Pride & Humility

XI

Beta: TaintedLetter

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Elizabeth clapped her hands together in delight upon seeing the seated cadavers' faces melt off. She had propped up a little over a dozen of recently deceased corpses in her airtight sealed testing room before detonating a little gas bomb she had been experimenting with.

Selim was munching on some gingersnaps Elizabeth had baked for him last night. He had been the one to collect the corpses for her after bed. "Wow."

Elizabeth was about to respond to her best friend when two horrible muffled screams came the room. To her surprise it would seem that two of her gifted corpses were actually still alive!

Well, not for long, obviously, since their faces were melted off and the rest of their skin was following suit. The man and woman stumbled for a few seconds, clutching at their flesh, and writhing in agony.

And then they fell over dead, and both Elizabeth and Selim stared at them mutely for a moment.

Elizabeth waited another minute to see if anything else would happen, but when it didn't she turned back to Selim with a beaming smile. "Thank you! I had a feeling sulfur mustard mixed with concentrated loxosceles reclusa venom would be fascinating."

"How long will it linger in the air?" Selim asked, nodding to the yellow gas inside.

"A while, it's very heavy," Elizabeth said, flipping on the ventilation inside.

"Any cure?"

"Technically yes, but I wouldn't bother. It acts too quickly, and it's more of an acid than a true poison."

Selim stuffed more gingersnaps in one of his mouths. "Cool. That was pretty neat to watch."

"I can make some grenades if you'd like some," Elizabeth offered.

"Only make a few," Selim advised, "and keep them with you. I trust you to know how to use them with discretion. I don't think this weapon should be publically shared just yet." He paused. "To be honest, it might be better if you kept it under wraps until after—after we're finished with the current plan."

Elizabeth didn't know what the current plan was, but she had heard Selim reference it multiple times over the years. She knew it was something that he and Papa had been working on long before she was born, but she didn't know anything else aside from that.

She smiled at that. "Okay. Do you want me to move the plants that produce the ingredients to a new greenhouse?"

"Yeah," Selim said, nodding. "I'll take care of that, though."

Elizabeth glanced back at her testing room. "M'kay. Well, it'll take a while to for the vents to clear out the gas, so why don't I start on your croquembouche tower?"

Her best friend gave her a smile worth dozens.

Elizabeth cleaned up her notes—Selim assisted her, his shadows making quick work—and separated anything pertaining to the gas she had just tested. She had decided to name it Vestard due to its unique combination of, in layman's terms, sulfur mustard and brown recluse venom.

Everything related to the Vestard project was placed in another box for Selim to hide away, or do whatever with. Elizabeth honestly didn't care. Making deadly weapons was more of a side interest than her true focus. Every now and again a wild idea would pop in her head and she couldn't shake it out until she gave it a shot.