Alchemised

by SenLinYu

He looked at her. “There’s always smoke rising from your Headquarters. It’s from the crematorium, isn’t it?” Helena said nothing, but his guess was right. They were constantly burning the dead.

“How much longer do you think you all can keep fighting?” That, she could answer. “Until there’s no one left. There’s no surrendering for us.” “Good to know,”

they’d be starved into submission before the next winter.

Kaine Ferron was a small price to pay if it meant there were moments like this again.

“But you also gave your word not to interfere with my responsibilities to the Eternal Flame. Foraging is part of my work. I’ve been doing it for years. If you want to control everything I do, you can wait until we win.”

They pulled me from combat before I qualified. When you only work in Headquarters, you don’t—” She gestured at her clothes. “I forage as a civilian.” His eyebrows rose. “You’re travelling through the city and out into the barrens alone and unarmed?”

“Tell us how to kill them, then,” she said sharply. “We’re not going to give up food and medicine because you psychopaths decided to set monsters loose everywhere.”

There was a dull pounding in her head. She could feel Luc being pulled further and further from reach. All light in her life disappearing.

I hate how Luc consumes her. Like he is the 'fire' in her eyes but she's so much more than that.

“Clear lines. No expectations. And I don’t have to pretend I care.” His lip curled at the last word, as though caring were the most offensive concept known to man.

She’d finally get it over with, stop enduring Crowther and Ilva’s search for signs that she’d been ravished or ravaged. Stop lying awake at night, cold with dread, wondering when it would finally happen. She was sick of waiting. Of wondering on and on. Like bracing for a sword to fall.

she forced herself to move down to the next button. “Hurting people is the only way you know how to feel anything. But now even that barely does it for you, so you have to find new ways to do it, make your victims responsible for their pain;

Using what people care about to coerce and enslave them rather than having to do the physical work of hurting.”

“You think you’re better than us because you’re immortal, but you’re ...

This was one of the many reasons alchemists were dangerous. When they lost control, their resonance could expand beyond them.

When Luc was at the front lines, he abdicated his other responsibilities as Principate to Ilva, not realising how ruthless she was in making whatever choices protected him alone.

“He’s quite—mercurial.”

“Yes. He trained in Khem, manual surgery and medicine. He and my mother ran a surgery and apothecary together in our village before I was born.” Ilva inclined her head. “Is that why you studied so much chymistry? I was on the board approving your scholarship every year. We used to wonder when we reviewed your transcripts. It seemed an odd choice considering your repertoire. You used it to help him during the summers, didn’t you?”

Shiseo. I ran into him the other day.” Helena looked up, forehead furrowed. “Who?” “Oh, he’s an Easterner, Far Eastern. All the way from the Empire, in fact. He came to Paladia with a political asylum request after the new Emperor came to power.”

A Far Eastern metallurgist was not what Helena had in mind. She didn’t want another trainee; she wanted help, for something in her life to be marginally less difficult.

He hadn’t hurt her. She hadn’t realised how much she’d expected it. She’d assumed that if she ever provoked him, purposely or not, death or severe injury was inevitable.

Helena had assumed Ferron would be like the rest of them. Now she wasn’t sure what he was.

Why not? After all, he didn’t care about the Eternal Flame. So what held him back? It wasn’t as if Ferron was above violence. He’d ripped out a man’s heart with his bare hands. She replayed what she’d said. The shock on his face, as if he hadn’t realised what he was like until she’d told him.

She sat, fingers curling against her palm, using her resonance to tamp down her rising unease and keep her thoughts from anxiously spiralling. It was fine, Ferron was just late.

Helena had relied heavily on body language after moving to Paladia. Etras was culturally expressive; words, expressions, gestures were all part of communication. Northerners were canny, and they often communicated more through subtext than their actual words.

That was why Helena had been so drawn to Luc: He wasn’t like that; he didn’t say things he didn’t mean.

She averted her eyes; best not to provoke him again. Given time, he’d be sure to change his mind, to redefine the terms to suit his ends, but in this moment, he wanted to believe he had some kind of moral code, that there were things he was above.

Everything else was theatre now, a cover for a mission she was failing.

She knew it was a sign she was over-expending herself healing, but she’d always healed that way, and it had never bothered her before. She couldn’t understand it. The Toll wasn’t supposed to take effect so suddenly, but she couldn’t think of what else it could be.

Blood loss was dangerous. The Resistance lost more people from exsanguination than anything else.

I love all the medical terms!

“I have command of a new district…” His voice trailed off. He straightened as if trying to rouse himself, blinking several times. “Previous commander—rather attached to it.” He gave a lopsided shrug. “Insulted his mother—few times. Insinuated some unfavourable things about his wife and a certain horse.” His head lolled back again. “Didn’t like that. Duelled to the death. Well—close as we can get. I won, so now I get his command posts.”

somewhere in his chest, a power source like a beacon was radiating out, regenerating him faster than he could die. The lumithium talisman. That must be it. The source of the Undying’s power.

Her fingers traced absently across his now unmarred skin. She couldn’t imagine being trapped in the body of a sixteen-year-old for eternity. “Do you leer at and fondle all your unconscious patients, or am I special?” Ferron’s voice was as unexpected as a bucket of ice water.

“Ferron,” she said, the idea abruptly occurring to her, and she wondered why she’d never thought to ask before. “Was it a punishment for you—being made Undying?” He glanced at her, his face empty. “How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

For months, he’d been something bloodless and soulless. Not a person, but an evil to endure and an obstacle to overcome. Seeing him injured, stripped of the shell of a uniform that he hid inside, had altered her perception of him. There was a fragility that she had been unprepared for. He’d seemed so human, and she didn’t like thinking of him as human.

“I’m not allowed to be there because apparently I glare and it makes people nervous.”

“No,” Helena said. “I don’t need to talk. There’s—no point in talking, and as I have now been reminded publicly, I’m not a fighter. I don’t know anything about what war really is. So—what would I even have to say?”

in the hospital, every battle looks like losing. I can’t imagine what that’s like.” She looked at Helena. “All you see in there is the worst of it.”

“You’re pathetic,” he said, adding more weight to her chest. Her eyes watered but she didn’t make a sound. “I could do anything I wanted to you, hurt you in ways you cannot even imagine, and you couldn’t do anything to stop me. I wouldn’t even need my resonance. I could do it with my bare hands. That’s how weak you are.”

She felt ashamed every time she looked at it, embarrassed by how much meaning she’d thought it had. She let the chain slip through her fingers but stopped. No. This amulet didn’t represent Ilva, it stood for Luc. Ilva had exploited that, but it wasn’t Luc’s fault.

“Are we—t-training again this week?” “No,” he said quickly. “No. I won’t do that to you again.”

He avoided her eyes, looking at the floor. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. She gave a brittle laugh. “Well, I always expected you would.” Anger flashed in his eyes as he looked up at her.

“If you get hurt, I’ll fix it.” Helena’s head swam. It hadn’t occurred to her that if he wanted to, he could hurt her, heal her, and hurt her again, leaving no trace.

Shiseo was on standby as she worked, handing her tools as she needed them. She didn’t understand why he worked with her as an assistant. He was too educated for it; the breadth of his metallurgical knowledge would have put many grandmasters to shame. Ilva’s request was an insult.

The trip has been kept secret; only a few know.”

If the Resistance has been waiting for an opening, this would be the time. The Undying are unlikely to coordinate well because they’ll all want the credit and glory for themselves.”

“I think we might as well plan to skip the next few weeks. I don’t expect to make it.”

However, a relentless sense of dread lurked beneath Helena’s skin, growing with each passing moment. What if it was a trap? What if Ferron had lied, hidden a noose within his information? She kept thinking about how strange he’d seemed.

Your fault. You should have known. Ferron’s a monster. A born traitor, just like his father.

The attack was not a failure but a spectacular success. The Resistance had the ports; they’d retaken most of the East Island.

Reports that Morrough had returned were followed by rumours of extreme upheaval among the ranks as blame fell. Then came the counterattacks and attempts to retake the ports.