Alchemised

by SenLinYu

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.

There wasn’t anyone left to protect, but she refused to cooperate with her captors. To make anything easy for them, even their filing system. Besides, she hadn’t been anywhere else. “Where. Were. You. Before stasis?” The woman was speaking loudly. Helena’s throat tightened, trying not to even think about the answer, because it tore her apart to remember.

She could still smell the smoke and blood in the summer heat, hear the raucous cheers as Resistance leaders died, their screams fading. Watching them die, and knowing it was still not over, even then.

She had been kept awake, aware of the claustrophobic horror of all that was happening to her, as she was locked inside her body and left in the dark. Waiting for someone to come for her. No one ever did.

“Something has been done to your mind,” the woman said, sounding bewildered but also strangely excited. “Some kind of transmutation. I have never encountered anything like it. I’m going to have to report this. I’ll need a specialist. You have—” The woman paused. “There’s no name for this! I’ll have to come up with a name…”

“I doubt you understand any of this, but imagine your mind is a—a city. Your thoughts run along various streets to reach their destinations. Those lines you see are your streets that have been rerouted. There are barriers, transmutationally crafted, and so instead of following a natural pattern through the brain, someone has created alternative routes. Some areas are cut off entirely. I can’t even imagine how…The skill this would take…”

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.

However, pure lumithium was too divine for mortals; overexposure caused wasting sickness, and for individuals with resonance, direct exposure could result in a raw, metallic pain within their nerves.

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

“We have to check in morning and night. There’s a curfew. If anyone’s missed for more than twenty-four hours—” She swallowed. “If they don’t turn up, the High Reeve’s sent to hunt them down, and they’re always dead by the time he brings them back. The Warden likes to string them up, leaves them hanging for days sometimes, and then when they’re starting to rot, she’ll reanimate them and have them ‘work’ with us for a while before they go to the mines. Says it’s so we don’t forget the rules.”

Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. He still wears a helmet the way the Undying did during the war. 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.”

Grace seemed to shrivel as she spoke, as if the memory were enough to paralyse her. “All there is now is surviving. That’s all that matters.” She whispered the last words as if they weren’t for Helena, but for herself.

Helena looked at her, bewildered. “What do they want eyes for?” Grace shook her head. “I don’t know. I just want the money.”

“You don’t know—you don’t have any idea what it’s like now. Where have you been? Why didn’t you save Luc? You were supposed to, but you didn’t. He died! We all watched it. And the Bayards are dead. And everyone in the Eternal Flame is dead—except you. And you think I should care about my eyes?”

She’d seen it every day since she was ten. She was in the Alchemy Tower. In the very heart of the Alchemy Institute that the Holdfasts had founded. This was Central.

There was a quiet shuffling in the dark. Helena craned her neck as much as she could, eyes straining for a glimpse of the traitor. A round-faced man with dark hair emerged, carrying a small case. He paused to bow reverently before the High Necromancer.

“I believe she was a healer,” he said quietly as he returned his attention to his case. Helena fought back a wince.

“You’re saying she did this to herself?” Stroud gestured towards Helena with scathing disbelief.

“Let the High Reeve manage it.” Stroud’s face fell. “But I found h—” “I have other work for you.” Stroud straightened but still looked disappointed. “The High Reeve was Bennet’s favourite after all.” Morrough waved a dismissive hand as he vanished into the shadows. “It’s time he’s given more to do than hunting.”

After five years, most students would depart with their certification to join the guilds, with only qualifying undergraduates ascending to the next tier in the narrowing Tower to study more technical fields and subjects. Even fewer would rise past the graduate and research floors to achieve the rank of grandmaster.

Luc, newly crowned as Principate, had been certain that the citizens of Paladia would be shocked into reason once they realised they were aligning themselves with necromancers. Necromancy had been a mortal crime throughout most of the continent for centuries. Not even the guilds would go so far. He had been wrong.

Although healers were relatively common in the remote parts of Paladia, vivimancy was rare enough that there were all kinds of claims about what vivimancers were capable of—that they could enthral the living just as necromancers enthralled the dead, for instance, and perform unspeakable transmutations upon living flesh. Helena used to think these views of vivimancers unreasonably harsh, but now as Stroud’s subject, she began to understand.

It was an imperfect solution; even when maintained, the bodies rotted slowly around them and lacked the regenerative qualities of the near-impervious originals. Helena suspected this was why Morrough was so interested in transference—the method had the potential to allow the Undying to move into living bodies instead.

Penny leaned over the arm of the chair, looking back, her face stricken. “You were right. I’m so sorry. We should have listened to you.”

If she was being taken to the mainland, then the High Reeve must have an estate of some kind. Either one was seized and bestowed post-war, or perhaps he was from one of the wealthy guild families. There had been a number who’d seen their fortunes explode from the industrialisation of the last century.

In the stasis tank, she’d told herself over and over that she’d survive, that she had to hold on. She couldn’t explain why.

A bouquet of roses sat arranged on a table in the centre point of the room. She flinched just looking at them.

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.

He looked at Helena again, no emotion on his face, but there was a predatory calculation in his eyes, like a wolf. “I’m sure.”

Ferron’s eyes gleamed, as if he could feel her struggling. His index finger barely touched her temple, and then she truly felt his resonance, vivid as a live wire.

Finally, his hand dropped away and he stood there, staring at her. “Well,” he said at last. “Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Stroud said from somewhere behind him. “Quite,” he said, his gaze splinter-sharp. He raised an eyebrow, still looking at Helena. “The war is over. What is it you think you’re protecting in that brain of yours?”

How could she outwit someone like that? Could he see memories alone or her thoughts, too?

She shoved the tray aside. Untying the bundle, she found sets of underclothes, wool stockings, and one dress, red as blood.

She tried to focus, but sharp red pain splintered her mind. Whatever it was vanished like water through sand.

Helena doubted she had any formal training. In general, the guilds only sent sons to the Institute; daughters were for marriage. They might be taught alchemical parlour tricks, but they were rarely certified.

“Let’s get this over with.” Helena didn’t move. His gaze lifted. “Come here.”

“Get out.” She knew the words, but they came from far away. Sounds. Not Etrasian. Etrasian was prettier. Melodic. This was— Dialect. Her thoughts were very slow.

“Did you think I didn’t know you’d try to kill yourself?” Ferron asked venomously. “As if there’s anything the Eternal Flame loved more than dying for their causes.” “I thought you liked us dead.” Her head hurt so much, she wanted to vomit.

“Stroud wants you going outside,” he said. “She believes fresh air will improve your constitution.” He tossed a bundle towards her. “Put it on.” Helena unfolded it and found it was a thick cloak, dyed crimson. She grimaced.

If the war had ended fourteen months ago, that would have been in late summer of 1787. Which meant that she had no memory of nearly nineteen months of the war. It blurred out of focus when she tried to think back, to remember anything more than the hospital shifts. She had no recollection of anything, not of conversation or the seasons, or Lumithia’s Ascendance and Abeyance, of anything but the endless loop of shift after shift in the hospital, like an eternal scream.

There were statistics presented about how Paladia’s economy was expected to continue to shrink due to a multigenerational loss of alchemists. The solution, the author declared, was sponsored births. The article suddenly stopped being editorial and read more like an advertisement.

Helena read the editorial several times, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. It was a breeding program being passed off as an economic solution. As if alchemists were dogs to mate in pursuit of economically desirable transmutation abilities.

She put her hand down, unsettled, and finally reached up to find the one scar that she did remember. It was hardly visible, hidden below the shadow of her jaw. It ran long and thin across the left side of her neck, stopping just short of her throat.

Her mouth twisted, throat going taut. “I don’t like places I can’t see.” “Since when? I haven’t noticed you keeping the light on in here constantly. Or are these shadows different?”

Everything about him was slim and sharp-edged. “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.”

“You don’t remember?” He shook his head. “Did you even do anything during the war? The way the Holdfasts used to parade you around, you’d think you would have at least tried to be useful, but you have the most unexceptional personnel file I’ve ever seen.” He scoffed. “How many years of your life did you spend in that hospital? And for what? Saving people who would have been better off if you’d let them die. But no, you put them back together and sent them right back out to suffer a bit more.” He gave a slow smile. “Perhaps Stroud’s wrong, and you were sympathetic to our cause.”

Helena glanced up. His eyes were locked on the window, as though his mind had gone elsewhere. He roused himself, glancing down. “Any other questions?” He arched an eyebrow as if daring her. “No,” she said quickly, looking away. “You’ve done enough.”

“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.”