Page 204 of Alchemised
The living had a vibrancy, but the necrothrall was dead. It was like a perpetual electric shock on an animal corpse to make the systems function.
“Do you feel it?” Ferron asked.
She gave a shaky nod.
“Then take it.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pulled. It was like a plant in loose soil. The energy came loose, and a shock of power ran up her arm.
The world went silver-white, as if she’d exploded in place and then instantly reconstituted.
She dimly heard the muffled thud as the necrothrall hit the ground.
She blinked to find Kaine kneeling beside the corpse.
He touched the hand for only a moment, and the dead man sat up, standing and walking back out.
Kaine looked at her. “If you’re ever attacked by necrothralls again, don’t waste your energy obliterating them. Just rip out the reanimation.” He looked away. “It’s possible it may keep the Toll at bay for you.”
Helena said nothing. Beneath her skin, her nerves were still buzzing.
“I didn’t know that was something vivimancers could do,” she said, trying to get her thoughts straight.
“I don’t think that most can,” Kaine said, straightening. “It’s something only animancers are capable of.”
He said it so casually that it took Helena a moment to process his words. She looked at him sharply.
“How’d you realise?” she said.
A thin smile curved across his face. “It was just a guess.”
She flushed.
“I did think you were rather quick to catch on with the memory trick.” He straightened. “Now that you’re not at risk of keeling over from performing a bit of basic transmutation, I want to see your combat forms.”
Her stomach sank. She could already feel his impending judgement.
“It’s been a while,” she said, digging for her knife from her satchel. It had fallen to the bottom, and she had to dig out several bundles of herbs and sphagnum moss to find it. “I wasn’t very advanced. Academic track, you know.”
“So was I,” he said, watching her through insolently lidded eyes, but she could see a gleam of silver beneath his lashes. “You should be wearing that knife. You can’t afford to waste time fumbling through that bag of yours, and you should have at least two of them.”
“Two knives would get in the way of my vivimancy.”
He raised his eyebrows. “With thralls, yes, but not if you’re fighting the Undying. Or a chimaera.”
She looked up. “Couldn’t I still use vivimancy?”
“If you’re close enough to touch them, they’ll have already killed you. You don’t regenerate. To survive, you need distance.”
She looked down at the knife in her hand. It was annoyingly hefty, but everything standard-issue was. “A knife isn’t going to give me much more reach than I already have, and if I’m walking around armed, I’m more likely to be noticed. It’s safer to be mistaken for a civilian. Necrothralls usually leave them alone.”
“Not anymore. With the losses incurred this year, now that the Eternal Flame controls the entire East Island, there are no civilians any longer. Anyone on the East Island, or elsewhere without the right papers, is an enemy, and may be treated as such.”
Helena’s mouth went dry. “Anyone?”
“Man, woman, or child. When the Eternal Flame was constantly losing territory, the Undying could afford to be magnanimous, but the goal is eradication now.”
HELENA KNEW ABOUT COMBAT FORMS. Academically.
