Chapter Text
Cold.
It was one of those sensations that Wriothesley never really paid attention to, granted that the Fortress of Meropide was always cold. The chill that prickled his skin wasn’t new. He was used to them for years. But this cold, this unmoored iciness, unhingedly bit into his bones and shattered his senses. It drove a numbing fever into his flesh, which the powdery snow beneath his back could not relieve.
He knew he was cut somewhere — but where? What seemed like his foot turned out to be his left hand, what he thought might be his knee; Wriothesley winced in his head as his elbow cracked.
Was he about to die?
He shook those thoughts out of his head. It’s been years since he thought of such fatalistic notions. In this head, he could hear a voice echoing, but the pain all over his body took hold instead. He remembered falling when the snowy ground they were trekking on split open. He remembered the felon laughing, cackling in madness as the crevice swallowed him.
Wriothesley did not remember how long he had fallen or whether he had hit the ground intact. His vision swam, the darkness edging into his sight, blotting out patches of whiteness. The snow beneath his arms was melting from something — body heat, his blood, or his hallucination, perhaps. But he did see something — or that he heard something — a pair of icy hands, tipped with claws, clasping his jaw, tilting his face upward.
“...too late.”
“The laboratory is gone. Leave it, Vasyl.”
“The man…he’s got part of the blood...”
“Let him die. We have to leave now.”
“Our samples, Doctor. We can’t just leave these samples. The organization will deal with us.”
“We can bring him along with us. Cut off his arm, something, freeze it.”
“Just go! This place is going to collapse. Just how long do you think you’ll take to cut a man’s arm off? And with all that muscle?”
“Doctor!”
“He won’t survive the transformation. You all saw what happened to those prisoners we tested on?”
Wriothesley heard a hard, mocking scoff.
“He will soon die or turn into one of them. Got it? The bloodline. It’s too unstable. We can harvest more blood later from the lab at Yekaterink.”
There were sounds of doors shutting and the piercing whirl of an emergency siren. Wriothesley opened his eyes, redness seeping through the whites.
He pushed himself up before snow, ice, and stone roared down on him.
It was an avalanche.
------------------------------o------------------------------
“He’s awake! Head Nurse, Head Nurse!”
“He’s awake, Monsieur Neuvillette! Miss Sigewinne!”
“Monsieur Neuvillette, you’re here! Copetta, get the supplies here. Call for hot water!”
A barrage of voices sounded above Wriothesley. The yelling of words that made sense and non-sense at the same time slipped into one ear and out of the other. He wanted to move his hand, or a few fingers and somehow, thought did not translate to action and he laid there, as if a giant hand had pinned him down and left him nailed to the ground.
Or the bed, for that matter.
Every single muscle in his body sluggishly obeyed and defied him at the same time.
At least he was breathing.
Wriothesley opened his eyes and took in a huge breath. Pain was a friend. It made him aware of how dreadfully mortal he was. It also taught him to have limits, albeit, in a demanding way. Pain can be a formidable ally, but right now, it is not. His ribs cracked on that breath he took though the familiar sight of the mottled brownstone ceiling above him gave him comfort.
This was the Fortress of Meropide.
He should be feeling relief instead that he did not freeze to death in some godforsaken mountain in Snezhnaya. That was a huge fall he survived and Wriothesley could only remember patches of it. Hazy bits of memories wafted in and out of his head — cold snow, broken bones, the cackling laugh of that former agent who decided to kill everyone together with him by triggering an avalanche and him falling into a strange underground facility.
Wriothesley shook his head, trying to remember the conversations he heard while injured. ‘Samples’, bloodlines, and a few foreign names, and there was some threat about cutting his arm off.
It didn’t make too much sense.
Wriothesley drummed his fingers against the bed as voices above him yelled and shouted, and someone’s shadow loomed over him.
A gentle hand touched his left arm, “Wriothesley?”
The Duke could feel the tension radiating from those fingers, and even as they pressed onto his arm lightly, the anxiety was palpable. His eyes wandered up, finally adjusting to the dimness of his bedroom.
Neuvillette was bent over him, his jaw clenched tight, though there was a small smile on his lips. His face looked gaunt, the bags below his eyes more pronounced than usual, and his hair slightly more frazzled, as if he had been sleeping earlier and gotten up in a hurry.
The Iudex's expression slowly softened as he reached over, passing a hand across Wriothesley’s forehead, pushing locks of hair away from Wriothesley’s face. He seemed to be checking something carefully and that was when Wriothesley realized his entire head was bandaged and bits of his hair shaved off.
“Does this still hurt?”
Neuvillette’s hand hovered over Wriothesley’s left arm.
Neuvillette proceeded to explain the injuries, starting with his left arm. It was entirely broken in two parts — very clean breaks, though much of his skin and flesh were flayed by broken rocks. The low temperature nearly set him into hypothermia if not for the strength of his body being able to withstand it and that the Cryo Vision he wore had somewhat prevented him from dying on the spot. Otherwise, the rest of his body was miraculously spared, except for his back, entirely torn by the glass and metal he fell on.
Wriothesley quietly listened to Neuvillette’s lengthy explanations, taking stock of each injury the Iudex mentioned.
Sigewinne came in with a cup of boiled mugweed broth — milky green in color and totally disgusting in texture. Wriothesley was going to refuse on the spot when the smell made him absolutely queasy. However, by the sheer virtue of Neuvillette’s pleading look, Wriothesley opened his mouth obediently and ate down the gruesomely green broth concoction.
“An experimental facility?”
Wriothesley asked after chasing away the slimy film in his mouth with a cup of hot water. Neuvillette removed the cup and straw and set it on the table before using a small napkin to wipe Wriothesley’s mouth.
Neuvillette nodded, “The Snezhnaya Diplomatic Branch was unaware that there was an extensive experiment facility below the mountain range that you and the convoy were traveling across.”
“Heh, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
He was about to scoff at something else and rub his forehead in thought before he was aware his arms were both injured. His left was in a tight splint, while his right was bandaged tightly.
Wriothesley wiggled his fingers instead.
“Anyway, what happened to the rest of the convoy? The guards and the ambassador?”
“The ambassador managed to save herself. Her Vision activated and kept her alive, airborne at least for a while before she gave up from the cold. We found her barricaded in a cave further down. The guards, they…” Neuvillette fell silent, his brow furrowed and his expression solemn, “They all fell into the underground facility along with you…”
“Did they survive?” Wriothesley asked. The guards were hires. He checked every single one of them, their backgrounds, families, and anyone who wanted to make quick money. The risks ran high, and every single one signed an indemnity, knowing for sure that failure often meant death.
Neuvillette seemed to fall into a musing of his own. Centuries back, he would have reported in detail with no hesitation. After all, the truth was the truth, and no one should be barred from it.
But now, it is different.
“Neuvillette?”
“Ah, my apologies, I was caught in thought,” Neuvillette muttered, and he stood, moving to sit by the side of the bed, “We — I do not know whether they have survived. The search party gave a report. They found no bodies. No belongings, not even a shoe.”
Neuvillette’s tone was edged with disturbance, “You were unconscious above a heap of glass and metal. You fell on one of their machines. An incubator of some sorts.”
Wriothesley licked his lips. His stomach suddenly churned, contents within revolting even as a memory rush overcame him. His back muscles spasmed in recollection of something foreign, cold and slippery seeping into his body, along with a quick flash of garbled conversations above his failing senses about cutting him up.
“Wriothesley?”
He looked up. Neuvillette’s hand cupped Wriothesley’s cheek. The press of Neuvillette’s palm against his face felt good.
“I’m glad you’re alive.”
Wriothesley smiled wanly and winced, noticing for the first time there were ulcers inside his mouth. Maybe he shouldn’t have chased the sticky greasiness away.
He turned his head, kissing the inside of Neuvillette’s palm. The Iudex’s skin was cold to the touch.
“Somehow, I managed,” Wriothesley laughed almost disbelievingly, “You did try to persuade me not to go.”
“Your sense of responsibility was too strong,” Neuvillette murmured pointedly, stroking Wriothesley’s cheek, “You must take a long absence from work after this.”
“And who would take care of the mess that happens every other day in the Fortress?” Came the immediate reply.
Neuvillette shook his head in response, “There should be someone to take care of things.”
Wriothesley leaned his head back, cranking his neck slightly before turning to look at Neuvillette, “The Fortress could be under the care of the Court for a few months then. Not that I could protest since the Iudex is worrying himself to bits right here by my bedside.”
“It would be an understatement to say I am just worrying, Wriothesley.”
“I know, I know, I could have died back there.”
Wriothesley rolled on his shoulder, inching closer to Neuvillette’s back, his face nuzzling into the pressed lengths of Neuvillette’s judge robes, “Don’t worry anymore.”
He laid like that for a while until his shoulder tendons protested sorely, and he gave Neuvillette’s waist a kiss before laying back again.
“I will attempt,” Neuvillette stroked Wriothesley’s face again, moving the chopped bangs away from the Duke’s forehead.
“Do I look shorn? Like one of those sad sheep we saw last year in the countryside?”
It was a weak attempt to lighten the mood. Neuvillette looked blank for a moment.
“The hair will grow back,” Neuvillette said, leaning down to kiss the Duke’s forehead before he stood up, “I’ll have Sigewinne come in with dinner. You should eat something.”
Dinner was a plate of boiled blue-tinged porridge with boiled carp cheeks, which Sigewinne insisted was boiled with the bulbs and stems of Romaritime flowers to help Wriothesley’s wounds heal faster and his broken bones, or whatever broken bits there were set quickly. He was used to bitterness but certainly not the astringent bite each spoonful gave him. She praised him each time he swallowed a spoonful and threatened to tell Monsieur Neuvillette if he refused the next.
Ultimately, Wriothesley pleaded with the Head Nurse for a cup of sweet tea and was told no. Instead, Wriothesley drank a cup of hot water (Sigewinne instructed firmly that the Duke must not be given tea for the next month. ‘His body will need to retain water, not get rid of it, ' she insisted firmly.)
After a month, the Duke was capable of walking, but during that same month, he experienced several strange flashes of sweating heat at night. Wriothesley would often wake up, drenched to the skin, his sleeping garments stuck to his body, and in the dead of night, reach out to grab his Vision, willing the coldness to come and reduce the peculiar burning sensations in his spine and lower legs. But the relief was only temporary, and he sat upright, heart pounding in his ears, a sudden sinking feeling in his gut, and his fingers clutched tight around his pulsing Vision.
Eventually, he slept at the early break of dawn, snatching fitful moments before Sigewinne appeared with his breakfast.
The Head Nurse was quite concerned with his health, and as she set down the tray, she eyed his sodden shirt, glassy eyes, and pale lips. Sigewinne pressed a hand on the Duke’s forehead. His skin was oddly cool to touch, and his eyes were bloodshot.
Sigewinne folded her arms, a small frown wedged between her brows.
“Monsieur Neuvillette is busy tonight again,” she announced as she went to the clothing cabinets, found a towel and a set of new clothes, and placed them on the Duke’s bed. “Are you having a fever? Or feeling pain somewhere? Maybe I should change your prescription as well and increase the dosage.”
Sigewinne emphasized heavily on the last sentence she said.
“There’s no need to worry him. Isn’t it the season for tax audits?” Wriothesley muttered, unbuttoning his shirt, “Even if he’s no longer dealing with the financial offices, you know how he is. Neuvillette can’t stop himself from being concerned about their processes.”
Wriothesley’s fingers trembled slightly over the last button. He blinked his eyes quickly, trying to refocus his senses. A freezing shower would do him good. He was burning up inside.
The shower facility built in his quarters was a legacy from a few decades ago. When Wriothesley decided to convert this part of the residence level to his office and living space, he took liberty as well to test various pneumousia-driven contraptions, some which he had a couple of engineers work on over the years, and improve them for mass production. The hot and cold shower system was one such invention that brought a semblance of physical comfort for the guards working in the Fortress though right now, Wriothesley had no need of that hot water.
He pulled the handle, hearing the rush of water up the pipes before it splashed onto his head and shoulders in icy bouts. Wriothesley scrubbed at his hair and his neck, trying to massage the tightness away. Somehow, his entire body felt tense, and there were knots in his lower legs. He thought it might be because he had not exercised for a while, having spent more than a month in recovery.
Wriothesley examined his body as he washed the soap suds off. Apart from the ache in his bones where he had fractured them, the broken parts had healed rather well, and he was sure that in another month or two, he could go back to the Pankration to throw a few rounds. Nothing bothered him as much as being unable to exert and use all that energy building in his body, especially when Neuvillette had decided to take on the paperwork for the Fortress in this month since Wriothesley was recuperating.
Though the Duke had insisted that his brain was certainly not fractured and could function, a mere few numbers wouldn’t hurt. However, the Iudex insisted on complete bed rest. Neuvillette’s stubbornness was extraordinary, and Wriothesley had not experienced the full extent of it till now.
As long as he didn’t overwork himself, though he’d had a few officers bring him some books to take a look at, Neuvillette had, in all perfection, balanced the statements and wrote reports on everything from meal deliveries to a proposed deep-cleaning of several residential sections for the inmates.
“All I wish for you now is to make sure you return in good health, Wriothesley.”
Neuvillette had said seriously and with all earnestness he could muster two evenings ago when he visited. They exchanged a few work reports and before the evening ended, Neuvillette was on Wriothesley’s bed and kissing him like a greedy, thirsty thing. Not that they could do anything more after that, but it was enough resolve for Wriothesley to speed up his recovery.
Including downing all those nasty milkshakes. Wriothesley sighed, brushing away his thoughts as now he sucked in a breath and bent his back, reaching to touch down his calves and to his toes. His muscles flexed with the stretch, and he heard a crack in his lower spine.
Likely a result of lying down too much, he thought regretfully to himself, and being extremely lazy.
But at least Wriothesley knew he was getting better.
He barely had any memory of the moment when he fell down the crevice, and the extent of his wounds was only described to him by Neuvillette after much adamant insistence. Neuvillette resisted because he said, ‘there was no need to revisit the horror’ but finally relented and told the Duke a standing strip of steel pierced his ankle and, luckily, missed the artery and his calf bone.
He rubbed idly at one of his ankles, checking the bones before running his fingers around his other ankle and pausing. Perhaps it was imagination, perhaps not, but there was a strange sensation sliding over his skin, as if he was touching a fish's soft belly or that of a snake's underside.
Discomfited, Wriothesley squatted down and peered at his ankle for a closer look. All he saw was rough skin and the pale round mark of a deep scar where he’d had rammed against a broken metal nail in the Pankration Ring some years back.
It must be his imagination. All that laying in bed must have made his brain turn into mush.
The shower left him feeling refreshed and relieved, at least, and he stepped out, water dripping off his hair, his hand running through the regrowing parts where it was all rough and stubbly. The capable doctor employed by the Fortress had shaved off all the hair in a bid to sew up the wounds on the Duke’s scalp. Sigewinne had left him the evening meal, a milkshake, and medication, as well a handwritten note of instruction from Neuvillette that there must be no work done tonight and especially no visit to the Pankration Ring.
Wriothesley chuckled to himself as he sat on the bed, mopping his wet neck and hair with another towel. If he even stepped into the Ring a mere inch, a melusine would mysteriously chance upon him and immediately send a message to Sigewinne or Neuvillette. The heightened concern bothered him slightly. He was alive and alright; the worst was over. Surely, both of them could allow him at least to lift some weights in the gym or go for a run around the production level ring.
He started on his meal. Sigewinne had finally graduated him from that sticky, gruel-like substance and had something more substantial prepared. Tonight’s meal was a stew of meat and potatoes, bread for mopping for the leftover sauce and a bowl of cut fruit. Somehow, the stringy bits of meat in his mouth felt less tasty than usual, though he’d reckoned Wolsey used a massive helping of spice with the sauce, seeing how dark red the stew was. Or could it be his tastebuds dulled from being too long in the snow?
Wriothesley chewed on a chunk of meat for a while, his hand rubbing his cheek. Was it him, or did his teeth seem sharper than usual? Wolsey’s meat stews generally used the tougher, cheaper cuts with ample gristle, and they often took a bit of grinding before they could be swallowed. But somehow, his teeth were shredding up the chunk in his mouth easily. He made a mental note to check later in the mirror if there was anything odd or maybe just ask if Wolsey swapped the brisket for a fillet cut tonight.
After finishing his meal, his mouth felt unusually dry, and the fruit and water did not help ease the dryness. The sensation crawled down his throat and tugged at his chest, along with a peculiar unease in his limbs — a need to move and do something, anything and not just rest in his bed again.
Maybe he will just take a few jogs around the production ring to work out the jitters in his legs.
The run did him good, even though the guards at that level were surprised to see the Duke out and about, sprinting past them in his exercise gear as if nothing had happened a month ago that he was brought back to the Fortress nearly dead. Three rounds around the production ring later, he was back in his quarters, clothes soaked with sweat, and feeling much better. His limbs were all loosened, and he’d got a bit of exercise. He could use another shower, sleep early, and see Neuvillette at the Opera Epiclese tomorrow. At least, Wriothesley bet he would sleep better tonight.
So wrong he was.
He jolted awake in the middle of the night, a heavy muskiness coating his tongue, and his throat felt tight and dry. His entire back was wet with cold sweat, and his limbs burned with a heat far worse than what he’d endured for the past month. His stomach churned with acid, and he gagged, spitting up a pale yellow fluid in his hand.
Wriothesley staggered up, trying to make his way to the shower. He could have considered calling for someone or anyone, but those thoughts were not in his head. His brain was just echoing the pain points throughout his body—his legs, his chest, his lower spine, and his groin. It was the feeling of something attempting to take over, but he was not sure what.
He finally managed to stumble into the shower and slammed his hand on the handle, turning the water on full blast. Gasping, Wriothesley pulled off his wet clothes, trying to get them off his skin, before his fingers scrapped across a glittering line of scales down his lower abdomen, down his oblique muscles — his hand brushing between his legs.
Wriothesley startled. He froze for some time before lowering his gaze, his eyes widening in incredulity as he stared between the torn flaps of his sleeping shorts at the reddened skin of two cocks, the slits fiercely leaking.
Two?
He blinked his eyes. Did water get into them? Magnified his privates and doubled his vision for some reason?
Wriothesley was unsure what else to think to avoid making the whole discovery so intimately awkward. He cautiously moved his left hand simultaneously, as if these parts did not belong to him, and wrapped his fingers around the upper one.
He stroked, pinched, and touched himself around the base and root, more amazed now than shocked that the muscles reacted to his touch and the entire length stiffening in his grip. They seemed to respond similarly to his touch, and he felt no other strange sensations apart from the oversensitivity and a new heaviness.
A nagging thought rose at the back of his mind as to why Neuvillette or Sigewinne did not notice these changes. Or that they knew and feared to tell him, or perhaps the two were trying to find a solution to medicate him through it without him ever finding out. If that was so, it was unfortunate their plans did not pull through.
Yet anyway, it would be a question he’d ask Neuvillette later if he remembered.
At any rate, there was nothing else Wriothesley could do since the changes had already started. Still, a vested curiosity soon overtook his initial shock. In small, careful motions, he mapped his hands over parts of his body, his mind recovering from the surprise to take stock of what was exactly happening and what he should do next.
His human form seemed to be retained. All the other changes appeared to be superficial, physical even, though he also became quite aware that the heat broiling in his limbs was gone, replaced by a coldness in his flesh that he could not fathom where it was emerging from.
He carefully examined the scales on his body again. Snowy-white with a pale bluish tinge, they were smallish and semi-translucent. As he moved his leg and flexed the muscles, he could see his scarred skin beneath the thinness of those scales. The scales ringed his ankles and appeared as patterned lines stripping his inner thighs to circle up to his obliques. Curiously, he slipped a fingernail underneath the lip of a single scale. It lifted without pain, but he couldn’t pull it out, and it tugged at his skin as if it was skin itself or a patch of hair.
His hands were next. Wriothesley noted his fingers had become noticeably thicker, the knuckles more pronounced, and his nails had elongated with a slight sharpness. He thought of vishap claws and quickly went to touch his forehead for any other signs of strange appendages growing from his body while he had been asleep. A quick swipe of his lower spine confirmed that only a smattering of scales was present, not that a tail had emerged from nowhere.
The broken conversation he remembered at the bottom of the crevice returned hauntingly into Wriothesley's mind. By now, he was pretty sure what exactly was happening to his body.
Wriothesley leaned back against the wet tiles of the bathroom wall and contemplated. Whatever those samples were, those genes—not human—were in him and had miraculously fused with his body. Judging from the scales appearing on his body, the changes to his genitals, and the peculiar lengthening of some of his body parts, it was not difficult to deduce that whatever the laboratory facility was dealing with was connected to likely some form of a giant lizard, or maybe amphibian.
He ran even more checks carefully through his mind. No wonder he did not feel too short of breath earlier, taking those six laps around the production ring. But in this situation, it was likely only Neuvillette could provide answers for him or figure out what was happening, whether it could be reversed, or whether it would only be these physical changes and nothing more.
Wriothesley glanced down between his legs again. This would need a pair of looser, more oversized pants to cover it. But now, he has to clean himself, quickly dress and find Neuvillette.