Alchemised

by SenLinYu

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.

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.

The woman was a vivimancer. Necromancy’s inverse twin, wielded on the living rather than the dead.

“This is elaborate, beautiful, professional work. A vivimancer manually rewiring the human consciousness.”

By its nature, lumithium bound the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire together, and in that binding, resonance was created.

Usually, resonance was channelled into the alchemy of metals and inorganic compounds, allowing for transmutation or alchemisation. However, in a defective soul which rebelled against Sol’s natural laws, the resonance could be corrupted, enabling vivimancy—like what the woman had used on Helena—and the necromancy used to create necrothralls.

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

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.”

Surely not. Souls were considered inviolable among those of faith. The Eternal Flame considered even the physical alterations of vivimancy and necromancy a risk to an immortal soul. Alteration of a mind, the transference of a soul: Surely that would be seen as infinitely worse.

Now it was up to Helena. She couldn’t fail him. Not again.

He turned. Helena’s throat closed as the world around her vanished, footsteps faltering. He was not old at all. It was the iron guild heir. Kaine Ferron. She stared at him in stunned recognition.

The darkness was like a pulsing oesophagus, the long shadows swaying with the wind, threatening to swallow her. If she stepped out, she’d fall into the cold, awful, unending dark again. She would never be found.

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.

“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.”

Helena had loved him for how human he was. He didn’t need to be Principate or favoured by the gods. He’d been good enough just as he was.

“You used to believe in me. What did I do to make you stop?” His voice was faraway. “I still believe in you, Luc,” she said. “But we have to win this war; we can’t make choices because we want a certain story to tell later. There’s too much at stake.”

They won by trusting that good would triumph over evil, and I have to do the same.”

“I promised I’d do anything for you.” She curled her fingers into a fist. “Maybe you didn’t realise how far I was willing to go.”

Alchemisation, the transformation of one metal into another, was the most difficult form of alchemy.

“What are those?” she asked when he unscrewed the top and tapped one out. He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll tell you if you swallow it like a good girl.”

It was undeniable that Ferron had a horrific talent for necromancy.

He gave her a sidelong look. “You’re lucky the national exam never tested for an ability to lie. You have a transparent face.”

On her own, it was nice, feeling like a functioning person again. Helena had forgotten how easy it was to exist when her mind and body couldn’t betray her.

Ferron’s lips remained pressed against Aurelia’s, but as he kissed her, he raised his eyes, and his gaze locked onto Helena’s face. She stared back, forgetting to breathe, frozen in place.

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.

It was beautiful, and it felt like a betrayal. The world was not supposed to be beautiful any longer. It was supposed to be dead and cold, forever mirroring the misery of Helena’s life. Instead it had moved on, tilting into a new season, and she could not. She was trapped forever in winter, in the season of death.

“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.”

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.” His face was so close the words brushed against her lips, and his mouth crashed against hers.

“I would rather spend the rest of my life being raped in Central than spend a minute of it having feelings for you.”