Page 115 of Alchemised

A CCESSING THE W EST I SLAND’S FLOOD CATHEDRAL WAS a mission of its own.

There were Resistance patrols they had to hide from until they finally found a weak point in the wall that Alister could open.

They crawled through, straight into ice-cold floodwater.

The spring floods had started early, and with Lumithia at near Ascendance, the tributaries had climbed out of their banks and threatened to drag them all downriver.

They had to cling to the wall as they made their way to a crossing point, one of the old pre-war bridges which was nearly destroyed.

It swayed dangerously, threatening to collapse as Helena crawled across it, not daring to look down at the swirling, freezing death below.

Things only got worse once they were across.

The flood cathedrals were immense towering underground rooms, designed to fill with several storeys of water and redirect it downriver, and they were filling.

The grate to access one was half covered in floodwater and made of inert iron, which required time to break through to reveal a terrifyingly deep drop.

Even with electric torches, they couldn’t see the bottom. The roar of water rose from the dark.

The others were unfazed. They were used to traversing the city levels, rappelling up and down dozens of storeys during combat. Their armour had harnesses built in, with spools of wires and hooks to anchor themselves.

Penny, a reconnaissance scout, went first. She was terrifyingly quick. In seconds, she was anchored and dove headfirst into the dark without a backwards glance. For a minute, there was nothing but the taut wires; then they slackened and drew tight again, and began to vibrate at intervals.

Alister touched them with his fingers. “All clear,” he said, flicking the wires so they’d vibrate back down.

The anchors came loose, slithering into the darkness after Penny like a pair of serpents.

The rest of them followed. Helena and Purnell, without their own armour and harnesses, were deadweight in the literal sense.

Alister took Helena with him, and Sebastian carried Purnell, and the water poured down on them like a waterfall.

They were soaked to the bone, nearly numb by the time they reached the bottom.

It was too loud to hear anything but water crashing down, echoing off the walls with a cacophonous roar.

Alister was shaking with cold, but he knelt down, putting his hands underwater for several minutes.

“It’s shallow along the edges but about ten feet left, there’s a drop, and the water’s fast. I can’t feel the bottom.” He had to shout to be heard. “If we go straight, it should be fine, but let’s anchor a line before we cross. I’ll go first, I know the safest route.”

Once they reached the far wall, there was a ladder leading to an upper walkway that ran above the dozens of huge tunnels feeding into the cathedral. Helena used her vivimancy to warm everyone, but there was nothing to be done about their soaking clothes except to keep moving.

Penny took the lead again. She’d memorised the route through all the tunnels that wound bewilderingly.

She had a slight limp from an old injury, but she was still quick and light-footed.

She moved forward, checking the route, making sure things were clear before using her torch to signal the rest of them forward.

They did not encounter a single necrothrall.

Helena’s dread grew.

They climbed an endless ladder that connected to a tunnel, and after crawling so long that Helena began to wonder if she’d ever see light again, they emerged into a basement.

“Wait here,” Soren said.

Penny leaned against a wall. She was breathing hard, stooped over, her hand pressing against her knee.

“Let me see,” Helena said. There’d been a torn ligament—it had been healed, but she should have been on bedrest for a few days and then worked slowly back into active duty.

“I’m fine, I’ll get fixed up again once we get back,” Penny said, but Helena could tell she wouldn’t.

There was a muffled shout, the quick snick of steel, and a thud. Soren’s head popped back through the doorway to those waiting in the basement. “Clear,” he said softly.

They ascended three floors. Helena had never seen Luc’s unit in actual combat, only their practices.

They were deadly. Dark blurs of steel and spilled blood.

Their weapons morphed like water in their hands, the blades twisting and altering, reaching out and slaughtering anything that crossed their paths, using their harnesses to make gravity-defying attacks.

The prison was unquestionably occupied. There were too many guards and necrothralls for it to be abandoned, but not as many as would be expected for keeping Luc prisoner.

Helena kept telling herself it wasn’t a trap, but it felt like one. They moved fast, trying to search every room before their victims were discovered and the alarms went off. There was no point in hiding the bodies; Soren left a trail of blood in his wake.

Alister was defence. He had spectacular resonance reach. He could throw up a wall, or shove back attackers by moving the ground under them. He’d hang back and queue them so that Sebastian and Soren could kill methodically without getting crowded or overrun in the narrow hallways.

Penny, no longer scouting, acted as Alister’s cover, protecting him from any attacks.

They checked every room. Cell after cell. No Luc. No prisoners at all. The place seemed empty. Except there were guards.

They finally found a prisoner in the last cell in the block. A huddled figure under a blanket.

“Luc?” Soren’s voice was ragged with desperation.

The figure lying on the cot stirred, and a grey-haired man lifted his head. When he saw them, his eyes went wide and he lunged towards the bar, jabbering in broken Northern dialect.

“Resistance?”

That was all Helena managed to make out among the many words she didn’t know. He sounded western.

“Save?” The man pointed at himself.

“No,” Soren said, shaking his head. “We’re looking for someone else.”

“Save.” He pointed at himself again.

“We’re only here for one person,” Soren said, already turning.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Boy?” He touched his own hair. “Gold?”

They all turned back.

“Is he here?” Helena asked.

The man set his jaw. “Save.” He pointed at himself again.

“We don’t have time to drag around a prisoner,” Soren said. “We’ll find him ourselves.”

“No!” The man sounded terrified now.

Helena studied him. “What’s your name?”

“Vagner,” he said slowly.

The name was familiar. Vagner.

Wagner? That was the name Crowther and Ivy had tortured out of Lancaster.

She turned to Soren. “We’ve been looking for him.”

“Helena.” Soren looked at her with exasperation. “We can’t deal with a prisoner.”

“This one is important. Crowther’s had people trying to find him. If this is where they’re hiding the prisoners they don’t want anyone knowing about, that’s all the more evidence this is a prisoner we need.”

Soren hesitated. “If he slows us down or does anything that puts the mission at risk, I will kill him, and you won’t stop me. Agreed?”

Helena nodded.

Luc wasn’t anywhere on that floor. They ascended again. Hope dwindling. Maybe all these guards were just for Wagner, who followed them, cowering behind her and Purnell as though they were human shields.

They turned a corner and found an immense grey-skinned necrothrall standing in front of the door. He smiled.

Not a necrothrall, then, a lich.

“There you are,” he said in a rasping voice, raising a huge spiked club, as his other hand rapped a warning on the door behind him.

“I wondered if the remaining Bayards might show up. Two down and two to go.” He paid no attention to Soren, his focus on Sebastian.

“That pretty niece of yours made a sound like a rotten gourd when I ran her through. You should have seen how fast your Principate dropped his sword when she fell.”

Sebastian stilled Soren. “Who are you?”

The lich smiled again, the corpse’s bloated lips splitting into a rotten grin. “Don’t you recognise me, Sebastian? I’d think you would, after all the effort you and Apollo put into executing me. Afraid it didn’t stick. Not like the axe did when I split your brother’s skull.”

“Atreus,” Sebastian said, his voice soft, but his grip on his weapon tightening.

Helena stared in horror. Kaine’s father was still alive?

Before she could process the revelation, both paladins attacked, and Atreus swung at them.

The wall exploded, tile and stone flying, dust filling the air.

The hallway was narrow, a tiny combat space in which speed was a far greater advantage than size and muscle.

If Atreus landed a blow, he would have killed Sebastian and Soren, but he had to hit them.

They were faster, slicing at him a dozen times before he could raise the club and give it momentum.

The other wall cracked open as Atreus swung again.

The air was so thick with dust, it was almost impossible to see anything but the gleam of metal. There was a horrifying crunch and squelch and something came flying through the debris and hit the ground. The lich’s head.

“Come on,” Soren’s voice barked from amid the choking dust. The rest of them moved forward.

Soren was favouring his right arm and Sebastian was bleeding at the temple, but they were mostly unscathed.

The huge corpse that had been Atreus Ferron lay at their feet, gouged all over with deep wounds that would have killed anyone who wasn’t already dead.

“Shouldn’t we get the talisman?” Helena asked as they all stepped around it.

“There’s no time to search a corpse that big,” Soren said as he stumbled forward and shoved the door open.

There was Luc.

They all froze.

He was strapped down on a medical table, a mask fitted over his nose and mouth attached to several tubes. There was a cluster of people around him, swathed in surgical gowns.