Alchemised

by SenLinYu

This was the alloy. The lumithium and mo’lian’shi. Kaine had been stabbed with it, and it had been left inside his body.

Alchemical surgery was much less invasive. Most of the hospitals in the North exclusively employed alchemists, while manual surgery was viewed as archaic and brutal with its large incisions and scars.

“Have you never wondered why it was so easy for the High Necromancer to recruit the guild families? After all, plenty of them were devout, or owed their fortunes to the Institute.” She shrugged. “Because you’re jealous and petty and wanted more than the plenty you already had.”

eyebrow as he pulled his blood-drenched clothes back on. “Well, I suppose that was a part of it, but no, what Morrough did was widen a crack that the Holdfasts have been growing for centuries. Since the moment they founded this city, they set themselves up as kings while claiming not to be. They weren’t the lowly sort who’d ‘pursue’ power; no, they were divinely destined for it. Called, you might say.” “That’s because they didn’t want to rule,” she said fiercely. “Luc certainly never did, and Apollo always cared most for the Institute. He hated politics.”

“Yes. Funny how often people in power hate politics, as if what they really want is to do as they please and be praised for it, and if they aren’t, then it’s all beneath them. Considering how much they despised it, they certainly were unwilling to part with it. Only handed the minutiae of governance over to those of faith, let the Falcons and Kestrels and Shrikes manage all that tedium. The Institute was founded on the idea of pursuing the heights of alchemy, but that began to crumble the moment the science began contradicting the Faith. You should have seen the crisis when new metals were first discovered. The Faith spent years insisting there could be only eight, calling them compounds or alloys, and refusing ...

Orion’s legacy had to endure, so they’d import someone from time to time. Some prodigy from a distant land that they could show off as proof of their magnanimity, to serve their ends while beholden to the Principate.”

“So all you guild students were just—what? Playing along?” she said scathingly. He laughed. “No. We did hate you. Consider it from our perspective: You were the line the Holdfasts drew between the Eternal Flame and all the rest of us. Some little nobody plucked from obscurity and given the attention and praise that none of the guilds could ever earn. We built ourselves from the dirt and emptied our pocketbooks annually buying certification and lumithium from a family that could make wealth from nothing, and we were expected to be grateful to do so. When we looked up at what we wanted, you were the first thing in the way.”

He just offered to remove those who would never let us rise further. With the Holdfasts gone, the Faith’s grip on Paladia was supposed to crumble. An easy takeover. The city should have barely been affected. Even the Institute was intended to be left intact.” “But then your father was arrested.” He nodded, his eyes flat. “But then my father was arrested, and it was all a lie anyway, but by the time those who’d object realised that, it was too late for them.” “There were Undying who objected?” Her pulse sped up, thinking about potential sympathisers. This was critical information. This could change everything.

He reached out, fingers wrapping around her throat, and pulled her close. “Basilius Blackthorne. Recognise that name?” Her blood ran cold. Yes, she knew it. “Blackthorne was—?” “Quite the monster now, isn’t he? I told you about the phylacteries, remember?” His fingers around her throat tightened. She gave a small nod, heart rising. “After I killed Principate Apollo, Basilius said he’d never agreed to such methods and bloodshed. Morrough—he still went by Morrough back then—pretended to give this some consideration. He called a meeting of us all. We

Morrough said he wanted us all there, to see him change Basilius’s mind. He brought out Basilius’s phylactery in a box and reminded us that we had all entrusted ourselves to him, and then he began carving into it using a talon ring. Basilius began to scream and tear at his own body, until there were pieces of him all over the floor, but it never stopped, he just kept regenerating. Over and over until the floor was covered. When Morrough was finally done, I’m told Basilius went home and ate his wife alive in their marriage bed. I believe he had children, too. All gone.”

“We are all expendable to Morrough. So you see, I am intimately acquainted with the illusion of choice.” He smiled, slow and cruel. “That’s why I recognise it.”

“And what would your dear Luc say if he learned how you let his father’s killer buy you like a whore?” As he spoke, his free hand found her waist and he pulled her close, hand sliding up her body, groping her as if he were about to push her down and ravish her there on the bare floor.

Sometimes she wished she’d died in the hospital with her father, to be remembered and mourned for her possibilities, rather than live day by day growing ever lesser. Now it didn’t matter if she’d been an alchemist, or a healer, or anything else. To anyone who ever learned of it, she would only be that one thing. Women were always defined by the lowliest thing they could be called.

“I thought I could show you some healing techniques, so you can do them yourself. I know most of the time you don’t need it, but if you’re strategic and direct the way your body regenerates, you’ll recover faster.”

“The High Necromancer doesn’t have eyes,” he said. She stopped short and looked up. “What?” She’d never seen Morrough, but she’d heard that during his rare appearances, he wore a golden mask—a large crescent that obscured most of his face and fanned out like horns on each side of his head. An eclipsing sun. “It’s rather gory to look at, but he doesn’t seem to mind.” He pulled his hand free, clearly done with the lecturing. “It’s like someone burned them out. He uses his resonance to see.” “I didn’t know that was possible.” She rubbed her hands on her skirt. “Well, that’s the basics. If there’s anything you’d want added to the kit, or ideas you have, I can try to make them.”

“They’re sized for you. Titanium and nickel is a mnemonic alloy, which will allow you to transmute them further than most weapons; they’ll still return to form. It has three memory shapes depending on the resonance phase you use, and you can alter them if you wish. That’s why the sheaths are malleable.”

The shrapnel samples Helena had retrieved could not make a sturdy weapon, but the alloy wasn’t supposed to. The fusion was intentionally unstable; it shattered on impact and the shards tended to deteriorate quickly when exposed to blood, dissolving like a poison blade targeting resonance. Helena and Shiseo had been instructed to pursue potential treatment methods.

“He gave me a set of daggers as a solstice gift, using the titanium-nickel alloy.”

“It seems he’s already surpassed everything he’d ever achieved prior to that injury of his. He controls several extremely valuable districts. Recently he’s taken over the factory Outpost where you’ve been visiting him, consolidating power at a remarkable speed. It seems all our recent successes have benefitted him greatly.”

“There have been rumours for months that Morrough has a new weapon. We thought it was a chimaera, like the one that nearly killed Lila, or the nullium, but no. It’s neither of those things, is it?” Ilva folded her hands, looking squarely at Helena. “How is it that he’s still alive?”

“So you can imagine our surprise that he has not only survived but become more dangerous than ever before, that treacherous spy of ours. How did you do it?”

broke and this—substance came out. Like quicksilver, and—it—it fused with Ferron.”

Rivertide was the name of Paladia back before the first Necromancy War. It had been wiped out by a plague, and when the Necromancer found it, he’d used the corpses for his army.

“The Necromancer realised the alchemical potential of the area and came to Rivertide specifically because of the people living here.”

“The Necromancer was a vivimancer, just like you, but the ability was even more mythical back then. He came to Rivertide performing miracles. They thought he was a god. They built him a temple on the plateau, gave him everything he asked for, and he promised them immortality if they only had the faith for it. Then one day, he brought them all together in a great assembly, in a secret place he’d carved underground, and declared that if they trusted him fully, utterly, he could make them live forever. I’m not sure of the process, but afterwards, his temple was full of corpses, and their souls were bound together, synthesised into this—substance. He used it, the power, to reanimate them all.”

“If the truth of the Stone’s nature were known, Orion feared that others might be inspired to rediscover the methods, and so, when those who’d witnessed the battle called the Stone a gift from Sol, Orion had no choice but to let them believe it.” Ilva paused, her expression mournful.

“It doesn’t serve the Holdfasts.” She looked away from Helena, jaw set. “Even in Orion’s own hands, it was hard and cold, never bestowing its power or favour upon anyone of the Holdfast line. There have been a few whom it would warm to, but it always went cold eventually. And you of all people had it. You could have done anything, and you healed Ferron with it.”

“He was always going to die, but I want you to do it. You created this new threat to Luc, so you will put an end to it.”

Ilva had always wanted revenge. Crowther looked at the civil war and saw all the political machinations of the surrounding countries; Ilva’s game of war was equally intricate, but hers was wholly personal. It was about Luc, it was about her family’s legacy, and it was about revenge.

“That includes you. No matter how you’ve romanticised him, Kaine Ferron is not a person. He is a monster.” Ilva

The Ferrons are as corruptible as their resonance.”

“I’m afraid that someday I’ll come, and you—you won’t be here.” He went still, his eyes darting across her face. His expression wavered, something she couldn’t decipher flickering in his eyes. He gave a low laugh. “Is this goodbye, then, Marino?”

The question jolted through her, and she reached out, grabbing hold of him. “No! No.” A month. She swallowed hard. “I got worried, and I—didn’t have anywhere else to go.” She’d said that already. She felt so stupid, so blindly trusting. And she was too late, too slow; there wasn’t enough time left. His right hand rested on her shoulder, heat seeping through her. She bit down on her lip, swallowing hard.

“You always have to come back,” she said. “All right? Don’t die. Promise—”

“All right…” he said, “but only because you asked.”

Her smile fell, and she stared at him in horror. That bitterness in his eyes—she finally understood it. He had been waiting for her betrayal. This was what held him back. He’d known from the beginning, before the possibility had ever occurred to her, and he’d trained her anyway. She didn’t need a book or Crowther to tell her what the expression on his face meant. She could feel it.

She leaned closer, her hand sliding up from his chest to his shoulder to pull him forward and kiss him. It was not a slow, sweet kiss. It was not a kiss caused by alcohol or insecurity. It was born of rage, despair, and desire so hot, it threatened to burn her into oblivion. It was possibly a kiss goodbye. She wanted him to know. It was real. For her, it had always been real. He froze when their lips met. She felt his hand on her shoulder and braced herself to be pushed away even as she deepened the kiss, gripping the fabric of his shirt tighter, her lips frantic.

But his eyes… She could tell— He was hers. The realisation broke her heart.

She had him. If she was smart enough to leverage it. On his knees, ready to do anything, Ilva had said.

“I wasn’t going to betray the Resistance,” he finally said. “I was never going to. You were already losing when I made the offer, and you’re probably still going to lose now, but I never cared. I just wanted to avenge my mother.”

“Unfortunately, by the time I had an opportunity to offer my services, she’d been dead too long and there was the coroner’s report saying she’d died of natural causes. What could I possibly have to avenge?” The bitterness in his voice and on his face was unadulterated. “I knew Crowther well enough to know he’d only consider me as valuable as the strings he could pull, so I thought I’d give him a dead end to dig himself into.”

“I tried to think what could I possibly want from the Eternal Flame. A pardon, because it was as ridiculous as it was obvious. But the Resistance was losing, everyone knew you were losing. I knew I’d need a contact, someone who could retrieve messages for me and come when called. I didn’t want Crowther choosing one of his rats, and I thought demanding someone specific would play into—what they expected of me.” He swallowed. “But the Eternal Flame’s noble families are too precious, I had to want someone they’d consider disposable, and Crowther was standing there, waiting for an answer. I had to come up with something. I remembered your name, on the exam lists. When I said Helena Marino, Crowther got this look in his eyes, and I knew he’d taken the bait.”

“As if I would betray the High Necromancer for you. I knew they’d send you with instructions to try to play up the obsession I was supposed to have—to ensure I wouldn’t get bored or change my mind—but I wasn’t worried. You were no one, just an awkward shadow behind Holdfast, ...

“But you—you—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter. You outmanoeuvred me. Or maybe I’m just too tired and grieving to keep pushing you away. You won.” He met her eyes for a momen...

“You are a monster,” she said, crossing her arms. “Do you expect me to forget what you’ve done? To think you became so high-ranking because of that delightful personality of yours? You think invoking your mother’s death can erase all that? Everyone has lost someone, and most of them, more than you ever could. If you want to blame her death on Morrough, then maybe you shouldn’t have spent all that extra time supporting him after she was gone. After you started this war. And chose to become Undying.”

her if she didn’t use her own resonance to push back. “Do you want to know why I’m like this?” he asked slowly, his teeth flashing like fangs. “You asked once if it was a punishment, and I was honest when I said it wasn’t. It was the bargain I made.”

“I was still at the Institute, finishing up the year. Who do you imagine was alone with him when word came that my father had been caught and confessed to treason?” Kaine’s expression contorted with grief. “He had my mother in a cage when I got home. He’d been torturing

uneven. “You sold yourself to save the person you care about. Well, so did I. What was I supposed to do, fail to kill Principate Apollo knowing I wouldn’t be the one who’d suffer for it? This”—he gestured towards himself—“this was how I proved I’d be loyal, how I got him t—” His breath caught. “—to stop hurting her.”

“After she died, I was being watched. Morrough knew I’d joined for her. I had to earn back trust before I could risk doing anything. I’m not one of your fucking idiots who thinks one moment of self-sacrifice can change everything. If I wanted my betrayal to matter, he couldn’t see it coming.”

“I can’t—I can’t do this again—” he finally gasped out. “I can’t care for someone again. I can’t take it.”