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Unfortunately for Mars, she got to do just that. Which meant he could only find answers in this absolute horror show. As the vilin made rounds of his b, Mars could only gawk at the se. The boratory was bigger than some ventioers, with different experiments seed off. The resources devoted to Akakios' work was truly a marvel. Oh, stists were seldom given access to so many tools, b assistants, a subjects. A grant that could cover this would have made his old "Intro to Biology for Non-Majors" professor a joyous heart attack. She could join Mars in the grave at the peak of her life.
But this great feat of sce was at the cost of any sembnorals ahics. All of this was funded by the vilin with his fast fortune of blood money. Which, to be fair to Lyharke, was not uo this try or world.
Take Elon Musk and his father's South Afri emerald mines for example. Earthen tech billionaires werely virtuous. And while the tests in this ir were more akin to torture than board-approved experiments, it would not surprise Mars if that rotten-peach faepo-baby would match Akakios in cruelty given a smidge less ht.
Actually, Musk might be worse. At least Lyharke's notorious vilin seemed to grasp basic stificepts, like the stific method and how to read data. Akakios even listened carefully to his underlings and their b assistants, which Musk was too busy succumbing to his owo try. The demon discussed their current experiments, and made suggestions for the stages rather than demands.
It was only in the tents of those discussions that his viliny showed. He had apparently been studying soul transference for a while, but unwilling souls made wreckage of their new bodies. Mars rivileged to bear wito that fact.
One experimehe test subjects seizing in their straps, foaming at the mouth, until their bodies succumbed to whatever the test had inflicted. "What was that?"
Akakios didn't have to answer him, as the researcher in that se, who hadn't even introduced himself, already started to expin, "Reje was faster this time. This is only the sixth trial, but I'm notig that bodies with simir features and/or dispositions are slower to reject. Which, of course, runs trary to the animal transfererial's success iion B6."
Mars was not a stist, but they were talking bullshit magic sce. prehending dense fantasy worldbuilding at even his lowest, when dopamine aonin refused to even allow him the strength to leave his bed, was one of his specialties. So it didn't take him long to start pieg together what these experiments were about.
"I've studied B6's trial closely. They're currently writing up their report, but there is a clear trend ia. In jun with B7, who has been measuring the soul power of different creatures a subjects, we have noticed that weaker souls are easier to dispce but harder to maintain in an alternate form, and the reverse is true when you adjust the data for 'willingness.' That might apply here as well. Humans and demons have the rgest range of spiritual power out of all the creatures we have tested. I suspect that a willing human with more power is more likely to survive transferehan a willing human with less, so we might want to adjust this experiment and start testing that."
That was ohing Mars couldn't his head around. They couldn't find a single soul willing to switch bodies? Even ba Earth, it would have been his dream.
"If only the prisoners were willing." The stist nudged one of the bodies, forever limp in those bindings. His name was Dr. Hasting Graves, which Mars was o learn but would have found a little on-the-nose.
"Hmm, yes that has always been the issue."
The stist started fumbling through his data tables. He sed the initial questionhey used to track that variable. None of the subjects wao gh the procedure, but the two who reported areme disdain for the cept were currently strapped to the test tables, still as the grave. They were two priests, zealots the vilin had captured in their attempt to raid his ir. They were all too willing to die during a poorly thought out and terribly executed mission. And ohey were prisoners, they were begging for their deathbed. That was the quickest trial failure out of the previous six. He flipped to the questionnaire of their only test subject still breathing. She had written iher questions and ents" se, "After the experiment, will I be released? I just want to see my family."
There attern.
I will take a moment to tell you a tale of one Dr. Hasting Graves, just three weeks prior. While the lesser demon was an underling to a cruel demon lord, he was not heartless. And the subject who ter made a full recovery roduct of unluck. She made a minression against his master, stumbling into the small se of his territory that leaked into the mortal world. A few months ago, mortals like her wouldn't be worth the demonic patrol's time. They would have let her go. Now, with such a high demand for test subjects, even the smallest sleight would lead to one's capture. But what if she survived the test?
So he had taken this young maiden to the side, where the other prisoners couldn't hear, and held up her questionnaire. He was going to py the valiant hero. Well, he was going to py "good demonic stist," which was his best approximatioe his efforts, and his very clear attempt at veying the message, the girl didn't uand. She had been taken to a side room in the dungeons by a pale man with too-sharp teeth and too-bck eyes. Naturally, she was too scared to speak.
He spoke first instead, "I will help you get home."
That jolted away her thickest yers of dread, and her eyes widened. "You will?"
"Not before our tests. We are experimenting with soul transference. Do you know what that means?"
She poio the questionnaire. "Is that what that sheet was asking about?"
He shook his head "yes," and expined, "We are going to transfer your soul to another body."
"You 't do that."
"We will do that. I'm just uain if you will survive. There's a low success rate."
She was horrified again. Which was not how she should have respoo her valiant hero. Then again, he was never made for such a part.
He tinued, "I don't want you to die. I'm just stating facts. Most of our test subjects die. But our experiments are our attempt to elimihat nasty side effect."
"Has anyone survived?"
"Yes, actually. There was just ohing they had in on."
Her emotions were pying a boung ball in her flesh, but she maintained herself through sheer effort. "What is it? Do I have it? I want to live. I o see my family again. My brother's birthday-" she momentarily choked as she fought tears back "-I have to go home."
"You might be in luck then. What you need is will."
She sched the delicate eyebrows she was bound to lose in a few short days. If she could only hold on, she would look pletely different. But she would be alive, and that was the important thing. "Just... will?"
"You o be willing to transfer bodies. In lieu of desire, just fighting to stay alive might be enough. I want to see if..."
"...if?"
Dr. Graves chuckled to himself. "I'm a nasty stist, fug with my own variables like this. But I think keeping as many subjects alive is more important than eliminating all the other discrepahis time around. Don't you agree?"
She didn't fully uand, but she agreed anyway. She valued her life after all. She would fight for it, to the end.
And that, dear reader, is what she did. But the minion would never admit to fug with his experiment, directly coaxing that will into his text subjeot to Akakios, of all people. The demon liked hearing new suggestions, but hated going behind his back. If the stist had only ged his experiment explicitly, his hands wouldn't be so cmmy now. But inspiration had struaybe a sick bout of empathy. Either way, he hadn't the forethought to write his alterations down, and bringing that up would not serve him well now.
So he didn't expin. He just got straight to the point. "I write up a report based on these past six tests and then put my efforts into coaxing the prisoners. I gehink I could increase that 'willingness,' variable. I have a few ideas that might work."
"Let's hear it." Akakios raised an eyebrow.
"They're scared, in pain, and don't want a new body, right? A2 and A3 have already tested pain and fear redu. Their medies, sedatives, and pain inhibitors have greatly improved the success of a rge portion of our tests. But we need people to want to leave their body. That's not on."
Mars would have snorted. "I'm right here!"
"I know you are, hush." Akakios thought to him.
Outside of their skull, the stist tinued his pitch. "If we 't get them to want a different body, the best thing is to remind them to live."
"But everyone wants to live!?"
Mars would have snorted, again.
The stist expined further, "That's too simplistic. It's not that they don't want to live, but when your soul is thrust into a body you don't want without care or much warning, it's going tet that fa its fusion. It will be too focused oing its vessel than on the sequences of that reje. Remember, it is not an active mind. The mind doesn't start funing until it has embraced its vessel. And even a scious subject would be too disorieo fully uand what's happening. But I think the soul is able to remember, even if it is uo think. I believe making a mind more willing will help the soul do the same."
Mars was too stunned in trans to snort.
"Fasating hypothesis. You still haven't expihe process."
"We give them a body they want, for one. Like I've said, I noticed people with simir features are slower to reject."
"But they still reject?"
"Most of them. But then, I think we might be able to reason with our prisoners. Expin what we are doing and how they might be able to make the best of it."
"The best of what? You're taking their bodies from them and what happens if they survive? Impriso?"
"What if we promised their release, if we worked with them," Akakios said, in respoo Mars. The human was kind of proud.
Dr. Graves, oher hand, was surprised the demon lord had suggested it. He was going to wait for the results of his few trials to mention it himself. "I defihink that might work. And what if we promised to trahem back when the experiment cludes. Again, I'm uain how much the soul retains. But I do believe they carry some degree of mindless reason."
"That's an oxymoron," Mars was good with fantasy bullshit logic, but this soul stuff was testing his nerves a bit. Just because he could follow the bullshit didn't mean it wasn't the shit from a bull.
But, without hesitation, the demon lreed with his underling's proposal. "Just make sure to do multiple trials to test individual variables this time. You need a solid trol. I don't care how many subjects have to die to get one. Oh, and wipe that girl's memory before you send her out."
Dr. Hasting Graves froze. "What girl?"
The demon lord just winked, ahe underling with the sinking realization that his master kly what he had done.
Mars, however, was in the dark. "What was that wink about?"
"He thought he got away with something."
"...did he?"
"He's still alive, isn't he?"
"Okay, sure. But what did he do?"
"Saved a prisoner. It happens to the worst of us."
"Would you like to be less vague?"
"No."
"..."
"It's his affair. I'm not going to spill the messy details just because you asked."
Which was unreasonably reasonable and unfairly extremely fair, because Mars really wao know those messy details. But he also wasn't getting anywhere with the questions. So he went back to poking The System.
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The demon lord spoke to various underlings to the point they all blurred together, like reading the same trope in the same genre over and over until all ten series you inhaled in the past two weeks became one giant story with no start and no end.
With the blessing of hindsight, I know how to skip to the end. It may have been the most important experiment debriefing iire cavern of a boratory. But how was Mars to know that? As the duo approached a seemingly random se of the b, Akakios called to a seemingly random stist.
Despite her seeming randomness, Mars perked up a bit anyway. This character would have driven the furries in the Font of Demons fandom wild. She was an anthropomorphic cockatoo. In furry terms, an "avian." In Mars' terms, a "feathery." To the human's relief, she wasn't cartoonish or mascoty. He couldn't imagihe horror of a photorealistic furry-style creature, with sparkling eyes bigger than an e and those mammalian-specific features implying this! Bird! Is! A! Woman! The reason Mars guessed she was a "she" was simply that her clothes matched the style of female characters in this world.
Narrator's Note: Of course, it was only a guess, as Mars in particur was very much aware. As I am able to reato the mind of more than just the human, I firm she was, indeed, a woman aremely proud of it. Moreover, she was fused why anyone would desire to be anything else. While she was receptive to Akakios' torturous experiments, his appreciation of the male form eluded her.
Mars couldn't remember many character names or plot details from the inal novel, but the fanworks were burned into his memory. M.X. Brady detailed the cultural intricacies of different regions of the world with a feverish incessahe author also spent more time describing the biology and anatomy of various kinds of demons than expl the personality of any individual creature. His work sometimes read more like a fantasy encyclopedia with a ower-leveling and harem-acquiring plot as a b throughline. Gavin-what's-his-st-he hero) was the least iing part of this story that was barely a story. It was why most of the fandom studied his text religiously despite very loudly hating it.
The point is, while the fanfic shamelessly strayed from established , the fan art was surprisingly pretty faithful. And Mars articurly fasated by the SouthAsian-inspired culture of Southeast Lyharke, which is why he was able the style of her dress immediately. The feathery wore a blue Nauvari1 sari which hit her ankle, her talons on full dispy beh it. The drape was masterfully executed, allowing her full range of movement to perform her duties as a stist and underling.
As Mars was distracted by the beautiful clothes, she and Akakios started pnning the stage of torture the experiment.
"The st test subjects were uo fully ie. Half of their soul remained in each body, which after two hours of screaming proved fatal," the cockatoo told him.
The ers of Akakios' lips drooped in thought. "I want to explore that issue a bit more before we return to the initial purpose of the experiment. you think of a way to test if the subject died because of their dual-spirit or because their souls were split?"
Mars' attention withdrew from the lovely feathery. He was very aware of why his headmate would want to veer off in that dire. It was his fault, after all. "Do you think we will die if we stay like this for too long?"
Before the feathery could answer her boss' question, the vilin answered Mars, "I have not found any indications of stress to either of our souls, but I am not oo shirk precautions."
His underling tilted her head in fusion, angling one of her eyes directly at him. "I'm sorry, sir... what!?"
"Oh, I have another soul inside my head right now. He asked a question."
She stared at him speechless.
"We do not seem to be experieng any current issues, but I will start a journal to tray new developments," he tinued.
"..."
"Is there a problem, Dr. Vaidya?"
"When did this start?"
"This m."
"Sir, this is bad."
"That is why we are going to put our efforts into studying dual-soul manipution. Having another person in my head is less than ve." Akakios was a big fan of uatements.
"Do you think this tack against you?"
"Who could possibly have more expertise in soul transferehan the people in this ir?" he asked, rather than answering her question.
"You mean it was an inside job?"
"We have not gotten to a stage where we transfer souls of humanoids to other humanoids, clearly," he said, nodding to Dr. Vaidya's st test subjects who were ying on the cold, stone floor at an impossible angle. "I doubt anyone on this floor was able to execute even this fwed transfere least, not without any outside help. No, I think someone is able to perform this task beyond our current capabilities. This is the perfect opportunity for study that they kindly id in our p."
"But what are that someone's pns? We don't know what game they're pying. Again, this could be an attack."
"If it's an attack, it oorly thought out. I'm still in plete trol of my body. And the other soul, Mars, is harmless. He barely hold it together just standing in this room, with all the death and gore. If he is some sort of master operative, I will be shocked."
Mars would have gred at him. "That's rude."
But the cockatoo just hummed in thought.
"Look, we don't know the mission of that other entity. But we do have clues. You're a stist. Tell me what you think our steps should be."
"We o observe, study, hypothesize, experiment..."
"And that's exactly my pn. So o worry."
She didn't seem vihis is because she was not vinced. When your demon boss' mind was invaded by a random soul with n, it was hard not to worry. But Akakios was rarely phased by such things, aly, despite his disaffected act, he's been dht reckless. It was a subtle ge. It wouldn't surprise Dr. Veidya if she was the only oo notice. But it was signifit enough to be w. It was on full dispy now, with that feigned indifferehat could quickly fester into a rabid mania if given the ce. "Master Akakios, it may not be my pention such things, but I know you haven't been yourself sihat apprentice–"
His gre cut her off before his words. "You're right. It isn't your pce."
She just had to give it the ce... fuck. She said the exact wrong thing. That stare might kill her before his hands got the ce. She backed off immediately, and also literally with two uain steps away from him. "Apologies. I was out of line. Please five this underling."
Mars felt the anger simmering in his shared chest. Though he couldn't parse the demon's thoughts, he knew for certain the demon was going to hurt her. As Akakios' hands started to morph into the, sword-sharp talons, the human screamed in their head "WAIT!"
Surprise gave Mars a few extra seds. He was able to fight his case before the demon could shut him up. "You need her to get me out!"
The demon and his headmate had observed many experiments already, and had spoken with many of the stists about their work and their steps. Everyone seemed petent. Many were already w on dual-soul manipution. There were certainly others who could shift to this new experiment. But he entrusted Dr. Vaidya with this ask. He had divulged his dual-soul issue the moment she asked. This feathery wasn't just any random researcher. (As I had said with my privilege of hindsight.) He clearly pced a lot of faith in her.
Mars was only guessing, but it was a good guess. I firm he was correct. There was no researcher in that boratory that could match that bird in aptitude and ability, and she was the only one he afforded enough text. In a few days, when he cooled down, he would have her directly observe him. He would let her poke and prod at his dual-soul. He would hand her his detailed notes on his dition and sift through the written ption of those private recesses of his mind.
So, despite the anger fring in the demon's shared body, he paused. His talo back to hands. While his fists were ched, his teeth were still grit, and his eyes were still dark, he didn't attack.
Mars could have sighed in relief. Actually, that time he did. It was just a little slip as Mars forced the body to rex. Then, when all the tensio his body, Akakios snatched trol back, blog the human from his own synapses. Sharing a body was frustrating, but at least that body wasn't beating his best bet out half-to-fug death.
"You're smart, Doctor. You know what to do."
The vilin stormed out of the se, a clear destination in mind, which filled Mars with a reasonable amount of dread. He retty sure they weren't headed to a uni petting zoo. The human wao ask about his headmate's old appreo uand what could provoke such ire, but he didn't dare mention it. So instead, he asked, "Where are we going?"
Akakios trekked five yards before he put in the effort to answer. "Dungeon."
"..." Mars said.
"..." the demon said back.
"...this isn't the dungeon?"
"This is my b."
"...is the dungeon worse?"
In spite of himself, the demon almost ughed. "Oh, much worse."
When they got to the dungeon, Mars was not the least bit pleased to find out that was true. The dungeon was, in fact, worse. Much worse. Much, much worse.
~~Author's Note: 1. Earth fact: The Nauvari or Nine Yards sari is most only worn by Maharashtrian women in India.