@praestigii studies the specimen
Somewhere far underground, deep below the castle overlooking Radiant Garden, is a lab built solely for the apprentices and their experiments on the heart. In a corner of that lab is a tank filled with an unnatural green liquid, a faint light shining up from below, and a figure suspended inside. A boy.
No more than twelve years old, Myde drifts in and out of consciousness, his bright watery eyes unable to focus and distinguish the world around him. He can’t breath, but he doesn’t choke either. The liquid is everywhere, cocooning his body and filling his lungs. It burns him from the inside, yet the pain is so steady, so consistent he almost doesn’t feel it anymore. All the boy can do is float in stasis at the mercy of his captors.
How long has he been trapped here? Hours, days, weeks, there’s no way of telling. Everything down there is artificial, bright clinical lights and sterile tables. Myde was sure he saw one of his captors slicing into a dark shadowy creature as it cried out with a pained sound like none he had ever heard before. But the figure before him now, this one was new. Raised from the ground as he was, the new person looked no taller than Myde himself--perhaps smaller even.
They watched in silence, indistinct and blurred around the edges. Why were they here?