Singed Short Story: "My Muse"

Click.

My chest heaves as the bellows activate, life-affirming air seeping into my respirator as I awake. There is a familiar rhythmic pumping with my breathing, or is it my breathing that plays to the tune? Why am I tied to this machine?

I get up and look at myself. Septic cloth bandages wrap around my body, covering the scarred skin beneath. The cost of countless calculated, risky experiments. What was I chasing then? I can't remember.

The notes. They'll have the answer. That's why I write them, of course, so I don't forget.

I drag myself to my feet. When did my legs get so thin? They are as twigs. How are they holding my form up?

The notes. Find the notes.

The laboratory. I'm a scientist. Bubbles. Vials. Burners. Liquids and gases of all sorts propped on shelves. A large, reinforced window overlooking a smoke-choked city. High above it, a much grander one, yet in turn lessened by its loftiness. Zaun and Piltover. My home base. My laboratory.

Find the notes.

I hobble, slowly at first, then with greater confidence. My stride is faster than expected. Is it because I've so little mass? My muscles feel taut and sinewed. They are conditioned somehow. I catch sight of a mirror nearby. I look.

An old man. Wrinkled, hairless, one eye glazed green by some panacea. I remember now. It was blind, so I fixed it. Now I see through it clearly. Sharper than before, even. I fixed it, and made it better. Why didn't I do that to the other eye? I forget again.

I try to lick my lips under my mask, but find nothing there. Did I I lose them in an accident? There are few teeth. How do I eat? I examine my head. I can see the contours of my skull, my skin a taut, pale shroud over it. Underneath, my mind. My greatest asset. Find the notes.

Over there, by the slab! At last, the object of my obsession. The notes, my notes, where I write everything down. Every idea, every discovery, every success and failure. It has everything. Why can't I remember what is in it?

I pick up the book, stained with oils and acid marks yet mostly intact thanks to the chemical preservatives I soaked it in. It is durable despite its appearance. The cover, a lacquered black. No title. The pages are yellowed and frayed. The smudges of carelessly dirty fingers grace their edges. I recognize some of the smudges as being blood. A lot of them, actually.

I flip it open. The very first page has an instruction: "Take Potion #1."

The nearby counter. A flask containing something green. "Potion #1" is written on the label, clear and clean. I took a great deal of care to ensure I found it now.

I hesitate. Did I? What if this is a ruse? Remember.

Remember what? Your name. Look under the bandages for your name. Where? Left arm.

I pull them back. I see it now. Splotched, warped flesh. The fresh air against it aches. I feel frail, as if my whole body had been singed.

Singed. It clicks. My name is Singed. I wrote this book, my experiment log. It is telling me what to do so I can remember everything.

I snatch the potion and pull the cork off. A puff of verdant smoke rises. I can't smell it because of the mask, but I know the scent from looking at it, a sweet sulfur with a sting. The mask has a circular receptacle. The potion's lips fit perfectly into it. I twist, and a mechanism sucks the liquid out and feeds it through a tube directly into my mouth. I swallow.

The effects are instant. I feel sharp. Yes, Singed. My name is Singed. I know what I wanted.

I pull the potion from the receptacle, accidentally shattering it as it flies from my hand. I flex my fingers, lean and lethal. I needed them to be for the work. I flip through my notes. The Ionian Campaign, of course. Satisfying work. Excellent payment in notes and samples of sanguimancy for study as well, and a fine stipend to fund my pursuits to boot. Of course, once that ran dry I just turned to keeping the Chem-Barons supplied with newer opiates. Boring work, but necessary. I didn't put them where they were for nothing after all.

Where was I? Oh, yes. My latest and greatest pursuit, a vexing conundrum whose answer was hoarded by the selfish, secret-keeping specters of our world: Immortality.

I flip through it. Now I'm beginning to see the bigger picture. For all my genius, there was one thing I had been able to slow but not stop: my own physical and mental degradation. For all my gifts, I am no god like the Ascended of old, no cosmic thief like the Aspects of Targon. I was mere flesh.

I had considered the methods for my perpetuity. No matter what, I always turned to the same conclusion: magic. How tragic! So many means of reaching my answer and all of them tied to some abhorrent spiritual force or another. I could not stomach the notion of relying on a finger-waggling mage or frolicking, frivolous forest urchin to save me. I devised a theoretical - later proven - procedure on soul transference via brain surgery, but that was also unacceptable. This body is old, but it is mine, and besides all that it did not salvage my own mental degradation. The brain was still the same.

This dementia is a curse upon all creation. My mind is a reservoir of knowledge, a repository for life's hidden truths laid bare by science! I had to preserve it at all costs.

I flip through my notes to find the latest ideas. Ah. Seems I'd found a promising prospect after all. If magic was the unavoidable answer, magic it would be. I was no stranger to concoctions and elixirs that could copy the powers of the supernatural and divine after all. My latest notion was to acquire the heart of a divine creature tied to the essence of life. I knew that Ionia alone was replete with such beings, but to go there personally would have been suicide. There, I was the single most hated non-imperial and every peasant and their chicken knew my face. I couldn't hire the usual band of thugs. Too far away, too unreliable, too incompetent. They'd never accomplish my goal and even if they did they would barter their trophy to some rich, brainless cretin.

Oh, here we are! My perfect solution.

A beast. A hunting hound. A chemically enslaved agent to enact this predatory mission on my behalf, with just enough intelligence to get to and from wherever I needed them to go. I had drafted the required formulae and schematics to achieve the transmutation, but according to my notes, a suitable specimen had yet to be found. I'd already disposed of dozens of failed candidates.

No time like the present. Let's see what my beautiful Zaun offers me today.