Chapter 54: Chapter 2
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***
Vengerberg. Eight hours later.
Jennyfair looked at the conflagration and couldn't believe her eyes.
Instead of her cosy and beautiful home, where she had lived for years with her beloved and beloved son, she saw a fire that was being put out by the guards and townspeople.
She tried to create a spell to put it out with tears in her eyes and shaking hands. But her fingers were like oak and did not obey her mistress. Her friends and her old mentor, Tissaya de Vrieux, Marguerite Lo-Antil and Keira Metz, came to the rescue. They extinguished the flames in seconds, and Jennyfair ran towards the ruins in search of her son.
No one could stop her. Neither her friends nor the guards, who, seeing the expression on the magician's face, did not seek to get in her way. Everyone tried to get out of the way, but not everyone succeeded, she threw away such losers with magic.
Yen burst inside the still hot ruins, steam billowing from them, burning her skin. But she didn't care, the thought of her son kept her mind off the pain and heat.
She ran from room to room, trying to find her favourite child among the charred corpses.
Each corpse made her feel sick and hard to breathe, but still, she had hope that he had survived, that he had run away from home before the tragedy or something else. But she soon realised that, neither her son nor his corpse was here.
Marguerite stepped out of the teleporter on the first floor, picked her up under her elbow, and led her back outside.
- Kha-kha! Are you out of your mind, Yennyfeather? Do you want to burn yourself? What are you doing? You should have used magic to check where Dami's boy is before you kill yourself. Ahem. - Marguerite stepped back and began to cough into her handkerchief.
The Vengerbergian sorceress collapsed to her knees and cried, covering her face with her palms. From which Keira came up to her, embracing her, and began to comfort her.
At the same moment Tissaya de Vrieux, at one time the mentor of all three sorceresses, began to scan her house.
- Your son is not there. Only the corpses of your servants and intruders.
- What happened here while we were gone? - Lo-Antil asked the now ex-Rector Arethusa. - We were gone no more than a few hours.
- Either a robbery or an assassination attempt. - replied de Vries. - I don't know yet. We need to interview witnesses.
- We have to find Damien! - Yannifere shouted. - My boy.
The spell Metz had cast on her put her to sleep. She was taken into her arms by a healer, an old man who looked to be as old as Yennifer was in reality.
- Take care of her. I'll take my supply of Damian's blood and use my spells to try and find him. Keep an eye on that hysterical girl, she's out of her mind and not thinking with her head right now.
Soon the two younger sorceresses and their assistants led Jennyfair away, and the former Rector of Arethusa departed to find Damian of Wengerberg.
Damian Blackheart of Wengerberg.
The pain that pierced the left side of my body didn't go anywhere even when I was probably unconscious. It wasn't even caused by the fact that I'd been injured or my skin had been burnt. I was used to that from my previous life, even though my body was new and the pain was more vivid, but I could tolerate it.
The whole problem wasn't the wounds I had received on the right side of my body. It was what those two freaks were doing to the left side.
I had clearly spent a few days here, judging by the feel of it. I could be wrong, though.
They experimented on me and cut me up like the last corpse in the morgue. One of "Dr Mengele" was just the main wizard who caught me, and the second was a nasty old man, who looked like he was probably two hundred at least, and this is clearly with elixirs and charms that no longer help him to hide his age. After a bit of thinking and listening to their conversation, I realised that the old man was not two hundred, but five hundred years old. And the name of this hunched, long-bearded, grey-haired old man is Ortolan.
He's a very famous sorcerer. I've heard a lot about him from Mum and de Vries.
He believed that magic should become public property, and serve to improve the general welfare, comfort, and happiness of all. The dreamy fool wants everyone in this world to have unlimited free access to magical medicines and elixirs, magic amulets, talismans and artefacts. He punctured the idea of accessibility of telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, telecommunication... to citizens.
And he had inventions not only in terms of magic, but also in mechanics, chemistry, alchemy and medicine. Tyssaya spoke of certain weapons that didn't require sorcery to work and were described as similar to primitive cannons
And if it weren't for my current position, I would have tried to sway him to my side in the future and use him to introduce novelties into my army and for my needs. But now it looks like I'll have to kill him.
After all, I will not forgive such a thing to myself!
First his accomplice set me on fire a little, then plucked me from behind the edge, put me in a tolerable condition, set fire to the house and brought me to this place. And this is where they decided to make me a lab mouse.
What exactly they tried to do to me, I don't know. But I saw how they took off my skin and performed some manipulations on my muscles, injected solutions and different chemicals into my blood. There was no skin on my arm, left chest and leg. I also had no skin on my face, again on the left side. I was also bald.
But other than that, as I was yelling, cursing and swearing at both of them, my tongue was cut off. And as a result. I could only moo.
I've never been in a situation like this before. Captured, imprisoned before execution, tortured, yes, even died. But not in such a desperate situation.
It wasn't long before I became desensitised to all the nonsense that was being done to me.
I certainly felt something foreign entering my flesh. But there was no pain or discomfort.
Day by day my thoughts, thanks to short effective meditations, became clearer and clearer, and I was able to listen and remember more. The nasty faggoty old man talked to himself or occasionally said something about my body and the changes he was trying to bring about. Only for unknown reasons for him the process of "partial mutation" was much slower than for the other test subjects.
And that's when I started to worry. I didn't want to become a mutant or lose the ability to have children. I need this ability not because of the banal instinct to reproduce, but for political purposes. What can I say, but to marry Ciri and get Cintra, Skellige and Nilfgard as consort and co-emperor as a gift for it is powerful. But that wasn't the only thing my claims and dreams were limited to.
So I frantically tried to think of a way out. After all, according to the chatter between these two... not good people, I had been stuck here for a long time. More than a week. I didn't know the exact date, though.
A couple of days later, after I'd started working out and trying to free myself from the restraints that bound me, the experiments with the left side of my body were finished and my skin was sewn back on. I must have looked like Frankenstein then, if not worse, but appearance was the last thing I cared about, because magic could fix anything in this world.
Now I was getting hurt again. And Ortolan, because his handmaiden had gone, judging by his grumbling, to Zerrikania in search of "inspiration," was digging into my insides with great pleasure and diligence. At the same time he started to lecture me about what to do in case of severe bleeding, what tools to use for human treatment and appendicitis removal, peculiarities of human blood and the history of how such mutants as witches appeared.
And the bitch is interesting and lucid. If I wasn't a dissecting frog, I'd clap for him. But no.
Another week or so passed, and I couldn't stand it.
It was impossible to get out by brute force. Tear the leather straps with which I was chained to the sheet metal table. Knocking out my thumbs and sticking my hand out of them did not work.
Three times I knocked my tooth out with the head clamps that were next to my cheeks. The three teeth I knocked out, I managed to spit two of them into my hand and catch them (the third, alas, I did not) and crush them so that I could try to make them into "lock picks" or a stabbing implement to cut through leather straps. But I was only spoiling my teeth for nothing. The belts were stronger.
After the last attempt, I went into a mild apathy. Why a slight apathy?
Because the old Damian Blackheart was awakening in me. Anger, rage, contempt for my own weakness, a desire for revenge, a desire to wash myself in this old man's blood, was bubbling up in me more and more with every passing second.
I was even ready to give my life for a good revenge on Ortolan.
Both old brains and cunning did their job.
For I wore a collar of dvimmerite around my neck. The kind of metal that restrains the powers of any mage here, I couldn't rely on magic. So wit and cunning, and a little luck.
I read books not only as an adult, but also as a child. Personally, my grandfather made me read the classics. "The Count of Montecristo." I remember the moment when the protagonist escaped from prison by pretending to be a dead old man. Or rather replaced himself with one in a body bag.
There's no body bag. But I do have Oxygen Hibernation. It's probably an analogue of the yoga from India I learned in the I-Tian Empire.
Six heart beats per minute, lowering of body temperature, pale skin, but at the same time the one who uses this technique hears everything perfectly well and thinks clearly, because it was created originally for "observing and enjoying nature". I love the narrow-minded people. In both worlds! Except it takes about ten seconds to come out of it.
I haven't used it in this world yet, and there's even a possibility that I won't "wake up" at all, but there's no other way out.
So after another manipulation of my body "in the name of science", Ortolan went to rest for a while. I had already learnt his schedule and habits and so I began to carefully enter this 'hibernation'.
I was able to enter it and began to wait.
I could hear every rustle and sound. Nothing was hidden from my ears, it was a bit jarring even when not used to this world, but I soon got used to it. I had to concentrate.
Patience and equanimity had never failed me before.
The time dragged on quite long and tedious. Of course, I could be in this state for a few days, and then I would have to be brought out of it immediately, and there would be consequences. But I don't have a few days. Because although I was fed through a tube with some solution and given plenty of water, but my body was exhausted. Therefore, the time for this technique now should have been reduced to a minimum, and anyway, after this will be followed by unpleasant consequences for the body. But the time to escape should be enough for me.
But my agonising musings ended when the old geezer rustled his slow and painful gait into the laboratory.
My eyes were covered.
He mumbled something to himself at first, excited and happy that he had "learnt about something". But then he came over to me and realised that I wasn't all right. He touched my forehead, my arms, my chest, they were cold. Then my pulse, and then he even checked it with magic.
- No, no, no, no!" he wailed. - My boy! How could you leave me! We still had so much ahead of us, you were the best test subject... how could it be? No! - he cried like a grandfather over the body of his murdered grandson. - My boy, who did you leave me for? I would have made you the perfect creature. A better mutant... Noooo.
The old goat cried for a while, and then walked over to me and began to free me from my restraints. Even got rid of the dwimerite collar. Using levitation magic, he put me on another table and started rummaging through the drawer where his tools were.
- It's okay my boy...I forgive you. I...I will do to your body, something beautiful. You'll be perfect. You'll be part of something bigger.
The old man was clearly insane. But I was out of hibernation by then, and I felt I could use magic despite the pain and exhaustion. And for one particular action I would be enough.
He came up to me with a wet rag and began to gently wipe the blood on my chest, while stroking my belly nastily and affectionately.
- Such a handsome boy. You and I would have been friends... kha-kkhraa-a-a-a-a. - He was choking on blood.
I levitated the scalpel right down his throat into his artery. And opening my eyes, squinting slightly at the blood that was gushing at me, I watched as the one who was torturing me, slowly with a look of universal sorrow and sadness, and probably also resentment for something, died and tried to touch me.
This picture pleased me very much. The last time I was so pleased was when Volantis was captured with my eldest son, Lieven Blackheart. Then hundreds of Nobles of that city died at our hands, refusing to join the Empire we were building. It was probably one of the most famous assaults and battles in the history of Essos. Though, the bloodiest for sure...
I gave myself only a moment to savour the beautiful sight of a once great and clear-thinking old man so foolishly dead at the hands of what was essentially a boy in whose body I was hiding. But one cannot hide one's hearing. And it would sooner or later become public.
On shaky legs I walked further to the end of the laboratory, where there was a megascope for Ortolan's communications.
Going behind a screen, I took a small sheet and wrote only the address where I was being held and the name of the man I'd killed. And only then contacted the only place I could definitely contact.
At the window, which showed a middle-aged man with wrinkles and universal sorrow in his eyes, light grey hair and bags under his eyes, I easily recognised Eastredd. Behind him were Mum and Keira, arguing about something.
- Damian?! - Istredd shouted in shock, and both of the sorceresses turned to me and ran over to the megascope.
- Oh, darling! My son! Where are you? Are you okay?
I showed them the note.
- Ortolan!!! - roared Jennyfair. In her eyes, besides tears, there was an anger and rage that frightened even me. - Tell me, how are you!
I didn't want to scare you mum, but I have to show you.
With a trembling hand I touched my lips, my fingers were bleeding, but it didn't matter now, I forcefully opened my mouth and showed the absence of my tongue.
Then the glow of my mother's star and her eyes increased a hundredfold and her face stopped expressing emotion.
I vomited right into the megascope, and then I shamefully fainted, right into the same puddle of bile that came out of me.
And I passed out.
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