Alchemised

by SenLinYu

The woman was a vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.

By its nature, lumithium bound the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire together, and in that binding, resonance was created.

All she knew was that as long as those manacles remained locked in place, she wasn’t an alchemist at all.

“I know eyes don’t grow back. That’s why the pay’s good.” “Yes, but—” “Why should I keep them?” Grace sounded nearly hysterical. “So I have two eyes to watch my brothers starve? There’s no food!”

It was like coming home and finding all the comfort it had once offered torn apart, the beauty flensed, everything once familiar peeled off into ruin.

He didn’t think a person’s abilities changed who they were, only what they did with them.”

Luc had always had a talent for making Helena feel like she was special rather than painfully out of place.

She’d wanted to prove him right—that she was something, that she’d be worth believing in.

“You were right. I’m so sorry. We should have listened to you.”

She wouldn’t be a traitor. Whatever she’d allowed to be hidden in her mind, she wouldn’t let the Undying discover it. Surviving didn’t matter. She’d kill herself before they learned anything from her.

She knew the terror of the stasis tank would haunt her, but she had not realised the way it had rooted itself inside her, grown through her nerves and organs to paralyse her.

one dress, red as blood.

She’d beaten Ferron before. If she was careful, and clever, she would do it again.

The High Necromancer hopes that if there’s anyone left, they’ll feel morally obligated to rush in and save the Flame’s last ember.”

She looked for the beacon, the light that had always shone from the top of the Alchemy Tower, the Eternal Flame which had been kept burning since the day of Paladia’s founding, but it was not there. It was gone.

It was as if all colour had been leached from the world. Except her. She stood there in blood red, stark against the monochrome.

She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”

Which meant that she had no memory of nearly nineteen months of the war.

couldn’t have lost that much, but it was like trying to catch the wind with her fingers.

She could tell it was Ferron just by his posture and the familiar tilt of his long fingers, but the article only referred to him as the High Reeve.

“When I see dark places and I don’t know where they end, I feel like I’ll disappear inside them, but this time, I’ll never be found.”

“You know,” Ferron said, jolting her from her thoughts, “when I heard it was you I’d be getting, I was looking forward to breaking you.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think it’s possible to exceed what you’ve done to yourself.”

“Well, you won’t have much luck with me. I’m sterilised.”

“And of course you agreed,” Stroud said, withdrawing her hand. “Because you thought they’d accept what you are if you only reduced yourself enough.”

“Usually, it was children who fell for that lie.”

“If he didn’t know, all that means is that he was a puppet and a fool. And you’re still one,”

That didn’t make him a puppet. It made him human.

“Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I suppose you do.”

It had created a perpetual cycle of grievances in which everyone found the current circumstances unfair, but no one would agree to a solution.

Her eyes were dead. There was no fire in them.

The spark she’d once regarded as the most intrinsic part of who she was had gone out.

She was a vibrant...

Things that seem too good to be true usually have a price you don’t know about until it’s too late.”

All the ordinary tasks that never ended, not even when a war began. It had been women doing them.

After everything Bennet did to him, he’s scarcely what I’d call human.

He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel.

“I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat. It is a promise. Consider your survival as much a necessity to the Resistance as Holdfast’s. If you die, I will kill every single one of them.”

“Do you remember Kaine Ferron?”

Murderers are still men,

this ring was hand-forged rather than transmutationally crafted; she could see the hammer marks that had beaten a scaled, almost geometric pattern onto it.

She only needed him to realise he wanted to tell someone— —that he wanted to tell her.

“You’re Marino, I know. This is Marta Rumly, Claire Reibeck, and Anne Stoffle. I’m Elain Boyle.”

“Hurting people is the only way you know how to feel anything.

“You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re dead inside already.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. She gave a brittle laugh. “Well, I always expected you would.”

she took his nearest hand, careful not to shift his shoulder as she started massaging the palm and worked slowly to his fingertips, knuckle by knuckle, her resonance seeking out every bit of tension and knotted muscles.

“And if you couldn’t? If a monster can’t be made loyal, what would you do then?”

“Don’t die, Marino. I might miss you.”

You are all alone, and when the war is over, you will still be alone.

“Is there a reason to cry?” She looked down, rubbing her thumb over the etched pattern on the decanter. “There’s always a reason.”