Page 198 of Alchemised
It was just an encoded intelligence report.
On Saturnis it happened again.
She hadn’t considered that Kaine could do that, but there was nothing about the way his information was passed on that required the in-person meetings.
She spent her newfound free time in the laboratory experimenting with Shiseo, who had become a collegial companion and collaborator.
Because healing was considered separate from medicine and medical care, the two did not always complement each other. Many sedatives inhibited vivimancy, requiring countering or workarounds in ways that made the healing process unnecessarily complicated. Healing Kaine, far from Matias’s purview, had allowed her to begin considering the possibilities of chymiatria designed for vivimancy.
She began with tonics to support things like blood regeneration and bone repair, but her primary interest was developing something that would maintain vivimancy’s effects by controlling the body’s inner chymistry. She and Shiseo synthesised a glycoside from foxglove and extracted alkaloids from nightshade, working piece by piece.
Creating a niche for herself was a consolation because Elain Boyle was becoming widely preferred as a healer. Helena tried to tell herself it was a good thing to have a healer so naturally likeable. No one ever jumped or even batted an eye when Elain forgot her gloves, but Elain’s social strengths also undermined her as a healer. She was too much of a people pleaser, and it affected her methods. She had a relentless tendency towards prioritising her intuition over her training and healing symptoms rather than causes.
A necessary fever never ran its course when Elain was on shift. People felt better but developed infections more often and recovered slower.
In late Augustus, Basilius Blackthorne tried to retake the southern tip of the East Island. Blackthorne was one of the Undying that everyone feared. He didn’t wear a helmet as most of the Undying did, making no effort to hide his identity. Whether he won or lost his battles, the devastation he left behind was terrible. He was known for eating his victims on the battlefield.
After days of fighting, when it was clear the attack was a failure, Blackthorne set his own army on fire and sent them as far into Resistance territory as they could get. The rainy season hadn’t begun; everything was unusually dry. The flames spread fast, jumping across the tributary between the East and West islands and consuming a large swath of the city. The sky to the south glowed red as an ember.
The hospital was flooded with burn injuries and lung damage, combatants and civilians alike.
The healers were on duty in the hospital for so long, Helena lost track of the days. She didn’t realise how tired she’d become until she was in the war room, listening to reports, and Ilva made a comment that they were unlikely to have an estimate on enemy losses for another day.
She’d already missed more than a week. She had to go.
When she got up the next morning, the room tilted. Lila was sound asleep, a lump under the blankets on her bed. The battalion had returned black with smoke. Luc had kept the fire from advancing on Headquarters, but even his pyromancy had limits against an inferno.
Helena’s head was hollow, throbbing from exhaustion as she dressed and headed out.
Everything was eerily quiet, as if even the birds were afraid to sing. The smoke hung like a shroud over the city.
Even the Outpost was quiet, but Helena paid no attention, just looking for the necrothrall so she could get Kaine’s missive and head back.
She came around a corner and found four of them. She was so tired, she stopped and stood staring stupidly for several moments, trying to understand why Kaine would send four.
Then it dawned on her that they were not his. These were ordinary combat necrothralls.
She immediately began backtracking, noticing only then that the encampments that covered the Outpost were torn apart. The Undying had retaken the Outpost, and she had walked straight into it.
She turned and fled, only to run into another group of necrothralls.
She had to retreat again, winding through the maze of buildings and factories. She tripped over a body, not reanimated.
Every time she escaped one group, she stumbled across another.
Necrothralls didn’t generally move fast, but they didn’t need to. They were herding her away from the gate, from the bridge, from the only way off the Outpost.
She ripped her gloves off as she was cornered in a tight alley and backed away until she hit the wall. It was narrow enough that they could only enter a few at a time.
They shuffled forward.
A few carried weapons. It was hard to say what was worse.
When they got in range, she shoved her hands towards them, forcing her resonance outwards, closing her eyes instinctively.
Her resonance flared for a moment and then burned out like a lightbulb filament.
She opened her eyes, barely seeing the remaining necrothralls approaching because of how raw and wounded she felt inside, as if she’d ripped out a vein.
