Page 6 of Alchemised
Her memory or mind had been altered?
She would have thought it a trick, but she’d seen the resonance screen. She knew what a brain should look like. It would have required a highly specialised and extensive degree of vivimancy to transmute a mind into that state.
It wasn’t something a person would forget having happened to them.
Yet she didn’t feel like she’d forgotten anything, except the mention of an extensive injury.
She couldn’t remember any injury, just shock, and grief, and horror.
She swallowed and blinked hard, trying not to think about it.
Looking around, she tried to make out her surroundings. Whatever she’d been injected with was a brutally effective drug. There was a sharp bruise forming on her chest where the needle had punctured its way to her heart. It hurt with every beat.
She looked down. There were bars along each side of the bed, and the metal cuffs around her wrists were shackled to them. The skin was raw and bruised, and beneath the cuffs chaining her to the bed, a greenish band of metal was also locked around each wrist.
Those at least were familiar. They’d been snapped around her wrists during the celebration.
In the darkness, thick with blood, with little torchlight and too many bodies in a cramped cage, she’d barely been able to make them out. But she remembered them.
Inside the stasis tank, she’d been constantly aware of them clamped around her wrists. Their existence had persisted along the edge of her consciousness, an inescapable presence that stifled her resonance, preventing any transmutational manipulation that might have let her escape.
Even in the tank, she could feel the lumithium inside them.
By its nature, lumithium bound the four elements of air, water, earth, and fire together, and in that binding, resonance was created.
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 as those manacles remained locked in place, she wasn’t an alchemist at all.
CHAPTER 2
THERE WAS A NECROTHRALL SOMEWHERE NEARBY. ALONE and able to focus, Helena could smell the rotting meat and chemical preservatives. The Undying used the dead like puppets to perform any undesirable or menial tasks. Chained and waiting, she wondered what this one was being used for. She peered around, looking for any shadows beyond the curtains.
“Marino?”
Her name was whispered so softly, it could have been a breeze.
Turning, Helena made out a face peeking through the dividing curtain. She squinted hard, and her eyes managed to focus enough to make out a pale face and hair.
“Marino, is that you?”
Helena nodded, still trying to see who it was.
“It’s Grace. I was an orderly in the hospital.” She crept through the curtains as she spoke. She had a heavy Northern accent, the kind that pulled hard on the consonants.
“Sorry, I’m—disoriented,” Helena said.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Grace came closer, youthful yet sunken features emerging from the dimness, her expression both frightened and curious.
Helena’s eyes widened.
Grace’s face was disfigured with scars, long cuts that bisected her cheeks and chin and nose. Not the accidental marring of injury. They were intentional.
