Page 48 of Alchemised
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she kicked him violently in the shin.
His jaw twitched, but he didn’t let go. Her legs simply stopped moving.
“I hate you,” she forced out between her clenched teeth.
He paid her no mind as his eyes went out of focus.
She could tell that he was doing some kind of complex transmutation to her. Something was happening. She should have been panicking, trying to resist as Ferron’s resonance sank into her biochymistry. Instead, she became completely calm.
She could feel him altering her as if she were an instrument he was tuning; tampering, adjusting, manipulating her until she felt empty.
He let go.
She jerked away, expecting the feelings to come rushing back. Vivimancy of that type was practically useless because it required a constant resonance connection to maintain.
Yet her emotions didn’t come back.
They were somewhere else. Present but distant. Removed.
Ferron watched as she stood there, left intellectualising her confusion.
It was as though a piece of glass had been slotted between them. She was aware she hated him. This was a piece of information that seemed of utmost importance, and yet she couldn’t feel it. Hatred was a construct rather than an emotion.
“How do you feel?” His sharp eyes were cataloguing her every detail.
Her skin prickled with awareness of his scrutiny, a shiver running down her spine, but she didn’t feel the corresponding wash of fear. Just awareness. Her hands had stopped spasming.
“I feel cold,” she said. “Numb. What are those tablets?”
“They were developed during the war. It’s a sort of holding effect on physiological transmutations that would otherwise be temporary.”
Helena blinked, wondering at how that could work. It must have been developed using chymiatria in tandem with vivimancy; developed in stages, addressing each of the various hormones and—
Ferron snapped his fingers in front of her face. “The purpose of this is to acclimate you to the house so I don’t have to waste my time escorting you everywhere, not so you can have something to reverse-engineer. Out.”
Helena was unfazed. It was bizarre how empty she felt. Scarcely human. As if nothing meant anything or had any consequences. The tablets took away the good feelings as much as the bad. She was carved out and empty. An abyss instead of a human.
“Is this what it’s like to be you?”
He gave a dry laugh. “Like it?”
She considered. It was certainly easier to be near Ferron now that she didn’t feel overwhelmed by how much she hated him, and afraid of his capacity to hurt her. She was still excruciatingly aware of how dangerous he was, but without the sickening physical reaction of that knowledge.
“It feels like I’m dead,” she said.
He made an odd sound. “Well, the effect is temporary. It’ll only last a few hours.”
He gestured towards the door, but Helena remained where she was, eyes narrowing.
“You’re being different to me now. You’re less mean.” She furrowed her eyebrows in confusion—a feeling she was still, apparently, capable of experiencing.
He stepped towards her and leaned so close, his breath ran along the length of her neck.
“Why would I torture you when you won’t react?” he asked softly in her ear.
He straightened, raising an eyebrow. “See? Nothing. No elevated pulse, no pounding heart. I could bring in one of your little friends, and peel their skin off right here in front of you, and you wouldn’t react.” He shook his head. “There’s no fun in that.”
Helena nodded, her own ideas developing. This would be the perfect state to be in to finally kill herself without any sense of self-preservation holding her back.
