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Helena wondered sometimes if she still had eyes. The darkness surrounding her never ended. She thought at first if she waited long enough, some glimmer of light would appear, or someone would come. Yet no matter how long she waited, there was nothing. Just endless dark.
Remembered that she’d been placed there as a prisoner, kept preserved, but someday, someone would come for her.
She had to endure. To stay alert. That way she would be ready. She had to stay ready. She would not let herself fade away.
They’d be slit open, their skin in ribbons, organs excised, eyes blank, face slack, and they would be used to kill the next “traitor” in an even more brutal way. The executions had not stopped until the air was red with a mist of blood.
Damn
The woman’s resonance was still running through her like a current, a visceral warning. Helena managed to nod shakily. She should have realised: The woman was a vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.
“Something has been done to your mind,” the woman said, sounding bewildered but also strangely excited. “Some kind of transmutation. I have never encountered anything like it. I’m going to have to report this. I’ll need a specialist. You have—” The woman paused. “There’s no name for this! I’ll have to come up with a name…”
Helena squinted and recognised the object. A resonance screen. They were frequently used for academic presentations and alchemical medical procedures. The gas used reactive particles to mirror the shape and pattern of a resonance channel.
“I doubt you understand any of this, but imagine your mind is a—a city. Your thoughts run along various streets to reach their destinations. Those lines you see are your streets that have been rerouted. There are barriers, transmutationally crafted, and so instead of following a natural pattern through the brain, someone has created alternative routes. Some areas are cut off entirely. I can’t even imagine how…The skill this would take…”
All of the Undying, regardless of their forms, are the High Necromancer’s most ascendant followers. Their immortality is the reward for their excellence. In this new world, death claims only the unworthy. No matter what insults you attempt, it is your friends who are nothing but ashes to be forgotten.”
By its nature, lumithium bound the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire together, and in that binding, resonance was created.
As the element of resonance, lumithium could increase or even create resonance in inert objects through exposure, making them alchemically malleable. However, pure lumithium was too divine for mortals; overexposure caused wasting sickness, and for individuals with resonance, direct exposure could result in a raw, metallic pain within their nerves.
The lumithium in the manacles didn’t seem to make Helena sick. Which meant that something had altered it. The sharp energy inside was keyed into her resonance, but rather than turn it raw, it blurred her senses. She could feel her resonance, but when she tried to control it, the cuffs were like static in her nerves. No matter how she tried, she could not push beyond
There’s no point. The High Reeve kills everyone. Any hint, even whispers get people killed. He has this—this monster he uses for hunting. There’s no point in running away or resisting or organising unless you want to be the next corpse.”
“Who’s the High Reeve?” Helena hoped it was a safe question to ask. She didn’t remember the title. Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. He still wears a helmet the way the Undying did during the war. The High Necromancer’s too important for public appearances, so he sends the High Reeve instead. He’s some kind of vivimancer, but not like the rest. He kills people without even touching them.”
The High Necromancer’s too important for public appearances, so he sends the High Reeve instead. He’s some kind of vivimancer, but not like the rest. He kills people without even touching them.”
“All there is now is surviving. That’s all that matters.” She whispered the last words as if they weren’t for Helena, but for herself.
“Yes, quite right, Doctor Stroud. Of course, it is as you say. But—the use of vivimancy on a brain has always been a most delicate procedure. Transmutation of this scale and complexity is beyond all known scientific possibility. Memory is a mysterious thing, very changeable as it’s moved around. Not a place, it is—the mind’s journey. A path. The more important, more journeyed, the stronger the path. The less journeyed”—fingers fluttered—“it fades.”
Memories cannot simply be regenerated; the mind and spirit must forge them. The spirit cannot be altered by external force—the—the fevers—”
The High Necromancer was not what she remembered. When he’d killed Luc, he’d been human. Now he was mutated. His limbs stuck out in ways that were impossibly jointed, and he was nearly the size of two men.
Where his eyes should have been were two blackened, empty hollows, as if they’d been burned out with live coals. Somehow, he still seemed to see Helena. He walked forward, one hand outstretched, but there was something wrong about it, over-jointed, the skin bizarrely stretched. Too many bones inside it. Before his fingers grazed her skin, the pain of his resonance lanced through her skull.
“If the Eternal Flame did have an animancer who developed a temporary transference method…could that explain this form of memory loss? If another person could enter someone’s mind like that, they might be able to alter thoughts and memories, just as we see here. It would explain everything,” Stroud asked, gesturing at Helena. “And…I must say it seems more likely than far-fetched notions of self-transmutation.”
Helena had never seen a guild alchemist wearing so little metal. Alchemists tended to keep metal everywhere: as jewellery, and woven into their clothes, walking sticks, weapons. Unusual alchemists like pyromancers always wore their ignition rings unless they were forced to remove them.
The roses rippled as if underwater, floor shifting, and around it circled a black dragon.
It was curled inwards around the table, wings spread out, head curved down so that its tail was caught within its teeth, consuming itself. An ouroboros.
“Did you think I didn’t know you’d try to kill yourself?” Ferron asked venomously. “As if there’s anything the Eternal Flame loved more than dying for their causes.” “I thought you liked us dead.” Her head hurt so much, she wanted to vomit. He gave a barking laugh. “Consider yourself the sole exception to that rule. The High Necromancer wants your secrets, and until he has them, you will not die.”
The sheets became damp with her sweat as her fever rose. Her body was freezing, but her brain was on fire. Time morphed, twisting, and she lost track of everything beyond her misery.
“Look, Hel,” Luc said. He touched his breastplate, and the golden armour melted away, revealing his bare chest. A gleaming black knife was shoved between his ribs, a bloodless wound. The incision grew, running down his torso until the knife fell, shattering on the ground, and his organs came sliding out, blackened with gangrene, the smell of decay filling the air as if he’d been rotting for months.
“As I understand, the assimilation process of transference that the Eternal Flame developed was intended to cultivate a progressive degree of tolerance. As with traditional mithridatism, there will be side effects. The next time should result in further progress on your part, but as a result the brain fevers will likely be of a similar magnitude. You must understand, it’s hardly a natural state of being. A living body surviving even a brief presence of another soul has never been achieved before. That she’s alive at all should be considered a miracle. As the purpose of this is only to keep her
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“You were gifted ascendance on my recommendation. If I am going to be inconvenienced by this, then so will you,” Stroud said. “And if this costs me anything, I will see that it costs you more.”
It was raining, and a gust of wind swirled along the house, whipping across her face. She gave a startled gasp. Ferron turned sharply. “What?” “I—” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. “I’d forgotten what wind feels like.” He turned away. “The courtyard’s enclosed. You may wander as you wish.”
“What are you doing?” She blinked in the sudden light, staring into Ferron’s incensed face. An electric sconce on the wall glowed, a halo in the dark illuminating only them. She focused on his face, trying not to see the ocean of black surrounding her. “It was—dark,” she forced out. “What?” Her breathing was so rapid, her head swam. “You’re scared of the dark?” His silver eyes were burning, his voice thick with disbelief.
“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.”
“No,” Helena said, shaking her head. “Luc wasn’t like that. He didn’t even know about the conditions for me becoming a healer. Or how healing worked. He wouldn’t have let me, if he’d known. People like Falcon Matias had harsh views, but Luc was always reining people like the Falcon in. Once it was over, he wanted to—”
Luc had never deserved the cruelty and hatred he’d been subjected to. She’d admit he hadn’t known everything, but that wasn’t because he was a puppet. The position of Principate was complex. Being a religious head and ruler was a difficult task, especially during war when he was expected to be fighting and governing. He couldn’t be weighed down by everyone else’s personal decisions.
His cool fingers followed the curve of her jaw to her temple. She lay, viscerally aware of the almost-weight of his body as his resonance pierced her mind. Her mind was like an upturned snow globe, all her thoughts whirling like snow flurries through her consciousness.
The memory evaporated like fog beneath bright sun, and she found herself lying on the bed, Ferron staring down at her with a scathing expression on his face. He snatched his hand away. “I have no desire to touch you,” he said, sneering. “Your presence here is offensive enough.”
Until that moment, healing had been the only thing she hadn’t felt guilt over. Luc might be dead, but she had done some good. Now Ferron had ripped that shred of comfort away from her, turning the act into its own form of atrocity.
Tucked into the shadow was an eye encased in glass. It swivelled, the pupil contracting, as if it were still alive, and stared straight at her. The iris was a beautiful, deep blue. They’re offering a lot of money for eyes, Grace had said.
“You’re not a homunculus, are you?” She felt ridiculous asking the question. Artificial humans were considered as mythical as chimaeras or philosopher stones. One of the many ideas attributed to Cetus in the prescientific era.
