It was dark outside, dark and cold thanks to the cold winds that wailed in the night. It was those winds that showed that the long summer was finally coming to an end. The weather outside had little impact on the candlelight room that he had been working in for the night. The room itself was warm which may have normally been an advantage on a cold night like this, but in this particular room it only helped to heighten the smell. The man named Qyburn stood in the middle of the room a table to his left and another to the right. He was an old man, his hair short and grey. He was dressed in a fading grey robe with an apron tied around him, the apron may have once been white but now it was a mix of the brown of dried blood and the red of fresh blood.

On the two tables were cadavers who had once been a married couple, with all the battles going on thanks to the many Kings warring over the one throne it were easy to find recently murdered corpses. When his healing skills were not needed by the members of the Brave Companions Qyburn continued his experiments in secret. The very same experiments that had lost him his Maester’s chain, but those old fools didn’t know what he was close to achieving. Dismissing the thoughts about the other Maester’s he looked down at the two bodies; the woman had been a useless specimen her body hadn’t reacted well to his. The man on the other hand had reacted well at first but also had ended in failure. Thanks to the heat of the room the bodies stank as they were slowly decomposing, yet Qyburn seemed not to mind the smell or even act upon it. He had been around much death both with his talents as a healer but also in regards to his many experiments on the dead and the near dying.

Qyburn turned and looked down at the man’s body; to call it a man was perhaps too kind. The body was cut up and its genitals had been removed, some of its vital organs had been removed and were placed into vials at the bottom of the table. Picking up a small surgical dagger from his tools, Qyburn cut down the left arm of the body exposing the bicep that leaked slowly out of the cut. The body that used to be a man had some muscle to it; perhaps it was once a farmer or a labourer of some sort?

Then it hit him, that’s why the man’s body had responded better than that of the woman, the muscle structure had allowed it to respond to Qyburn’s experiments. Hundreds of possibilities ran through his head at this new discovery, of course he would need test subjects for this. Live ones would be much more preferred for this experimentation, he would start with a few expendable subjects but in the end it would be a warrior that he would need for his work to be complete. He took a deep breath to calm his pacing thoughts. Right now his mind was needed in the now not the later. He placed the knife back on the table and picked up a small bone saw, the bodies needed to be cut up into smaller pieces and then disposed of to prevent anyone seeing his work.  He whistled softly to himself as he casually began to saw the first body apart…