by J. S. Miller
A Man sat upon the throne, a Man as bright as the sun. I stood before my Lord, my new red armor shining in His light. My black knives kept sharp, as He had taught me. My Lord’s presence alone could have shattered my new mind, the mind born from the fire and the blade, forged to match those of my brothers and sisters, who kneeled at my back. But I let my mind fall back onto theirs, and together our strength withstood the sight of our Lord.
All except for one. That one broke and ran. Our Lord raised a single hand, and the unbeliever stopped, screamed, fell. Later, after our Lord departed, we would give new life to our fallen brother’s flesh. Build new cathedrals. Paint upon them the sigils of our Lord. Make him a believer again.
Our Lord’s approval washed over us like a rising tide, and we silently rejoiced in unison. Then He willed His own black knife into existence, turned toward the throne, and plunged the blade into the thick, shimmering slab. The dark glass rippled, the dagger a stone skipping on still water. When the surface broke, the universe parted to allow His passing. Our Lord walked through without looking back.
Light flashed again, and I was back on the dirt, staring up at The Laughing Man. My mouth hung open. I could no longer control the muscles that should have kept it closed. This was what Elena had felt when he’d touched her in the sewer — a paralyzing mind meld. I had seen through his eyes for a moment. I had seen my true enemy.
The hand above my head flexed, crushing the vials into a dull liquid pulp. It oozed through his fingers and dripped toward my open mouth. I tried to scream again, but no sound escaped, and then my own alchemical concoctions were smothering me, choking me, drowning me in fire. The world spun as the liquid forced its way down my throat. Air ran out and my body spasmed, pulling the flames deeper into my stomach and lungs.
A blue fireball erupted in the distance, shaking the earth. As the explosion tore through the camp, that terrible laugh transformed into a scream of rage. All other sounds faded except that shrieking voice, which echoed in my ears as I died.
Chapter 23
“Wake up, Westley!”
My mentor’s voice roused me from yet another daydream about his daughter.
“I’m here, Vincent,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“Alchemist Bouclier,” he corrected. “Now, here. Hold this.”
He lifted two small bottles, one filled with purple, the other with blue.
“What are we doing again?” I asked, taking the bottles. We were sitting in the main room of the old brewery, but I couldn’t quite remember how we’d gotten there.
Vincent stopped what he was doing and stared at me silently over his broad mustache. Between us sat a large pot. More of a cauldron, really. White liquid bubbled inside, and beside it, a small steel table held an assortment of beakers and cylinders.
“We are performing an alchemical infusion,” he said after his long pause. “An act that requires intense concentration. Not daydreaming.”
“Won’t happen again,” I said and sat up straight, which elicited an irritable squeak from my dad’s old desk chair.
“See that it does not.”
He turned his attention back to the pot. Inside it, the strange liquid swirled and glowed.
“So … what’re we making?” I asked.
He flashed an amused smile.
“Try some and see,” he said.
“If I’d known my punishment was going to be your terrible sense of humor, I’d have kept dreaming.”
“We are making an elixir. One that heals. Nonetheless, if consumed in large quantities, it can alter the body in unpredictable ways. Remember, even restorative alchemy possesses grave dangers.”
By now I’d heard this lesson about a hundred times, but I nodded silently and put on my best awed-pupil face. Slack jaw, wide eyes, you know the drill. He continued.
“An alchemist must be absolutely sure that—”
A creak from the lobby alerted us that the front door had opened. She was late, as usual, but I still couldn’t keep the goofy grin off my face. My teacher rolled his eyes.
“Go,” he said.
I jumped to my feet, nearly kicking over the chair. The old man’s rumbling chuckle chased me around the corner and down the hall toward the lobby.
When I got there, Abby was standing in the entryway — but beside her stood three men I didn’t know. Dressed in punk rock leather and torn jeans, they had a look I could only describe as “hired goon chic.” The frontman sported a thin scar that ran up one cheek and disappeared into dark, slicked-back hair. He had a tight grip on one of Abigail’s arms. Too tight. She wore a tense, worried expression. I came to a stop next to a display lined with bottles of beer and felt the boyish grin slide off my face.
“I’m sorry, West,” she said. “They followed me and—”
“Shut it!” said the scarred man in a thick Cockney accent. I pushed down my anger and plastered on a mildly annoyed frown.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Who am I matters very little,” the man said. “What does matter is who I work for.”
“And who’s that? Johnny Rotten?”
“Powerful men who don’t want you livin’ up to your father’s legacy.”
“My father?” I asked. “Fine. Sure. Let her go, and we can talk about whatever you want.”
“Oh, we’ve not come to talk, precious,” he said and jerked his head toward me. In the language of hired muscle the world over, the gesture translated to “get him.” The two other men obeyed, closing on me as if trying to corner a small animal. Well, if they wanted an animal, who was I to disappoint?
I grabbed a bottle from the display case and flung it at the closest goon. It smashed into his forehead, breaking. The man shouted, trying to wipe broken glass, blood, and beer from his eyes as he stumbled back into his comrade. The two went down together. I was reaching for another bottle when Abigail screamed.
“Pack it in!” cried the ringleader as he drew a small knife and pressed the blade against Abigail’s neck.
I froze. Tears streaked her face, but she didn’t cry out again. I looked into her eyes, and she looked back into mine. In them I saw the same warmth that had been there on our first day together, when she’d followed me into the forest. I saw the same quiet strength, the resolve of a Bouclier. I wondered what she saw in mine.
“If you hurt her …” I said.
“You’ll do what, boy?” the Cockney interrupted. “Ah, I see it now. You still think you’re the hero of this story. George, Tommy, remind him who’s in charge here.”
His buddies got to their feet, glaring at me as they approached — a bit more cautiously this time, I noted with satisfaction — and then a fist like a frozen ham slammed into my jaw. The world spun. My knees buckled. The concrete floor delivered a second blow to my skull. Dragging my eyes up off the ground, I saw the man with the knife grinning a vicious grin, one that told me this wasn’t just a job to him, but something he enjoyed.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I dislike the way you look at me, you little shit. As if you think you earned something bein’ born to all this. Didn’t have to go this way, y’know. Could’ve been clean.”
Without further comment, he dragged the knife across Abigail’s throat. Blood spilled down the front of her dress. I screamed an incoherent maelstrom of sound.
“Abigail!” a familiar voice bellowed alongside mine. “NO!”
A gunshot rang out, and something hot splattered against my face. One of the attackers fell on top of me. He was heavy, and I didn’t have the strength to push him off. The Cockney pushed Abigail forward and hurled his knife across the room. Vincent cried out in pain, and his Smith & Wesson Model 500 revolver clattered to the floor.
Abigail landed on her stomach, and our eyes met again. This time I saw panic, regret, and longing for the life she must have felt slipping away. I tried to push, to get up, to go to her, but the man was too heavy, my head too muddled, my body too weak. All I could do was watch as the light drained from her eyes, and
something inside me shattered. I felt no rage, no burst of strength. I collapsed under its weight. I couldn’t think or move or breathe.
“Ain’t that special,” the Cockney said. “Built yourself a li’l family here, did you? Don’t worry, you’ll be joining ‘em soon. George, get poor Tommy off him and let’s look for something ‘round here with which to exact painful revenge for our mate’s untimely demise.”
George did as he was told, grabbing me by the feet and pulling me down the hall. I couldn’t take my eyes off Abby’s, even though I wanted to. They shone like blown glass, but all their former warmth was gone. Finally, George turned the corner and dragged me into the main room.
“What’s this then?” the man who’d just destroyed my life asked in a cheerful tone. He approached the cauldron and looked inside. “Oh, that looks like it’ll chew up someone’s insides quite nicely.”
He lifted a beaker from the surgical table and dipped it into the cauldron. George pulled me to my feet and held me under the arms, tilting my head back and forcing open my mouth. As the Cockney approached with his beaker full of bubbling liquid, I felt the strangest sense of déjà vu. He smiled at me and poured it down my throat.
I tried to scream but could only sputter. The liquid in my chest burned hot and cold at the same time, like a cocktail made from layered shots of sulfuric acid and liquid nitrogen. I was drowning all over again, but for the first time — drowning because I couldn’t stop them, because they kept taking the things I made to heal and using them for harm. My body, mind, and soul all cried out for death. Agony answered. I began convulsing — but I didn’t die. Instead, something inside me changed. The Cockney went back to the cauldron, pulling out a book of matches.
“No idea what this stuff is, but it certainly looks like it’ll burn.”
He lit a match with his thumb and tossed it into the pot. The explosion wasn’t huge, but it did knock him back onto his ass. He giggled as bluish white alchemical fire blazed up out of the cauldron.
“Now ain’t that beautiful?”
He stood up, walked back over to the pot, and kicked it over, dumping the flaming contents across the floor.
“This oughta do it, Georgy. Let us vacate the area.”
He walked toward the exit, and George tossed me down to writhe in agony among the broken remnants of my life. Rage and hatred coursed through me, but my limbs were heavy and slow. With immense effort, I dragged myself back toward the lobby, past the flames engulfing my father’s legacy, which had apparently caused the fire in the first place. I dragged myself around the corner and down the hallway until I saw what was left of the girl I had loved. She lay crumpled on the floor, a discarded page from a forgotten manuscript. Her father sat, propped against the wall, with her head in his lap. The hilt of the Cockney’s knife protruded from his chest, and with each labored breath, fresh sheets of blood flowed down his shirt.
“Come here, my boy,” he said.
I crawled to him.
“Vincent,” I said. My voice sounded like I’d been gargling glass. “Why?”
“I should have … told you earlier,” he said. “But I thought I could keep us safe. As long as you are your father’s son, you will have enemies. Take this and go. Promise me you will protect it with your life.”
He pushed something round and metal into my hand. An alchemist’s signet ring. His was still on his finger. I said the words. I made the promise.
“Do not let this day’s darkness destroy you, my son,” he said. “We will still be with you … in what you have learned … in the power you draw from yourself, the Earth, and the sky. Remember … as above, so below.”
He closed his eyes. I didn’t know much about medicine, but I knew they would never open again. I looked at the door but couldn’t make myself leave them there. So I lay, coughing, gazing at Abigail. Blood had matted her hair to one side of her face, but I clasped it in my hands anyway, taking one last chance to really look at her. I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to drag them out. My body shook from alchemical convulsions almost as much as from weeping.
The floor burned away beneath me, and I fell. The feeling of vertigo was becoming tiresome. I tumbled down a long, vertical corridor lined with open doors. Light spilled from them. The Boucliers were gone, and for a moment, I panicked. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not again. Not yet.
I reached out and managed to grab one of the ledges. My body swung in empty space; my hands scrambled on the hardwood floor. When I finally pulled myself up into the doorway, I realized I could breathe properly again. The fluid in my lungs was gone.
The room was familiar. Bookshelves lined the walls, except where photos had been hung. Photos I hadn’t seen in years. I was in most of them, standing beside her, smiles dancing on our faces in an emulsive echo of memory.
There was a chair in the room. On it, curled up with a book — something by H.G. Wells, probably — Abigail gazed at me with a calm, friendly smile on her face. One that said, “Stay with me.”
I once again lost the ability to breathe, and dizziness nearly buckled my knees. I wanted to stay with her more than anyone could want anything, but this couldn’t be real, not while smoke from the burning of this very building still filled my nostrils. I had just watched her die a second time, and that was two times too many. None of this was real. And if I went to her now, I would never have the strength to leave this place.
I took two steps and hurled myself out the open door, flying back into empty space, plummeting through a vacuum dotted with rectangular stars. It was like falling inside a constellation lamp, the kind that casts starry projections on nursery walls, except here all the light was on the outside, pressing in.
I didn’t grab for any other doorways. The fear of what might lurk inside them dwarfed the fear of falling. But I couldn’t help looking, and the images inside the rooms began to drift together, creating a Kinetoscope of memories before my eyes. I watched myself pick up a handgun too big for anyone’s damn good. I watched as I started adding to it, refining its mechanisms, transforming it into something new. Reshaping it into a weapon of fire, ice, and wind. Then I watched as I set out to hunt the men who had destroyed my life, a mission that hung over me to this day.
The doors began to burst apart as I fell, disrupting the movie’s rhythm, spilling my life into a blender of half-remembered moments. I fell toward the spinning blades at the end of the universe, which glimmered like a pool of alchemical concoctions I could never stop drowning in.
Then, closing my eyes before I hit the surface, I plunged back into the icy air of another world.
Chapter 24
I sat up, gasping, in an empty, ashen field. Trees stood on my periphery, but they kept their distance, huddling on the sidelines as if too frightened to come closer. I could see why. The Laughing Man’s army had burned everything down to the blackened soil, even their own camp, and the air was heavy with the dull, sullen scent of sulfur. Ugh. Did I really leave Abby for this shithole?
My throat was raw, and my head ached as though my lungs — which didn’t feel great themselves — hadn’t bothered sending any air that way in days. For a moment, I idly wondered where I could find some coffee around here.
An even broader road of ash stretched off to the south, back toward Astoria. Fen’s army was on the move. Had the attack on the farmhouse only been a scouting party? A diversion? A trap designed to lure me in? Would he still attack the city even if I was elsewhere? If so … why?
As I examined the utter desolation around me, and all the unanswered questions piled up, the gravity of my situation hit me like a medicine ball to the midsection. I’d taken my best shot … and missed. Fen had caught me off guard and kicked the crap outta me, even though I’d been armed to the teeth and holding the element of surprise. What could I do now, half-dead and out of options?
I spotted the Chemslinger and rune satchel lying nearby, but my stoneskin jacket was nowhere to be found. Great. I’d just handed that monster the best suit of body armor on
the planet. He wouldn’t have much use for the gun, though, considering he’d spent all the ammo trying to kill me. Hell, even if he did have alchemical abilities, he wouldn’t be able to use it … not without …
My eyes darted down to my ring finger. Where the signet-style band had been, only a strip of slightly lighter skin remained. My alchemist’s ring, entrusted to me by Vincent Bouclier with his dying breath, was gone. The Laughing Man had taken it from me. All those years spent sulking, wrapping myself in memories, refusing to let my surrogate family fade away — and now I had failed to keep my final promise. With that realization, the last bit of them I had crumbled in my fingers and fell to the charred earth.
I struggled to stand, but shame and regret stole the impetus from my limbs, and I flopped back down. I was useless without the ring. And even when I’d had it, my efforts to stop the bad guys had continually blown up in my face. People kept dying. I kept trying to stamp out fires, but all I ever did was start more. Maybe the citizens of Astoria were better off without me.
Going after Fen was still the right thing to do. Wasn’t it? I kept turning the question over in my mind. But then I heard Vincent, telling me to take the ring. Asking me to guard it with my life. I saw Abigail, hair slick with her own blood, eyes vacant except for a fading afterimage. I saw Coppersworth and the gargoyles turning away from me. I saw Elena being dragged into darkness.
I needed to focus … to draw upon my power as I had a thousand times before. I forced myself to concentrate on the potential energy stored within me, flowing through me, but it evaporated under my touch. I reached out farther, clutching at the energy in the world around me. There was so much of it, but without the focal point provided by the ring, I was grasping at smoke. And then … it pulled away from me. When that happened, when my power failed, something else inside me broke, something I hadn’t even known was there. It was a slow thing, a dissolving of will. I sat there for a long time, unable to think or do anything at all.
