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“He went in alone?!” Kaveh gasped.
The matra at the edge of the collapsing cave formed a barrier, preventing anyone from entering. They had to hold Kaveh back as he tried to press past them.
“Sir, I’m sorry,” the matra to his right told him. “The Scribe instructed us not to allow anyone through. This site has a severed ley line, and is biochemically unstable.”
Kaveh scoffed. “And you let Alhaitham go in by himself? He’s just a scholar!”
“He insisted he was the only one capable of navigating the environment inside, and a child’s life was at risk. His orders were logical.”
Another matra stepped in. “Excuse me, but who are you? What relation do you have to Alhaitham?”
Kaveh froze. “He, uh… we… it’s a bit—
He was interrupted by a low rumbling from deep inside the cave. A bright flash of purple light and a boom emanated from deep within, and the walls started to collapse.
Kaveh’s heart caught in his chest.
But then a broad-shouldered figure sprinted through the dust of the collapsing cave, carrying in his arms a small child with fox ears. Thank god.
Alhaitham handed the child off to one of the matra, giving quick instructions. He looked entirely unfazed by the fact that he’d narrowly escaped a cave-in. Well, except for the dust on his face.
Kaveh ran up to him, finally pressing his way past the
matra.
“Are you okay?” He asked, looking Alhaitham up and down frantically.
Alhaitham raised a brow. “I’m fine.”
Kaveh nodded, then grabbed his roommate by the shoulders, shaking him.
“What in celestia’s name were you thinking?! You told me you were off to pick up groceries, and the next thing I know I’m hearing about the Akademiya’s Scribe heading a rescue mission into an abandoned fatui lab with a ley line disorder?”
Alhaitham remained stone-faced and unbothered. “Something came up.”
“Something came up? Next time you decide to risk your life,” Kaveh crossed his arms and flicked his gaze away, “maybe think about letting me know!”
“I didn’t think you’d care.”
Kaveh pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course you didn’t.”
Then he turned on his heel and marched away. Fine, whatever. As long as Alhaitham was alright.
———
Before Alhaitham returned to his house, he made a stop at the building where the Akademiya would be keeping the child he’d rescued.
He visited with the child first, who appeared mostly normal. The child had fox ears, however, which he hadn’t possessed until the fatui had started experimenting on him using a snapped ley line.
The kid seemed to be functioning normally, save for a hyper-awareness to noises and a few minor non-human behaviors. Strangely, the doctors said that his mannerisms were more animal-like now than they’d been only an hour ago, as if his symptoms were progressing.
Even so, they claimed that he would return to normal within twelve to twenty-hours, now that the ley line disturbance had been purified.
On his way out, he grabbed the case notes from the doctors there. He noticed an unusual tremor in his hand as he took them. He couldn’t quite keep his fingers stable. Concerning, especially considering the environment he’d been exposed to in that cave. It shouldn’t have been long enough to affect him; He was nearly certain.
He thought back to the walls shifting color in front of his eyes, and the small animals skittering on the ground on paws, then talons, then insectoid legs.
He’d destroyed the severed ley line, so the disorder should’ve been cleansed.
But he supposed the child was still affected, despite that. Ley lines weren’t a topic he’d studied in depth—he couldn’t claim to be an expert. He’d take a medical examination tomorrow morning, just to be certain.
He skimmed the case notes on his brisk walk home. The sun was falling, and the night’s first stars were beginning to appear. He noticed an unwarranted chill in the air for late spring, which sent him shivering.
He put that annoyance aside and focused on the case notes.
The Fatui have discovered a way to utilize ley lines to alter the biology of human test subjects. The project was intended to enhance soldier’s capabilities by providing them with animal advantages— flight, enhanced hearing, faster swimming, etc. The project was abandoned after splicing animal DNA was determined to be too unpredictable, as the desired trait was often not correctly applied to the subject.
When he looked up from the file, he was already at his door.
He reached up to knock, rather than bother to grab his key.
Something was wrong with his fingers — there was a silvery texture, smooth and ridged, over his knuckles. He blinked and it was gone.
He’d like to say he’d imagined it, but logically he knew something had been there. Hopefully just a few inconsequential side effects from his exposure to the ley line.
If it became anything more obvious, he’d have to give Kaveh an explanation, and that was something he desperately hoped to avoid.
He knocked on the door, and heard footsteps a few moments later.
With a slow creak, Kaveh opened the door a crack, but when he saw it was just Alhaitham he threw it open.
“So, you finally showed up! I thought perhaps you’d run off on another mortally dangerous mission without telling me. Thank god I was wrong. I got takeout. Yours is on the counter, and it’s probably cold by now.”
———
Kaveh thought that Alhaitham was acting incredibly off.
He had only eaten half his rice bowl, even though Kaveh knew it was from his favorite restaurant.
On top of that, he refused to tell Kaveh what type of ley line disorder he’d run into in that cave. And he was more silent than usual over dinner, which was saying something for Alhaitham.
And now he was shivering horribly even though it was barely a cold night. Of course, he was trying to hide it as much as possible, but Kaveh could see his clear discomfort.
“Here,” Kaveh insisted, reaching over and grabbing a throw blanket from the couch behind him. “Just take the blanket.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“You’re visibly shaking, and I swear your fingers look blue. Take the blanket.”
Alhaitham caved, reaching over the table to take the soft checkered blanket and even wrapping it around himself. This told Kaveh his roommate was legitimately in distress.
“…are you dying?”
Alhaitham glowered. “I’m only cold. Why are you so concerned, anyways? Are you worried your only source of income is about to bite the dust?”
Alhaitham took a gracious bite of his rice, as if to prove he was perfectly normal.
Kaveh sighed, exasperated. Alhaitham was infuriating, especially when something was wrong and he was trying to cover it up.
“Sure. Because this is about my debts.”
Alhaitham swallowed his rice and casually opened his mouth to reply, but then he froze, and his eyes widened in what looked like legitimate surprise. He coughed, wheezed, and then coughed again.
“Are you okay?!” Kaveh shouted.
Alhaitham didn’t reply—oh my god he actually was dying—but instead reached up and grabbed the side of his throat. He seemed to be struggling for air.
Kaveh realized he must be choking. And from the rice that Kaveh had bought him.
Kaveh jumped up, slamming back his chair, fully prepared to execute the Heimlich maneuver, when Alhaitham yanked down the shirt collar at his neck.
And revealed three small slits in the skin of his throat, which appeared to be stretching larger.
“Archons…” Kaveh whispered, eyes locked on the strange red slices. “What’s happening to you? What can I do?”
Alhaitham still didn’t say a thing. He might not be able to, considering the way he was struggling with air. He reached up and signed out, “Ley line.” The slits on his neck were shifting, moving in and out in sync each time Alhaitham attempted to take a breath in, as if they were…
Gills.
Kaveh locked eyes with Alhaitham.
“Do I need… to fill the tub? Do you need water?”
Alhaitham squeezed his eyes shut in a grimace, and nodded.
———
It was a point of scientific debate whether fish felt pain when their gills were exposed to air.
On land, a fish’s gill arches would eventually collapse, and as the delicate inner material of the gill dried out it damaged their structure significantly. But did they feel this in the form of pain?
Currently, Alhaitham felt himself experiencing this process firsthand, and would have a new perspective to bring to that debate.
Maybe he would write a paper on it, eventually.
The newly formed gills produced a strong burning sensation. It was unusual, to experience such a searing pain from a body part he hadn’t had five minutes ago. He assumed it was similar to the feeling of human lungs drowning, though he had only read about that in theory. He considered whether he currently had human lungs or not. He couldn’t feel them, and an attempt to breathe only contracted the gills on his neck, but that didn’t prove anything. It most likely depended on how far his affliction had interfered with his anatomy.
He tried to focus on something else.
Kaveh was yelling something about the tub being nearly high enough to stick his head in.
He wanted to get up, but he felt frozen in place, his hands clapped over the sides of his neck in an attempt to protect himself from the air’s sting. He didn’t know if this was his body’s innate reaction to his lack of oxygen, a simple response to pain, or if this was some fish-related instinct from whatever DNA had apparently entangled with his in that cave. What he did know is that he had very little control over it.
Yes, he could write a thought-provoking paper on this later.
He could feel the gills beneath his hands flexing in and out, in time with his body’s spasming attempts to take in water.
The burning sensation was escalating.
Someone grabbed his elbow, and his eyes jolted open.
Kaveh was there. He felt a surge of relief, strangely, just to see his roommate’s face.
Kaveh pulled him up from his chair. Kaveh then tried to pull his palm from his neck, to guide him, but Alhaitham wouldn’t release his hands. Something in him was screaming to keep his neck covered. He shook his head slightly, unable to convey it in any other way.
Kaveh seemed to understand. His roommate led him by the elbow down the hallway, and to the large tub.
“Okay, let’s go. Just a few more steps.”
As soon as Alhaitham saw the water, he threw his leg over the side of the tub and slid in without any regard for ruining his expensive clothes. The liquid hit the sides of his throat, and he felt instant cool relief. The burning subsided. He pulled his head underwater.
He relaxed, slightly. Was it over?
He could tell that… something was happening with the gills, the small sections inside moving in response to the liquid, and the pressure to breathe was lessened, but water wasn’t flowing easily yet.
He tried to inhale through his nose underwater, as strange as the idea seemed, but he couldn’t create any suction.
No lungs, then.
He thought back to some of the courses he took with the Amurta darshan. Fish drew oxygen from water by opening their mouths to pull in water and then closing them to expel it through their gills.
He felt ridiculous, but that wasn’t the concern at this moment. He opened his mouth slightly, and water rushed into his throat. He closed his mouth, and the water pressed out through the slits in his neck.
It felt like taking a deep breath of fresh air. It was strangely thick air, of course, but a relieving dose of oxygen nonetheless.
He took in a few more breaths, trying to become more used to the sensation of water flowing through his neck. He stared at the rippling surface of the water from underneath.
Kaveh was up there, and he probably needed to tell him he had recovered.
———
Kaveh sat on the toilet lid, watching his fully clothed roommate breathing underwater in their bathtub. He still hadn’t surfaced, and Kaveh refused to leave the room until he was certain he was alright.
This was an… eventful night.
Who did Kaveh try to contact in this situation? The matra? The akademiya? An actual archon?
He couldn’t believe the fact that over dinner Alhaitham had the audacity to shrug when Kaveh asked him what the ley line’s disorder was.
Was Alhaitham turning into a fish? If he turned into a fish, Kaveh was taking the house.
He’d feel really bad about it though.
The water rippled, and Alhaitham finally surfaced.
The first thing he did was sigh, and Kaveh could see the gills—and they were much larger and clearly gills by now—release water as air left his mouth.
“Thanks for the heart attack,” Kaveh groaned. “I thought you were actually dying.”
Alhaitham reached his hands up to sign something, and then seemed to change his mind and set them back down in the water.
“Are you turning into a fish?” Kaveh asked.
Alhaitham signed out “I’m not sure,” and then, “probably not.”
“How reassuring. You can’t speak right now, right? That’s why you’re signing?”
“I don’t think I have lungs.”
Kaveh just blinked. Sure. Okay. Because that made sense.
Then he laughed, without any humor in it. “So you’re part fish, maybe, and you’re missing lungs. Did you know this might happen when you came home today?”
Alhaitham went underwater, breathing for a second. Kaveh watched him subtly opening and closing his mouth, probably a way he’d found to pump water through the gills. He looked ridiculous, like… well, a fish. Then he surfaced again.
“No. I expected, worst case scenario, some form of animal ears for a day or so. We have people researching the condition, and by their estimate it should wear off on its own by around midday tomorrow.”
“You can’t just stay like this until then. I can’t leave you like that.”
Alhaitham paused. After a second, he started signing again. “I apologize for earlier. The situation was more serious than I first expected. From here on out, I can handle this. I don’t intend to bother you with my own problems.”
Kaveh scoffed, incredulous. “You don’t want to bother me? You nearly drowned at the dinner table. Have you ever even considered that I might actually be concerned for your wellbeing?”
Alhaitham stayed still. He slowly shrugged off his now soaking jacket, and laid it on the side of the tub.
“I can handle this on my own.”
“Oh really? You sure couldn’t handle it ten minutes ago.”
Instead of replying, Alhaitham dipped underwater again for a few more breaths. He surfaced quicker than last time, brows furrowed. He started cupping the bath’s water in his concerningly pale hands, holding it a distance up in the air, and then letting it drop back into the water.
What was he…
Alhaitham turned to Kaveh, dropping the water in his hands so he could sign and answer his roommate’s unspoken question. “I have to aerate the water. So it stays breathable.”
Oh, that actually made sense. There wasn’t that much water in the tub, and Alhaitham was quickly using up its oxygen content.
“You can’t keep that up all night. How about you run the faucet, and crack open the drain. That would do the trick, right?”
Alhaitham blinked.
“I was planning on that,” he signed, reaching over and slowly turning on the water.
“Sure you were.”
Why was he so stubborn? Here he was, clearly in distress, and yet he still refused to admit he’d screwed up and needed help.
Actually, now that Kaveh looked at him again, something was strange. Alhaitham’s movements had slowed, he seemed oddly pale, and his eyes kept blinking shut.
A faint memory drifted through Kaveh’s mind. Tighnari had loaned him a book on fish and fish tanks back when he’d had the dream of installing an indoor koi pond.
He slipped out into the dark living room. He looked along the small bookshelf to his left, dragging his finger along the many scientific novels until it stopped on… yeah, that’s it.
———
Alhaitham was having a great deal of trouble doing anything. His mind was moving slowly, his thoughts drifting, and he felt exceedingly tired. Simply moving was difficult.
All he could really manage to think about was how cold he felt. He laid at the bottom of the tub, staring up at the surface, breathing water. The air was too chilly, so at this point he just wanted to stay underwater. He was miserable.
He mentally shook himself. Get a grip.
It was fine. This would wear off tomorrow. All he had to do was pull himself through an uncomfortable night.
Alone.
Kaveh had left the room. Alhaitham himself had been the one to ask him to leave, and yet he couldn’t help but wish he’d stayed. Which was ridiculous. Alhaitham was perfectly capable of taking care of himself.
Something splashed above him. Someone grabbed a fistful of his shirt and was pulling him up.
Kaveh.
Reading from… a textbook?
“Fish are ectotherms,” Kaveh announced, pointing intensely at a cartoon illustration of a fish.
Alhaitham tried to process that, but it was really freezing outside of the water.
“That means they’re cold blooded, and dependent on outside sources of heat to regulate their temperature and metabolism. Do you know what happens when an ectotherm gets too cold?”
Alhaitham was aware of what an ectotherm was, but he didn’t want to put in the effort to nod or sign something.
“Their metabolism slows to a point where they can barely move or think. And then they die.” Kaveh emphasized the word by pushing a cartoon diagram of a dead fish into Alhaitham’s face. “Well, they don’t die immediately. But EVENTUALLY, they die.”
Kaveh slammed the textbook shut, then threw it on the counter behind himself. He reached back and grabbed a box with a glass cylinder inside, dropping it into the center of the bathroom.
The apartment’s portable heater.
He fired it up with a righteous slap on the side, swirling the pyro slime within the container.
“You’d better thank me once your organs start functioning properly again,” he said with a huff, sitting back on the toilet’s lid.
———
“Thank you, Kaveh,” Alhaitham said with a reluctant sigh.
“What was that?”
Alhaitham glowered at him. “I’ve already said it three times.”
“And I think you might need to make it four.” Kaveh flipped a pancake, nearly missing the pan but adjusting at the last second. “After all, I’m the reason you’re breathing air right now, and not in… what was it again… tor… torpor?”
“Thank you, almighty Kaveh, keeper of incredibly basic fish-related facts.”
“Now… what is it you’re thanking me for?”
“Are you really going to make me do this again?”
Kaveh responded by cupping his ear.
Alhaitham put a hand to his forehead, throwing himself down on the couch. “Fine. Thank you for recognizing that I had become cold-blooded and grabbing the heater.”
“And…?”
Alhaitham groaned. “And for reading the entirety of my favorite paper on quantum theory when it was three in the morning and neither of us could sleep.”
“And…?”
Alhaitham fixed the back of Kaveh’s head with a death glare. Kaveh flipped another pancake, and started plating their lunch. He raised a hand to his ear again, without turning around.
“And for making lunch.”
Kaveh carried over his specialty pancake lunch. He set it down on the table with a satisfied smile.
Alhaitham walked over, pulling up a chair.
And startled backwards.
The pancakes were… fish-shaped.
“Was that a bad call? I thought it might be funny. Sorry,” Kaveh said. He seemed genuinely worried.
“No, it’s… fine. Thank you for lunch.”
Kaveh starting cutting up his pancakes, applying a generous dollop of whipped cream. “I’m just glad you’re back to normal. That was really scary, for a while. I hope you don’t have to go through anything like that ever again.”
Alhaitham looked down at his food, and found himself smiling.
“Just please ask me for help,” Kaveh continued, “when you need me, okay?”
“…Okay.”