The light in Faewild Prime didn't change. There was no sunrise, just a gentle brightening of the ambient glow as if the world itself was turning up a dimmer switch. Rajendra woke to find a simple meal waiting on a ledge that had grown from the wall—a bowl of tart, sweet berries, a translucent gel that tasted of herbs and nuts, and water so pure it felt like drinking light.
A soft chime sounded in his mind.
The Mad Scientist: The scholars are ready for you in the Verdant Atrium. Please follow the guiding lights.
As he stepped out of his room, a trail of softly pulsing blue fungus lit up along the base of the corridor wall. He followed it through the living palace, passing silent, graceful attendants who gave him nods of detached courtesy. No one spoke.
The Verdant Atrium was a vast, dome-ceilinged chamber open to the sky. Sunlight—or whatever passed for it here—filtered down through a lattice of glowing vines. In the center stood a group of four Faewild scholars, their robes simple and functional. And beside them, watching like a statuesque guardian, was Lady Elara—The Mad Scientist.
She acknowledged him with the slightest tilt of her chin.
The Mad Scientist: These are my foremost biometric analysts. The procedures will be painless. They wish to map your physiological baseline—neural activity, endocrine responses, cellular resonance. Stand on the marked circle.
Rajendra did as instructed, stepping onto a faintly glowing ring on the mossy floor. The scholars didn't approach him. Instead, they gestured in the air, summoning holographic controls. Soft beams of light—gold, silver, and a deep indigo—washed over him from various points in the atrium. He felt a faint tingling, a sense of pressure in his temples, but no pain.
"Is this necessary?" he asked aloud, more to break the eerie silence than anything.
The Mad Scientist: *All knowledge is necessary. You are a unique point of data. A Tier-0 entity who trades across dimensions. Your biology is primitive, but your pattern of activity is… anomalous. We wish to understand the vessel that carries such chaotic intent.*
One of the scholars, a being with bark-like skin and eyes like chips of amber, spoke softly. The System translated in Rajendra's mind.
Scholar: Elevated cortisol levels. Fluctuating dopamine. Inconsistent neural synchronization. A high degree of background psychic static. Most irregular.
The Mad Scientist: He is from a world of unresolved conflicts. The static is the noise of unchecked emotion. Note the patterns. Compare them to the emotional spectra in the acquired light-narratives.
Rajendra almost laughed. They were diagnosing his soul like a faulty engine.
"It's called stress," he said dryly. "And maybe regret."
The Mad Scientist: Stress is an inefficient conservation of energy. Regret is a failure of predictive calculation. Yet in your narratives, these states are often dramatized, even romanticized. I am correlating the data.
The scans continued. They measured his reaction to sudden, soft sounds (he flinched), to shifts in light (his pupils dilated), even to projected images of simple shapes. It was dehumanizing, yet conducted with such clinical detachment it felt less like an insult and more like being examined by advanced, curious insects.
After what felt like an hour, the lights faded. The scholars conferred silently via subtle hand gestures.
The Mad Scientist: The baseline is recorded. You may move freely within the palace grounds now. Your body presents no contagious pathogens, only fascinating inefficiencies.
"Glad I'm not a biohazard," Rajendra muttered.
She either didn't catch the sarcasm or ignored it.
The Mad Scientist: Come. I will show you the Grand Vault. It is where we archive templates of perfected life.
She led him out of the atrium down a winding, downward-sloping passage. The air grew cooler, carrying a scent like old paper and cold stone. The Grand Vault was not a room of books, but a cavernous space whose walls were made of hexagonal crystalline panels, each glowing softly from within. Suspended in each panel was a single, perfect specimen—a flower of frozen light, a fossilized insect with gem-like wings, a spiral shell that seemed to hold a miniature galaxy.
The Mad Scientist: Every life form here has been optimized. Beauty without decay. Symmetry without mutation. Purpose without waste.
"It's like a museum," Rajendra observed.
The Mad Scientist: It is a library. These are the successful conclusions. The failures are composted to fuel new iterations.
They walked slowly down the silent rows. Rajendra's eyes were drawn to a panel holding a creature that looked like a cross between an orchid and a hummingbird, frozen in mid-flight. It was stunning. And utterly lifeless.
As they turned a corner, he wasn't paying attention. His shoulder brushed against an outcropping of sharp, crystalline coral that formed part of the wall. A searing pain lanced across his bicep. He winced, pulling back. A shallow, three-inch cut welled up with beads of blood.
"Ah. Damn," he hissed, clamping his other hand over it.
The Mad Scientist: You are damaged.
"It's nothing. Just a scratch."
She made a subtle gesture. A steward, who seemed to materialize from the shadows, approached with a small orb. He pressed it to Rajendra's arm. There was a cool, tingling sensation, and when the orb was removed, the cut was gone, leaving only a faint pink line.
"Thank you," Rajendra said, flexing his arm.
The Mad Scientist: The coral is sharp. It is meant to be observed, not touched. The path is clear.
They continued their walk. But as they moved away, Rajendra glanced back.
The Mad Scientist had lingered for a second by the crystalline outcropping. With a slow, deliberate movement, she extended one slender finger. On the sharpest point of the coral, a single, crimson droplet of his blood still shimmered.
She touched the tip of her finger to it, collecting the droplet. Then, with a gaze of intense, analytical focus, she raised her finger to her lips and tasted it.
Her eyes, already sharp, widened almost imperceptibly. Her body went still. It wasn't shock; it was the stillness of a supercomputer processing a universe of new data.
Rajendra turned away quickly, a cold prickle running down his spine. He had seen it. She didn't know he had seen it.
When she caught up to him, her face was its usual mask of serene composure. But her eyes held a new, almost feverish intensity.
The Mad Scientist: Your biochemical profile is even more complex than the scans indicated. Adrenaline. Cortisol. Trace elements of lithium and serotonin. And beneath it… a sustained, low-grade neuro-signature of… melancholic ambition. It has a flavor.
"A flavor?" Rajendra asked, keeping his voice neutral.
The Mad Scientist: Data has many forms. Chemical, luminous, resonant. And yes, gustatory. Your blood tastes of… unresolved narrative. It is pungent. Complex. Nothing here tastes like that.
They exited the vault, returning to the softer light of the upper gardens. The silence between them was different now—charged, inquisitive.
The Mad Scientist: Your week of sanctuary will be respected. But our contract stipulated an exchange. You promised narrative data.
"I told you about my… relationship problem."
The Mad Scientist: That was a summary. I require the raw data. The decision trees. The emotional vectors. I wish to understand not just what you did, but the sensation of doing it. The taste of choosing betrayal over truth. The texture of ambition scraping against regret.
She stopped walking and turned to face him fully, her green eyes boring into his.
The Mad Scientist: Tell me, Merchant. When you lied to the one called Shanti, what did it feel like in your throat before the words came out? Was it dry? Tight? Did it taste like metal?
Rajendra stared at her. She wasn't asking for gossip. She was asking for a sensory map of sin.
He took a deep breath. The air here was so clean it hurt.
"It tasted like chalk," he said quietly, surprised at his own answer. "And my throat… it felt like I was swallowing something too big. Something that would get stuck and never go down."
The Mad Scientist: Fascinating. She didn't blink. Correlate: physical constriction with ethical compromise. The body remembers what the mind rationalizes. Continue.
And so, in the too-perfect gardens of a silent world, Rajendra Shakuniya began to confess. Not his crimes, but his sensations. The burn of shame, the cold weight of a lie, the hollow aftertaste of a victory that cost too much. And The Mad Scientist drank it all in, her expression one of rapt, terrifying hunger, collecting every word like a drop of blood from a sharp crystal—a sample of the chaos she could never grow in her own perfect garden.