Alchemised

by SenLinYu

“The souls of the others, they would feel that life, they would try to resist, but the prisoner could not be killed. Still…slowly their mind would—” Wagner touched the sides of his head, pulling invisible strings as though unravelling something. “Are you saying that the Undying are just a power source for Morrough?” Helena said slowly.

“How are all the Undying able to use necromancy?” she asked. Hotten translated the question. “Accident,” Wagner said with a barking laugh. “He never knew why.”

If it’s possible to bind a soul, surely it can be unbound.”

The war was a cage with no escape.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding. To avenge his mother. In penance for all the ways he believed he’d failed her.

“If the nullium were encased in ceramic, that would prevent the corrosion and biointerference. If you put a thin tube of it right through the wrist here”—she pressed her fingers against the space between the radius and ulna—“the cuff could slot around a suppression spike and alchemically lock in place. I bet there wouldn’t be any resonance then.”

“You’re a vivimancer,” Helena said. Lila didn’t meet her eyes as she gave a small nod. “I never used it on anyone except me. Soren a couple of times, but only when he asked. He said I couldn’t let anyone know. Not even Mum and Dad, because if people knew I wouldn’t be allowed to be Luc’s paladin.”

Now Helena understood. A pregnancy altered the narrative. It didn’t erase the scandal, but it did reframe it; instead of a violation of vows that nearly led to calamity, it became a love story.

Mandl grinned towards him. “See, I knew you’d remember me.”

“But it wouldn’t be the first unforgivable thing I’ve done. What’s one more line for the history books?”

Loath as I am to admit it, the war will still be here when you wake.”

You need someone. I’m offering to be your shadow. I’ll provide you with what you need, same way you did for Ilva. But Kaine is my condition.”

“What if it’s not that simple, though?” she said. “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?”

I’m not going anywhere without you. And if anyone touches you, immortal or not, I will kill them.”

“I’ve gone by so many names, I don’t even remember them all,” said the person in Luc’s body. “Once, long ago, my brother called me Cetus.”

“This whole war was just two brothers fighting over who gets to play god?” Kaine gave a disbelieving, bitter laugh. “You think you’re picking a side, and you’re just on the opposite end of the same fucking coin.”

“All this time and you’ve gone with the same plan of hiding me somewhere and getting yourself killed as a traitor, and you think I’ll be all right with it?”

“Every time you asked, I promised I was yours. Always. There aren’t any exemptions or expiration dates on always.”

For him, acknowledging that he would have a child, a daughter, meant acknowledging that he wouldn’t live to meet her. He was telling the stories so Helena could tell their daughter about him, about what he’d been like, before the Institute and the war.

“But you won’t save Kaine by finding him. The killer you’re searching for is your son.”

To the world, to history, Lucien Holdfast had died on the steps of the Alchemy Tower. Lila would have to believe that, too.

They were as bright silver as a lightning storm. Helena gave a sob and held her tighter. “Kaine—she has your eyes.”

How different it could have been if the international community had decided to put even a negligible amount of effort into caring sooner.

“Love isn’t as pretty or pure as people like to think. There’s a darkness in it sometimes. Kaine and I go hand in hand. I made him who he is. I knew what that array meant when I saved him. If he’s a monster, then I’m his creator.”

“But—” Enid’s jaw trembled. “—she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten like this. She shouldn’t be a footnote. This shouldn’t be the only entry she even has. She deserves her own chapter. She deserves a whole damned book of her own.” Her voice quavered. “And the things they say about Dad—like he wanted it all, that he asked to have it done to him—” She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand and drew a deep breath. “Sorry. I always think I can handle this, and then I get so mad I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

Marino left the city at the start of the Paladian Civil War to study healing. She survived the war but died during imprisonment prior to Liberation. She was a non-active member of the Order of the Eternal Flame and did not fight.