Page 89 of Alchemised

She’d never touched a necrothrall with resonance like this, never experienced the dissonance of life and death entwined. There was a heart beating sluggishly, oxygen-deprived blood crawling through the veins. There was no life; it was just energy.

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.”

H ELENA KNEW ABOUT COMBAT FORMS. Academically.

She had also practised them, but it had been a very long time.

Kaine seemed to think she was the most incompetent combatant he’d ever seen. After only brief observation, he started her all the way back with first-year forms, drilling them on and on until they were perfect.

After he was relatively civil about the animancy, she wasn’t prepared for how merciless he’d be about combat. He was completely vicious. It was only marginally preferable to being chased around the room having furniture thrown at her.

“I doubt this is going to save me from anyone,” she said after a week, growing uncomfortably sweaty. Her arm trembled as she raised the knife over her head for the hundredth time and channelled her resonance, altering the length and curve of the blade.

“If you can’t master the basics, you’re not going to survive anything.” A boot collided with the small of her back.

She gave a startled scream and barely managed to keep herself from ramming face-first into the wall by getting one foot out to catch her momentum, her knife curving instinctively as she spun around to face him.

Her spine was throbbing. A little harder and he might have broken it.

“What the fuck, Ferron?”

“Ah, back to surnames, I see,” he said coolly.

“That. Hurt,” she said through gritted teeth, touching her back gingerly, her resonance preventing the swelling before it could start.

“Then keep your guard up.” His eyes flashed. “I’m not training you to take a test. Do you think combat is for standing around seeing who transmutes best? You’ll never know what’s coming. You use your resonance to predict attacks. If you let me close enough to hit you, I will. Now keep going.”

She shook her head, refusing to move.

His expression darkened. “I said, keep going.”

“I’m not like you,” she said venomously.

“If you hurt me to teach me a lesson, I need time to recover. And when I’m exhausted, I just make more mistakes.

I’m not staying here to see how much you have to hurt me before you manage to remember that a trivial injury for you can paralyse me. You’re lucky you didn’t just now.”

His lips turned white. She turned away, sheathing the knife and shoving it into her satchel.

“This isn’t combat training,” he said when she was at the door. “You’re going to get killed if you don’t learn how to defend yourself. That’s the only way to survive.”

“Well, whatever it is, you’re a terrible teacher,” she said as she opened the door and slammed it behind her.