Alchemised

by SenLinYu

She would not let herself fade away.

There wasn’t anyone left to protect, but

Helena’s throat tightened, trying not to even think about the answer, because it tore her apart to remember.

General Titus Bayard’s dead body was used to kill his wife. Slowly. Making him eat the strips of her as he cut them off.

vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.

“Something has been done to your mind,”

There are barriers, transmutationally crafted, and so instead of following a natural pattern through the brain, someone has created alternative routes.

There was a sharp bruise forming on her chest where the needle had punctured its way to her heart. It hurt with every beat.

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

“Who’s the High Reeve?” Helena hoped it was a safe question to ask. She didn’t remember the title.

Helena could feel his resonance in her marrow, as if it were burrowing into her flesh, attempting to peel her apart, layer by layer.

he looked as if he’d been bleached in moonlight.

The wind moaned through the halls, twisting into a scream, windows rattling. The house creaked like shifting bones.

“I thought it was a rather obvious trap,” Ferron said with a sigh, flipping past the front page. “Then again, your Resistance was never known for its intelligence.

The political section of the paper was almost funny in a horrible way.

Outpost to do it. After all, who else would volunteer for a breeding program because of incentives like food, lodgings, and a retrial?

Aside from the predatory intensity to his eyes, his features were almost too fine, like a statue carved a stroke too far.

“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.”

A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to wear.

“You think the guilds invented the divide between us and the Eternal Flame? The Holdfasts claimed all their preferences were divinely moral and treated any concessions as a violation of their consciences;

The Toll of extensive vivimancy is reversible for those who know the means.”

“I will die before I lose her,” Ferron said, his grip tightening.