"It's inhuman!"
"We'll have a Cephalid do it."
"It's immoral!"
"You say that about half of the things going on here."
"It's impossible!"
"Nothing is impossible for me," one of the two arguing wizards stopped short and spun on his heel to stare the other straight in the face. "I'm tired of you shouting down every advancement I try to make. This could be one of the greatest things the riptide project will achieve and all you can do is shout out how wrong it is." The man had short hewn, dirty-blonde hair adorning his head, along with a goatee of the same color. Like all participants in the project, he wore blue clothes. In particular, he had a blue cape, trimmed in gold, a lose blue tunic, and baggy blue trousers with a wavey pattern in dark green stitching. Currently his sea-green eyes glared angrily at his companion.
"I still don't think it's even possible. I'm just trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself." The man Had a look of genuine concern on his face as his deep blue eyes looked into those of the other researcher.
"Fine," with a roll of the eyes the two continued down the glass-plated tunnel between two of the large domes. "Just don't think that you know everything about possible and impossible just because you say so."
The brown trimmed blue robe that the blonde's companion wore billowed around him like the sea that surrounded them as they walked down the large corridor, "Thedroe, how can you make individual creatures evolve? Evolution is defined as the gradual change of a species."
"Yes, but what causes those changes?" Thedroe, as the blonde was named, raised a finger and shook it at his companion decisively. "The emphasis and reproduction of dominant characteristics. So logically, increasing the dominant characteristics of one individual would generate a creature that belongs to a possible branch of that creature's species's evolutionary future."
"That's barbaric! You're suggesting we warp a living creature's physical structure just because you're impatient. If you're so desperate to find out what evolution looks like why don't you join the cartographers and find the ruins of Tolaria?"
"You're a lost cause, you know that?" Thedroe shook his head as they entered the dome they were headed for, "Well, I'm still proposing this to the council and we'll see what they think about it." With that he walked off to another area of the project with purpose in his stride
His partner sighed as Thedroe walked off, "I swear, it's like when you join riptide, you leave morality."
***
It was three days later when Thedroe's project was finally put before the Riptide's council; the most senior wizards in the facility along with a handful of cephalids acting as direct representatives for empress Llawan, who was graciously funding the whole of Riptide. It took them four more days to finish discussing it, and due to the beurocracy that was quickly growing in the facility, another day for Thedroe to find out.
As the young messenger, a hopeful wizard apprentace who wasn't likely to get much farther than lab assistant, left, Thedroe sighed contentedly to himself as he flipped through the itinerary he'd been writing since he'd submitted the project. In riptide if you weren't three steps ahead of the game, you weren't playing.
As he looked over the list of people the council had assigned to his staff, one name caught his eye. "Oh not that objectionable twit. He'll be kicking and screaming for the duration of the whole experiment!" The conversation he'd had a week ago flitted through his head as he scowled to himself. He'd talked to the man during almost every lunch break he'd had since joining Riptide, and every idea he'd had he'd been convinced was a bad idea. Then, the one thing he'd actually gone through with was going to be taken down from the inside out.
Thedroe groaned as he mentally tried to reconfigure his plans to include one less assistant and a plethora of pointless tasks, to no avail. No matter how little he liked the prospect, his greatest naysayer would have to cooperate or he wouldn't get anywhere. As he left to scout out the labs he'd been assigned he wondered if it was too late to join the cartographers after all.
***
As Thedroe had thought, the actions demanded of his most senior assistant had been belittled and objected to, but they'd been done; however slowly. It had been two months and they'd only finished putting together the hardware for the experiments a week ago. The council had been cutting short ventures that had proven too much trouble left and right as matters on the mainland got more and more complicated, causing trade with, and the economy within, the Cephalid empire to slacken. If he didn't start making results instead of excuses soon, he'd be back to playing lackey for other wizards and trying to convince the council anything he said was worth listening to.
The only solution he could see was to get rid of his reluctant assistant. With the kinds of experiments going on in the complex, fatlities weren't uncommon, flare ups of uncontrolled mana, explosive chemicals and more and more dangerous animals had taken their fare share of researchers, but Thedroe's pet project would have to get much farther before something like that was conceivable. Out and out murder was strictly frowned upon, considering the difficulty in transporting more human personel to the sea floor. This left him little option but to bear with his situation until he could produce an organism that had been "evolved" in some benificial way. This was something he'd planned on achieving through a month or so of trial and error, but he only had a matter of weeks and dumb luck.
Unless he were to forego the testing of his equipment and went right to the experimentation. It would mean risking his own well-being, as well as running the possibility that the equipment could be damaged so badly that he'd have to start from scratch; something he did not have time to do.
He sat in his room contemplating all this and could not find any viable solutions. He banged his fists on the desk he had until now been resting his elbows on and stood up. "If I want to continue on with this experiment I'd have to get rid of him and produce something worth note by the council at the same time! There are too many deadly animals running around this blasted place for them to be impressed by something that'd just maul him on sight. The only way it would work is if I were to make him the test subject..." Thedroe stared at the wall of his room as what he'd just said echoed in his head. They wouldn't be able to accuse him of killing one of their precious researchers, and if the equipment worked as planned, he should have a stronger smarter wizard to show them as a result.
The only problem would be subjecting him to the procedure, but that could easily be taken care of if he thought far enough ahead.
***
It took two weeks to put everything in place. He told all the other assistants that he'd be performing the safety tests himself, while he told his unsuspecting subject that they'd been performing the safety tests without him. Tonight he'd dismissed everyone else, saying they'd finish early for the day and had asked his experiment to work a late night. When the man walked into the nearly deserted lab he looked at Thedroe curiously.
"Where is everyone? You said we had a lot of work to do tonight."
"They went off to get a new mana battery, this one says full but the machine just shut off with no warning before you got here," as he spoke he motioned to the two massive mana batteries that rested next to a large capsule, slightly taller and wider than the two men before it. "I was just about to check the chamber, but I wanted a fresh battery, just in case. Would you mind saving me the trouble while I reset the controls?"
Thedroe gestured to the capsule and began to idly work the switches and levers on the large console he stood in front of. Thick tubes, cables and even some piping connected it to the batteries, and them to the "chamber." His assistant entered it and began to examine the inside of it, around the areas the connections were made. "I don't see anything wrong with--"
His voice was cut off as the thick glass door of the chamber swung into place and sealed itself closed. He turned around when he heard the light hiss and banged on the glass, in vain. Thedroe began to flip switches and levers on his console and press buttons in what seemed to be a practiced sequence. The mana batteries generated a small hum as they were activated and began to feed energy into the chamber as well as back to the console.
The whole thing was designed to scan an organism's physical structure, determine it's most prominent characteristics and apply mana in focused concentrations in hopes of enhancing said characteristics. Currently he had no readings on what characteristics had been found while his machine was already beginning to pump the chamber full of a slightly glowing blue gas.
"This sin't supposed to be happening. The energy's too unfocused. It's not even telling me what it's doing dammit!" Thedroe had quietly begin to panic as he flipped switches back and forth with apparently no effect. Finally he was reduced to shouting obscenities at his equipment just before he kicked the console.
Then, it all stopped. The batteries stopped humming, the gas stopped pumping into the chamber, though it was hard to see through what was already present, and the lights signaling various things on the console all went dark. Thedroe looked at it all blankly for a moment. Finally he gathered enough of his senses to press a few buttons experimentally, nothing. After another long moment, he cursed under his breath and picked up a large lead pipe that had proven to react with the mana-gas and had been removed from the aparatus some days ago, and never moved out of the lab. he carried it to the chamber and hefted it before him like a bat. He brought it over one shoulder and down, to smash into the glass door.
"Are you alive?" he asked as the gas began to billow out of the hole he'd smashed. He got no reply. "Come on, I know you're still in there, it couldn't have been that bad; the machine shut itself off early."
He stuck his hand into the lightly glowing mist and waved it around, trying to feel for the man he'd put in the chamber. It hit one side, then the other. He reached further down until he hit the bottom. The man was gone, but how? The mist hadn't even made his hand tingle much as he'd swished it around, what could it possibly have done in a closed environment.
"You won't find him."
Thedroe turned around, but the lab was still empty. "Who's there?"
"Do you even know my name? You ignored my warnings, worked me like a dog and tried to turn me into your little lab rat. Do you even know my name?"
"I uh...I've been busy...I can't remember everyone. Uh...by the by, where are you?" Thedroe was stammering as he quickly glanced around the room, looking for some hidden hiding place amidst the glowing blue fog.
"You did all this to me and don't evne know what to call me," the voice echoed with a cold emotionless laughter, "Very well, just call me Arcane...is. Yes, Arcanis, the Omnipotent."
"If you're so omnipotent why are you hiding in some damn mist?" Thedroe was sure he was losing it, talking to an empty lab. Worse yet, feeling threatened by an empty lab.
"I'm not hiding." Slowly, the blue mist surged together just next to him. It collected until it was roughly as tall as he was. Then it began to take form. A human form. It formed arms, legs, torso and head. All but a face; the head took shape, but remained completely blank. As it gathered together, the mist went from a dull glow to a bright body of energy. Then, two points on its face began to glow brighter. The two points turned into two thin lines; then got wider, like eyes opening to stare at him. It had no face, and thus no expression, but still somehow managed to look more threatening than anything he'd ever seen in his life.
"I am Arcanis the Omnipotent. You made me. You killed the man I was, and made me what I am now. Now die." The humanoid that called itself Arcanis brought up one bright glowing arm. The appendage quickly lost it's shape, increased in size and completely enveloped Thedroe's head. At First he struggled against the grip as his air was cut off, then bolts of energy coursed over the appendage, through his body and gave him the sensation of his brain being boiled in his skull, which wasn't far off.
Arcanis reeled back on what was his arm, and flung Thedroe into the mana batteries that powered his machine. He broke the casing of one on impact and magical energies surged over him. The other battery exploded as it overloaded and the feedback caused the console to burst into flames. Arcanis surveyed it all calmly as his arm returned to a more human form. He calmly walked down the empty corridors of the Riptide project. He made his way to an air lock and upened the hatch. As the hallway begain to flood he stood in the middle of the torrent, unmoved by the pounding water. Slowly his body lost it's form and melted into the water. A glowing patch of the green-blue liquid collected outside of the dome and slowly floated toward the surface. Then, carried on the crests of waves the blue glow came to shore, and Arcanis stood for his first time on Otaria.
