A Broken World - Ch. 47 World of Discovery (Patreon)

So Lucas pulled the poor soldier-cum-artist out of bed, he could sleep after they finished this up- Lucas was approaching twenty hours awake and still going strong on pure excitement.  He did briefly consider that maybe a sleep deprived person should not be playing around with sharp objects but anyone who thought that was clearly not a biologist.  Nature did not follow a human timeframe after all, sometimes you had to go with when it wanted to do things.

Subject D1 was missing its head, and much more beat up than the other subjects.  Unfortunate, but perhaps to be expected.  A sentient creature was not dumb enough to let an archer put a clean shot through them after all, but even in this condition, the body was already far more interesting than the others.

To start with, it was a bipedal digitigrade- the term didn’t translate so he had to explain it to the person who was taking notes for him as he spoke.

“Digitigrade locomotion means that the creature walks on its toes essentially,” Lucas was quite excited just speaking about it.  “It will become evident when I open it up to show you the bone structure, but while it looks like the legs bend backwards, they are actually more similar to our own then they first appear.  The thigh and shin are both far more condensed than our own, while their tarsals- the set of bones in the foot- are extremely elongated which gives the appearance of an extra part of the leg.”

This dissection was far more bloody, given the damage to the body draining it properly might not be the best idea.  There was not much of a risk of anything occurring, but why risk it?  Or that could all be Lucas rationalizing the fact that he was too impatient to wait but he was not going to question his motives!

Overall, the creature was roughly the same size as Lucas himself- though far more muscular.  Its hands were clawed, to the point where Lucas wondered how the creature used tools, but he quickly realized that the creatures tail was- like the others- not a tail, but fused limbs, the difference was that the digits were functional.  Upon examination, it was clear that the ‘tail’ was quite capable of delicate work in addition to its probably function to help the creature balance while running

Opening it up-

“What the fuck is this?”  Lucas exclaimed.

About the only thing that made sense was the skeleton- and Lucas would bet his soul that it was simply a case of convergent evolution and nothing more, because this was not something he had ever seen before.

“It does not have organs…”  A complex organism with organs?  Lucas could not believe it.  Off the top of his head the only creature he could think of without specialized structures was a sponge- and some of those could be forced through a sieve and would simply reform on the other side because they were too damn simple to kill!

No, he was looking at this wrong.  Lack of organs did not mean a lack of tissues that fulfills those purposes- but at this point he would really need a microscope.  He would have to figure out how to get one after this, to be in this situation without the ability to investigate as he would like- it was tragic!

“No, wait-”  Cutting through an organism without finding anything was incredibly strange, but here was something- the electric organ found in the others!  “Interesting, in this position- can it electrocute other creatures on touch?”

It seemed like a defensive adaptation of some kind, and it was the only organ Lucas found in the creature.  However, in his professional opinion, it was not an artificial addition.  Lucas’s reasoning was that if they could have done better with the other creatures, they would have, and since they did not, they could not.  Thus, the streamlined nature of this subject was not the product of a lab- but the product of natural selection.

He could not speak for the other varieties of intelligent demon, but this creature seemed a likely source for the genetic material used to create the other, less intelligent demons.

“Lord Hero?”  A messenger entered the tent with a box, “This was presented as a trophy to my Lord, and he ordered me to bring it to you.”

The head.  Wonderful.  Why was everyone looking at him like he was crazy?  This was normal behavior!  Well, for a biologist anyways.

The head was a bit messed up, but Lucas was able to tell some interesting things.  For one thing, this creature was nearly blind and probably saw through smell and electroreception.  It had ocular organs, but they were extremely underdeveloped.  Interestingly, it had an auditory system with three auditory organs- it had ear holes on either side of its head and one more at the back of its head, and they were asymmetric like an owls.

There were so many implications from these discoveries!  Even ignoring odd brain structures that Lucas had no clue about- and probably never would.  Brain function was not well understood, so trying to understand the workings of an new species with a fundamentally different physiology was a waste of time.  However, it did hint that the creature need an abnormal amount of brain matter to use its body properly- more than Lucas would have thought- which itself implied that the tissue that made up the creatures body might not just serve the functions of the organs it didn’t have, but possibly have more functions that Lucas could only guess at.

Julian had shown up at some point, Lucas had not even come in- but now Lucas was just glad to have someone to jabber at in his joy.

“Based on what I am looking at here, this creature is not from any environment I have ever seen.”  Lucas considered the features of D1 individually and as a whole, and tried to figure out what kind of place it had evolved to live in.  But he did know one thing…

“Wherever it was, it was not a pleasant place.”  Lucas waved his hands towards the cartilage plates that lay in the corner, having been broken when the creature was killed.  “Endoskeleton, but cartilage plates to serve as natural armor, electrical organs clearly evolved as a defensive measure, digitigrade locomotion implying a need for speed and quiet, and a whole suite of powerful sensory organs- except sight.  So wherever they evolved, it was probably pretty dark- sight would be mostly useless there.  To sum it up, this is a predator from a very dangerous environment- but not the apex predator of that environment, and this species is the source of the genetic material for the others.”

Julian frowned, “That is just an Imp.  The lowest of the intelligent demons we know of, hardly above fodder.”

“Changes nothing about what I said,” Lucas said happily as he examined a sample of the tissue closely.  Maybe he was thinking about it wrong, it was not that the creature was missing organs, but that it was mostly one big organ.  

“The others are nothing like this though.”  Julian did not seem to get it, Lucas could only sigh.

“So?  Does that matter?  It is the one in front of us that matters for this point.”

Julian sighed and left Lucas to his work.  Lucas was wondering why Julian had bothered to show up at all though.