Sonnet: The Cities of Steam, Brass, and Aether

Chapter Eighteen

Vilgis was sitting at a table while bent over several loose sheets of parchment, scribbling notes down at a furious speed.

There were beakers lining shelves throughout the room. Each one was filled with strange goo, followed by a plethora of different body parts; one body part was in each jar, there were easily hundreds of them upon the walls.

Strange trinkets lay across the tables and floors, along with various notes from different students who left their work behind for later. Almost everything in the room was constructed of brass, just like most of the inner cities of Sonnet.

There was the lingering smell of chemicals permeating the air, along with the ever present smell of shit that was never cleaned up from far, far down below the laboratory.

In this vision, he was eighteen once again; and sitting in the laboratory he frequented so often during his time at the academy. Nobody really used it but himself and a younger student whose name was Violet.

On the table behind him was a myriad of strange tools and implements laying around several large beakers filled with various fluids and powders.

"Maybe if I combine that with this? No, that might catch fire actually... perhaps this and... never mind, those were extremely reactive when combined with each other last time." He was talking aloud to himself, as nobody else was in the room with him currently.

It was less of a room, and more of a large platform inside of a peculiar, circular building. It was designed to be a storage unit for beasts on the lower floors, with the laboratory perched above; it reminded Vilgis more of a zoo than any sort of laboratory.

Except the creatures in this zoo were all Faye, and they weren't here to be taken care of; or to have people come and gawk at them after paying a buck.

Rather these creatures were here for their personal experimentation. They kept them locked in huge cages below at all times, in case a student ever needed to retrieve certain... resources from them.

"Damn it. Looks like I am all out of ground unicorn horn, I guess I should go get some more..." he stood there for several minutes without moving.

He didn't mind being in here, or around the Faye creatures for that matter. In fact, he actually kind of enjoyed it, and felt bad for their circumstances.

That didn't mean he would ever think of freeing them of course, that would be a guaranteed death sentence for him. His father would probably even be the one to carry it out, he tolerates absolutely no mercy when it comes to Faye...

"Hellllooo!! Are you there? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, don't say anything!"

Once he finally snapped out of his stupor, he realized that Violet was now standing in front of him. How long had he been just standing there for?

"Oh uh hey Vi." He said while trying not to blush, although she was two years his junior; making her Desmond's age, he couldn't help but feel a strong infatuation for this kind girl.

"You okay? You were just standing there, like some sort of ghoul or maybe a zombie." She began putting her arms up and making zombie-like noises.

"Are you a mummy or a zombie? I can't tell with all that incessant moaning!" He teased while swatting her arms down playfully.

"A mummy is just a zombie with bandages on, now are you gonna tell me why you were zonking out so hard or what?" She shot him a look that was mixed with concern and annoyance.

"Oh that? It's nothing really." He didn't know why, but he was suddenly embarrassed by why he froze up.

He absolutely hated killing Faye though, and would avoid doing it whenever possible. Oftentimes when he ran out of materials for his studies, he would wait until another student did the ghastly deed and collect materials from that.