The Stone Heart's Lament
A scientific intermission

Doctor LothaireBaillargeon sighed and propped his fists on his hips, surveying the laboratory.It had taken months to restore the Adaline facility to working order; delayshad been numerous and even when supplies and personnel made it on time thejourney from Aramantine to Adaline was long. The prototype hybrid engines inthe automobiles, using an admixture of synthesised deific fuel and highlyrefined phantasma were prone to glitches and failure, and the project had yetto synthesise enough faux-deific energy crystals for extended use. The miasmamade travelling difficult for obvious reasons but it also caused problemswithin the facility. Phantasma vapour seeped in everywhere, polluting the airand damaging the instruments. Extractors and catalysers had been mounted to theinternal and external walls of the tower but the phantasma had compromised thestructural integrity of the building. It was an unavoidable risk of theirlocation, one that had only one solution: the creation of a self-sustainingdeific catalyst.

Logistics and safetyhad not been the only concerns of the project. Baillargeon did not concernhimself over much with politics; he was a scientist, such things were trivialdistractions. However Arnault, the administrator DeLunde’s faculty head hadfoisted upon the project had made it his business to bemoan the difficultieshe’d faced ensuring Aramant cooperation, even before the first convoy had leftfor the Steppes. The damnable Aramantine Provost now had pockets heavy withbribes, and, last Baillargeon had heard, the man was still demanding more inreturn for looking the other way as DeLunde used Aramantine as a staging postfor their work in Adaline. Baillargeon had suggested during one of Arnault’smore extensive rants that they might be better off killing the Provost andinstalling a more amenable man in his stead. It was simple fact that Aramantineand the rest of that piddling country survived only due to the largesse ofEmperor Orlenaux. It was galling really how ungrateful and grasping theAramants could be.

Still these were allconcerns of the past. The facility was functional and work had already begun.Baillargeon walked over to the nearest examination table. The man on the tabledid not stir. The monitors hooked up to measure vital signs reported that heremained stable however Baillargeon remained underwhelmed by this latest batchof test subjects. He checked the clipboard attached to the end of the table. Ashe feared the latest records showed that the test subject’s rate of decline hadinceased since the last phantasma exposure. This was a severe disappointment.This particular test subject: number Thirty-Two, had shown early promise. Afterthe initial symptoms of extreme Phantasma sickness Thirty-Two had begun to exhibitsigns of nascent resistence. Physical, mental and ethereal decline hadstabilised. Two days ago the first evidence of metaphorsis had been detected,but Baillargeon had remained hopeful. The crystalline growths sprouting fromThirty-Two’s body were not in themselves evidence of imminent failure. ProjectPandora’s only successful catalyst had never exhibited physical mutation, true,but the circumstances had been different. Baillargeon had a much harder task torecreate those same results without the aid of a Sereph. He remained convincedthat the pre-existing scion bond between Sebastien and the former SeraphSmythion had been pivotal in the creation of a non-maligned, fully functionalcatalyst.

Baillargeon lookeddown on Thirty-Two in contempt. The mutations had continued apace, in much theway they had in the previous failed experiments. The man’s face had split alonethe seam of his nose, skin tearing apart as crystalline growths sprouted fromthe bone and cartilage. Blackened veins, protruding under the skin of the man’sforearms, denoted the return of Phantasma sickness. Thirty-Two was yet anotherfailure, though it was possible they would be able to extract useable deificcrystals from the body before disposal. It would add to their data to record howlong it took for Thirty-Two’s soul to die. So far all their experiments, eventhe failures, had exhibited a protracted period of ethereal dissolution. Noneof these wretches came to close to ascending to the status of Pure Souls, butthe manner in which the test subjects underwent physical and ethereal mutationwas fascinating.

The process ofextracting the spirit from the body while maintaining the existence of a livingsoul had been refined since Director TreLawn’s first experiments upon his sonSebastien. They now knew the exact quotient of phantasma gas to anima vapourrequired to cause the spirit to detach from the physical body. It was essentialto the creation of a successful catalyst to destroy the spirit – the psyche –of the subject. A sense of self was incompatible with the refinement of thesoul necessary to create a catalyst and a Pure Soul.

There was no realmeans of reliable long distance communication out on the Steppes, no mailservice and radio waves were disrupted by the miasma, but Baillargeon wasconfident that soon Sebastien TreLawn would be back in the custody of theDeLunde Institute. Despite the set back with Thirty-two this was something tobe celebrated. The return of the first Pure Soul catalyst would push their workforward exponentially. Baillargeon knew so much more about the process now thanhe had five years ago. He was not thesame man he had been then, when Sebastien had escaped the Scarria facility inValkieres. Baillargeon had lived with the ignominy of blame even though healone was not responsible. Director Trelawn had always been too lenient, giventhe boy too much freedom, allowing sentiment to cloud his judgement. Baillargeonmay have been in charge on the night Sebastien escaped, but it was the Directorwho was ultimately at fault. He had continued to treat Sebastien like his son,like a human being, and not as what he was: the catalyst of Project Pandora. APure Soul was not a person – the Pure Soul had evolved beyond such a basestate. TreLawn’s cosseting, his misguided sentiment, had corrupted theircatalyst, infecting the Pure Soul with a detrimental sense of identify andfree-will that had nearly destroyed everything Project Pandora worked toward. Baillargeonwas already preparing the apparatus for Sebastien’s return. After five yearsthe corrupting influence of self-determination would be entrenced. He wouldhave to eradicate all trace of spirit and self from the boy before they couldbegin work in earnest.

He would have to workfast. Director TreLawn would be coming here, back to the site of his greatest-albeit accidental – discovery. He would be coming for his son. As much as itpained him to accept it Baillargeon knew that once the Director arrived hewould once more be relegated to the sidelines. It did not matter that he hadworked tirelessly on the Project in the years since Sebastien’s escape, nomatter that his work on the synthesis of deific crystals was without questionadvanced of anyone else – including the Director – Baillargeon was still deniedthe respect and recognition he deserved. Word had reached him from the dreadfulMarre Noir agent charged with Sebastien’s apprehension that the plan was ontrack. Baillargeon had to assume that the Director had known before he did thatSebastien was to be returned. (The Director still worked out of Valkieres andthey did not lack for reliable forms of communication back in the civilisedworld). He would just have to hope that the miasma, which had caused suchproblems in the initial stages of the Project would now work to his advantageand keep the Director from reaching Adaline before Baillargeon was finishedreturning the Pure Soul to its proper state.

The Director had losthis objectivity. In the years since Sebastien’s escape TreLawn had continued topioneer work on deific energy and Project Pandora, but he had also started todistance himself from the rest of the DeLunde faculty and the original membersof the Project. It was not just Baillargeon who had noticed, Marietta had alsovoiced her concerns that Project Pandora was becoming too politicised. Insteadof a purely scientific venture, led exclusively by the DeLunde Institute Pandorahad become, in recent years, the pet project of Theirn Orlenaux -the Emperor’seldest son and commander-in-chief of the Imperial army. Unlike Marietta, Baillargeondid not care if the Project became a military one – there was definite militarypotential in deific energy, and in the synthesis of Pure Souls – no, what heobjected to was the loss of control and autonomy. The Director behaved as ifProject Pandora was his and his alone and he could therefore take the Projectin any direction he liked, without consulting the rest of the faculty. Baillargeonintended to do something about that. The rest of his colleagues could not betrusted to speak out. The Director commanded too much respect, and was tooclose to the Emperor and his son for many to dare question him, let alone act,but Baillargoen, long cast into the shadow for an imagined failing that was nothis fault, well, he was ideally placed to wrestle control of the Project backinto DeLunde’s hand, was he not?

He would start withSebastien. He would destroy any trace of the Director’s son and restore thePure Soul to its perfect form, and he would ensure that the Pure Soul’s loyaltywas his and his alone. Not even the support of the Emperor’s son would protectthe Director if Baillargeon had the Pure Soul on his side.