Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“You’re dead, Father. Perhaps you forgot. That corpse has no claim to my estate or my inheritance. And”—Ferron’s voice grew pointed—“you have no iron resonance inside that body. Regardless of the titles the guild indulges you with, you have no real power. It took nearly a year before anyone even remembered you, and longer before they wanted you back. The only reason I let you continue as guildmaster is because I have better things to do with my time than dealing with the minutiae of factory management.”

“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.”

She turned to explore the house. She couldn’t help but wonder at Ferron’s choice to drug her. Wasn’t it more convenient for her to be afraid?

The iris was a beautiful, deep blue. They’re offering a lot of money for eyes, Grace had said.

Of the three, homunculi were a particularly enduring concept. The idea was that by placing a man’s seed in a cucurbit with the proper environment of stable warmth, it could come to life on its own. After being fed distilled blood, it could grow into a human of limitless alchemical potential and utterly without flaws because it was unspoiled by the inferior environment and contributions of a female womb—the source of all humanity’s flaws.

“What kind of ring is that?” she asked. He looked down. “This?” he asked, as if there were any other rings she could have been referring to. He turned his hand. “Just an old piece.” He slipped it off and tossed it to her. She caught it reflexively, disappointed to discover that it wasn’t an unusual black metal at all, but a severely tarnished silver ring, as if he never took it off to care for it. It was hand-forged rather than transmutationally crafted; she could see the hammer marks that had beaten a scaled, almost geometric pattern onto it. A bizarre thing for an iron alchemist to wear.

She dropped the ring into his palm, and he slid it back onto his finger. “Why all this sudden interest in me?” he asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, is that all? And here I was hoping you were plotting to seduce me.” She stared at him blankly. He gave a mocking smile. “Steal my heart with your wit and charms.” Helena scoffed. “Who knows, perhaps I have a proclivity for—” He paused, studying her, trying to find something. Helena walked away. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Helena followed Aurelia’s voice and discovered that the foyer had been transformed since she’d last seen it. The rails had been reshaped into iron bars stretching all the way up to the ceiling, making it impossible to jump from the landings or from the stairs. Ferron was clearly taking no risks.

“You’re all right. You had a seizure. It’s over now.” He touched her jaw, and she felt warmth under her skin where the muscles were so rigid that they might crack, coaxing them to relax.

She didn’t understand. She didn’t remember— “Who are you?” she slurred through her teeth. Myriad emotions flashed across his face. He opened his mouth, then shut it firmly. “I’m in charge of your care,” he finally said very slowly, saying each word precisely.

The room blurred, the edges disappearing. The face softening as it faded away. “Do I know you?” she asked as her eyes slid closed. “I suppose you do.”

His expression grew eager, triumphant as he got closer. His hand extended, fingers curved and grasping. The door slammed open so abruptly the room seemed to jolt. “Lose your way, Lancaster?” Ferron said as he entered, his eyes burning an irate silver. A flood of relief rushed through Helena.

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.

He didn’t look away until Aurelia broke off the kiss, turning from him. His eyes immediately dropped, and a false, indulgent smile curved across his lips as he scanned the room, clapping without enthusiasm until one of the dead servants approached with a tray of drinks. He snatched up a flute and knocked back the contents as if it were a mouthwash.

It happened so fast, everyone in the ballroom was left standing in shock, unable to process that it was already over. Helena could scarcely believe it. It didn’t seem real that something like that could happen without warning. Five people.

“Do you say that to every girl?” The words popped out thoughtlessly. Ferron gave a short laugh, his gaze sharpening, eyes darting across her face. “I think you should go to bed,” he said. She looked at him in confusion, feeling as if the encounter had suddenly veered off course, but she wasn’t sure how.

She approached cautiously. The cage was too narrow for an animal but slightly shorter than Helena. A prisoner would be forced to huddle inside it.

It was iron, but roughly wrought, made with manual smithing not alchemy, which meant the iron was probably inert, not transmutable at all. She touched it, feeling the rough telltale traits that no alchemist would leave behind.

What did he gain from it? Surely he was too intelligent to be so void of ambition. He had to be playing a long game. And if Helena could only deduce it, that would give her leverage, a means of manipulating him.

“Ah, and that’s supposed to explain why you spend so much time with her. And when you’re not, it’s the thralls following her.” Aurelia scoffed. “As if she’ll disappear otherwise.” She cast a hateful glare at Helena. “There’s no need to act as if she’s anything precious. I asked Stroud, and she told me: She was a nobody. No one’s coming for her, but you’re still hovering about like you’re hoarding her.”

Helena inclined her head. “Yes. You seem strangely concerned about me thinking such a thing.”

How had she forgotten Soren? She barely had time to wonder. Ferron seemed to be waiting for more names.

For several weeks, newspapers became her only glimpse into the world beyond. The repopulation program, which had initially been treated as an economic necessity, was gradually reframed as the new scientific frontier. New Paladia would forge its own future; no longer would alchemical repertoires be left to chance. Parentage in the program was to be selected based on the strength and variety of resonance. Tests were being done to discover the ideal combinations.

Ferron said nothing, but Helena could have sworn he’d somehow paled. “I assumed she’d been eating as Aurelia and I do.” His fingers flexed. “Aurelia has always managed the menu. I will make enquiries.”

She realised then that she was lying on a bed beneath him. Heat flooded under her skin, and her spine prickled as she sat up quickly, folding her arms.

“No.” Helena shook her head. “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?” Lila’s prosthetic leg clicked as she shifted and then said, “I think the hospital’s worse than the battlefield.” Helena went very still.

“And here I thought you’d use poison,” he said, his voice mocking. Rage ignited inside her. She flung herself backwards, taking the knife with her.

She angled the blade back and drove it towards her own throat, meeting Ferron’s eyes with savage triumph. Ferron moved so fast he blurred.

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

Morrough lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him. Morrough seemed shrunken somehow from the immense distorted being he’d been. Now he looked as though the skin was rotting off him.

“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.” The pressure growing in Helena’s head was so intense, her vision disappeared.

“It was the Eternal Flame. Who else could it be? Who would dare to kill the Undying? The weapon was obsidian. Crowther is ours now, but he must have shared the secrets with someone overlooked during the purge. Perhaps their identity is one of the secrets our captive animancer is trying so hard to keep from us.”

“Watch her carefully. The Eternal Flame will come for her soon, I am certain of it.” “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.” Ferron said nothing.

“They’ve been dying for weeks. I didn’t realise what the disappearances had in common until now. I thought it was censorship, that maybe they were dissidents, but it’s the Undying. They’re disappearing because they’re being killed, and you’re the one who’s been covering it up.” Ferron said nothing, his expression carefully blank.

She looked up, forcing her question out. “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.”

After Principate Apollo’s death, when talk of war began, Helena’s father had wanted to return south. He’d said it wasn’t their fight, and his responsibility was keeping her safe, but Helena had already promised Luc she’d stay, and so her father had stayed because of her. And died because of her.

She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.

“Actually, I’ll tell you…if you tell me what it was that ended up being too good to be true for you.” She swallowed hard, staring at the mountains. “Paladia.” She drew a deep breath and looked at him. “Well?” He met her stare, eyes glittering with a strange look of satisfaction. “Yes, he’s dying.”

He wasn’t returning to the house pale with fury; he was in shock from torture. The symptoms showed more distinctly every time she caught sight of him. It was as though he were mentally eroding as the physical ramifications vanished. She tried not to notice. When she couldn’t help it, she tried not to care.

Ten days after transference, when he came to her room to check her memories again, he seemed less on edge. When he encountered Helena’s reluctant but fixated concern over him, he broke the connection. She blinked and found him staring down at her. “Worrying about me?” His face twisted into a gloating smile. “I never thought I’d see the day.” Her face burned. “Don’t take it as a compliment. I hate torture.”

“I do, though,” he said, his expression so hard he could have been carved from granite. “This is a story with only one ending. If your Resistance wanted something else, they should have made different choices. Perhaps some hard, realistic ones, and given up their fanatical notions that the righteousness of their cause made their victory inevitable. They were fools, every one of them.” He sneered. “If the gods were real, they would have made Apollo Holdfast harder to kill.”

“Well,” the sly voice replied, “it probably depends on your repertoire. She’ll give you a list of room numbers to choose from. There’s this one girl, pretty thing, scars weren’t too bad. Little bitch managed to bite me, but she was very cooperative after I broke her jaw. I told Stroud to let it heal the old-fashioned way.” There was a dramatic sigh. “I’ll go back again this week, make sure she’s knocked up, and if not, I guess I’ll try again. I rather hope it didn’t take, I think I’ll like her better with her mouth wired shut.”

Lancaster’s lungs gave a wet rattle. “I assumed you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed her, seeing how you let Aurelia out to play. I’m the one who caught her. She should be mine.” “She’ll never be yours.”

She thought she should say something. What she’d tried to tell Lancaster. “Ferron always comes for me,” she whispered. He stopped short. His jaw locked, fists clenching, saying nothing for a moment. Then his throat dipped, and he sighed.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a tense voice. He took her by the shoulders, turning her towards him. She knew he wouldn’t. He only hurt her on certain days, and this wasn’t one of them, so she sat very still.

Ferron will come. Ferron will come. The words ran through her mind in a relentless loop. He would; he had to know what was happening. He wouldn’t let Aurelia— He was in the city. She knew how long that journey was.

Her chest was spasming with suppressed panic. He tilted her face up towards his, and his expression grew horrified. He touched her cheek and held her face as he drew several deep breaths.

Ferron kept talking in his cold, unsympathetic voice. “I’ve tried to be patient with you, Aurelia. I’ve been willing to overlook your indecent behaviour and petty interferences, but do remember, aside from being somewhat decorative, you are useless to me. If you ever go near her again, or speak to her, or so much as set foot in this wing again, I will kill you, and I will do it slowly, perhaps over the course of an evening or two. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. Now get out of my sight.”