Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Everywhere she turned, there were more bodies, even under her feet. She crushed them when she moved. Choose. Who lives and dies. She had to decide. It would be her choice.

Luc was still alive. He was bleeding, but she could heal him. Her hand shook as she reached out, but he spoke. “I’m dead because of you.”

Wym "Dead because of you.!"

blackened with gangrene, the smell of decay filling the air as if he’d been rotting for months. “See?”

“Helena,” he said, “I’m dead because of you.” He stepped towards her, a scalpel gleaming in his hand. She didn’t move, didn’t resist this time when he took her in his arms and slit her throat.

scowling down at Helena as if she were a stray he wanted to drown.

“I’d forgotten what wind feels like.”

Grace said they were all dead. But here was proof of survivors.

Was that why they’d sent her to Spirefell rather than keeping her in Central? To be used as bait?

Everywhere she looked was grey: the dead grass and leafless, skeletal trees, the dark house with its black vines and spires, even the washed-out slope of the mountains, white peaks shrouded by the mist of an overcast sky.

It was as if all colour had been leached from the world. Except her. She stood there in blood red, stark against the monochrome.

No. Her plan remained the same. Die, by Ferron’s hand or her own.

She let herself sink into the oblivion until everything grew comfortingly vague.

The Faith said that a soul and body remained joined together as one until cremation.

If a body was not burned, the soul was left trapped, unable to ascend and in danger of becoming tainted by the body’s putrefaction.

Left too long, the impurity of the body could metamorphise the soul into maggots and insects, plagues, and other grotesque forms of evil, doomed to sink beneath the surface of the earth to be consumed forever in the dark wet fire of the Abyss.

She looked up at him. “You’re a monster.” He raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, have you?”

refusing to let the corpse touch her further.

Go off queen

He hadn’t listened, not until she swore that if he jumped, then she would, too. He’d stepped back to save her.

“You’re scared of the dark?”

She needed to feel that things were real and tangible, not an abyss of nowhere with her body and nothing else.

“I don’t like places I can’t see.”

I felt that!

“When I see dark places and I don’t know where they end, I feel like I’ll disappear inside them, but this time, I’ll never be found.”

It was the first time she’d bothered to just look at him, to see him for what he was, rather than who he was.

Period…

“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.”

“Because you thought they’d accept what you are if you only reduced yourself enough.”

then I pulled out his beating heart. You should have seen the shock on his face. I hadn’t realised he’d still be alive for a moment, but he lived just long enough to know exactly who killed him.”

Wel damn

“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we’ll remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”

“Do you remember what I promised you, Luc, that night you came out here?”

“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.”

alone now, she missed him so intensely, her bones and skin ached for the familiarity and comfort of a hug.

“I hate you,”

Hatred was a construct rather than an emotion.

“You’re being different to me now. You’re less mean.”

“Why would I torture you when you won’t react?”

Evil craves reaction

“See? Nothing. No elevated pulse, no pounding heart. I could bring in one of your little friends, and peel their skin off right here in front of you, and you wouldn’t react.”

“Why all this sudden interest in me?” he asked. She shrugged. “You don’t make sense.”

Men dont they are useless

“Oh, is that all? And here I was hoping you were plotting to seduce me.”

Hmmmm

“Steal my heart with your wit and charms.”

She was hot and cold and thirsty and pathetically desperate for comfort.

“I hate you,”

“Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I suppose you do.”

Tea

It was one of the things that Helena realised was most strange about him: how little his body and tone communicated at times.

She noticed with irritation that there was a mesh safety net over the opening, as if Ferron had somehow foreseen that she’d go there and might attempt suicide during his party. She hadn’t even been thinking about it, but she was annoyed at finding herself preemptively thwarted.

Helena stopped in her tracks. “You sound as enslaved as I am.”

“Some people just are. You look at them, and you know it.”

“I think the hospital’s worse than the battlefield.”

“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 curved into an insincere smile. “Prior commitments, I’m afraid.”

“I will die before I lose her,” Ferron said, his grip tightening.

She shook her head. “I was a healer,” she said. “I wasn’t—they didn’t let me fight.”

A question rose to her lips, and she felt as if it was vital that she ask. She leaned forward, trying to see his face. “Do you want to?”