Infernal Investigations

Today was a day of staying indoors.

The last three days had been nothing but that, and I wished I could pretend it was simply me preparing for the upcoming infiltration of the Archives.

It wasn’t. There’d been no marches in the Infernal Quarter since the day of the bombings. Instead, there were newspaper articles about the bombings and then the ‘attacks’ that followed. Some had the decency to mention who had provoked them, but still, remembering one.

The frightened members of the Society for Reclamation of the Infernal Quarter lashed out as only might be expected of a group of people under attack. It is entirely possible that some of those residents attacked may have simply been minding their own business, but one must wonder why innocent citizens would be wandering on the streets in the aftermath of the attack.

I doubted how many had been ‘wandering the streets’, but arguing against an inanimate piece of paper was the height of foolishness. The first day, I’d been worried, having made it out of the Quarter and made it back here. Varrow had insisted on going to secure his meager belongings.

I hadn’t seen him since, and after walking down the street had gotten enough murderous looks and at least one person regarding me with a concealed weapon, I’d headed back. Reaching the Quarter without incident seemed…impossible. So I holed up in my own refuge.

On the second day I realized I didn’t need to worry. I’d made a clean-cut break, an escape until the current situation with Voltar, Dawes, and Imperial Intelligence resolved itself. I no longer needed to worry about the kind of things that mattered to your average Infernal at all. At least not to the same extent. Sure, wandering outside had its risks, but I wasn’t likely to face the same consequences as anyone in the quarter.

I’d felt sick for a while after that realization.

That was something to figure out an answer for later, though. Today was a day for preparations. Tomorrow was the planned infiltration of the archives. ‘Planned’ in a loose sense. I had my plan. Dawes and Tagashin had added to it and had their opinions, but both agreed to play along. The Montague’s had a broad idea that would be filled out more tomorrow.

We’d only had time for one more meeting between us, so filling them in on all the plans proved a bit difficult. But we’d had enough to put together a plan that felt more than a concept. Maybe not as filled out as I’d liked, but not barebones.

I’d found out what Gregory meant by his father reconfiguring the archives during my discussion with him and Elise. I’d assumed it was rearranging the Archives by magic. I’d been half-right.

Mechanisms, crude ones by modern standards, although neither of them had been very detailed about them. Whether because they didn’t want to trust me with those secrets or because they had no idea themselves I didn’t know. For my immediate concerns, it didn’t matter too much. The mechanisms could only rotate and change the positions of sections of the archive, not individual bookshelves. The bookshelves around the administrator offices would remain the same, as would the offices themselves.

They could have been more granular with what could be changed if they went for magic. But magic could be exploited, used as a guide if you were of the right disciplines and even used to seize control away. So the mechanisms were to them a good trade off.

Hopefully, those descriptions of the section with the Archive offices would be enough. Guard patrols, I’d have to rely on enhancing my hearing once again and a few other biosculpted tricks of the trade. Alchemicals would be detected, and while I was a decent Biosculptor trying to make myself into a chameleon…Well, I counted myself lucky that my last attempt was simply embarrassing instead of horrific.

Of course, the main effort was going to be making myself look like something besides an Infernal.

This…I’d done it a few times before. Unsurprisingly, making yourself look like a human had many advantages for a gang of Infernals pretending to be a revolutionary group. That didn’t make it easy or quick to do.

Up in my attic apartment, I looked at myself in the mirror, then the picture I was going to use as a reference. It was only a reference; it wouldn’t do to resemble someone else too much. Although I doubted this random girl from Illtaea would be in the archives.

Is this really necessary? The Imp asked in my head.

I paused, Biosculpting on the verge of being called.

“Not sure what you mean by that,” I said. “Even if you don’t have a particular interest, I want in those archives, and Lord Montague would not be allowing an Infernal inside, especially at a time like this. So, a disguise is needed, and the best I can manage.”

Diabolism could get you inside, The Imp said. There are ways. If only you would practice.

That...was fair. After the party, I’d still failed to find time to keep up that promise to the Imp.

“I’ll admit I could have freed up more time,” I said. “Things move so fast. But still, the Archives have ways to detect magic. Do you have ways to disguise Diabolism to bypass those?”

Yes

“And even if I had dedicated every waking moment to fulfilling that promise, would you have been able to teach them to me before now?”

A pause before a reluctant No from the Imp.

“Then I think that answers that,” I said. “Something to discuss more of in the future though. Versalicci just used warding to keep places free to practice Diabolism in without risk of detection. This would be the spells themselves?”

Yes, The imp replied. He preferred the wards because he had more control over them. No need to advance the Diabolism of underlings he may not trust. Your half-brother is a bundle of paranoia and fear most unbecoming.

I snorted. “Ah, because the ranks of the Hells surely must trust each other. Imp, spare me the obvious falsehoods.”

There is a difference between caution and craveness. There is a difference between taking a risk for victory and running away when the die is cast.

I frowned, feeling a definite barb in that last one.

“Irritated that I fled Understreet?” I mused. “Because that last one fits me more than it does Giovanni.”

There is no use staying on an already sunk ship. The decision that ended those efforts was made far before you decided to flee and his decision to strip you of allies. Very poorly, given three live but-

“Shut it,” I hissed at the Imp. “Do you think I haven’t thought about how many of them died in those opening days? Those people are dead and buried and leave them-”

My words caught out as my mind caught up. Three live. Arsense. Tolman.

“Who?”

Who? The Imp repeated back.

“Don’t mimic me. You said three lived. I know of two. Who is the third, and how do you know?”

Actually attend a lesson, and perhaps you’ll find out.

I growled but didn’t respond immediately.

The Imp had decided to mention the third for a reason. Another carrot, probably because I hadn’t had a session with it yet. The question is was it telling the truth and how could it know if it did?

There were some names I could cross off the list for certain. I’d seen and been forced to cut open the bodies myself, something that had me choking on my own bile every time I’d managed to get out of sight. Others I’d merely seen the end of, so some could conceivably-

No. Focus on the here and now. This could be solved at another time. Another place. Not right now when I needed focus. And perhaps pursuing a part of the conversation we’d skipped over.

“You seem rather dismissive of his efforts, considering how close he came,” I said. “He almost had this city in his hands.”

It was a fragile hold, The Imp replied, seemingly just as eager to get off the hint it had dropped. Destroyed the moment it was brought into the light.

“He got closer than most,” I said. “I could hardly call myself his biggest fan of course, but I’d say he’s come the closest to Her Most Profane Majesty.”

He doesn’t even hold a candle. She controlled this kingdom, ruled it, for nigh on forty years. He could barely rule a city from the shadows for a year.

“She fell too,” I said. “Isn’t that what always happens with the Hells, Imp? You reach, you grasp, you lose. Story of the Hells, over and over again, unto the end of time. Leaving everyone else to pick up your messes.”

Leaving Infernals to suffer in your place.

Interesting. Is that your main objection? That we never win?

I frowned. “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve read what Her Most Profane Majesty have gotten up to. What devils have gotten up to.”

If you think that’s all devils are, I lower my opinion of your fool of a brother even lower. Somehow, there is still space for it to sink.

“That I’ll agree on,” I replied. “You can hardly say you’ve had the best relations with those above.”

Better than you might think. Consider who writes those books, and consider the Unholy Union only happened because they invaded first.

The unholy union refers to the marriage that had produced Her Most Profane Majesty, held after that failed invasion of the Hells. He wasn’t wrong.

“I’ll not lie. It’s been an interesting discussion,” I said. “But I do need to focus on this. If you wouldn’t mind?”

It is more likely that Fey thing the mortals foolishly think they have shackled will end up messing up your efforts than I, but I will be silent.

Not wrong, but I’d locked the trapdoor for now and if Tagashin wanted to force the issue she’d find a few surprises trying to make her way inside. I turned to the mirror, putting a hand on my face as I reached for magic.

A quick glance around the room for spirits- a few wisps either attracted or conjured by emotion, keeping a healthy distance. They likely detected the Imp, and even as small and incapable of complex thought as they were, they knew to avoid its presence.

There were a few different ways to handle excess tissue left over at the end of bio-sculpting. One was to store it, typically in an air-sealed container, and hide it away till you needed it again. Temperature controlled, other things that needed magic to bridge the gaps in order to keep it actually living tissue. Clean as well, or at least as clean as could be managed. An alchemical solution typically manages all of these issues. It solved the iproblem simply and neatly; just keep it there till you need to return to your base form and then reintegrate it into yourself.

Spare flesh and tissue was actually a thriving market, especially for people who wanted more flesh added to themselves. However one should never ask too many questions about how those materials were sourced.

Of course, the most significant problem with this method when you are altering yourself is if your Sculpt got disrupted. Only other bio-sculptors could do it, but the effects of your body trying to return to its baseline form without the required parts were horrible. If you’d removed only a small part of yourself, it typically wasn’t that bad. Still, if you’d removed major parts and the magic started trying to spread what was left of your body to fill in those holes, moving tissue and organs without care to try and return you to your baseline form, death might be one of the luckier results.

I preferred the second method, which was just integrating the tissue inside yourself in one way or another. Messing around with densities took longer and was more challenging, but ultimately safer. And my questions to the Montagues had indicated the cast wouldn’t be searched.

First things first. I grabbed a bag from the table and hooked it up to a needle. Affixing it to my vein took a few seconds, and then a while longer for the numbing effects of the moprhine to kick in.

It was necessary to keep the pain down for full body adjustments, but I’d need to be careful. I’d seen this claim too many lives after helping to save them. I couldn't directly control the morphine's flow once they were inside my bloodstream, just influence it to an extent by where the blood flowed. I hooked the bag up to an overhead hook, letting gravity pull It into my veins.

The horns were first to be physically adjusted, and I grabbed the left one with my hand and pushed against it. The horn compacted in, spreading out above the skin as I forced it into a cube of keratin poking out. The part below my skin remained the same, I was just making the horns easier to manipulate with Biosculpting. Having keratin push against skin and tissue while modifying the latter so they didn’t rip was the opposite of that.

The horns spread further, and more and more came into contact with my skin. It would give me a larger surface area to work with once I started transferring the keratin surrounding the live bone forming the core of my horns. Once it was all transferred, I’d manipulate my bone structure directly to handle what was left.

It was amusing thinking of this versus the public perception of Biosculpting. I couldn’t just push my horns inside my skull, they were bone, I’d need to sever them first then move the internals of my head out of the way, sink the horns inside, and then whittle them down much like I was already doing. So much work to make one part of the process a little faster, with that other work easily doubling the time taken.

Meanwhile, in a novel I’d been recommended about a highly respected human doctor who used Biosculpting to turn into an Infernal in order to indulge his ‘base pleasures’, something he found easier to do both because of his new mask of anatomy and the ‘profane nature of his new body’. Whenever he wanted to change back, just push the horns in, no care for displaced mass or biology or even the fact Biosculpting couldn’t change species.

Honestly, the only thing more disappointing about that novel besides the bad science and racism was the fact it had never gone into any detail about what those ‘base urges’ were.

Not that I was interested in things like that, of course. Some detail would have been nice is all. For….context.

Besides, your tastes run more to those romance novels you read, don’t they?

I opened my mouth to snap back at the imp, only to realize that had been my own thoughts. I didn’t know which possibility was more disturbing, that I’d begun thinking of its response even when it wasn’t talking, or that even my own brain was starting to tease me over my fantasies.

The keratin was absorbed and sent around my arm bones to help reinforce them a little. Some to my legs, spread it all across my body and pack it tightly so the effects wouldn’t be apparent on my figure. I didn’t have so much time that I could alter density too much, and I’d go for a shorter height and broader frame.

Before I started shortening all my bones, first, the ones that weren’t going to be needed as part of the disguise. The bones of my horns sank into my skull, compacting and joining the bones of my head, thickening them. The sensation of them pushing against the skin wasn’t pleasant, but I’d also have some of that to spread around.

My tail began to shrink, practically shriveling as I forced cells from it inside me. Bone compressing, muscle and fat being sucked in. Skin grew loose as the contents went inside me, being spread around so I didn’t enlarge too large in one part of my body. The tail’s skin shriveled as it was drawn inside.

Internal bones were compacted just a little at a time, a careful balancing act of reducing without causing my body to collapse in on myself. Then working on skin, changing the color throughout it.

Keratin from my hoof went up my leg, joining the other stores as I sculpted the flesh left behind, forcing it to grow out, redirecting bone from my horns and tail down there, nerves growing as wriggling toes poked their way into an existence. The rest of my legs needed more work as well, adjustment to bend the other way as well.

I’d done this before, but every time, it felt strange, having these wriggling stubby fingers at the end of my leg. What are you even for?

I wouldn’t be making myself human, not truly. There were differences at a genetic level that nobody yet had the skill to fully alter without a result of death. What I would be doing is hiding the more obvious signs. Sinking keratin into flesh and spreading it out throughout my body. Adjusting melanin to a human tone. The hooves would be a more difficult adjustment. I wouldn’t be reaching inside my still injured leg, and we’d be relying on other ways to keep that hidden from plain sight and examination. Paint, a prosthetic, and long clothing would have to suffice. I’d work on a variety of substances that should join all those together seamlessly to the naked eye. According to the Montague’s, that should be the most rigorous method of examining my leg for the first layer of the Archives.

Minor details now. Sculpting the flesh around my ears, forcing it to be rounded. My eyes itched as I adjusted color and structure. Fingers softened, becoming more fleshy with each second. My teeth cracked as I forcibly adjusted structures, flattening and compacting. Tiny adjustments made their effects known as I kept at each, carefully removing and reshaping tissue, and redistributing the excess.

I looked at my face in the mirror. Skin a light brown, no horns, no pointed ears, the small pattern of scales faded completely into new flesh, eyes a simple green, hair a plain brown. It wasn’t hard to picture this is what I would have looked like if I’d been born human. I hesitantly smiled, only a few pointed teeth in my mouth, none with the same sharpness as my hell-given teeth. I brushed my cheek with a soft finger. It felt…softer than usual, not quite as slick. No slight scales to brush over.

If my mother had not gotten involved with a duke of hell, well I wouldn’t be alive, but if I’d been just from a marriage with another human, or even a race not tainted by the diabolic, would life have been easier?

Probably. Diabolism was the reason we’d been forced from the family home and had been the reason for most everything since then. For why I was holed up in this house. For why I was doing this, to begin with. If I’d been born without it, if I’d been born looking like this instead, would I?

I shook my head, trying to chase that thought from my mind. It wasn’t worthwhile dwelling on hands dealt. As I’d told the Imp, I needed to focus on this instead.

The hard part was over now that the keratin was spread, melanin adjusted, teeth refit, and all the other details. I itched all over and everything felt wrong, especially the clack of my teeth as I closed my mouth. Still, it's time to manipulate the flesh once again.

Going in as the human version of mys-as a human who looked like me would be enough to raise alarm bells. And similar for anyone looking like Sister Danielle Waters and Katheryn Falara.

The photograph was such an excellent aid for that. It's more perfect than an artist’s sketch and widespread enough that you could get ones of more than just the most famous people. In this case, a newspaper article from six months back about the flooding devastated most of Illtaea. If anyone remembered the young farmer’s daughter, it would be as a distant memory hard to place. And if anyone had a good recall, that was what the alteration of facial features and artificial aging would be for.

Artificial aging only. Aging cells and organs was something you couldn’t take back. Cosmetic changes only to put me, or the Iltaian girl, well into middle age.

I looked outside to see the sun already past noon and well on its way to evening. My stomach suddenly growled from not eating and the energy I’d consumed doing this. When had so much time-?

Well, it just went to show how much one could get lost. I got off the stool, muscles protesting as I got onto the unsteady foot and hoof. I unhooked the bag of morphine, hoping the numbing effect would last long enough to get a bit to eat.

After that, it would be time to finish the disguise, sleep, and prepare for tomorrow.