Chapter 30: He Will Not Share
A week had passed since Corvin’s shadow first fell across the golden savannahs of Savaryn. Now, nestled deep within a sun split cavern veined with silver roots, he sat cross legged in silence, save for the rhythmic sound of breath, spell hum, and wet bone shifting. The cavern, once a natural hollow, had become a laboratory. A sanctuary. A crucible.
His experiments had not started well, not at all.
Three test subjects, two Jackalkin and a Wolfkin had rejected the modified viral sequences.. explosively. The first collapsed into spasmodic seizures within minutes after moments exploded like a new year fire works. The second.. foam bleeding from his lips as the mana strain overrode his neural channels it suffered a grotesque reaction as his muscles expanded without symmetry. One arm bulging monstrously while the other withered, ending in a crumpled husk, other parts as well swelled before joining its predecessor. The third simply combusted from within, arteries boiling until he crumpled to the floor with steam rising from every orifice. His skin blackened in strange, asymmetrical runes that glowed briefly before vanishing.
"Too aggressive," Corvin muttered at the time, scratching jagged lines into his notes with a sliver of bone dipped in blood.
But he refined it. The bone pen and viral sequences.
He adjusted the resonance binding of the strain. Introduced phase delayed activation spells to limit metabolic shock. Anchored the mana nutrient balance to match baseline energy signatures rather than idealized archetypes. He added stabilizing buffers, grafted using threads of Aether and Life Magic, that allowed for metabolic rebalancing mid infusion. A ’few more’ failures followed then another few.. one subject turned mute and glassy eyed, another grew a third limb entirely, but then...
It worked.
On the fourth day, a Lionkin subject stood straighter after infusion. Shoulders broader, back upright. His vocal cadence, once crude and clipped, smoothed into something coherent, deliberate. His eyes no longer darted with animal panic but held fixed, directed focus, as though a fog had finally lifted.
"Name," Corvin had said.
"Rha Toren," came the response. Crisp. Structured.
Even more promising was the four hundred and thirty eighth trial: an Eaglekin female whose wingspan increased by half a meter. Her aerial agility in the open grassland doubled. Corvin even noted an uptick in resistance to shock based spells, suggesting peripheral neurological hardening as a side effect. She soared in test flights with fluid grace, banking hard and turning mid air with the ease of a seasoned aerialist.