The Cult's Failed Summoning

Chapter 11: First Experiment

Boros woke as warm arms wrapped around him from behind. Yelan pressed against his back, her hands resting forward over his chest, holding him gently. Her voice was soft, still laced with exhaustion. “You didn’t get any sleep.”

Boros replied calmly, “It appears so.”

Yelan shifted slightly, her breath warm against his shoulder. “What are you planning to do today?”

Boros let out a slight chuckle, the sound low and filled with dark promise. “Create life.”

The procession moved through the torchlit corridor. Men and women in rags, bound at the wrists by iron chains, shuffled forward in a single file, their hollow eyes fixed on the stone floor. Cult members in dark robes flanked them on either side, wordless and efficient, herding the prisoners the way a shepherd herds livestock.

At the front of it all stood Stone, the Overseer.

He stood just inside the entrance of the Head Priest's laboratory, lips moving faintly as he counted each prisoner that crossed the threshold. His eyes moved with mechanical precision, tracking each body.

When the last prisoner passed him, he turned his gaze to tally the numbers in his head and gave a slow nod of satisfaction.

He stepped outside the laboratory door and met one of the robed figures waiting in the corridor. He spoke quietly.

"That's enough. Go tell the others — we have sufficient numbers. Send the rest back."

The figure dipped their head beneath their hood and disappeared into the dark of the corridor without a word.

Stone turned back to face the laboratory. The prisoners knelt or sat against the walls, chains pooled around them like iron roots. Some stared at the ceiling. A few trembled. None spoke.

"The rest of you," Stone called out flatly to the robed figures still lingering inside, "can leave."

He let the words settle for a beat.

"Unless, of course, any of you are willing to volunteer as test subjects." He tilted his head slightly. "In that case — by all means, stay."

The robed figures did not need to be told twice. There was a brief, undignified scramble as they moved for the door — careful not to run, but walking at the very edge of running. Stone watched them go with the blank expression of a man who had seen it before and expected nothing less.

He caught two of them by the shoulder before they could slip out.

"You two. Stay at the door. No one enters."

They nodded, taking their positions on either side of the heavy iron doors as Stone pulled them shut with a low, resonant *boom* that echoed through the stone chamber.

Silence settled.

Then the wall opened.

A section of the laboratory's far stone wall split apart without sound, revealing a narrow passage behind it. From the dark of that passage stepped Boros.

He was still wearing his human form — a tall, composed figure with an unnervingly still quality to his movements, like a predator that had learned to mimic patience. Over his dark shirt and deep blue vest he had draped a white doctor's coat, pressed and clean, which stood in quiet contrast to the grime of the chamber around him. A red tie sat at his collar with deliberate precision. Combat gloves covered his hands. Dark trousers. A stethoscope hung around his neck with the casual ease of a man who had worn one for years.

He walked toward the prisoners without hurry, his expression unreadable — not cold, not warm. Simply absent of anything unnecessary.

From the floor at Stone's feet, a shadow stirred.

It stretched forward like something alive, thin and dark across the stone, until it reached the leg of the large desk near the center of the lab. Then, from the shadow itself, a figure emerged — stepping out of darkness the way a person steps out of a doorway, smooth and unhurried.

Yelan landed lightly on the desk, crossed one leg over the other, and adjusted the front of her cult robe, which hung open to reveal the skin-tight assassin's suit beneath. She looked around the lab with mild curiosity.

Her eyes found Boros.

"I thought you couldn't control the old man," she said, nodding toward Stone.

Boros stopped walking. He turned — and found Stone already standing before him, hands clasped behind his back, posture rigid with a kind of enforced deference.

"Head Priest," Stone said. "All preparations have been made."

Boros looked past him. Along the far wall, an operation table had been arranged with the thoroughness of a surgeon's theatre. Instruments lay in precise rows — scalpels, retractors, bone saws, clamps — all of them clean, all of them waiting. Nearby, a secondary table held glass containers, measuring tools, and materials whose purpose was less obvious and more troubling.

Boros looked at it for a long moment. The faintest trace of a smile crossed his face.

He turned to Yelan.

"It took me all morning," he said, "but I was finally able to rewrite his perspective. A slight alteration to his memory. Nothing dramatic."

He moved toward the operation table.

One of the prisoners had already been secured to it. A middle-aged man with a broad build. He stared at the ceiling with the glassy stillness of someone who had run out of prayers.

Boros looked down at him, expression calm but eager. He reached for a scalpel from the instrument tray, held it up briefly in the torchlight, and turned it once between his fingers.

"How nostalgic," he said quietly.

Then he began.