This is little piece is what I imagine was going through our favourite Quaestor’s mind leading up to the whole turning-Lucio-into-a-burnt-snack debacle!
Please excuse how rushed this is, I did it in like 30 minutes.
It hadn’t taken them too long to realise fire was the only way to stop the pestilence. Sure, it didn’t help those already sick, and it put the dying in worse pain as they wheezed the ash of homes and their occupants in and out of their disintegrating lungs, but what else was there to do? The sick were a lost cause, the only ones worth saving were the healthy. The main concern of the doctors was no longer curing the sick – instead, they were to prepare the dying and record their existence. Minimal contact with the family – if any were left – was recommended. Otherwise, there was a heightened chance the doctors could get sick too. That was a risk nobody wanted to, nor could afford to take.
The others had questioned them when they put the idea forward. The lot of them had seemed so concerned with ethicsandkindness – wasn’t it obvious that neither of those were options? When one particularly young doctor (a trainee, perhaps?) began to shout his objections, they had simply sighed and walked out of the tiny corner of the dungeon he had been confined to. They couldn’t deal with so much emotion. They were here to study the Plague. That was all. Study the dying, dissect and burn the dead. They weren’t stupid enough to get attached to the lumps of quivering meat that were the infected. No; as the patients’ lungs gave out and the light faded, they’d get right to work. It was much more helpful than saying meaningless hymns and mantras over a corpse who couldn’t hear them. They didn’t care what the other doctors thought. They were doing what they had to.
The doctors, they had realised, were so insistent on that one little idea. Ethics.Sure, it wasn’t ethicalto vivisect an (already dying, might they add) victim – but how else could they study the effects that eluded them upon death? They’d gotten into the medical field for knowledge. Treatment and cures were an afterthought, at best. And even if the screams and wails and groans couldget to them (they didn’t, they really didn’t) it wasn’t as if anaesthesia and painkillers could just be given away. They weren’t running a charityhere. They couldn’t let emotion get in the way of duty. Of learning. Of knowledge in its purest form. Not even if a good fifth of the people sent to their deaths were children. Not even if the smoke would occasionally edge on the city. Not even if there were more sick doctors than healthy ones.
The other doctors always seemed so shaken when one of their own passed on, despite the inevitability. Each seemed even more horrified when the dead one ended up with organs on display, eyes extracted for ease of examination, slits in the lungs as a pump sucked out any liquid collected inside. Every single time, such a discovery would lead to their questioning, and the body being buried, despite their protests – there was a standard procedure: the bodies of the dead must be burned! Did the rest of those sentimental fools want to get sick, too? They kept such accusations to themself, however. After all, they were many things, but a creature of common dramatics was not one of them.
What must be done, must be done. If these people wanted a cure, the experimentation must be allowed to continue. If they wanted an end to the death and decay, the sick must be dealt with. If they wanted the fires to stop and the city to recover, well…
Valdemar looked up from the spot they had been staring at in their office. They needed to talk to the other courtiers. It’s often somuch more effective to fight fire with fire.
![Inktober 2018 [Day 20] - The Demon DeathCatching, catching, catching up. They’ll catch up with you.](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1976d5c7be80a5ebf5500bd922f6546d/tumblr_pirwri1RO31rm5hgoo1_1280.png "Inktober 2018 [Day 20] - The Demon DeathCatching, catching, catching up. They’ll catch up with you.")
