Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“I realise you consider me a complete monster,” he bit out. “But I do generally keep my word. I’m not planning to hurt you. Come here. I want you to try attacking me, so I can see what you know.”

“This is war.” His voice came from somewhere beyond the bodies crowding around her. “You don’t get to want; you get to live or die.”

“Am I supposed to care? Do you think that ruining your life is the worst thing I’ve ever done?”

If she saw him, without the context of who he was, she might find him rather handsome.

If she admitted those theories, it would be proof of what she was. If she refused, she might endanger the Eternal Flame by withholding imperative information.

It was both unsurprising and undeniable that Falcon Matias wanted Helena removed from the Eternal Flame, possibly the Resistance. With all the trainee healers, Helena was no longer the necessity she’d once been. Luc might be the only obstacle to that.

Control the intensity of its effect? No, you cannot. I did not ask for something irreversible, I asked for a vivimancy-controlled obsession.” “Well, that’s not how vivimancy works,” she snapped back. “You can’t just turn human emotions on or off, not in a way that gives you the kind of leverage you’re wanting. It’s not magic.”

Now Paladia is built with their steel, and they think that means it belongs to them, whether to seize or ruin. They do not share. They are obsessive about what they regard to be theirs. You do this and Kaine Ferron will never let you go, and he will not be content with being secondary to anyone.”

He’d aged, his body seemingly lurching through time.

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”

A thing apart, reduced to her functions. Healer. Chymist. Liaison. Tool. Whore.

A starved wolf would sate itself on anything.

“You made me feel like the parts of me that aren’t useful still deserve to exist. Like I’m not just all the things I can do.”

She’d climb over tortured bodies, sell herself, and tear out Kaine Ferron’s heart if that was what it took to win.

Creating a niche for herself was a consolation because Elain Boyle was becoming widely preferred as a healer.

She had a relentless tendency towards prioritising her intuition over her training and healing symptoms rather than causes.

It’s caused when an unviable soul sustains itself by stealing life from another. Souls like that can only be purified through a life of self-sacrifice. The toll is—penance. It’s giving up what was stolen.”

Her mother’s mysterious sickness, diagnosed as a kind of consumption, was the Toll. Not because her mother had been a vivimancer, but because from the moment of conception, Helena’s defective, corrupt self had leached her mother of life from within her womb, stealing all but those seven years away.

“It didn’t work,” he said. “It’s not possible to take it by force like that. If it was that easy—” He scoffed. “—Morrough wouldn’t be bothering with most of this. Try it yourself now.”

You’re being driven by the guilt over crimes you never committed, that you think you deserve to suffer for, and that’s making you a liability for me.”

“I didn’t know that was something vivimancers could do,” she said, trying to get her thoughts straight. “I don’t think that most can,” Kaine said, straightening. “It’s something only animancers are capable of.”

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.

“You know, I just realised, if I succeed, you’ll control Ferron the same way you use Luc to control me. It makes me feel rather sorry for him.” Ilva didn’t look at her. “Well, he’ll deserve it more than you do.”

Lila was going to die unless someone cheated death, and fast.

Luc, who’d always been a bit of a larker about combat training and dismissive of the idea of a paladin, developed a passion for it overnight. He’d started constantly disappearing from study sessions and social events to practise with Lila. His interest had been so painfully obvious that Helena and Soren were embarrassed just witnessing it, but before anything could happen, Principate Apollo was dead.

Lila took the vows. To protect Luc with her life, to die for him. Luc had no choice but to accept them. Whatever had or hadn’t briefly existed between them was buried beneath the weight of those vows.

“I’d do anything to have that now. I can’t taste anything now except blood and smoke, and I don’t feel anything except when I’m on fire. The stories made it sound so good. Fighting for a cause. Being a hero.” He shook his head. “Why does everyone pretend it’s anything like that?”

The argument was all theatre. The Council had to censure him, and Luc stood there like a figure of myth, inexorable and resolute.

“In the East, there is a rare metal found deep in the mountains. It is—rarer than gold. Only the Emperor himself is permitted to possess it. We called it mo’lian’shi. It—creates inertia.”

But this—” He touched the vial lightly. “—this was made from pure mo’lian’shi. Only someone of royal birth, with an Emperor’s seal, could access it.” “And you know of it,” she said slowly.

Touch him and she’d bleed, and yet she could not escape the allure of it.

“You think it started then? You’ve always been expendable. Do you really think this war is about necromancy? That any of the wars have ever actually been about necromancy?” She shook her head warily. “No. It’s always about power. And what people will do without caring about the cost.”

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.”

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.”

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.

“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’s all a lie?”

The whole city, the Principate, the Faith, the history, every mural, every amulet. All lies.

It had never been about securing Kaine’s loyalty, but simply about giving the earnest appearance that she was trying to.

“You want honesty?” Ilva’s voice was viperous. “I want you to kill Kaine Ferron.”

“I am trying to save everyone, Marino.” Her voice crackled with intensity. “That includes you. No matter how you’ve romanticised him, Kaine Ferron is not a person. He is a monster.”

There’s no such thing as loyalty in his kind. The Ferrons are as corruptible as their resonance.”

“It’s because we passed the test. We held firm and didn’t let our fears corrupt us, and now Sol is bestowing his favour. We can’t lose now.” Helena flinched as if she’d been struck and stared at Penny in such abject shock that Penny’s smile faded, and a look of comprehension and discomfort suddenly swept across her face.

They thought the war was being won because her proposal of necromancy had been so sharply reprimanded that the Resistance passed some final spiritual test, and all the success of the last year was a reward for it? Without even realising it, she’d proven their mythos. No matter what happened now, no one would ever listen to her. She was cast forever into the role of doubter, of tempter.

Kill Kaine. Bury the evidence, the true means of their success. Create one more miracle.

Your friend Helena Marino died in a field hospital six years ago. She doesn’t exist anymore. I need you to let her go.”

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.

Don’t trust me. Don’t trust the Eternal Flame. We’re all liars.

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

It’s the same cycle, over and over. I don’t know how to get out, and I don’t know how to keep going, either.”

He knelt over her. “You’re still trying to win by being quick rather than clever. Use that brain of yours. Again.”