With a cloth mask covering his mouth and nose, Alpheo stepped into the tent toward the side project he had ordered to be studied.
The stench was what hit him first, forcing him to breath through the mouth. A sour, metallic rot, the smell of open flesh and boiled bile , it clawed down his throat and settled into his lungs like smoke. His gloved hand instinctively rose to tighten the mask. Even through the linen, it did nothing to dull the reek of death and medicine.
Bodies lay open on long wooden tables, their skin peeled back in neat lines that turned men into diagrams. Organs glistened in bowls, floating in yellowed liquid, each tagged with small parchment slips.
Alpheo forced himself forward, boots squelching on dirt gone dark with spilled fluids. Whatever disgust twisted in his gut, he buried it , he had ordered this. And now he needed answers.
