Lambs to the Slaughter

Edited by Pyrranha

Yawei by holyflpncows

The metallic tang of the air coats my tongue and the horrendous stench nearly has me doubled over.

I try to move closer, but my senses won’t let me proceed. The smell is overwhelming; the sight of piled lumps of blood and flesh just beyond the doorway is too much for my eyes and mind to process. Nobody else seems to be able to move forward either. Shen Po and Wen back away and head toward a large blown-out window on the left of the building. I follow their example and enter through the shattered window on the right side.
I find a corpse slumped over a desk; it doesn’t seem to contain anything inside. I take a glance at what I can only assume were paintings at one point. Now, squares of blood-soaked canvas decorate this tragic locale. I slowly open the door that leads out of the room. It’s a hallway filled with more framed bloody canvas. I stare and wonder.
I freeze in the middle of my contemplation. Was that just munching? I listen for the sound again. There! I turn and look to the door at the end of the hallway. What could it be? I stop and head for backup. I’d rather not be added to the mass of corpses in this place.
I step out the glassless window, glass crunching beneath my feet. I hold my breath as I pass the open doors between the windows and enter into the other room Shen Po and Wen had entered. This room looks identical to the one I explored. This time, however, there’s a stack of crimson-colored papers on the desk next to an open drawer. Shen Po stacks the last few pages he was holding onto the others on the desk.
“Nothing.” Shen Po sighs. “It’s all illegible. Soaked with blood.”
“Well,” I say, “there might be something,” I inform them about the noises I heard from the other room.

---

Shen Po approaches and knocks on the door. The chewing sounds stop. He motions to Wen seconds before the door cracks open. For a split second, I see something blue in that opening. Then Shen Po bashes the door all way open and pearlescent flames jet from Wen’s hands.
“OW!” I hear from the room. “That was rude!” I see Shen Po and Wen stand down, but stay wary. I inch closer to take a look.
There’s a bright blue colored man sprawled on the floor, chunk of salted pork still clutched in his hand. He looks a bit lanky, and despite the enthusiastic sounding chewing I heard before, there’s not a speck of food on his robes.
Yawei, as he introduces himself, informs us that he’s been holding out here for about a week. The others join us as he leads us to the main hall where we had seen the gruesome sight of bodies and blood. At least the stench has aired out a little. Still, our steps slow as we take in the scene. Most of the corpses are heaped near the main doors. Some are locked into defensive positions, seemingly fending off the other corpses at one point. There are others scattered around and I note two staircases. One heads up and the other goes down. We keep a wide berth from the downstairs as we head to the other staircase. A miasma of red wisps from it, dissipating as it reaches the ground level. Could the basement be the source of this town’s tragedy?
Yawei begins to climb further than the second story, but Shen Po stops to investigate this floor. Yawei makes no move to follow everyone. I decide to hang back and keep an eye on this strange man. Looking at his face is unnerving. His black hair only helps contrast his skin and make his unnatural silver eyes stand out.
An eternity of awkward silence is pierced by a yelp from Spark, down the same hallway Shen Po is investigating.
“Damnare!” I swear. “You,” I pull out my saber and point it at Yawei, “you’re following me.” I don’t wait for a reply before I take off.
I round the corner of the hallway and see a pitch-black angular creature, its body glistening with blood dripping off its body onto the floor. It releases Spark from it claws embedded in the stone wall and bounds towards me, a single horn on its head pointed at me and tail lashing behind it. I take a few steps and meet it. I swing my saber up high, keeping its horn at bay and slashing at its head. My dagger sweeps in low and cuts across its arm. Shen Po runs up behind it to strike. Suddenly, my vision goes fuzzy and a wave of sickness washes over me. I shake it off while the creature screeches at Shen Po. It turns back to me and I panic.
Fear grips tight around my throat, strangling me. No, not fear; it's the creature’s claws. Now its fangs sank into my abdomen. I try to scream, but I can’t. My throat is sealed shut.
No. No, that's not right. I shake the fear off me. I hear claws on stone next to me, and I realize that I had run back out of the hallway, near a window. I spin and watch the creature leap from the window. I lean out to see what direction it’s heading and catch its tail disappearing into the first-floor window.
“It came back in!” I shout. “On the first floor!”
“It dove down the stairs!” Spark calls out, leaning over the railing of the opening to the first floor. “Down into the basement.”
We set to work barricading the basement with cabinets, cots, stretchers—anything we can find. With our immediate fears blockaded behind copious amounts of furniture, we ascend to the third and final level of the hospital. The small room at the top of the stairs holds a few couches tucked into the corners. I sit on one while the others investigate another room. My hands are still shaking a bit. I close my eyes and try to settle my breathing. Damn it. What had that thing been? And I wasn’t able to stand up to it. How am I going to find what I'm after when I can no longer stand tall against anything? The cloud of doubt persists, holding me in dark thoughts. Thankfully, a yelp from the other room breaks the cloud apart.
I rush into the room and directly into a thick, fresh cloud of smoke. “What happened?” I choke.
“The drawer was rigged,” Shen Po answers with a few coughs. “Damn it all. All I was able to catch written on them was an insignia of a saw drawn across an open palm and ‘Experiment I’ before it all burned.” He waves smoke away from his face.
As the smoke finally disperses, I look around the room. Behind the desk on the wall is a plaque:

This person is advised in the field of medicine within the Sung-Cho Empire. Doctor A. R. Xew.

My stomach turns queasy. Experiment evidence rigged to burn in a hospital? A doctor that was likely exiled from the empire to here, like most? The bloody mist emanating from the basement of this building? “Calor solis est scriptor,” I mutter, my eyes going wide.
Before my thoughts get too carried away, Wen mentions how much smaller this floor is compared to the others. Shen Po and I make eye contact. We inform the rest of the group and split up to look for a hidden room.
It takes a bit before Shen Po calls out that he's found a door. We gather around while Wen disarms the traps around it. The door swings open into utter darkness. Shen Po tries his lit gauntlet, but it seems doused by the blackness. He pulls his hand back out and mutters something under his breath. Then he spreads his hands out in front of him and suddenly the room isn’t as dark. He tries his gauntlet again and it works.
Inside, there are bars to the right and more farther back as the room turns to the right. Cages. In the first cage, I see an unresponsive man, one of his arms actually a creature. A large purple, chitinous worm with a large maw is attached to the man’s torso in place of his arm. It turns its eyeless face towards the group. They move in, but I stay back. I feel fear start to grip me again. The bars to the worm creature cage look like they would barely contain it if it could move. What if I seize up in a fight again? “I’ll stand guard here,” I announce. I get shrugs and they continue in.
I take more time to process everything while they investigate. Ultimately, it had to be this doctor who was responsible for the death of this entire town. Maybe Admiral Jin had ordered the doctor to do this. But why would he? He died of the same illness that the corpses in here did. I eye the worm creature. Perhaps he thought he was safe from it? Did Jin even know the doctor was running these experiments?
I hear a voice from the room that I don’t recognize. I tense, ready to— well, not ready to do anything. I still can’t bring myself to step foot in there.
“Don’t remember.” A male voice says.
“What’s the last thing you do remember?” Spark asks.
“Uh,” the voice begins, “the doctor was in here.”
“The doctor?” Shen Po prompts.
“I don’t know his name.” The voice is strained and masculine. “Very tall, blonde hair, very clean. Likes to wear white.”
“Do you know what happened here?” Shen Po asks the man.
“Did you,” he begins, “did you see any demons?”
“We did fight a creature that was likely a demon,” Shen Po answers. “It escaped into the basement where the red miasma seems to remain.”
“Did you get the- the doctor’s papers?” Wen heaves a large sigh at the man’s question and Shen Po breaks the news of them all burning. “That means the experiment failed.” The man sounds defeated.
“What experiment?” Shen Po asks.
“The—” the man coughs a few times, “the Admiral was trying to find a way to kill Kanbei. He can’t be killed by normal means.” Silence settles. “They used me to…practice.”
There's more silence for a minute before Shen Po speaks up. “To practice?”
“And they had help,” the man ignores Shen Po, “with the demons around. But it didn’t work.”
“So they experimented on you to see if it would work?” Shen Po’s voice echoes through the darkness. “Are you afflicted in the same manner as Kanbei?”
“No.” The man replied. “I’m just…resilient. And they got that to work, but you probably know that.”
“The Blood Plague?” Shen Po again.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a plague.” He continues on and mentions the sewers running below the town, where the demons reside. Shen Po tries to convince the man that he can cure him. “No,” the man insists. “You don’t understand what they turned me into. I’m their weapon.”
“The blood mist comes from you?” Shen Po inquires.
“What mist?” The man asks. I suck in a breath. There’s more at work here.
I hear Shen Po again. “What was the intended result then?”
“To get Kanbei’s men to kill him,” the man states. “I’m patient zero. It got out of hand too fast.”
My thoughts churn. Admiral Jin went to these lengths to attempt to kill Kanbei? To somehow sneak this man into Kanbei’s ranks and spread the disease? At this rate, wouldn’t it be best to just incarcerate Kanbei? My attention turns back to my companions as I hear the sounds of magic being cast. A minute later, the group emerges from the darkness.
The mysterious man now mercy killed, we close the door of the hidden room and shore up the third floor for the night. It seems in order to clear up the blood mist, we must purge the demons in the basement. At least, that’s our best lead. Wearily, Shen Po passes his lit gauntlet over the group. Then he and Spark get to work, using magic and ki to cure the disease we’ve all contracted from this place.
I take a seat and try to rest. A chilling idea pops into my mind. If this doctor was capable of all this, would he be able to help me? I had been turned down everywhere else. Or is he too twisted? Would it be worth risking? Yes.