Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Iron was one of the eight traditional metals associated with the eight planets: lead for Saturn, tin for Jupiter, iron for Mars, copper for Venus, quicksilver for Mercury, silver for Luna, lumithium for Lumithia, and gold for Sol.

The Holdfasts were always depicted wreathed in fire. The creation of sacred fire and the alchemisation of gold were the two unique gifts which Sol bestowed upon the Holdfasts. Alchemisation, the transformation of one metal into another, was the most difficult form of alchemy. Prior to Orion Holdfast’s founding of the Institute, early alchemical writing was more entwined with mythological ideas than science. The mythical Cetus, often called the first Northern alchemist, was credited with hundreds, even thousands of the earliest alchemical writings, which spanned centuries. Scholars had speculated that Cetus was the name of

a school or an alchemical sect. The mystery was later revealed to be a consequence of superstition. Early alchemists were forced to write pseudonymously, initially to avoid persecution, while later novice alchemists used the names of more famous alchemists in their attempts to legitimise their theories and discoveries. As a result, “Cetus” had written almost all the surviving alchemy texts. While the works of Cetus were considered historically seminal, they were highly inaccurate, and it was doubted that any alchemist by the name had even existed, but with no one else to credit, almost all early alchemical theories and discoveries prior to Paladia’s founding remained attributed to him. It was Cetus’s early writings that established the alchemical principle that a metal could only be alchemised into a less noble form, often in keeping with the planetary hierarchy. Later, Orion Holdfast discovered the modern principles of alchemisation, overturning Cetus’s claims and laying forth the methods and array principles needed to transform the ignoble metals into those less corruptible. In Orion’s work, alchemisation was predicated upon spiritual purity; only an alchemist with a soul as pure as the metal they sought to create could alchemise it. It was Sol’s own light and purity bestowed in blessing upon the Holdfasts that endowed them with the divine ability to turn lead into pure gold.

Artificial humans were considered as mythical as chimaeras or philosopher stones. One of the many ideas attributed to Cetus in the prescientific era. 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.

Where did the power come from? She studied him. Supposedly there were crystals and precious stones with properties useful for resonance. In early myths of Orion Holdfast, Sol’s blessing was described as a huge celestial stone. Amulets featuring crystals had been long popular as a result. Necklaces and brooches had been sold in Paladian shops and stands to visiting pilgrims who considered the city-state as particularly sacred to the Faith, often with promises that they would strengthen or expand an alchemist’s resonance or repertoire, ensuring admission to the Institute.

Helena had never understood why, but the Institute, which generally treated science and the Faith as complementary to each other, strictly banned the study of vivimancy even for healing. Most healers tended to appear in remote places in the Novis Mountains and were only taught to work by intuition, their success or failure left to the will of Sol. No “science” about it.

Paladians valued stillness. Expert alchemists would only move their fingers for precise and controlled use of their resonance. It was culturally ingrained. Expressions were also valued most when they were subtle; insults often came in the form of sarcastic flattery that didn’t translate easily for a newcomer.

The cult claimed that mankind itself was the first product of the alchemy, created by Sol at the beginning of time and scattered across the earth. However, the human beings created were lowly and corruptible, much like the most ignoble of metals, and Sol for all his power could not make them better. Then came Lumen, whose alchemical processes were much harsher. Lumen joined together the other four elements of fire, earth, water, and air, using the entire earth as an alembic, with the creatures of earth as the prima materia. The Great Disaster, two millennia past, which nearly shattered both earth and humanity, had been the processes of alchemisation itself.

The Northern continent’s largest mine was in the mountains, upriver from Paladia, and the number of children with measurable resonance born in the city was more than double the rates of neighbouring countries. Paladia’s lumithium mines had made for complicated politics. Lumithium could only be safely excavated by those without resonance; otherwise the symptoms and wasting sickness came quickly. But the work was limited to a single generation. Miners’ children were almost always born with measurable resonance. Paladia was constantly bringing in new labourers to work the mines, resulting in a perpetual population explosion.

Without certification, people could not professionally call themselves alchemists or use their resonance without a credentialled supervisor. The guilds wanted the certification and admissions of the Alchemy Institute to remain limited, both because it increased the value of their credentials, and because those without formal certification were cheap to hire for alchemical factory work. However, the guilds also wanted assurance that their heirs would be the ones entering the Institute, no matter whose resonance or aptitude was greater.

Transmutational arrays were often simply illustrative, to record processes, but they were also used for transmutation when the process was too complex for simple resonance manipulation. Alchemisation always required the stabilisation of an array. Proprietary arrays were what allowed the guilds to produce alchemical products inside industrial-sized forges.

Faith regarded women as categorically lesser, and even after the official distancing occurred, the belief remained pervasive. It had been viewed as a fact of nature. Men were of Sol, active, hot and dry, full of vitality, and the source of life’s seed. Women, it followed, were an inferior human form. Wet and cold, passively bound to the monthly cycle of Luna, the lesser moon. While their bodies were the necessary vessels for birth, it was their blood that was the source of all defects. Both vivimancy and necromancy were regarded as a corruption of resonance caused by a “poisonous womb.”

“Those difficulties are because she is resisting, because she can resist. This—she is the animancer.”

Paladia’s economy and legitimacy depended on alchemy, and the war had decimated both the population and the industry. The natural resources and centuries of alchemical science remained, but the country was weak, and the wolves were closing in. It was only the fear of the Undying that held their enterprising neighbours at bay, but now that myth was shattered. Morrough had all but vanished from the public eye; the High Reeve was the only true power that remained.

Ferrons were an old family, considered a part of Paladia’s history even before they’d made their fortune. The Undying maintained their regime entirely through fear, and those in Paladia still benefitting from it could fit in Spirefell’s ballroom.

He was critically dependent on Ferron and without alternatives. Yet Helena couldn’t shake the sense that she was missing something.

For those with low resonance, Ascendance was the only time of year when they could transmute, while alchemists with strong abilities found themselves disoriented by her radiance. Moon-drunk, people called it.

Ascendance had a particularly heightened influence on Paladians. A sign of Paladia’s deep connection to the gods, according to the Faith. Luc and Lila used to get so intoxicated from it, they’d have trouble walking straight, while Helena—in the true fashion of a foreign unbeliever—had only ever felt anxious, a heavy sense of dread pressing down on her.

“But at this point I suppose I deserve to burn. I wonder if you’ll burn, too.”

“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.”

“He wants you, Marino,” Crowther said. “Both now and after the war.”

“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.” Helena stared at him in surprise. “How’d you figure that out?” The only reliable method for permanently removing the Undying from combat was by burning them so hot and fast that they couldn’t regenerate, but when on fire, the Undying and the necrothralls would often plunge straight into the nearest cluster of combatants.

“They chose a dragon because the wings make it look like the symbol for iron.”

A circle is without hierarchy, and yet in this crest, it is iron that forms it.” Crowther drummed his fingers on his desk. “Iron will never be a noble metal, but it is indisputable at this point that Ferron steel has built as much of Paladia as Holdfast gold. The Holdfasts ruled for nearly five hundred celestial years by divine right, but the rest of the world has been catching up with our technological revelations. The tension between past ideals and present realities is what enabled this war.”

They were not looking for someone else to serve when Morrough appeared; they thought he was a means to an end, an outsider with the resources to challenge and undermine the Principate for them. But now Morrough holds too much of an advantage. Ferron is making the gamble that he can sabotage the Undying by aiding us until the scales even.” “Because if the Undying and the Eternal Flame destroy each other, then—” “Who better to rule the ashes than the family whose steel can rebuild this city?”

“It’s an odd request, don’t you think? Why would Kaine Ferron, the iron guild heir, want Helena Marino?”

The Outpost was a huge satellite structure built in the river just below the hydroelectric dam, erected atop enormous pillars that held it above even the highest storm floods, but near enough to benefit directly from the electricity generated there.

It was a tarnished silver ring; she knew it by both sight and resonance, although her silver resonance was minimal, not high enough for her repertoire to be considered noble. However, this ring 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 have.

“A symbol of our relationship,” Ferron said, and when she looked up sharply, he raised his right hand to indicate a matching band on his index finger. “There’s a mirrored entanglement in them. If I do anything to mine, you’ll feel it. I’ll transmute it to warm briefly if I need to meet. Twice if it’s urgent. I’d advise coming very quickly if it ever burns twice.”

Mirrored entanglement was the way her call bracelet from the hospital worked. It was a form of transmutation that was incredibly rare. Few alchemists had the ability to manage it. It made the pieces very valuable, but they were o...

“He must have inherited it from his mother. She was a silver alchemist here at the Institute. Minor

Anyone who studied metallurgy knew that silver and iron were incompatible metals. They couldn’t be alloyed. Silver was a noble metal, however, which would have placed the wife above her husband in station if not fortune.

Willow bark was best before the sap began to run. While its efficacy paled against laudanum, it could provide some minor pain relief and was also good for reducing inflammation, for managing fevers, and as a disinfectant for wounds. They were getting dangerously low on antiseptic,

Like homunculi, chimaeras were one of Cetus’s prescientific alchemical myths.

“How could immortality be a punishment? It’s what everyone wants.”

The chimaeras were made with vivimancy, therefore a vivimancer would be needed to understand the process. It was the duty of the Eternal Flame to study the practices of their enemies.

The victims arriving were nearly unrecognisable, experimented on in ways that defied reason. Bodies methodically dismembered and reassembled. There were so many.

The incisions over his shoulders were the worst of it. Not merely cutting to the bone but into the bone, carving into his shoulder blades, a lumithium alloy welded in, bonded with the bone to keep the array intact and

Arrays could be simply illustrative, to record or visually calculate a process, but they were also used for transmutation or alchemisation when the process was too complex for simple resonance manipulation, or when working with organically derived compounds that tended to be volatile. Drawn with chalk or charcoal, or etched into a surface with a stylus. But Helena had never seen anything like what had been done to Ferron.

The fundamental design was a classical celestial star correlating to the eight planets. Paladians loved things in sets of five or eight. The only exception she knew was pyromancy, which the Holdfast Suncrest was modelled after. Which used seven.

The use of the notation carved into Ferron’s skin was like using an alchemical formula to express a literary concept. It wasn’t unheard of for alchemists to write with alchemical symbolism and symbols, particularly in textbooks as a way of restricting information to the educated, but Helena had never seen the method applied to a functioning array. Each of the eight points had a distinct concept using combinations of symbols. Helena parsed the meaning slowly.

She knew the sunstone amulets were supposed to be special, to hold some of Sol’s light and strength within them, but she hadn’t realised what a difference it had been making all these years. Buying her time. Getting her to this moment. If it could do that, maybe it could save Kaine, tilt things into balance and give him a chance.

“Because we’re bound to Morrough.”

“We’re not always bound to him exactly.” He sighed. “We’re—he uses his bones, pieces of them, when we’re made. Part of the outer bone of his right arm was used on me. He calls them phylacteries. It’s what creates our physical immutability. A part of that is used to make the talismans.” He gestured at his chest. “He takes the phylacteries out sometimes and either grows a new bone or takes a spare from some necrothrall. That’s what he did when travelling, so he could leave some of us behind during his trip. He doesn’t like to do it often, but if he travelled without leaving the phylacteries, the connection would sever, and we’d—die.”

“Yes. He shares a piece of himself with us, and we give all of ourselves to him.”

Well, that explained why Ferron needed the Eternal Flame; he was dependent on them defeating Morrough for him.

In Paladia, Luna was regarded as fickle and vain, treacherous as the tides. According to the Faith, it was because of Luna’s inconstant nature that Sol had birthed Lumithia from his own heart, placing her in the night sky so that mankind would not fear the dark. Luna, envious of Lumithia’s greater brilliance, had sought to drown the world in retribution. Lumithia had faced Luna in a celestial battle so devastating, it had rained fire across the earth. After the battle, Lumithia settled in the sky and—to repair the destruction caused by the Great Disaster—bestowed the gifts of alchemy upon mankind. Meanwhile Luna, remorseless even in defeat, continued to express her fury by keeping the ocean and sea frothing with her endless jealousy, only calming when she ruled the skies alone.

Millennia later and Luna remained reviled, small and insignificant compared with Lumithia’s brilliant beauty and power. The statue of Luna was worn featureless, leaving little more than a vague figure behind. The Paladian treatment of Luna had been a shock when Helena first arrived. She’d known of Paladia’s great devotion to Sol and Lumithia, but the very concept of religion was different. The islands of Etras had little metal for alchemy, and being in constant proximity to the sea meant that Etrasians regarded Lumithia as the one responsible for the severe tidal shifts that ruled them. In their myths, Lumithia was a violent interloper who’d sought to destroy the earth, and Luna had thrown herself into Lumithia’s path. The act had left Luna so grievously wounded, she nearly fell from the sky, and the seas had tried to rise from their beds to catch her. Lumithia, chastened by this act of self-sacrifice, was quieted from her violence and came to share Luna’s vigil over the night sky. But the seas did not forget: They still rose in rage when Lumithia waxed full, only quieting in her absence. Because of this, in Etras, Luna did not merely rule the seas; she was also regarded as the patron goddess of protection, an intercessor. A mother.

She noticed the streaks of silver while treating Kaine’s back. They were just barely visible at his temple, glimmers of silver-white threaded through his dark hair.

She leaned in closer, trying to convince herself that he was simply going grey, and that it was not the exact shade of silver-white the stone had been.