself into her chamber, soon falling into a restless sleep.

She was woken by a cacophony of hisses from her remaining captives, each apparently trying to surpass itself in the amount of decibels produced. Still groggy from her rest, Alice scooted closer to the opening to see the reason for the awful concert.

Then she heard it.

One of the hissing cries stopped abruptly and the rest abated as a wet sound of crunched bones and tissue echoed in the cave. She froze, her hand immediately traveling to her side where her knife should have been.

It wasn’t. She had left it near her experiment bench together with the prosthesis and the rest of the tools and weapons.

Cold sweat ran down her back as she felt a horrid sense of déjà vu.

Heart beating madly in her chest, the young woman finally moved close enough to the opening to be able to see the rest of the cave.

In the dimming shimmer of the cave, she saw a shape awkwardly hunched over one of the broken stone enclosures, its winged upper limbs grasping the mutilated corpse of one of the remaining screechlings. Holding it in the grip of its talons, the creature bit down once again in a mess of blood and innards, like a macabre copy of Goya’s painting of Saturn Devouring His Son.

Alice finally noticed a sickly green glow suffuse the body of the creature as it gulped down another large bite from the carcass.

With eyes opening in horror, she finally realized what had happened.

It’s G.

It worked.