Page 5 of Alchemised
Helena lay there, not understanding.
The woman’s face came close enough that Helena could make out blue eyes with deep creases between them and around the mouth. She stared at Helena with avid fascination.
“If Bennet were still here, he would marvel at the precision of this work.” Resonance ran through Helena’s mind as tangibly as if fingers were gliding inside her skull. The woman’s pale eyes lost focus as she worked. “The smallest mistake anywhere, and you’d be vegetative, but whoever did this kept you almost completely intact. This is genius.”
“Whaa—tt?” Helena finally managed a clear word.
“I wonder … What does it look like?” The woman walked away, then returned a minute later, carrying a sheet of glass.
Helena squinted and recognised the object. A resonance screen. They were frequently used for academic presentations and alchemical medical procedures. The gas used reactive particles to mirror the shape and pattern of a resonance channel.
The woman held the glass overhead, her other hand resting on Helena’s forehead, and ran resonance through Helena’s skull. Her vision turned red again, but Helena squinted through and watched as the dim cloud between the panes morphed into the vague shape of the human brain and then into an incomprehensible spiderweb of lines that wound all over.
“I doubt you understand any of this, but imagine your mind is a—a city. Your thoughts run along various streets to reach their destinations. Those lines you see are your streets that have been rerouted. There are barriers, transmutationally crafted, and so instead of following a natural pattern through the brain, someone has created alternative routes. Some areas are cut off entirely. I can’t even imagine how … The skill this would take …”
Her words trailed off. She set the screen aside and peered probingly at Helena.
“Who worked on you?” The question was loud, slow, and over-enunciated.
Helena just shook her head.
The woman’s expression hardened dangerously, but then she seemed to reconsider. “I suppose you wouldn’t know, given the state of your brain. You’re probably lucky to remember your own name. You were an alchemy student, I presume.” She idly tapped a metal cuff around Helena’s wrist.
Helena gave a wary nod.
“And foreign. Obviously.” She gave Helena a pointed once-over.
Helena swallowed. “Etras.”
“Ah, quite far from home then. Do you remember your resonance repertoire?”
“Div … erse.”
“Hmm.” The woman’s eyebrows furrowed, and she studied Helena more carefully. “Wait. I remember hearing about you. You’re that little savant the Holdfasts sponsored. That must have been more than a decade ago, so you must be what, twenty-something now?”
Helena’s eyes burned, and she gave a stilted nod.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “Do you remember what happened to your sponsor, Principate Apollo?”
“Killed.”
“Mhmm. And the war. I’m sure you remember that. Did you help the Holdfast boy burn down the city? Your darling Luc, as you all liked to call him?”
Helena’s throat tightened. “I didn’t—fight.”
The woman gave a small sound of surprise, and her eyes narrowed. “But the final battle? I assume you remember that?”
Helena’s mouth parted several times, her tongue struggling to untangle. “We—the—the Resistance lost. There were—executions. M-Morrough came—at the end. He—he had Luc. K-Killed him—there. Then—then they—they took me to the warehouse.”
“Who’s they?”
Helena swallowed bitterly. “L-Liches.”
The woman chuckled. “I haven’t heard anyone dare use that word in a long time. All of the Undying, regardless of their forms, are the High Necromancer’s most ascendant followers. Their immortality is the reward for their excellence. In this new world, death claims only the unworthy. No matter what insults you attempt, it is your friends who are nothing but ashes to be forgotten.”
She tapped Helena’s forehead. “You do seem mostly intact, though. So why go to all the effort? And who could have even—?” The woman picked up the resonance screen, glancing at it once more, and then disappeared through the curtains.
Helena was relieved to see her gone.
