Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Men prone to violence were generally thoughtless, acting with emotion first and applying reason after.

He looked at Helena again, no emotion on his face, but there was a predatory calculation in his eyes, like a wolf.

“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?”

The Alchemy Institute had been at maximum capacity for decades, which functioned as a limit on the number of alchemy certificates in any given year. Without certification, people could not professionally call themselves alchemists or use their resonance without a credentialled supervisor.

So the academy effectively created a divide

Her instinctive relief at his appearance unsettled her in more ways than she wanted to think about, and she would think about it if she spent the entire evening in her room.

Her body remembers ahhhhhh

The spark she’d once regarded as the most intrinsic part of who she was had gone out. She was a vibrant corpse, hardly different from the necrothralls haunting Spirefell.

“Is there really a difference between having someone die for you and killing them?”

Every good thing she had ever had in her life was destroyed, every scrap of solace ripped away as though there was nothing left of her now except hurting. She had been imprisoned and violated in almost every way imaginable, and now he would inflict this final atrocity upon her, but he was worried about her eyesight.

“You appear to have forgotten that I do not suffer fools tampering with her.

“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 cracked a smile that made his lower lip split, a trickle of red blood running down his chin. It healed instantly.

I hate how hot this sounds

Each of the eight points had a distinct concept using combinations of symbols. Helena parsed the meaning slowly. Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

As he was regaining consciousness, she took his nearest hand, careful not to shift his shoulder as she started massaging the palm and worked slowly to his fingertips, knuckle by knuckle, her resonance seeking out every bit of tension and knotted muscles. Her father used to massage her hands like that, even before Paladia. Every night.

Welp i managed not to cry until now

The Guild Assembly defended the attacks, saying that the hospitals were run by the Eternal Flame as covers for military bases, and the surrounding countries swallowed the lie, because it was easier than involving themselves in Paladia’s conflict.

Fuck

“All the field hospitals. In one day. They killed everyone, nurses, doctors, surgeons, all the patients. And we found out about the liches. And what I was.”

Oh MY GOD

Her death count was the numerical representation of her failures. All the lives she hadn’t saved, the ways she fell short. For Kaine, it was a mark of power. His victims, even Principate Apollo, all represented what made him so valuable. They were the inverse and counter to each other. A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable.

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.

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.

“You don’t get to lie to me and then get angry when I make the mistake of believing you,” Helena said.

“In the future, perhaps tell me what you want instead of expecting me to fail where it’s convenient to you. Maybe then we’ll both end up less disappointed in each other.”

Nothing and no one would ever convince her that anything noble or purifying could come from this scale of suffering. That any rewards could ever be worth it.

You need to fight dirty. Forget every word you’ve ever heard about honour in combat. The honour is surviving.”

You were so obvious, but that only made it worse; knowing you’d let me do anything to you in the hope it would save everyone else, even the people who’d sold you in the first place. At least when I sold my soul, my mother prostrated herself, begging to take my place. I suppose, in some regards, I am luckier than you.”

He gave a low bitter laugh. “I’m sure there’s something poetic in it all, but right now all I feel is a new set of manacles.” He let go and stepped away from her, heading for the door. “So forgive me if I dislike looking at you. I’m still adjusting to the ways these new ones chafe.”

Like a star, he was glittering and ice-cold from afar, but when the space was bridged, the heat of him was endless.

“You’re mine. You swore yourself to me. Now and after the war. I’m going to take care of you. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be lonely. Because you’re mine.”

She reached out, her fingers brushing back his hair. “Don’t worry. I’m always going to come back to you.”

The only thing Hevgoss liked more than expansionist war was their prison population. It was vast, multigenerational, and the source of their labour force and the bulk of their military.

Is this play about us?

Whenever there were labour shortages, or rumours of political or economic instability within the country, Hevgoss had a habit of going to war, stretching their borders to encompass some new population to refill their prisons.

Officially Hevgotian prisons were all state-run, but that didn’t prevent the “rental” of prisoners when it suited them to whoever could pay. Slavery was illegal on the Northern continent, so Hevgoss had reinvented

To keep order, it is important that the guards are not the enemy. Instead, you make the prisoners think their trouble is other prisoners, a different unit or sector. Those prisoners are the reason this prisoner has less; the rules they hate are those prisoners’ fault. By making privileges always at the expense of others, the prisoners forget who has made those rules.

“If he’s that powerful, why doesn’t he come out and win the war?” He glanced up for a moment. “He’s a god. You’ll notice that making humans die for them is the gods’ primary mode of operation.

It doesn’t matter what happens to you, you will still be mine.”

“Everyone who wins says they were good, but they’re the ones who tell the story. They get to choose how we all remember it. What if it’s never that simple?”

She shifted across the bed and into his arms, burying herself there, letting her eyes close as she traced her fingers across his skin. She would know him blind.

Anyone who wanted to fight could fight, alchemist or not, adult or not, man or not. There was no time to train anyone. They didn’t even have weapons for them. There were boys and girls practising with sticks, trying to make themselves slingshots. No armour because there was none in their sizes. The sight made Helena sick. They were battle fodder. They’d be slaughtered in minutes. But they would do that rather than allow necromancy.

She wanted to commit everything to memory, the way he felt under her hands and against her skin, as if sufficient detail could make this secret thing real enough to endure; as if she could write it into the universe so deeply that even a war could not erase it.

She lay in his arms, listening to his heart. When she tried to picture home, this feeling was all she could imagine.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting him nearer, under her skin, beneath her ribs, inside her heart. To hoard him so close nothing separated them and the terror of losing him would finally end.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes.

If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”