Alchemised, page 4
Helena stared at the woman in dazed bewilderment.
“You tampered with a prisoner and her records out of—jealousy?” Stroud looked astonished. “Why didn’t you report her abilities?”
Mandl shrank back. “I feared that she would be favoured if it was known. That you might find her useful and not punish her as she deserved to be punished.”
Stroud leaned over her. “And what kind of punishment did you think she deserved?”
Mandl swallowed nervously. “I—left her conscious—in the stasis tank. I intended to return. I wanted her to be trapped, knowing and dreading what I would do to her, but then I was assigned to the Outpost and selected for ascendance. I was afraid my temporary lapse in judgement would disappoint, so I did not disclose it. But I would never betray our great cause!”
“She has been in that warehouse for the fourteen months since you were reassigned. Why are there no records?” Stroud sounded highly sceptical.
“I’d intended to complete her records once I was—done with her. When I left, I assumed she would die and then no one would ever know. Forgive me! I did nothing else, I swear it.” Mandl flung herself back down onto the floor.
“I see now I have been too generous,” Morrough said. His nightmarish face and looming eye sockets emerged from the shadows. He tilted his head as though staring down at Mandl. “You were not worthy of my gift.”
“Please! Your Eminence, I beg of you—give me—”
Mandl stopped speaking as she was jerked up onto her feet by an unseen force. The front of her grey uniform tore open as her ribs unfurled in a gush of blood, her chest rent apart.
Helena’s skin crawled, terror slithering like a worm through her gut as the warm wet smell of fresh blood and exposed organs permeated the room. There was a sensation like a hum in the air that she could feel all the way into her own lungs.
But Mandl, split open as she was, was not dead.
Her hands rose up, and she tried to claw her ribs closed with one hand and ward off Morrough with the other, her exposed lungs pulsing. “Another chance—please! I will not fail you! I swear. You will not regret it.”
“No, you will not fail me again,” Morrough said, his rasping voice almost gentle as he reached into Mandl’s open chest, fingers sliding beneath her lungs and extracting a gleaming piece of metal from somewhere near her heart. Little tendrils of viscera were wrapped around it, clinging to both the metal and Morrough’s fingers as it was torn free.
When it came loose, Mandl’s body dropped to the ground. Silent. Dead.
Morrough gave a low sigh and seemed to shrink momentarily as he stood, cradling the metal in his hand. Through the blood, the piece had a sharp, bright, lumithium gleam.
He gestured with his other hand. A necrothrall crawled from the shadows like an animal. It was a young woman in the early stages of necrosis, still wearing the tattered remains of the Eternal Flame’s hospital uniform. Her expression was blank. A rip in the uniform exposed a chest latticed with blackening veins.
When the corpse reached Morrough, she stood, and he shoved the metal piece into her. There was a soft crunch of breaking bone that left a hole purpled with old blood in the centre of her chest.
The corpse-woman shuddered, and then her expression morphed, the blankness vanishing.
She stumbled and gave a wild screeching moan as she looked down at her blackened fingers and deteriorating body.
“No! Please, no—it wasn’t my—”
“Do not fail me again, Mandl,” Morrough said, “and in time perhaps I will permit you a better reliquary. Perhaps your original.”
He gestured at Mandl’s corpse on the floor. The air hummed again as his fingers curled, and the ribs closed. Mandl’s body stood. The front of the uniform was ripped open, exposing her, and she was covered in blood. The skin knit back together, but her face showed nothing. The corpse-woman fell to the floor moaning and pleading, clawing at the oozing wound in the middle of her chest as if trying to rip the metal back out while Morrough walked back towards Helena.
Stroud kicked Mandl. “Thank the High Necromancer for his mercy in allowing you a vivimancer’s corpse, and a return to the Outpost, Warden.”
The corpse-woman gave one last guttural moan and struggled to her feet.
“Thank you, Your Eminence,” she rasped, and stumbled from the room.
Stroud joined Morrough, appearing unfazed by what had transpired.
“Is it possible for someone to survive fourteen months in stasis?” Stroud asked.
Morrough said nothing, but the nervous, perspiring man spoke up from where he’d been cowering against the wall. “Ac-Actually that idea does have some potential,” he said, stepping forward and then shrinking back as Morrough’s eyeless attention turned to him.
He adjusted the collar on his shirt several times. “Our good friend from the Far East”—he gestured towards Shiseo, who was absorbed in cleaning his awl—“mentioned that the suppression she was wearing was an old model, without a complete resonance block. Perhaps that explains both her mind—and her survival.”
Stroud’s eyes narrowed. “How?”
“The transmutation done to her isn’t something another person could do. Those memories are too deeply enmeshed with her mind. However, if you had someone capable of such complexity—a healer, as our friend says she was—perhaps she…”
“You’re saying she did this to herself?” Stroud gestured towards Helena with scathing disbelief.
He choked on his saliva. “Well—it seems the most likely explanation. In my opinion.” His face was gleaming with perspiration.
Stroud sucked on her teeth. “And the survival?”
“She—did not let herself die. Per-Perhaps a low level of internalised resonance in a competent healer would provide a sufficient means of self-sustenance when ordinarily a body would perish under such conditions.”
“That’s absurd!” Stroud snapped.
“That is immaterial. Can we recover the memories?” Morrough said. “The Eternal Flame would not go to such lengths unless the information was of vital importance.”
“Your Eminence.” Stroud sounded pleading. “The Order of the Eternal Flame is gone. Their ashes are all that remain.”
“I did not ask you,” Morrough said, his focus on the man, who’d turned a sickly green.
“I don’t—believe—”
“Get out.” The air hummed.
The man blanched and bowed repeatedly, thanking Morrough for his mercy and patience as he walked backwards out of the room with visible relief on his face.
“What are you hiding?” Morrough loomed above her.
Her heart beat faster and faster. She had no answer.
Stroud leaned over as well, eyes narrowed in appraisal. “Your Eminence, perhaps if we removed the frontmost section of her brain, we might be able to penetrate some of the memories before the fevers become detrimental,” she said, trailing her finger thoughtfully across Helena’s forehead. “Or it might alter the pathways enough to revert things. I would be honoured to maintain her vitals while you perform the vivisection.”
Terror sliced through Helena as Morrough nodded. Stroud stepped to the side, adjusting the light overhead, as though intending to begin immediately.
“Pardon,” a soft voice interrupted, and Helena felt a rush of relief until she realised it was the traitor, Shiseo, standing with his case gripped in his hands. “I have just remembered one small thing. There was a General Bayard. His head was injured in the war.”
“Yes.” Stroud seemed irritated by the interruption.
“The brain was healed, but”—he paused as if struggling to find the right words—“it blocked him from who he was—his mind, his true self.”
“Yes. We are aware of what happened to Bayard. Nonverbal. Dependent. His wife had to care for him like a child,” Stroud said, her voice waspish.
“Of course, I apologise. It was probably nothing.” Shiseo bowed and appeared to be on the verge of leaving.
“Wait.” Stroud sounded conciliatory. “You’ve begun now. Tell us what your point is.”
Shiseo stopped. “I don’t know all the details, but I believe they pursued a cure for him late in the war. A complicated procedure of the mind.”
“By a healer or by a surgeon?” Stroud leaned forward.
Shiseo tilted his head as if trying to recall. “A healer.”
Stroud pursed her lips. “Elain Boyle, I imagine.”
Shiseo tilted his head again, no recognition in his face.
“She was Luc Holdfast’s personal healer. The Eternal Flame was rather lax in their record keeping, but Elain Boyle’s name appeared frequently in the last year of the war. She seemed to have become unusually distinguished.” Stroud tapped her fingers on her lips, sucking at her teeth again.
“Where is Boyle now?” Morrough asked.
“Killed when we seized the Institute. I believe her body was sent to the mines. We could see if there are any remains.” Stroud’s attention returned to Shiseo. “What did the Eternal Flame do with Bayard that you think is somehow relevant?”
Shiseo bowed again.
“I was only aware of this because they hoped there were similar techniques used in the Eastern Empire. The healer, I was told, had a special ability to—to alter not just the brain but the mind. They proposed to enter the mind of Bayard and heal him from within.”
The mood in the room suddenly shifted, growing electrified.
“That would be animancy, not healing,” Stroud said with slow incredulity.
“I do not know, the words were—different,” Shiseo said. “The mind, I was told, resisted another’s presence, but this healer believed that with many small treatments, it was possible. Like learning to tolerate a poison.”
“Mithridatism,” Morrough said slowly. He straightened into his full, tremendous height. “Soul mithridatism…”
He advanced on Shiseo as if intending to rip the answers out of him. “The Eternal Flame found a way to make living subjects survive soul transference? And you never thought to mention this?”
Helena thought she was about to watch another rib cage be torn open.
Shiseo remained eerily calm and bowed again. “I apologise. They asked me many questions. It is hard to remember.”
Morrough seemed appeased by this excuse and turned back, considering Helena once more as if still inclined to vivisect her in search of answers.
“If the Eternal Flame did have an animancer who developed a temporary transference method…could that explain this form of memory loss? If another person could enter someone’s mind like that, they might be able to alter thoughts and memories, just as we see here. It would explain everything,” Stroud asked, gesturing at Helena. “And…I must say it seems more likely than far-fetched notions of self-transmutation.”
“If the Eternal Flame discovered a viable method of transference, that has more significance than mere memory loss,” Morrough said. Helena could feel his resonance in her marrow, as if it were burrowing into her flesh, attempting to peel her apart, layer by layer.
He looked towards Stroud. “Record every detail Shiseo remembers of this procedure before his departure east. We will begin testing this gradual transference method. I want it perfected. If it is possible, we’ll use it to remove the transmutation on her and see what the Eternal Flame was so desperate to hide from me.”
Morrough drew a breath that rattled as he turned away.
“Your Eminence,” Stroud said, her voice nervous. “This transference procedure you wish to begin testing, it would require an animancer, I believe?” She gave a weak cough. “I’m sure Bennet would have been thrilled by the opportunity, but unfortunately souls are not within my resonance repertoire, and there’s only one other. Would this be something that you and I—” Her voice lifted hopefully.
“Let the High Reeve manage it.”
Stroud’s face fell. “But I found h—”
“I have other work for you.”
Stroud straightened but still looked disappointed.
“The High Reeve was Bennet’s favourite after all.” Morrough waved a dismissive hand as he vanished into the shadows. “It’s time he’s given more to do than hunting.”
Chapter 3
When Helena was rolled back into the lift at Central, she counted the floors of the Tower as they passed.
The Alchemy Tower had been an architectural wonder for centuries. It was only five storeys when initially constructed as a memorial to the first Necromancy War. Back then, alchemical resonance was an arcane ability, regarded as magic. Its practitioners, figures cloaked in myth and mystery, like Cetus, the first Northern alchemist.
The Holdfasts and the Institute had changed that, establishing alchemy as the Noble Science, something to be studied and mastered. When the Alchemy Institute threatened to outgrow the Tower, it was raised with alchemically wrought pulley systems to add additional storeys to the base. It had stood as the tallest building on the Northern continent for almost two centuries, growing ever taller as the city around it expanded and alchemists flocked through its gates.
The study of Northern Alchemy itself was entwined with the Tower structure. The lowest five levels with the largest lecture halls were the “foundations,” filled with initiates still discovering their resonance and mastering basic transmutation principles. Annual exams were required to ascend. After five years, most students would depart with their certification to join the guilds, with only qualifying undergraduates ascending to the next tier in the narrowing Tower to study more technical fields and subjects. Even fewer would rise past the graduate and research floors to achieve the rank of grandmaster.
The lift stopped somewhere amid the former research floors.
Helena strained her eyes, forced to peer through an aura of pain steadily fogging her vision. The walls blurred, her eyes failing to focus until she was rolled to a stop in the centre of a sterile room.
It had probably been a private laboratory once.
The straps pinning her in place were unfastened, and Stroud paused, checking Helena’s wrists.
The tubes running between her ulna and radius were nauseating, evoking a deep sense of wrongness. She couldn’t even twitch her fingers without feeling the way her muscles, tendons, veins, and nerves in that narrow space were all forced to accommodate the nullification driven through her.
“Very good,” Stroud said to herself before she turned to leave. Just before the door shut, Helena heard her say, “No one enters this room without my approval.”
There was a heavy click and the grind of a lock, and Helena was left alone.
She lurched up, but the drug had burned itself out of her blood and her muscles were cramping, contracting as though pulled taut. She tried to straighten, but the instant her feet touched the ground, her legs collapsed under her.
She slumped to the floor.
Run, a voice kept telling her. But she couldn’t; her arms and legs couldn’t hold her. In the absence of any physical ability, her thoughts turned inwards.
Had she really forgotten something?
Perhaps the Eternal Flame was not gone but remained as a hidden ember, waiting until the time was right. The possibility sparked a glimmer of hope. But how had she been made to forget?
Transference. Animancy.
Both words were unfamiliar.
She turned them over in her mind. Trying to contextualise the comments that had been made. Souls and minds and occupying the mental landscape of another person to transmute them from within. And the Eternal Flame had discovered this?
Surely not. Souls were considered inviolable among those of faith. The Eternal Flame considered even the physical alterations of vivimancy and necromancy a risk to an immortal soul.
Alteration of a mind, the transference of a soul: Surely that would be seen as infinitely worse.
Yet Shiseo claimed that the Eternal Flame had developed a way to perform this animancy-transference process. Something that Morrough, who’d unlocked the secrets of immortality, had not discovered.
Who was Elain Boyle? Helena didn’t know the name, and she was sure there had never been any other healers, much less a personal one, designated for Luc alone.
Luc would never have consented to receiving anything that wasn’t equally distributed to all the rest of the Resistance, and that included medical care and healing. He’d struggled with having paladins sworn to protect him, despite it being a tradition older than Paladia.
Stroud had to be mistaken.
Yet there was something hidden, changed about her. A secret so painstakingly concealed, Helena could not even guess at what it was.
Her muscles cramped harder. She lay on the floor, her body curled and contorted inwards like a dead spider, but her mind raced on.
What would Luc do if he were the one still alive? Captive. He’d already have a plan. He would have charmed Grace into passing a message for him, begun coordinating a way to escape, and plotted to rescue everyone on the Outpost.
That’s what he would do. Now it was up to Helena.
She couldn’t fail him. Not again.
* * *
Helena had expected the transference to begin immediately, but instead she spent what felt like days barely able to move as her muscles gradually un-cramped.
“Withdrawal,” Stroud said with a look of condescension as she forced a feeding tube down Helena’s nose and inserted a saline drip into her arm to keep her sedated. “No matter. I imagine they taught you to enjoy suffering. After all, sacrifice is a healer’s calling, isn’t it?”
Stroud was unveiled in her disdain for Helena with the revelation that they were both vivimancers, but on opposite sides in the war.
