Alchemised

by SenLinYu

The necrothrall’s lips moved, mouthing something silently as she looked at Ferron. Kaine, Helena realised. The woman was saying Ferron’s name over and over.

Is it his mom…

The war was lost. Her suffering would not bring anyone back, not any more than Luc’s had saved them.

The Undying frequently develop a tendency towards sadism over time. Some more quickly than others.

“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’s the Undying. They’re disappearing because they’re being killed, and you’re the one who’s been covering it up.”

OK QUEEN BRAIN

“The Undying. You’re his source of power, and the Resistance—we figured that out, didn’t we? How to kill him. How to kill all of you.”

Why would the Undying trust Shiseo if he’d worked and lived among the Resistance for the entire war?

So he must be our snape equivalent …interesting

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.

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

His Eminence insists Ferron be your first candidate, but I doubt anything will come of it. After everything Bennet did to him, he’s scarcely what I’d call human.

Yet Helena couldn’t shake the sense that she was missing something. How did she fit into Ferron’s plans?

“Oh, Marino.” His thumb trailed along her neck, following the scar below her jaw. “If I’d known what pain you’d cause me, I never would have taken you.”

Trapped in Spirefell, she was latching on to any glimpse of kindness, any sense of tenderness her mind could fabricate. But it wasn’t kindness. He wasn’t kind; he simply wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t as monstrous as he could be.

His harm was incalculable. Everything. All of it. It was all his fault, but she could feel herself eroding, desperate to have something in her life that was not pain. That was not dead and gone.

She was not as stilted and blank as Helena was accustomed to; she moved more like a lich. Under Helena’s scrutiny, she slowed and grew more mechanical as she brought a bowl and cloth over

Im telling you this has to be his mom

“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.”

“You know those lumithium pieces we find sometimes after burning the liches and Undying? If you can rip it out, it kills them. All their necrothralls, too.”

To heal a mortal wound or reanimate the dead required vitality, a drop of life itself. The greater the scale of the work, the greater the cost. Healing came with the highest cost; that was why the Faith considered it a purifying act and allowed its practice while forbidding all other forms of vivimancy.

Like trying to touch a mirror’s reflection rather than a person. Ferron was there, physically. And he was alive, technically. But he was immutable in a way that her mind simply refused to comprehend.

“Are you wanting a confession? Shall I tell you everything I’ve done?” She stared into his mocking eyes. “Do you want to?”

The callback

While Luc had a natural talent for pyromancy, he lacked both patience and interest when it came to the science. As a student, he used to rely on Helena to make sense of the theory sections of his homework.

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

He glanced at her, his face empty. “How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

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 so young. You don’t even know how young you are. You’re sacrificing things you don’t even comprehend the value of.”

was regarded as a military triumph for the ages. For the hospital it was an unending nightmare.

As he was regaining consciousness, 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.

He learned this from her:(

She was replaceable. Ferron wasn’t.

Sad to know she thinks this way

couldn’t bring Luc into this. He was already shattered by the death and wouldn’t want an autopsy at all, but the Council was right: They needed to know what had been done.

She is so consistently worried for everyone else aside from herself

There was a dull sense of emptiness that never went away now, a slowly growing wound that she couldn’t heal. She couldn’t fix herself anymore, and no one else seemed inclined to even notice she was breaking.

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”

She hadn’t realised how much she’d wanted to be touched. That she was starved of it, too.

A starved wolf would sate itself on anything.

“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”

“Lila Bayard is not the only person that the Resistance would suffer greatly for losing. I’ve told Ilva, Crowther, and Matias as much time and again, though I can’t say they listen, but maybe you will. There are rare talents that shouldn’t be squandered even if they are overlooked.”

I can’t taste anything now except blood and smoke, and I don’t feel anything except when I’m on fire. The stories made it sound so good. Fighting for a cause. Being a hero.” He shook his head. “Why does everyone pretend it’s anything like that?”

“You have an interesting intuition. I may have underestimated it,” he finally said. “I can’t say I’ve ever thought much of vivimancy. However—you do the Eternal Flame credit.”

GIVE THIS WOMAN HER FLOWERS

Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser. Now it didn’t matter if she’d been an alchemist, or a healer, or anything else. To anyone who ever learned of it, she would only be that one thing. Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

Ilva’s game of war was equally intricate, but hers was wholly personal. It was about Luc, it was about her family’s legacy, and it was about revenge.

“I wasn’t going to betray the Resistance,” he finally said. “I was never going to. You were already losing when I made the offer, and you’re probably still going to lose now, but I never cared. I just wanted to avenge my mother.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter. You outmanoeuvred me. Or maybe I’m just too tired and grieving to keep pushing you away. You won.” He met her eyes for a moment, his expression bitter and derisive. “Well done.”

“I can’t—I can’t do this again—” he finally gasped out. “I can’t care for someone again. I can’t take it.”

Her cheeks had hollowed, there were craters of exhaustion under her eyes, and her collarbones jutted out. Stress had carved her away like water cutting through sand.

“Will you—will you tell Ilva? I know you both think I’m compromised, but I did what I was told to. He said he’ll do whatever you want. I did it—I did—”

Oh this poor girl. So used and abused by everyone she wants to care about her

That in some way he regarded them as alike, and she had done something for him and now he regretted treating her so poorly. She didn’t want an apology, though.

“You should allow people to look out for you.” A harsh, sobbing laugh split her chest at the absurdity of his words.

The fucking NERVE of this man

Rhea’s body trembled as she held Soren’s hand. “And now Titus doesn’t even know what’s been done to our beautiful children—all my family, I only have pieces of them left.” She folded over Soren. Her body was shuddering, but she cried silently.

The cost of war… tragic

thought eventually you’d give up. But you will do anything to save the people you feel responsible for. Of course you’d weaponise your guilt in order to use mine.” He gave a low bitter laugh. “I’m sure there’s something poetic in it all, but right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.”

“So forgive me if I dislike looking at you. I’m still adjusting to the ways these new ones chafe.”

OOOOOF

She was sick of how Ilva and Crowther both defaulted to manipulation to get their “miracles” to show up. As if people couldn’t be counted on unless they were tricked.