New Developments on the Stabilization Serums!

 Please note that the Gorean Saga is a fictional series, and its world, customs, and values may not align with modern societal standards or moral principles.

This story is based off Chat logs and CHAT GPT was used to make it into this.

Gor is Copyrighted by John Norman

 

“I’m old. Very old.”

The words were not meant to provoke, yet they landed like a challenge.

Neeve looked up sharply, her expression caught between irritation and disbelief. She had heard exaggeration before - heard fear disguised as bravado - but this was different. The woman who spoke sat straight-backed despite the stiffness in her limbs, her voice low and roughened by age that did not belong to her face.

Neeve said nothing at first. She turned instead, already moving toward her office, muttering to herself as she rummaged through scrolls and instruments. A panther who had survived twelve hundred winters was impossible. Entirely impossible. Unless…

She stopped, lips pressing thin.

Unless the serums were involved.

When she returned, she did not ask permission. She told the woman to sit, her tone clipped and professional, and began issuing instructions. Blood samples. Full analysis. Comparative screening. Neeve’s irritation was sharp, but beneath it ran something more dangerous - interest.

Hilda watched, leaning slightly on her cane. She said little, her expression guarded, eyes following Neeve’s movements with the practiced gaze of someone used to being the one in control. When the subject of the serum was raised, she stiffened, just enough to be noticeable.

“Yes,” she said eventually. “I have had it. Long ago.”

That was when the tension began.

The blood told a story neither of them liked. The panther’s hybrid nature - half human, half something older - had allowed the serum to bind in ways it never could in a fully human body. The toxins that should have killed her had instead amplified the effect, locking age in place while time marched on around her. It was not perfection. It was survival, bought at a terrible cost.

The physicians had begun their work on the woman, documenting every anomaly they could find, searching for patterns within the serums that might explain what should not have been possible. It was methodical, careful work—until something else intervened.

A member of the Black Caste was sent to kill the patient.

No justification was given. None was required. That she was a panther seemed reason enough. The act was carried out while Neeve and Hilda slept above the infirmary, unaware of the quiet violence unfolding below. The woman’s neck was broken swiftly, cleanly, with the efficiency demanded in a place meant for healing.

When the physicians woke, the damage was already done.

But the act would not deter them.

Neeve ordered an autopsy, frustrated by how little remained to study. Hilda agreed, though her thoughts were already elsewhere.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________

That night, Hilda could not sleep.

By midweek, she had gone north.

The forests were colder than the city, quieter, older. Hilda felt the pull of them in her bones, even as her joints protested every step. She traveled as a healer, unarmed, carrying supplies and knowledge rather than threats. The panthers did not turn her away. They never did.

She was welcomed with fire and tea and watched carefully by eyes that missed nothing.

There, the truth emerged in fragments.

The woman who spoke with her had died. Killed in the city, her body destroyed before proper rites could be given. And yet she lived—through serums, through ownership, through bonds forged over a thousand years ago. She spoke of age not as a burden, but as a condition. She spoke of serums that did not merely slow decay, but anchored the soul to the flesh.

She offered one.

Hilda refused.

At first.

By the time Hilda returned to the city days later, she was limping badly. The pain in her leg had worsened, spreading into her hands, leaving them trembling at rest. She hid it poorly, masking it with willowbark tea and forced composure.

Neeve noticed immediately.

“So,” Neeve said, folding her arms as Hilda entered the hall, “are you going to tell me why you’re walking like a woman twice your age—or shall I order you onto a bed and find out myself?”

Hilda bristled.

“It’s nothing new,” she snapped. “Just wear and tear.”

Neeve stepped closer. “That’s a lie.”

The argument that followed was not quiet.

Neeve accused Hilda of hiding symptoms, of endangering patients, of letting pride interfere with judgment. Hilda fired back that she was not a child, not a slave to be ordered about, not a novice who needed her hand held. The words were sharp, fueled by pain, exhaustion, and fear neither wanted to admit to.

It ended only when Neeve invoked authority.

As Head of Caste.

As physician.

As someone who had seen too many bodies break under silence.

Hilda’s resistance collapsed into anger, then into something quieter. When Neeve ordered blood work and forced her onto a bed, Hilda finally broke—not loudly, but thoroughly.

The truth came out in pieces.

Years ago, driven by ambition and conviction, Hilda had believed the serums could be improved. Stabilization was not enough. Life could be longer. Bodies stronger. Minds clearer. She had worked the equations obsessively, refining them until they were flawless on parchment.

Her mentor had allowed it.

Encouraged it.

And then, when testing became necessary, had looked the other way.

Hilda tested the serum on herself.

The result was catastrophic.

Her aging accelerated instead of halting. Her joints degraded. Her immune system twisted in on itself. Where the serum should have preserved her, it hollowed her out. Her mentor’s fury had been swift—and cruel. No help. No reversal. Only condemnation.

“This is your penance,” she had been told.

And Hilda had believed it.

For ten years, she had lived with the pain, the tremors, the certainty that she deserved every failing joint and sleepless night. It was only now, under Neeve’s analysis, that the full truth emerged: her remaining time was not decades, but years. Five, at most.

Neeve did not shout when she saw the results.

She went very still.

“We start immediately,” she said. “Proper serums. No more guessing. No more penance.”

Hilda wanted to argue. Wanted to refuse. But fear had finally stripped her of pride.

The first serum shot was administered that night. Neeve worked with careful precision, numbing the injection site, speaking calmly as the fluid entered Hilda’s body. There was no pain—only a strange warmth, a tingling that spread outward like a promise.

Afterward, Neeve laid down rules.

Light duties only. No surgery unless absolutely necessary. Calculations, research, and rest. The panther serum would be investigated—but only together, and never tested on Hilda first.

Hilda agreed.

Not because she was ordered to.

But because, for the first time since her failure, someone had told her she did not deserve to suffer for it.

By the end of the week, nothing was fixed.

The pain was still there. The fear still woke her at night. The future remained uncertain.

But the serums were no longer a sentence.

They were a question again.

And this time, Hilda would not face it alone.