The Bewildering Yet Meritorious Conduct of Consul Priscilla

EARLY MARCH, 1918
Asellio left the office of Arthur, unsure what exactly he was. Perhaps he was a god. Or an animal, or a madman. Or all four... he sighed, and Priscilla soon landed on his shoulder.

"Get the troops!" She squawked, "tests! Tests!" 

Asellio patted Priscilla on the head, "we only need a few for-"

"No!" She flapped her wings, "stretch! Walk! Run! Fight! They've been inside too long! Test! Run! Fly!"

"A... combat drill?" Asellio asked, "calisthenics?" He tapped his foot. It would do the troops well, he couldn't have them slacking off. He was the representative of the Imperium and bearing a Consul's personal force. A lazy and complacent force... would be a humiliation to Priscilla, himself, Florin, and the Imperium. Of course. The bird wasn't insane. 

"I want them marching in lines!" Priscilla wiggled her body, "and doing push-ups! Lots of them! In the mud! And then running!"

Priscilla half-shifted to Arthur's voice, and Asellio rubbed his forehead. From that voice, that booming, overconfident baritone, he expected Arthur to have been a handsome giant, a real deity. Not some sweaty scientist who smelled like rubbing alcohol and looked like a testicle. But... Asellio shrugged and put the thought to a side as he gathered his troops. There wasn't much to do other than the combat drills, as clouds gathered overhead. It was warm and humid - and Asellio knew every day in Dunwik would be like this. Soon, he had invented some drills, recalled them from his murderous superiors back before the Duom war. Half of these drills were meant to be punishments.

Priscilla stared at him as he issued the orders. He looked back at her. "What is it?"

"You too!" She squawked, "go! Leaders go from the front! Join! Join! I'll join too!" She hopped from foot to foot, "they'll see!"
---
Five hours later, Asellio half-dragged his aching body to parade rest, with Priscilla hopping back up onto his shoulder. Her clothing was a complete mess but she seemed in high spirits, and the Dunwikki nearby had either joined in on the madness or watched in obvious interest as the Divinian soldiery ran about like maniacs, digging trenches, set up and rapidly shifted artillery pieces, did burpees until they couldn't stand anymore, then crawled back and forth under imagined fire, and every other murderous exercise Asellio could conceive of. His heart pounded in his throat, and Priscilla squawked once and raised her wings to either side of her body.

"Good! Good! Very good! One more test! One more!" She flapped her wings "and then dismissed for dinner! Are you ready?" She asked. Asellio felt a lump form in his throat. She always demanded more, flitting about, doing her best to mimic the soldiers. But her cadence... she had an idea. Priscilla's ideas were dangerous. Perhaps a product of the mad mind that had spawned her... 

Priscilla hopped off of Asellio's shoulder and gently landed on the ground. Asellio turned to look at her, as the bird cocked her head back and laughed. "Fly!" She squawked. She flapped her wings and soon was flying in a small circle over Asellio "fly! Fly! Fly!"

For a moment, there was silence. Then Asellio jumped up, flapping his arms like a madman. Row after row of soldiers followed, while Priscilla flew around, laughing uproariously. Then, she started to sing as she flew, and the soldiers - knowing what to do - followed along.

The hardiest men lasted ten minutes before they needed to stop, and Priscilla landed on Asellio's shoulder again. She stuck her wing out in a salute, and the men, exhausted, saluted back. 

"Welcome to Dunwik, friends! Dismissed!"
---
The psychologist's office smelled like hardwood and was decorated sparsely. The building was a tiny white, picturesque little house on the edge of the staging ground, with large windows and high ceilings for its size, but the office itself was lifeless. There was one door in, and a desk with a window behind it to give plenty of natural light, but the walls were unadorned and the bookshelf - while covered in thick tomes - seemed artificially placed off in a corner. A large couch dominated one corner, a few chairs were sprinkled around, but Asellio noted how drab and lifeless it was. There was only one object of note: a series of six portraits, depicting a man of some kind. It was framed in an unremarkable wooden case. 

Asellio turned his attention from the man in the dark suit sitting behind the desk, and the Latin interpreter, and stared at the portraits. They depicted a man or men. One was a young man drawn in a quite realistic style. The next, an older man. Then, the proceeding portraits showed sloppier and sloppier techniques, until the last was an unrecognizable smear. Perhaps, those intermediate faces showed fear of a kind.

The psychologist said something Asellio half-understood, and the interpreter clarified it. "I was a clinical psychologist first."

Asellio turned and looked at the psychologist. He was a silver-haired man with a lined forehead, that square jaw, swarthy skin, and wide build so common to the Dunwikki. His piercing brown eyes were half-concealed behind a thick pair of rounded spectacles, and his suit was rumpled just enough to make him seem an intellectual - not a snob. A large pin showing the Dunwikki cog-and-nail was stuck proudly in his lapel, and his cufflinks were gold.

The interpreter was a taller, thinner man in a white suit, sporting a pencil moustache and goatee, inky black hair swept up in spiked protrusions and held aloft by some manner of shining gel, with a brilliant red tie the only bit of color in his clothing. His shoes were especially polished, almost to mirror shine.

Asellio turned, "was this a patient of yours? What happened?" The interpreter dutifully passed this on.

"A neurodegenerative disease," the psychologist said, "I had realized he was an artist and decided on... not quite an experiment, but a pithy means of garnering support and attention for the psychological sciences. I requested he draw a self-portrait. This was what he made."

"It certainly worked," Asellio said, "mister..?"

"Doctor Orlan Sedge. Please, call me Orlan," the psychologist said, "Legate Asellio, do you understand why you were called here?"

Asellio strode over to Sedge's desk and sat down in one of the surprisingly plush chairs in front of it. "To be part of some psychological experiment."

"Excellent. The first test is the awareness test. You should pass with flying colors," Sedge said, "where are you, and what is the date?"

"I am in the office of Doctor Orlan Sedge, psychologist. We are currently on the east coast of Dunwik, if my maps are correct we aren't far from the city of Halahard. The current date is the nineteenth of March, nineteen-eighteen on the standard reference calendar."

Asellio passed the next tests. Banal commands: name what a watch was - tell the time on it. Draw two overlapping pentagons. Read an instruction in Latin and obey it: Do three push-ups, stand, and raise the left leg. Though his muscles still ached from Priscilla's demented commands, he complied. Add sevens together, recite Dr. Sedge's name and occupation, his own name and occupation. Identify a yellow triangle, a pink square, the smell of candles, grass, gasoline, follow a finger with his eyes...

"What was the purpose of that?" Asellio asked when the test was over.

"Admittedly, that was an easy one. The purpose was to identify if you are mentally impaired. You are not, so the next test can begin," Sedge said. He opened a file in his cabinet and retrieved a hefty stack of cards, "Legate, here is the first portion of the test. Each card has a logical pattern on it. On the bottom, in the Latin alphabet, are possible options to pick from. One of the panels will have a missing piece, and you can choose one of the options."

He showed a card. On it, there was some square, shown at various points on a nine-point grid. It was moving left-to-right, "Mister Asellio, your task is to say - or write on the answer sheet in front of you - what the appropriate picture is."

"This is D," Asellio said, "the box moves left to right in all the other panels. It must be D."

Sedge nodded, and soon, more tests began.

---
Asellio stared at the paper, written in Latin, pencil in his hand. He was to mark with an X the appropriate answer.

"Do you usually feel well and strong?"
YES [X]    NO  [  ] 

On and on, marking X on appropriate questions... sometimes sexually explicit or deeply personal questions, but he answered. Sedge took the paper without any remarks and stapled it to the growing pile of papers already connected to his myriad tests.

---
"The vocabulary test will be a bit difficult," Sedge said, "because you do not speak Dunwikki. Thankfully, my interpreter, Mister Gilman, will be taking over for me. He's working towards his doctorate now, and is qualified to run these tests himself. But your case is a special one, Mister Asellio, and we wanted to ensure it was proper."

"Excellent. Mister Asellio, what does a pedagogue have?"

"A pedagogue can have many things, mister Gilman," Asellio said, "please elaborate more."

"As a commander has followers and a gardener has plants, a pedagogue has..?"

"Students, a pedagogue has students," Asellio said. Another long time of dialoge questions, some he knew, some he didn't, passed. Sometimes the doctors would nod, or seem curious, but for the most part they retained a completely impassive expression. Something about it made Asellio's skin crawl. They were trying to dissect him in a way, weren't they?"

---
"Mister Asellio, do you know what this is?" Sedge held up a strange tool. It almost resembled an electrical drill, with a strange, saw-toothed blade. It looked like it was meant to cut a circular hole, approximately an inch and a half across, into a hard surface. A long cord came off the back of the device, plugging it in to some electric power source.

"I'm not familiar with this tool," Asellio said, "it looks like a drill of some kind."

"It is an electric trephine," Sedge said.

"I'm unfamiliar with trephines. What is the purpose? Do you use this?" Asellio asked.

"We're getting off the test," Gilman said.

Asellio sighed, "Gilman, please, I've been sitting here answering various questions for... two hours? You don't have a clock in here. Can we adjourn for just five minutes?" 

"This was the last question," Sedge said, "sure. Gilman? I'll tabulate the results. Please answer any questions he has."

Sedge took the stacks of paper and left the room, while Gilman turned the tool over in his hands, "a trephine is meant for trepanation, the process of boring a hole in the skull."

"It doesn't look like a weapon. Is it for medical use?"

"Research," Gilman said, "Asellio, are you aware that Dunwikki prisons are the emptiest they've been in decades, and this trend is continuing?"

Asellio leaned back in his seat, "I am a Divinian politician and military leader. I don't know, nor should I be expected to know, anything about Dunwikki prisons, aside from the vague concept that they existed prior to this moment. I presume your research kills your prisoners?"

"Quite so. The object of the trephine is to identify neurological structures. Here, mister Asellio," Gilman reached into the desk and retrieved a pink rubber model about the size of a large loaf of bread, "is a model of a human brain. Let me ask you something: how many parts comprise this brain?"

"One?" Asellio asked, "it is a brain, it is one object."

"One," Gilman said, "or eight lobes. Or one hundred billion neurons and many more glial cells. Now, mister Asellio, I'm sure you've had a soldier with a head injury act differently."

"I remember a few during the Duom War," Asellio looked up.

"Different regions of the brain are specialized for different tasks. I'm sure you can appreciate the utility of this arrangement, sir. Just as different men have different tasks, so too do different portions of the brain hold different powers. Here," Gilman rubbed the top part, "is your motor ability. Here," he rubbed the back of the brain, "is your vision. Here," he rubbed the front of the brain, "are your thoughts, intelligence, and personality. Finally, here," he rubbed the stem, "keeps your heart beating. Some areas are for language, some areas for memory, some areas for balance. I've given a simplified model."

"What does the trephine have to do with this?" Asellio rubbed his chin, "do you destroy the part of the brain to see what changes?"

"Precisely correct, sir. Although, we only use the trephine to bore a hole in the skull. A different tool is used to ablate the brain itself. We go through these tests, the ones we just went through with you, destroy a portion of the brain, and repeat. Then we observe for any other potential deficiencies, and take the tests one last time if the patient survives."

"I feel like you'll run out of prisoners soon," Asellio said, "then what?"

Gilman smiled, "Grand Chairman Arthur is adamant we burn through our supply of imbeciles and prisoners. I suppose we'll need to find more when we're through with our own natural stock. Perhaps the Imperium would be willing to lend their supply?"

Asellio felt a fear he hadn't felt since Catherine died.