Cenotaph of Bones: Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Chapter 31: Experiments

The two of us moved deeper into the tunnel, weaving through piles of rubble left behind by the collapse.  There were two more sections we had to use our qi to push through, thankfully there were no more surprise attacks by the undead.  We did manage to find several more hefty chunks of raw malachite, which invariably sparked conversations about what we could do to mine the region for profit.  It was a way to pass the time while we searched for our friends, and Chu even stopped occasionally to scratch marks along the tunnel walls to make things easier if we ever came back.

“You have to know that the Emperor won’t give up the mining rights to these mountains.  At least, not without taking a large enough percentage that you won’t see any true profits.”  I paused to let him catch up to me, after he had pushed a small glow stone into the wall to mark where he had been.  “That’s just how the Empire works.  You have to give the Emperor his due, and then the King of the Province, and any officials between the two that might interrupt the process of getting - and keeping - mining approval.”

“There’s a simple solution, you know.”  Chu grinned, his white teeth flashing in the dim light.  “If they don’t know about a mining operation up in the mountains, then they can’t tax a mining operation up in the mountains.”  We both laughed quietly at the idea.  I wasn’t sure how serious he was being, but I knew once Ming became Emperor, there was no way an operation that brought in large amounts of malachite wouldn’t be noticed.  It was still a long time before we needed to worry about that.  “I still haven’t seen any tracks.  Do you think we missed them somewhere?”  Chu lifted his torch a little higher, trying to see deeper down the tunnel.  The occasional pile of rubble would have made it impossible to see any farther than a few dozen yards, even if it had been brightly lit down here.

“I don’t think we’ve passed them yet.”  I looked back the way we had come.  “None of those piles of rubble were blocking a side path, so that means they must be deeper underground than we expected.”

“Why would they take off like this, especially without leaving us some kind of note or sign to show what happened.”  Chu took the lead position, picking up the pace a bit.  “It isn’t like leaving a few scratches on the wall is a hard thing to do.”

“If they expected us to be right behind them, then they probably didn’t see the point.  And after the ceiling came down, they were probably trying to keep up with the frightened horses.”  I kicked at a pile of rocks on the ground, sending them bouncing deeper.  “Those are enchanted horses, after all.  They can move pretty fast when properly motivated.  After being drained by the fighting, it was probably hard to-”  A creaking sound echoed down the hall, cutting me off.  It was some kind of hinge squealing in protest from someone - or something - interrupting its centuries-old rest.

Chu and I crept forward silently, doing our best to limit the light we were using.  No sense in announcing our arrival, before we wanted whatever was ahead to know we were approaching.  The air was lacking the tell-tale smell of rot and decay I was beginning to associate with the monsters down here, and finally the quiet ringing clop of a horseshoe on stone caused both of us to relax.

“About time we caught up to you guys!”  Chu used a bit of wind qi to stir the air, causing his torch to flare up brightly.  “You trying to leave us behind or something?”

“Oh, thank the stars!  Jim and Chu are here!”  The voice of Jamila came from the shadow left by a pile of rubble that, upon closer inspection, was clearly designed to help hide a stone door in the tunnel wall.  “This way, guys.”  A glow stone was uncovered and provided enough light for us to see her standing in the doorway.  She leaned out to whisper to the two of us.  “You made it just in time.  Valerie was about to try and cook something, and I was starting to worry about actually having to eat it.”

“I heard that!”  We all laughed, and Valerie poked her head out to get a look at us.  “Jim, you need to get in here and look at Donny.  He is looking pretty pale.”  The grimace on Jamila’s face at Valerie’s words made a tiny flutter of fear flicker in my stomach.

“What happened?”  Instead of answering, the women motioned us forward, leading us deeper inside.  The four of us made our way down a short set of stairs that ended at another doorway.  This one made of wood so old it had petrified instead of rotted, and the tell-tale rust-colored metal used for the hinges, bands, and in the viewport meant it was made of orichalcum.  A quick glance revealed this place to be some kind of prison or jail, with more bars of the mana-draining metal lining the back wall of a chamber the size of a great room in an inn.  Donny was laid out on a bedroll with his armor in a haphazard pile next to him, while the horses were standing next to one another in the far corner, as far away as they could get from Donny.  I paused in the doorway, feeling a wave of dark qi assault my senses.  “Was he injured by something?”

“No, it wasn’t that.”  Valerie led me over to her betrothed, and knelt down near his head.  “There was some kind of vulture, and Donny managed to blast a part of its head off.  When he did, a splatter of its blood hit him.  He didn’t have his shields activated, and it touched his skin.  We were able to rinse it off right away, but he started feeling sick right after.  Once we found this place, we stopped to set up camp.  It was more defensible than the rest of the tunnel.”

“That was smart.”  Chu moved to the side, pulling out the materials to start cooking.  “I’ll try and make something hearty, so he can recover faster.  I think adding a few dried herbs to the broth would boost his healing ability.”

“Good plan.  You do that, and I’ll see if I can figure out what’s going on.”  I knelt next to Donny, who stirred when I placed my hand on his chest.  I was hoping he would wake up, but it didn’t happen.  The moment my strand of wood qi touched his body, I knew instantly what the problem was.  A dark stain inside his meridians was spreading toward his core, trying to attack me the moment my strand was close enough for it to reach.  This time, I knew what to expect, so I severed my connection and backed away.  The thread erupted from the skin on the back of his hand, and tried to jump on my leg, where I was kneeling next to Donny.  I was still in my armor, so it slid off the orichalcum and mithril alloy, making a screeching sound that I didn’t hear with my ears.  I backed off and fired a pellet of light qi directly at the glob of corruption, and it bubbled into a mist that burned my sinuses.  I worried the infection had passed to me somehow, but a quick scan showed I was clear.  “Well, this isn’t good.”

“Oh gods, he has what that sailor had, doesn’t he?”  Valerie seemed to hunch in on herself, curling around Donny’s head.  “I… I don’t…”   She looked down at her betrothed, and her expression went blank.  “He wouldn’t want to become one of those things.”

“And we won’t let that happen.”  I immediately pulled out my pill cauldron, and walked over to the cages that lined the walls along the back of the room.  “I’m not going to let this infection take my brother away from me.”  I pulled out my stiletto blade and scraped some of the orichalcum lining the bars into the cauldron.  “This is something that spreads through qi, so if we can shut down his system, it should slow it down long enough for us to find a cure.”

“Give me one of the shackle sets, so I can put it on him.”  Jamila walked over and took a spare set from me, and clamped them around his wrists and ankles.  “What else can we do?”

“We can try to reduce the amount of dark qi in the area.  It seems to have its base in that element, so boosting the light around him might bother it.”  I tossed a few braziers to Valerie for her to place around the area, along with a barrel of the lamp oil I had taken from the Auction House ship wreckage.  “Set these up all around, but make sure you circulate the air from outside frequently.  We don’t want to kill ourselves by taking away all the good air.”

“Give me all your glow stones, too.  We can pile them up around him.”  I gave all I had to Valerie, who also took all of the ones in Jamila and Chu’s storage as well.  Pretty soon, the entire jail room was bright enough to hurt our eyes.  The natural flow of dark qi wasn’t affected much, but the amount of light qi that was produced started to balance things out.  It would only last for as long as the oil-soaked wood in the braziers lasted, so I hurried back to the alchemy pill I was trying to produce.  “He doesn’t look any better, Jim.  You should hurry.”

I gave Valerie a quick nod and went back to pulling out ingredients.  A few years back, I had taken everything from my uncle’s alchemy shop in the southern capital, and there were several ingredients that I hadn’t even touched yet due to their unique properties.

Most people would see these ingredients as only useful in poisons, or as counteragents to balance the effects of a concoction meant to expand qi absorption.  If you took in too much all at once, it could damage your meridians, or stars-forbid, blow a hole through a core wall.  To avoid that, you would need some kind of limiter to keep the effects spread out over an extended period of time instead of all at once.  What I pulled out of storage was all of the limiter and poison ingredients I could find.

“Seven-Wind Severing Fruit, Flying Frog Lilypad, Brown Burgundy Blossom.  All are poisonous unless used in tiny increments.  If I can get the proportions evenly mixed with a double dose of Yellow Fire Grass, it shouldn’t kill him right away.”  The sharp inhalation from Valerie made me realize I was speaking my thoughts out loud.  Instead of stopping to explain myself, I raised my voice so it was audible to everyone.  If they understood what I was trying to make, they might get a better idea of the side effects I wanted to create in Donny’s cultivation network.  “Those three ingredients will slow his breathing, heartbeat, and brain function to almost nothing.  They should put him into a temporary coma that will stop any further damage to his body.”

“I didn’t think there was a cure for Brown Burgundy Blossom.  What are you going to do if it is too much?”  Chu was looking over from where he was cooking on the heating stone.  “He won’t ever wake up.”

“While there might not be a cure, there are ways to treat the symptoms until it works its way out of his system.”  I patted my belt.  “There are plenty of stimulants that can keep him alive long enough.”  I shoved a few items back in my belt to give myself some work space, and then pulled out the last two things I had that might work.  “Barnacle Tree Root for reducing qi absorption, and two vials of Lavender Grape Liquid to help keep the ingredients from melding too deeply with his bloodstream.  We want this to wear off quickly, after all.”

Once I had the necessary ingredients, I started to heat up the cauldron with a controlled flame from the meridian in my left hand.  Since I didn’t want to take off my armor, it was necessary.  I lifted the visor on my helm and used the meridian in my forehead to hold up the Seven-Wind Severing Fruit.  A quick flick of my stiletto cut through the thick skin of the mango-like fruit, and I carved out a tiny sliver of the meat to drop it in the cauldron.  Next, I added the Lavender Grape Liquid after allowing the fruit to sizzle and carmelize for a minute.  Once it had reached a boil, I dropped in the Brown Burgundy Blossom and watched as it went from a burgundy flower to a brown liquid that bubbled and fizzed before blending evenly into the mixture.  The Barnacle Tree Root shavings were quickly dissolved, and a light stir brought the orichalcum powder I had scraped from the prison bars swirling through the concoction in a red tornado.  After the mixture was holding at a steady boil with the new ingredients, I added the crushed stem of the Flying Frog Lilypad.  Once the ingredients were finally all blended properly, it was time for the hard part.

I swapped fire qi for water qi, rapidly cooling the mixture from the outside.  I had to add a thread of wind qi into the liquid to keep it swirling and cooling evenly.  It was necessary to skim the pulp and impurities off the top as the temperature dropped, and eventually I ended up with a purple tinted milk-like substance.  I put the lid on the cauldron, and started to heat it back up again.  This time, I encapsulated the whole cauldron in fire, and used my willpower boosted by a concentrated dome of earth qi to increase the pressure inside the cauldron.  As the pressure steadily built, it took more concentration to hold the lid closed and keep any steam from escaping.  I felt a single drop of sweat trickle down my temple, and doubled down on the earth qi to increase the gravity bearing down on the cauldron.  A rumbling sound started emanating from it, and the drain on my qi reserves spiked immensely.  I was afraid I would have to start tapping into the qi batteries to make sure I didn’t bottom out.

Suddenly, the rumbling stopped, and I knew the moment of truth had come.  I spun up my brain core to speed up my perception, knowing it would be necessary.  When the first explosion rocked the cauldron, I had to shift all of the earth qi in the dome to a small ring over the lid to help keep the seal.  Since the explosion had unbalanced the heat levels, I had to shift a quarter of the fire qi heating the bottom to the upper half of the cauldron.  A second explosion quickly followed, and I had to use a thread of metal qi to reinforce a weak spot on the side.  It barely stayed intact, but barely was good enough.

When the third explosion came, it sent a deep rumble through everyone in the room.  I lost control then, even with my perceptions cranked to the maximum I could manage.  My ring of earth qi holding the lid in place shifted when the cauldron jumped, and the seal was broken.  The mixture would have been a failure then, but luck was with us.  Instead of the great pressure exerted on the lid blasting outward, the concoction chose that exact moment to coalesce.  A strong suction pulled in all of the heat from the fire qi, the pressure from the steam, and the weight from the earth qi.  Another quiet rumble signaled the mixture was complete.  The cauldron went from glowing a cherry red from the heat, to completely cool to the touch.  I dropped my hold on the creation and slumped in relief.

“Is it done?”  Jamila walked over and poked at the cauldron.  “What did you make?  Will it work to heal Donny?”

“Not to worry anyone, but I don’t think this pill has ever been made before.”  I pulled off the lid of the cauldron to reveal three pale violet pills about the size of the first digit of my littlest finger.  “At least, not that I have heard of.”

“How will we know if these work or not?”  Chu was still stirring whatever was in his own pot, occasionally adding ingredients to the meal.  “If this is a new pill, how do you know it won’t hurt him?”

“I don’t know.  This is all one big experiment.”  I pulled out one of the pills and sniffed it.  The power it held was undeniable, and I had to fight not to fall into a relaxed state.  There wasn’t time to sleep at the moment.  “I’m pretty sure it's going to work, though.  Once this takes effect, the qi infection should be halted in its tracks.  That will give us enough time to figure out a cure.”

“You mean, that wasn’t the cure you were working on?”  Valerie was clearly fighting back tears.  “You wasted almost an hour, just to make a pill that wasn’t going to fix him?”  I could feel her aura pulsing in time with her heartbeat, and it most definitely wasn’t happy.  “The infection is getting close to his cores, and I don’t think he can fight it much longer!”

“Please, just trust me.  Think of this as the first step in making him better.”  I got up and placed a pill under his tongue to dissolve after prying his jaw open.  Donny was obviously in a lot of pain.  “Now, we just need to monitor him to make sure he keeps breathing.”  Valerie seemed to calm down a little, especially once his tense muscles started to relax.  “I’ll need you to get your healing medallion ready, in case the infection attacks Donny internally when I reach out to it.”  I passed over the two remaining pills.  “If you use your medallion, it will probably remove the side effects of the pill, so give him another.”

“Should you make more pills?  There’s only two left.”  Valerie already had her medallion out and ready, pressed against Donny’s forehead.  “What if we need to heal him more than twice?”

“You only have three charges on that medallion.  We need one to heal him after the infection is cured, which means we only get two chances anyway.  Neither myself nor Chu would know how to heal the damage this disease will likely leave behind.  Our only real chance is that medallion.”  She gave me a sharp nod of agreement, and I knelt next to Donny.  I paused for a moment to draw in a large portion of the qi stored in one of the batteries.  “Enough talk, it’s time to save his life.”