Alchemised

by SenLinYu

The Sacred Faith held that resonance was a gift, intended by Sol, godhead of the elemental Quintessence, to elevate humanity. Resonance was a rare ability in many parts of the world, but not in Sol’s chosen nation of Paladia. The pre-war census had estimated nearly a fifth of the population possessed measurable resonance levels. The number had been expected to rise further with the next generation. Usually, resonance was channelled into the alchemy of metals and inorganic compounds, allowing for transmutation or alchemisation. However, in a defective soul which rebelled against Sol’s natural laws, the resonance could be corrupted, enabling vivimancy—like what the woman had used on Helena—and the necromancy used to create necrothralls. As the element of resonance, lumithium could increase or even create resonance in inert objects through exposure, making them alchemically malleable. However, pure lumithium was too divine for mortals; overexposure caused wasting sickness, and for individuals with resonance, direct exposure could result in a raw, metallic pain within their nerves. The lumithium in the manacles didn’t seem to make Helena sick. Which meant that something had altered it. The sharp energy inside was keyed into her resonance, but rather than turn it raw, it blurred her senses. She could feel her resonance, but when she tried to control it, the cuffs were like static in her nerves. No matter how she tried, she could not push beyond it. All she knew was that as long...

Luc, who’d been the whole world to her. Helena had enlisted in the Resistance and sworn fealty to the Order of the Eternal Flame—not out of faith, but because of Luc Holdfast. Because she might not believe in the gods, but she had believed in him, that he was good and kind and cared about everyone. She’d promised she’d do anything for him. But he’d died before her eyes.

She was in the Alchemy Tower. In the very heart of the Alchemy Institute that the Holdfasts had founded. This was Central.

“His family was Called,” Helena said, despite knowing there was no point in arguing. “Yes, by the sun,” Stroud said, scoffing, her voice growing sharp. “I know they didn’t teach modern astronomy at the Institute, but did you ever study the newer astrological theories? You’re from the trade islands after all; you must have been exposed to all kinds of ideas. Did you really believe that the sun looked at the earth and chose a favourite? That a drop of sunlight endowed Orion Holdfast with such godlike abilities that all his descendants deserved to rule Paladia like gods themselves?”

All she knew was that some students wouldn’t speak to her, laughed when she asked questions, and mocked her accent and way of gesturing with her hands when she talked. Later she learned that those were the guild students and to be wary of them. It was Luc who’d had to explain that the guild students thought Helena’s enrolment had taken a spot that should have gone to the guilds—though Luc assured her that they were wrong. His family’s Institute hadn’t been founded for guilds but for people like her, the ones who didn’t have opportunities to study alchemy on their own. The guild students didn’t even need to attend; their places and futures were all assured. For them, enrolment at the Institute was a status symbol. Once they had their certification, they’d all leave.

Luc, newly crowned as Principate, had been certain that the citizens of Paladia would be shocked into reason once they realised they were aligning themselves with necromancers. Necromancy had been a mortal crime throughout most of the continent for centuries. Not even the guilds would go so far. He had been wrong.

Ferron had been accused of killing the Principate? The assassination responsible for causing the war? She stared at the words until they blurred. She remembered Principate Apollo’s death. He was found brutally murdered in the Alchemy Institute’s commons, and an investigation had immediately been opened. She didn’t remember there being any conclusion. There’d been so much happening at the time: the funeral, the preparations for Luc to be crowned Principate.

Luc, who’d gone up onto the roof of the Alchemy Tower the night before becoming Principate, standing alone on the very edge. Helena had followed him and stood as close as she dared, promising him that she would do anything for him if he would just step back and take her hand. He hadn’t listened, not until she swore that if he jumped, then she would, too. He’d stepped back to save her.

There were statistics presented about how Paladia’s economy was expected to continue to shrink due to a multigenerational loss of alchemists. The solution, the author declared, was sponsored births. The article suddenly stopped being editorial and read more like an advertisement. The head of the new science and alchemy department at Central, Irmgard Stroud, was heading up a program to bolster the next generation of alchemists using new scientific selection methods to give them the best start. Volunteers were wanted. Participants would be provided food and lodgings, and upon completion of the program, those with criminal convictions would be eligible for retrial. Helena read the editorial several times, hardly able to believe what she was seeing. It was a breeding program being passed off as an economic solution. As if alchemists were dogs to mate in pursuit of economically desirable transmutation abilities. It wasn’t an entirely new concept. Marrying into the resonance was a well-known term for the guild families’ tendency to marry those with either the same or a complementary alchemical resonance. Aurelia and Ferron were just such an example.

“You know,” Ferron said, jolting her from her thoughts, “when I heard it was you I’d be getting, I was looking forward to breaking you.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think it’s possible to exceed what you’ve done to yourself.”

Things that seem too good to be true usually have a price you don’t know about until it’s too late.”

“I swear it, on the spirits of the five gods and my own soul, Kaine Ferron, I’m yours as long as I live.”

Ferron was not human. She knew that the Undying were unnatural, but she hadn’t been prepared for how unnatural he would feel.

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.”

No. This amulet didn’t represent Ilva, it stood for Luc. Ilva had exploited that, but it wasn’t Luc’s fault. Helena was doing this for him, and he was worth it.

Calculating, Cunning, Devoted, Determined, Ruthless, Unfailing, Unhesitating, and Unyielding.

Don’t make me responsible for Kaine Ferron’s death.

“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.”

“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.”

She knew that people enjoyed sex, but she had always thought it was an indulgence. She had not known it was a hunger. Or that she was starving.

There were no visible signs of torture. No cuts or any external wounds. Instead the corticospinal tract in his spine had been pinched, paralysing him but leaving his sensory nerves intact. That way, he would feel everything. Beneath his skin, Ivy had flayed him, using vivimancy to sever the individual layers of skin. Blood had pooled between each one. In some areas, he was flensed down to the muscle. It was one thing to heal people injured in battle, but healing torture was a different kind of horror. Crowther did not seem to think that any physical violation went too far in the war against necromancy, so long as the soul was not violated. Based on the tenets of the Faith and the Eternal Flame, there was nothing wrong with the torture of necromancers or aspiring necromancers; flesh was an inferior substance to eventually be consumed by fire anyway. What these people were willing to do to civilians and the Resistance was far worse than anything Crowther did to them.

She entered another tunnel, trying to get away, but no matter which one she took, or which way she turned, they all seemed to lead back to the same room. As if to mockingly remind her that she could not escape herself, and what she had become. This was what the war had made her. Finally she turned slowly back, walking towards the screaming, tired of running from herself. She’d climb over tortured bodies, sell herself, and tear out Kaine Ferron’s heart if that was what it took to win.

Basilius

Werewolf?

A smirk twisted his mouth as he looked at her. “There are far worse fates than dying, Marino.” She nodded. “I know. But that one you don’t come back from.” He gave a bitter laugh. “All right, then, but only because you asked.”

“Eyes are awful. I mean, hopefully if you ever lost one, it would just grow back, but if not…” She exhaled. “The tissue doesn’t matrice the same way. It’s very tedious work, and nerve-racking. You should—probably come to me for that. Well, I mean—”

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?

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

“You always have to come back,” she said. “All right? Don’t die. Promise—” Her voice failed. “Marino, what’s wrong?” He tried to step back, but she wouldn’t let go. “Nothing! I just spent a lot of time making that medical kit for you, and I did spend an hour teaching you how t-to use it, so—I think it would be really ungrateful if you—d-died.” He gave a hollow laugh and stepped closer so that his chin grazed the top of her head. His sigh was almost despairing. “All right…” he said, “but only because you asked.”

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

“I’m tired,” she said, staring at the floor. “I’m tired of this war. I’m tired of trying to save people and watching them die anyway, or saving them only to watch them die later—in a worse way. 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.”

For the first time, Kaine Ferron was fully human to her. She’d slipped through his walls and peeled away the defensive layers of malice and cruelty, and found that there he carried a broken heart. She could use that.

Apparently, Crowther was right after all. The Ferrons were possessive enough to eat themselves alive before they’d let go of anything they considered theirs.

“I’ve spent a year working on the logistics of replacing you…I must admit, you are the most exceptional asset the Eternal Flame possesses. And I am sorry for that.”

She only heard Crowther utter one word before the door sealed shut: “Beg.”

Like a dog

“After you nearly bled to death here, I thought, at least I can keep her alive. She deserves to have someone who cares enough to try to keep her alive. I thought eventually you’d give up. But you will do anything to save the people you feel responsible for. Of course you’d weaponise your guilt in order to use mine.” 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.”

He reached into a pocket, pulling out a fistful of something and flinging it outward. They looked like shimmering bits of metal, and as they flew, she felt his resonance expand, carrying them. The metal sang through the air, moving like an avian murmuration, and hit like a spray of bullets, tearing through the necrothralls’ skulls.

Birds

“You could be a healer,” she finally said as he removed the block on her nerves. She flexed her hand, opening and closing. It was still sore, and fragile as though hairline-fractured. “You have a natural talent for it.” “That’s one of the most ironic things anyone has ever said to me,” he said quietly.

“Remind Crowther that if the Eternal Flame wants my continued assistance, they will keep you alive.”

“You are not expendable. You don’t get to push everyone away so that they’ll feel comfortable using you and letting you die.”

“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people. The reason I’m here—the reason I’m doing any of this—is to keep you alive. To keep you safe. That was the deal.” He searched her face. “They didn’t tell you.”

He was a spy that they depended on. And she was— Not his handler. No, that role belonged to Crowther. She was— A prison.

Kaine Ferron was a dragon, like his family before him. Possessive to the point of self-annihilation. Isolated and deadly, and now he held her in his arms as if she were his. The temptation to give in, to let him have her, and to love him for it terrified her.

“Because I have warned you, if something happens to you, I will personally raze the entire Order of the Eternal Flame. That isn’t a threat, it’s 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. Given that the risk to their lives is the only way to make you value your own.”

He laced their fingers together as they lapsed into a silence as empty as the future. “You could—become a healer,” she finally said, straining to feel the sensation of his hand against hers. A smile ghosted at the corner of his mouth. “I hadn’t considered that.” “You should. You have a talent for it—although your bedside manner is terrible.” “It would be something to balance out that death toll of mine,” he said, not looking at her.

“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?”

“You’ve always done the worst things because of me.”

“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.”

“He can have Paladia for all I care. If the Eternal Flame wanted to win, they should have made better choices. They all knew the risks, but that was never enough incentive for them. They refused to pay the price that victory demands, and I am sick of watching you try to pay it for them.”