Antibodies - 628

The servant nodded and left the room.

The next morning, Skymender woke up and got ready. As usual, he got on a carriage with Melly and rode to the city.

Melly seemed as usual, but also a bit quieter. Skymender did not feel bad for what he had said to her, for it was the truth. He didn't have any feelings for her. He didn't even really consider her much of a friend. She was more of a close acquaintance, though, to be fair, Skymender had no friends.

They soon arrived at the academy and walked inside. The day went on as normal, save for Skymender's new mask that everyone tried to take glances at. 

Skymender had never really spoken in school at all, but now, he actually had an excuse to never talk.

The day went by and Skymender found himself in the same room as before. However, just outside, there were a few horses waiting for him.

Luckily, this room had direct access to the outside, or it would have been awkward to bring the horse inside.

He turned to Melly, who was standing in the room as if she was a servant.

"Go on and wait outside for me." Skymender said.

Melly hesitated. "Are you sure? Whatever you do, I won't tell anyone. What if you get hurt again?"

Skymender shook his head. "Go on."

Melly reluctantly left.

Skymender rummaged through his bag and took out a box. Inside of it was the vial of poison.

He carefully sat it down, grabbed some tools, put on gloves, and opened it.

The vial opened, and a faint green mist poured out of it. However, due to it not being heated, the mist was very faint.

Still, Skymender held it far away from him. He quickly grabbed a tool, extracted a few drops from the vial, and closed it back up.

He looked back at the dropper and began his first test.

Corrosiveness.

Taking varying materials, he dropped a drop of the poisonous substance on them.

However, no matter what it was, the liquid would not corrode it at all. It would slowly release a mist, but other than that, it acted as water.

Next, Skymender repeated the process of opening the vial and extracting a few drops from it for the next test.

Do the effects happen on contact, or does the mist need to be inhaled? Naturally, he didn't plan to test this on himself.

Therefore, the horses.

He walked outside and separated one of the horses from the rest.

On its back, he dropped a drop of the poisonous substance.

There was no reaction, so Skymender dropped a few more, until all of the drops had been used.

He went inside, got a few more drops, and came back out.

He took a different horse and separated it. This time, he was testing the poison once again.

He held out a piece of paper and dropped a drop of the poisonous substance on it.

A mist slowly moved up as the drop soaked into the paper. Skymender held it to the horse's nose.

Just a few moments after inhaling it, the horse yelped and jumped up, its front hooves coming off the ground.

It shook its head as it began to back away, but the mist had already entered it.

Skymender watched as it began to neigh loudly, clearly hurting.

Its hooves soon began to scratch at its face, and a drop of blood poured out of its nose.

However, after that, it seemed to stop. Besides slightly rougher breathing and the initial reaction, the horse seemed back to normal, simply laying down as it was tired.

This was not unexpected. In fact, if the mist from a drop of the substance could kill a horse, Skymender would not have even made it to the hospital.

He had luckily only inhaled a few breaths of the mist before backing away. Otherwise, he would have died.

Skymender also had another reason to experiment on the living today.

It was because of something called antibodies, a discovery that had shocked the world.

It explained something that should have been obvious, but wasn't. 

It was like how friction stopped objects from moving infinitely, how could a poison be stopped once it infected someone?

The answer was antibodies, something the body produces to resist poison and disease.

Theoretically, antibodies could be harvested to create an antidote. In fact, this had been proven.

However, it was a complex process, one that very rarely worked.

Usually, this was first started by exposing a poison to an animal in small doses, but for Skymender's purposes, he could not care about the prolonged life of an animal. In other words, he had a better plan.

First, he took the entire vial of poison, making sets of different sizes.

He skipped the horse that had recently been in contact with the poisonous substance, a sort of mercy for its suffering, and skipped to one that had yet to be experimented on.

He tied this one down strongly, making sure it couldn't even move. It resisted, but Skymender had succeeded.

He took a drop of poison on a piece of paper, and let the horse inhale it.

It tried to move, but couldn't. After a while, a drop of blood fell from its nose. Skymender took five drops of blood, put it on the paper, and let the horse inhale the mist.

It had a much more violent reaction this time.

However, in the end, blood poured from its nose, but it lived. Once all the symptoms stopped, Skymender took 25 drops and let the horse inhale the mist.

It struggled violently, resisting on the verge of snapping the ropes that held it down. In the end, it fell, slowly dying.

Skymender waited until the exact end of its life before taking a knife and cutting it. He began to collect its blood in a bucket prepared beforehand.

Eventually, he filled the bucket. The rest would, unfortunately, be wasted.

There was only one more piece of knowledge involving this process, and the rest was classified even for nobles.

It needed intense spinning to separate the antibodies and everything else.

There was no method mentioned, but Skymender had an idea.