Page 12 of Alchemised
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.
