Revisiting The Root Cause

[Lye]

Months upon months he wandered the frozen wastes. His body robbed of purpose and imprisoned within itself with a thorny cage. In his mindless journey, the assassin stumbled across several old faces from his past. In summary, he found himself resuming the mantle of an old flag and an even older establishment. Lye's affinity with Ravens remained strong over the years and on their wings, he send out word to the old members of the Crimson Hand.

To no surprise, many perished to one means or another. Some found themselves behind bars or turned new coins for a better life. The assassin lord welcomed those that returned and with the effort of their ragtag group, they breathed life back into the Seventh Sanctum. Of all the men called out to, two replied that caused his dissappearance and new purpose.

"Madison," he called out to her over the summer and boil of burners. Her lab brimmed with life after the brunt of their work went into restoring it. In her leave, unattended experiments grew and flourished. In the restoration, several lives were claimed and a new room was carved from the mountain specifically to house what abominations they could successfully capture.

"Madison!" Lye repeated, his hand firmly rapping on the door. The clatter of metal on stone sounded through oak and the clack of patches soon folowed. As it opened, a familiar face peered through.

"What do you want?" asked an irritated Hedge. His eyes narrowed at the man before him, lids thin with distrust.

"A word with your colleague," Lye replied. "I wish to talk business - catch up."

"Who is it?" called out the familiar voice of Diggs. Hedge peered back inside.

"Him." The reply came. Muffled profanities soon followed.

"Look," muttered the assassin, face ripe with irritation. "Knocking was a formality. Doors can't hold me. Just let me speak with her, or let her refuse me herself. I want her... expertise."

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

The report lay open before me on the table, but I still couldn't believe what had told me about the... the thing that had evolved in the laboratory in the time since I hastily left the Sanctum buried deep in the icy tundra of Salvar.

"Corrosive breath, jaws that can shatter steel, poisonous flesh, venomous claws, a gaze that can somehow induce partial paralysis..." I absentmindedly rattled off the bullet points on the blood-stained page. "Am I missing anything?"

Hyperion cocked her head to the side to get a better look at the report, the light of her eyes flickering inquisitively behind her mythril facemask. "The creature can also eject its razor-sharp dorsal spines at anything it deems a threat." She tapped a small set of scribbles on the corner of a page that started off legible, but quickly tapered off to unintelligible scribbles.

"Of fucking course it can," I muttered underneath my breath. That explained the holes we found in the face of some underling whose name I hadn't bothered to learn.

"Was that part of your original design?"

"No." I shook my head as I walked over to a nearby bookshelf, where I kept a lot of leather-bound books that contained all of the experiments I dreamed of doing during my first stint with the Crimson Hand--before the coup. I picked up one book in particular, a red tome that had gold trim on the spine. It was one of the three volumes that contained a bunch of notes on possible creatures to breed together to make war beasts for our campaigns.

I started to rapidly flip through the pages, trying to find the original plans for the monster currently locked away in a brand new hole under the mountain when I heard the soft rapping of knuckles on the chamber's stone wall.

The tall, lanky form of Hedge filled the archway. "Hey, Mads. You have--" The mercenary trailed off as I turned. There was a look on his face--disgust, shock, uncertainty. He was clearly still not accustomed to how my briarheart decided to regenerate me after I was executed twice in Eiskalt. But then again, can you blame him? It's not every day you see a twisted monster of vine and bone shaped like an old friend.

I wasn't offended. In fact, I was growing more and more used to the reaction.

I gestured him to continue. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and built up the courage to speak. "Sorry for butting in. You have a guest."

"Who?"

His face soured momentarily, the scar that traveled down his right eye wrinkling as he spat out his name. "Ulroke. Says he wants catch up with you about a few things. You want me to tell him to piss off?"

I glanced at the book in my hand and the report on the table, and decided that since the beast was locked up somewhere it couldn't bother us, I had time to hear the silver-haired assassin out. "No, that's alright. Send him in."

Hyperion appeared at my side and offered me my mask. I pushed it away. Lichensith had already seen my new face, and wasn't put off by it. Besides, that thing gets stuffy at times, and it's awfully nice to be able to breathe.

[Lye]

The assassin waited, an activity he personally loathed, while Hedge relayed his arrival to Madison. After a moment, he cracked the door and opened it wide. The bright light of several luminescent stones shone from the stone ceiling and bathed several tables in a pure white light. No table bare, experiments bubbled, hissed, crackled, and oozed. As Lye entered, eyes gazed at him through the cages along the immediate wall. Manners of basic vermin, rejected ravens, and livestock looked upon him with fear and concern. Some cages remained empty, likely lost in some trial of her research.

"Madison," the assassin spoke as he approached. "It's good to see you back in the lab."

From behind, Lye could feel the judgmental and wary eyes of her most trusted companions. He glanced over his shoulder and found both watching him intensely. Neither posed a threat, but their loyalty was fierce.

"I'd like to have a word with you in private if you don't mind. It's about..." Lye brought his hand up to the center of his chest and jabbed a thumb against his sternum.

"There's also a question I'd like you to answer." The assassin reached to the pouch at his side and heard the shuffle of feet. His sharp glare stopped on Diggs and Hedge who braced their footing. Fight or flight it seemed. Lye flipped the latch, lifted the leather fold, and produced an odd, bloodied chunk of bone. Shaped somewhat like a smooth fragment of skull, several calcified tendrils dropped down. Dried blood and meat seemed jammed between the ivory.

"This," he lazily cast it atop her table with a clatter.

"It's not from me," he started, eyes narrowing on the Briarthorn. "It came from an interrogated prisoner's shoulder who didn't have it the day we incarcerated him.."

Lye looked to it and imposed his will on the foreign object. As he did, the tendrils began to slowly creep and writhe like worms.

"And it bends to my will as if it were a part of me."

He shot another glance behind him at two puzzled and concerned men.

"So, a moment of your time? Alone?"

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I regarded the curious little scrap of bone and the eldritch tendrils that grew off of it for a moment. As the former head of the science division during Lichensith's original run as the leader of the Crimson Hand, I was also by default the head medical technician, and had to know the medical and magical profiles of each member, that way we could cater to or exploit their unique needs. So, I was fully aware of the assassin's ability to manipulate his bones. But, if what he said was true and this was a literal chip off someone else's shoulder, that could mean any number of things--and almost none of them were good.

It would give me a chance to take my mind off the monsters locked in the Sanctum's closets, though.

I shot a glance at Diggs and Hedge. The look in their eyes told me that they were slightly worried about the events unfolding before them. I gave them a curt nod. "It's okay," I offered.

As the two mercenaries silently shuffled towards the door, my briarbane companion Hyperion drew closer. Her steely, glowing gaze hadn't left Ulroke since the moment he arrived. She was born long after the Eiskalt War and the coup performed by myself and Aurelianus Drak'shal, and didn't know the assassin personally. The horror learned of him and his actions through my journals, though, and had been suspicious of him and his intentions the moment the messenger ravens arrived and I agreed to return to the Sanctum. She must've thought that he would try and put a knife in my back the moment the opportunity arose.

I reached over and gave her hand a quick, calming squeeze. Her muscles were tense, wound up and ready to strike. She wanted to lash out at him, rend his flesh and spill his blood, her simmering anger colored by the venom I wrote my stories about the Master Hand with.

"It'll be okay, Hype," I whispered to her.

She turned to me, the light of her amber eyes flickering behind her mythril mask. "But--"

"He just wants to talk," I reassured her. "It'll be alright."

Hyperion hesitated for a moment, glanced down at the hunk of bone on the table, then at the man who brought it, and took her leave.

I waited until the door clicked shut before I spoke. "Sorry about that," I said with a shrug. I grabbed a nearby pair of forceps, and picked up the scrap of shoulder. Rather than indulge him with light conversation, I wanted to get down to business.

"Whatever it is you did, can you do it again?"

Lichensith closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. The protrusions on the bone slowly came to life, the stalks wiggling around and curling into themselves in the air before me.

I wasn't sure what to make of it. I flipped through my memory of the year that Aurelianus and I re-educated him, and came up empty. I didn't recall conducting any experiments on him that would have given him the ability to control the bones of others--I'm not that stupid.

Could it have been something that the tiefling did to him? He worked over every square inch of the wiry killer's frame with his fleshcrafting skills in an effort to break him. Did he accidentally alter his DNA or his ties to the magic of the world in a fashion that would grant him this gift? I made a mental note to ask him later on, once he finished setting up shop in his corner of the mountain.

"Interesting," I muttered noncommittally. Questions started popping into my head, one by one. I set the bone down onto a nearby tray and motioned for Lye to take a seat.

"Let's start from the beginning, I suppose," I said as I opened a fresh notebook and grabbed a pencil. "Tell me what you were doing and where you were when you discovered this."

[Lye]

The assassin's narrowed eyes followed the unknown party named "Hype". Glowing eyes and hidden behind the mask, the tension between the two had a bitter, coppery taste in the air. Lye hated unknown variables, and noted a personal goal to unravel what was behind the mask. Once left and locked, he diverted his attentions back to the Briarheart.

"First," he began, refusing to take a seat. "I want you to remove your leash."

The assassin's voice rolled low and serious. His face remained flat as slate, unable to reflect his inner plots.

"You're curious, as am I. My bargaining chip for a potential new experiment is that you remove your harness." He placed his hand over his chest. Each beat throbbed with the faint sting of pain. That pain only reminded him of their betrayal, but ultimately an important lesson he would soon not forget.

"If you're still afraid I might kill you, its a wasted fear. There are more people out there with stronger animosity toward you than I."

The assassin turned his back on Madison deliberately and paced to a wall laden with books, manuscripts, and bound tomes. He ran his finger along their spines, taking in the labels and titles of each with interest. His lowered guard either begged her to kill him on the spot, or subtly displayed his lack of interest in maiming her.

"What'll it be, Madison? Do you still have need for a dog?"

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I nearly choked stifling a horrible, cackling laugh that would've echoed through every hallway and chamber of the Seventh Sanctum.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," I said matter-of-factly, my mouth twisting into a polite smile. "That's not a leash; it's a preventative measure."

Crossing one briar-knit leg over the other, I leaned back into the chair and made myself comfortable. I wouldn't give this egotistical fuck a single inch or show him an ounce of fear. I've dealt with far, far worse than him since we released him from his prison, and he knew it.

"It's a vaccine for everyone here and the world around us against the highly contagious virus that is your stupidity, anger, and lack of judgment." It wasn't quite anger that crept into my voice; it was more annoyance than anything. "And considering the whispers I've heard about the girl you've brought into our midst, it sounds to me like you still need it."

I shook my head to clear my mind of the rumors that surrounded her. What I had heard concerned me greatly; but that wasn't my fight to pick today. "So, no, I will not remove the vines from around your heart. As for this?" I motioned towards the shard of bone with the calcified stalks growing out of it with the sharpened point of my pencil. "This should be of greater concern to you."

The leather of the chair creaked as I shifted my weight a bit, cutting through the deathly silence that grew between us. "It could be any number of things, really--maybe your ability to shape your bones is manifesting in different ways, maybe it's some new type of parasite, maybe the poor fuck just had some weird-ass bone cancer and you only think you can affect it.

"But the way I see it, you're in no position to be making any demands from me. You can threaten to deprive me of satiating my scientific curiosity--but the world is full of wonderful and strange questions in need of answers. You need me here more than I need to be here, Lichensith; and your shitty attitude is only going to work against you if you keep it up."

I felt like I was scolding a small child who wasn't used to not getting his way. Given my interactions with him in the past, the metaphor certainly fit.

I again jabbed the pencil at the bone as it sat harmlessly on the tray. "Now, for all we know, what's happening with this thing could be adversely affecting you. My gut instinct tells me that this could very well be involved with your innate abilities. But to be one hundred percent sure, I need you to answer my questions." I pushed the sharpened lead onto the paper once again. "Tell me in detail the circumstances surrounding this discovery of yours."

[Lye]

Her tone crawled under his skin and as her words rose in volume, his chest began to pain. His lip flared from view of the monstrosity, partially in response to her thorny countermeasure and partially due to a simmering anger. His browsing fingers stopped on the spine of a book labeled "Miscellaneous Studies IV" and he burned the words into his mind to refrain from lashing out. His mind conjured up the idea of simply carving out the damn thing and being done with it. Surely he's survived worse.

"Fine," the response came across bitter. Already, he began spinning methods of retaliation - execution.

"Shall I thank you for the consideration or would that be too drab? A year of the worst pain imaginable and complete mutilation of my body certainly hasn't shaken any expectations," Lye seethed. He turned to face the alchemical witch with emerald slivers.

"And just so we're clear, I never demanded your presence. You arrived after my invitation out some other interest or purpose - even if just to keep an eye on me. Regardless, I don't care what you do or what strange books you seek from Alerar."

His tone quaked, and he gave pause to fill his chest with a cool breath of the lab's earthy and sour air.

"For all I know, I could be killing you right now with that thing." He jabbed a finger at the writhing piece of human ivory and coagulated meat.

"I have living subjects as well," he continued. "Both of which were exposed to my abilities. Pikes of bone used to pry information out of them. I've drank of their marrow, but never seen this happen before. I would not be surprised it had something to do with your foul appendages inside me."

He gestured his hand dismissively.

"Some half bred bastard of your briarheart and my... condition."

He propped his body against her table and flared his lip at the thought.

"So what'll it be, Freebird? The ball is clearly in your court. How can I slake your curiosity today?"

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

His combative tone and belief that we were playing a heated round of verbal chess aside, there was something in what he said that triggered a thought in my brain.

"Some half-bred bastard of your briarheart and my (overly dramatic pause) condition."

When I had the vines installed in his chest, I did have to grow them from my own body. The briars needed to be spliced with cells from my heart in order to maintain a connection with me through the aether. Those same cells also powered the vines, rooting themselves in the killer's heart and drawing sustenance from the blood that coursed through his veins in order to remain alive.

What I hadn't considered at the time, mostly because I still didn't know too much about the magic that powers Brairhearts back then, was that the same energies that allowed me to do some of the things I can do could leak into Lye's body, mixing with his own latent abilities and the ties he had to the world's magic.

A chill crept down my spine. Gods-fucking-dammit, I might have done something I can't reverse.

The research I've done in the year since Ulroke and I last saw each other pointed to the Brairheart being a parasitic organism, one that attached itself to the host body and granting it heightened abilities and all sorts of other fun shit in exchange for the means to survive. In the books I've read on it, all accounts stated that it would be nearly impossible to remove once it bonded with the host. It would spread enough of itself through their body to be able to regenerate itself should it be burned, cut, or ripped out.

I didn't think about it at the time. In fact, after I freed Lichensith from his bonds and left the Seventh Sanctum, I had completely forgotten about him.

And now it's come to bite me in the ass.

Great. Just great.

I couldn't tell him any of this yet. I had to keep him focused on his current problems.

I closed my notebook, pencil resting snugly in its spine. "I'd like to see some of these live specimens, please."

[Lye]

The assassin's eyes became slits as silence drew long. Madison didn't challenge his sarcastic tones or scowl with disapproval. Something in her mind stirred and that either meant trouble or curiosity took hold. The often went hand in hand.

"As you wish, Lady Freebird," he droned on with a theatrical bow to the vine-beast.

"Follow me." He rose form his sarcastic display with a snarl of disgust. If it wouldn't kill him by proxy, one spell in his arsenal would reduce the Briarheart to a sizzling, boiling mess of organic matter. Likely one she wouldn't soon walk away from like her double incineration in Eiskalt.

Lye broke for the door, expecting the mad scientist in tow. As the oak opened to her mutual break room and resting quarters, Diggs and Hedge staggered to a corner. Lye shot them a suspicious glare to which they responded by unusual intrigue at the ceiling and floors. No doubt, the two men had their ears pressed against the door as they spoke. In the far corner, by a series of shelves comprised of bottle labeled "antidote" and various liquors, Hyperion watched quietly with glowing eyes. The unseen heat of murderous intent radiated off her enough to unsettle the assassin.

"You're new assistant seems.. nice..." Lye commented as he passed by Hyperion, her eyes tracing his movements.

As they made out into the main cavern of the Seventh Sanctum, Lye carried toward one of the several doored hallways. Dimly lit by magefire torches, they carried down the hall to a series of steps that lead down to the chambers where they held prisoners. Coincidentally, the assassin called this place home for the entirety of a year as well.

When they arrived, half a dozen wrought iron chambers lined the walls. One held a corpse where mangled meat oozed semi-coagulated blood from the shoulder. The exposed bone looked hollow and shattered fragments peppered the wound like broken glass.

"Here they are," Lye spoke as he gestured to three individuals in their cells.

Each bound by chains and hunched over, the three had patches of ivory exposed to the musty dungeon air. The magelight from the few sconces in the room provided only a dim light. The first prisoner was no older than twenty, a young girl who belonged to one of the Lesser Bards still remaining in Raiaera. Unable to convince the Lesser Bard to reveal the locations of remaining figureheads in Raiaera, Lye captured his daughter for leverage. In an attempt to pry some knowledge from her, she too became afflicted with whatever was happening. Beneath the blonde hair that draped over her face, a ridge of her brow became a calcified plate of ivory. While still technically alive, all higher motor functions and speech were nonexistent. If the tendrils from the man's shoulder were of any indication, they likely rooted deep into her skull.

The second was a burly, gruff man. He too hung his head low with wheezing, labored breaths. Previously responsible for claiming he was the leader of the Crimson Hand after their informal disbanding, Lye meant to teach him a lesson. In the end, more damage had been done than intended and a gnarled knot of bone covered the majority of his chest just above the sternum. Another similar plate of ivory showed on his shins, but the rest of the leg from ivory to foot was bent at a painful right angle, clearly broken.

The third seemed worst of all. Patches of bone littered his ribs, clavicle, shoulder blades, and down the vertebrae of his spine. Tattered linens covered his waist and legs, but the exposed legs beneath had crumpled into horrific positions. Bone protruded through the flesh, but not from fractures. Bloodless, the ivory laid smooth on the surface, textures of similar roots somewhat visible through mangled skin.

"The girl has only been here for about a week," the assassin began. "This guy," He gestured to the middle. "Has been here for two weeks and the spineless coward on the right has been here a month."

The assassin paced to the far wall and pulled the keys from an iron hook. With a deft toss, he lobbed them at Madison.

"They're all yours. I have no further need for them in this state." He gestured with a nod to the forth chamber. "The body is yours as well. Be careful in transit. Their bones seem to break easily."

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I snatched the keys out of the air and closed a briar-knit fist around them.

All three of Lichensith's prisoners looked to be in pretty rough shape. Getting them to speak about their experiences with him was certainly out of the question. If I was going to learn anything at all about what was going on here, I'd have to open them up.

The heavy scent of body odor and offal filled my nostrils as I knelt closer to the man in the middle. The assassin called this man the pretender to his throne, but his wasn't a face I recognized. He must have kept a low profile and swept in after I found better things to do than to lord over a bunch of scum and mercenaries. His shaggy brown hair was matted with sweat and oil, his face creased with pain and the scars of battles long ago. A quick glance up and down his body showed the protrusions of bone ringed by dried blood that stuck out of his chest. Whatever Lye had done to him... this was definitely something new.

Gingerly, I cupped a finger under the man's chin and lifted his head. He did not struggle as I looked into his eyes, nor did he recoil when he saw the gnarled vines of my face and razor-sharp bone teeth. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure that he knew I was there. His dark eyes, clouded over and bloodshot from the incredible pain he was suffering, could not seem to focus on any one thing in the dungeon.

"Hi," I said softly.

The prisoner snapped to attention, startled by my greeting. His eyes grew frantic as his attention focused, darting around in his head as he took in the monster before him. A thick, hoarse whimper escaped his lips as he struggled against his chain. He recoiled back, hitting the damp stone of the wall behind him as he tore himself from my grasp.

"It's okay," I told him. "I'm not here to hurt you."

He answered with some sort of guttural noise and the rattling of chains that kept his arms bound to the wall.

I leaned forward and latched onto the sides of his head. His skin was hot. He was running a fever. "I'm here to help you," I said. The flickering of amber light that came from my eyes highlighted each individual bead of grimy sweat on his forehead. "I can take you away from all this. I can end this pain for you."

The burly man calmed somewhat hearing that. The idea of freedom from his chains and his suffering appealed to whatever sense of self-preservation was left inside him.

"Is that what you would like?"

Cracked lips parted as he tried desperately to force a response through the sheer amount of pain and anguish he was suffering. "P-p-p... P-please..."

It was a cry of desperation from a broken man looking for any way out. He'd be free from everything soon enough.

He closed his eyes and hung his head low as I set the keys down on the dirty stone floor in front of him. I cupped my hands in front of his nose. The vines of my hands parted, and two oily blue fungal pods emerged. A quick blast of blue spores exploded from them, whatever didn't go up his nose or into his mouth sticking to his sweat-drenched face.

A few seconds passed before the cordyceps began to fight for control of his body, traveling through his bloodstream and into his brain. It wouldn't be long before he was dead and revived under my control.

With a quick turn of the keys, I opened the instruments that kept him bound. As he fell to the ground, gasping for breath and clawing at his face while the fungus did its work, I stood up and turned to the trio's captor. The wiry man with the silver hair looked on, his face devoid of any emotion whatsoever. "This will take a few minutes," I said, my voice flat as I tossed the keys back at him. "Let's go back to the lab and prepare for the experiments. By the time everything's set up, he will have turned completely and he'll walk up to meet us."

I glanced at the prisoner's broken ankle, which flopped around on the ground independent of the rest of his convulsing body. "Or hobble up, anyway."