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She had a body; she could feel it wrapped around her like a cage, but no amount of effort or determination could make it move.
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.
How could she outwit someone like that? Could he see memories alone or her thoughts, too?
Helena had saved his body and learned the bitter lesson that a mind was a thing apart and she had not saved it. She’d tried and failed for years to fix what she’d done. Somewhere in the hidden spaces of her memory, Elain Boyle had materialised, a cure in hand, a procedure then used on Helena as well. Now the Undying had learned of it.
Perhaps that ouroboros dragon was not merely a pretentious decoration but something the Ferrons prided themselves on. An omen of a destructive, insatiable hunger which left nothing but ruin in its wake.
The Faith said that a soul and body remained joined together as one until cremation. It was only when fire consumed the flesh that the ethereal soul was untethered from the crude earthly form. A person who had lived devoutly and without vice would release a pure soul that could ascend to the highest of the heavenly realms.
She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”
Her mind cleared slowly, that suffocating terror gradually ebbing away, allowing reason to seep back in. It was almost worse to be rational again, to sit knowing her fear made no sense. It didn’t matter. The part of her that was afraid did not care about being rational.
Flipping between dissociating and not in a time where both are uncomfortable
She sounded irrational. She was irrational, but there was no help for it; there was a schism between her reason and her mind, a fault line shearing them forever apart. Her mind did not care whether the fear made sense; it just wanted to never go back.
So beautifully written
She let the dustcloth slip from her fingers and tucked the painting back into its hiding place. Her mind flipped like a coin between the dark-haired Ferron in the painting and the silvery-pale iteration that now existed.
Later, Orion Holdfast discovered the modern principles of alchemisation, overturning Cetus’s claims and laying forth the methods and array principles needed to transform the ignoble metals into those less corruptible. In Orion’s work, alchemisation was predicated upon spiritual purity; only an alchemist with a soul as pure as the metal they sought to create could alchemise it. It was Sol’s own light and purity bestowed in blessing upon the Holdfasts that endowed them with the divine ability to turn lead into pure gold.
“You’re dead, Father. Perhaps you forgot. That corpse has no claim to my estate or my inheritance. And”—Ferron’s voice grew pointed—“you have no iron resonance inside that body. Regardless of the titles the guild indulges you with, you have no real power. It took nearly a year before anyone even remembered you, and longer before they wanted you back. The only reason I let you continue as guildmaster is because I have better things to do with my time than dealing with the minutiae of factory management.”
She could tell that he was doing some kind of complex transmutation to her. Something was happening. She should have been panicking, trying to resist as Ferron’s resonance sank into her biochymistry. Instead, she became completely calm. She could feel him altering her as if she were an instrument he was tuning; tampering, adjusting, manipulating her until she felt empty. He let go. She jerked away, expecting the feelings to come rushing back. Vivimancy of that type was practically useless because it required a constant resonance connection to maintain. Yet her emotions didn’t come back. They
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It was bizarre how empty she felt. Scarcely human. As if nothing meant anything or had any consequences. The tablets took away the good feelings as much as the bad. She was carved out and empty. An abyss instead of a human.
She was still excruciatingly aware of how dangerous he was, but without the sickening physical reaction of that knowledge.
Rage ignited inside her. She flung herself backwards, taking the knife with her.
She angled the blade back and drove it towards her own throat, meeting Ferron’s eyes with savage triumph. Ferron moved so fast he blurred. The world morphed, going silver as resonance exploded outwards and the knife was ripped away from her throat, pain tearing up her arm all the way into her shoulder. Her mind struggled to catch up. Ferron had caught the blade in his fist, wrenching it up overhead. His other hand was wrapped around her throat, holding her back.
She couldn’t move. His resonance had her frozen, every bone, muscle, and tendon under his control. She couldn’t even breathe. Her heart was constricted. Atreus, a few feet away, was trapped in place as well. This was how Ferron killed.
His hand around the knife blade was seeping blood, running over her fingers and down her arm. His eyes were a reflective silver so bright, they appeared to glow. “Why don’t you ever stop?” He let go of her, sh...
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“Why don’t you die?” There was no point in being coy. She wanted to kill him; they both knew it. Blood was still flowing down the hilt of the knife, dripping scarlet across the white marble floor, spattering across the ouroboros mosaic. His lips...
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He turned back to Helena, examining the knife in his hand. It had sliced into his palm so deep, it was lodged in the bones. He didn’t even wince as he pulled it free, holding it up so the blade caught the light, scarlet blood gleaming along the edge.
Helena knew the Undying could regenerate but it was still startling to witness. It would have taken her at least half an hour to heal a wound like that; hands were delicate, intricate, full of nerves.
“The Undying have their own—limitations. Bennet was one of the earliest to ascend. He used the High Necromancer’s great knowledge to experiment beyond what was believed possible. He spent decades seeking to unlock the secrets of transference. Anyone who knew him could not help but appreciate his genius. I was among the few who worked most closely beside him…”
The Undying frequently develop a tendency towards sadism over time. Some more quickly than others.
“The High Necromancer wishes to see you.”
“Those difficulties are because she is resisting, because she can resist. This—she is the animancer.”
“There is only one answer: She is the animancer. Even now, with her resonance all but gone, she is still resisting. She erased her memory of what she is in an attempt to escape me.”
“It was after the final battle,” Ferron said, sounding far away. “Seems you were captured after levelling more than half the West Port Laboratory. You’d disguised yourself as a Hevgotian during the attack, and then disappeared into that tank afterwards, resulting in contradictory reports. The investigation was considered inconclusive until my father realised where he recognised you from. He was present that night.” She shook her head. “I was a healer,” she said. “I wasn’t—they didn’t let me fight.”
“The West Port Laboratory was Bennet’s experimental research site.”
“To see if I’d be better than my father, or if I’d break under interrogation, too.”
“They’ve been dying for weeks. I didn’t realise what the disappearances had in common until now. I thought it was censorship, that maybe they were dissidents, but it’s the Undying. They’re disappearing because they’re being killed, and you’re the one who’s been covering it up.”
“You know, the Undying have never made much sense to me. Scientifically or logically. Immortality seems like a dangerous thing to just—gift to people, and Morrough’s hardly the altruistic type. I know how vivimancy works. There’s a price for complex regeneration, and someone always has to pay it. There’s no way around that. In order to regenerate the way the Undying can, someone is paying for it.”
“You are exceptional with titanium. I met the titanium guildmaster once, and even his work was not so perfect.” Then he picked up a piece of her nickel work, studying it as well. “Have you ever tried nickel-titanium alloy?”
“Well…if you wanted a weapon, I would advise you to use nickel and titanium. Don’t limit yourself to what Paladians do.”
She’d been telling him that Morrough was dying, that killing the Undying somehow hurt him; she’d finally pieced it all together and then—
She looked healthy. Pretty, even. A Helena from a different life. But her eyes— 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 corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.
Had it just been her, hiding herself all this time? Was that all it was in the end? Surely there was something, but nothing she remembered, none of her glimmers of returning memory, hinted at anything of importance.
She began to suspect that Morrough was torturing him regularly. Since Ferron couldn’t stay dead, Morrough got the pleasure of killing him over and over.
“Worrying about me?” His face twisted into a gloating smile. “I never thought I’d see the day.” Her face burned. “Don’t take it as a compliment. I hate torture.” “What a saint,” he said dryly, laying a hand across his chest. “I’m sure sweet Luc would be touched by your tender heart.” “Don’t use his name,” she said sharply. “You were never his friend.”
“Is there really a difference between having someone die for you and killing them?”
I’m the one who caught you while you were busy gutting Atreus. When I saw you in the ruins of the lab, everything in flames, the sky blazing, and all those thralls around you. You looked like Lumithia born from fire.”
“Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered.
The banging on the door had grown louder. Aurelia tilted her head to the side. “You know, Kaine’s terribly hard to shop for. I can never find anything he wants, but there is one thing that he started collecting…Do you know what it is?”
Ferron will come. Ferron will come. The words ran through her mind in a relentless loop. He would; he had to know what was happening.
“Aurelia!” The thralls were screaming through the door. Inhuman, tearing rage in their voices.
The whole house shook as the floor rippled, like a creature come to life.
The room around her was only half visible, and all in ruins. Her terrified breathing was the only sound. The house was utterly quiet.
The door warped, opening, and then Ferron was kneeling in front of her, blocking the ghastly sight of Aurelia from view as the iron around her wrists melted away. She collapsed towards him.
Her chest was spasming with suppressed panic. He tilted her face up towards his, and his expression grew horrified. He touched her cheek and held her face as he drew several deep breaths.
