The Prison

The alchemist stood in a silent, empty corridor. To her left and right the hallway vanished in terminal darkness. Directly in front stood a single door. There was something terrible on the other side. Though the thought of facing it filled her with dread, there was nowhere else to go. She tried to open the door but the handle would not move. Suddenly, inexplicably, she found herself on the other side. The walls of the room were black, sparkling with stars. Off in the far corner lay a box of gleaming, polished onyx, the entire surface elaborately carved, made up of human bodies in various agonized poses, mouths opened in mute horror. Somehow she recognized them, knew them: alchemists now forever bound to the surface of this box. She tried to stop herself but her body would not listen, acting of its own accord as if under some compulsion. Approaching the box her trembling hands reached out to open it. Her face reflected an emerald glow as she saw what was within. She screamed but there was no sound. Then she too was part of the box, frozen, twisted, and distorted.

Wearing drab prison garb she sat up in a cold sweat, wiping her long black hair from her face. The nightmare was always the same, tonight as before, a continuing echo of her criminal past. Everyone had expected the death sentence at her trial, but someone or some group had intervened. One of the few things that remained clear in her memory of that time was an image of a single man in uniform, sitting emotionless while the rest of the gallery at her trial erupted in paroxysms of anger. She knew him. He was blonde, with blue eyes, and he stared at her with a face that could not be read. Was he happy, sad, mad, angry, or indifferent about her fate? She couldn’t tell. More than anything she wanted to know what he felt, and why.

“Why didn’t you help me?” she asked plaintively, falling back on the cot.

---

The penitentiary had a storied history. Centuries ago, religious heretics had been its main residents. Faith, however, had given way to knowledge. Recently remodeled, it was now a modern, state of the art facility. Made just for alchemists. A pair of soldiers working for Internal Security approached the gated entrance. Major Emanuel Wulfric, now in his mid-thirties, exuded that kind of stoic hardness typical of anyone who had spent half their life serving in the military. Lacking any natural talent in alchemy and without any family or political connections, he had attained his rank through sheer hard work and personal bravery. Accompanying him was First Lieutenant Eliza Hartwin.

“Stay here,” Wulfric said.

“Sir?” Hartwin replied.

“This is something I have to do myself,” he said.

“I must protest, Sir” she insisted. “Our department is the reason why these rogue alchemists are doing time. You need someone watching your back.”

“I’ll be fine. If I’m not back in an hour you have my permission to storm the prison gates, guns blazing.”

Wulfric had projected an air of indifference but beneath that exterior, his heart was racing. The military had its own alchemists, of course. Combat and medical alchemists serving at the front, and research alchemists conducting experiments in military labs. There were rumors of the most sordid sort of alchemy in those labs, alchemy without morals, happy to step over any boundary line at the outer fringe of the art, always excusing itself in the name of state security. The hypocrisy of it all disgusted him, seeing as the prisoner he was about to see had been convicted of crimes scarcely any different. There were differences, to be sure, but it was more a matter of degree than kind.

His meeting with the warden began with some vague pleasantries and then Wulfric stated he reason for coming.

“I’m here to see the Silver Moon Alchemist,” Wulfric said.

“We don’t have anyone under that name,” the warden responded.

“The 'Black Snake',” Wulfric said, laying his authorization, stamped with the Bundesschild of the Central Security Council, on the warden’s desk.

“Of course,” the warden said, checking the paperwork. “I should warn you she’s been down there a long time. There may not be much left of her mind.”

From the warden’s office Wulfric was escorted one of the omnipresent guards deeper into the prison’s bowels. He passed through drab stone corridors full of belligerent inmates behind iron bars. These were the third-rate amateurs, alchemic dabblers, not the really dangerous criminals. The guard led him to a strange-looking door with no visible doorknob or handle, just a button on the side. He pressed the button and there was an audible whir of machinery. The door opened, revealing small room, scarcely bigger than a large closet.

After they entered, the guard took hold of a handle attached to a cylindrical container shaped like a cake laying on its side and pulled it toward his body. Wulfric felt an odd sensation as if his body were becoming lighter. The entire chamber was descending.

“Ah, I’ve heard of this. An elevator.” They were a relatively new technology.

When the doors reopened the only illumination in the hallway before him was a thick strip of greenish glowing along the ceiling. He had never seen lighting such as this before. It seemed almost organic, like the Goblin’s Gold found in the deepest and darkest portions of a cave. More likely than not one of the more innocuous products of the state alchemy labs.

“Watch your step,” the guard warned him.

Passing through the corridor with the guard slightly ahead of him Wulfric noticed the air was damp. The penitentiary was near a river and as best as he could tell, they had descended well below street level. At the end of the hallway stood an unusual door seemingly made of a single thick slab of stone. It was not until he was nearly on top of the door that he noticed the etchings on it, almost certainly alchemical in nature. After inserting a key, the guard tugged at the door, having to apply his shoulder just to move it far enough to pass through. Wulfric stepped into the room, which he found to be barren save for a table with chairs on opposite sides. On the far side of the room was yet another, seemingly identical, door. The light coming from the ceiling was the same ghostly green.

Wulfric had a seat and waited. He did not understand exactly how it worked but supposed the uniquely constructed architecture of this dungeon effectively dampened the powers of any alchemist placed within it. A minute later, little more than a silhouette in the dismal illumination, she was led in, escorted by two guards who towered over her. She looked gaunter than he remembered her. Her hair was an overgrown, wild mass of unkempt black tangles that, in the strange lighting, appeared to writhe like snakes. When she reached the table she wrenched her arms free, only to be pushed down into the chair by the guards.

“Please wait outside,” Wulfric instructed.

“Just shout if she gives you any trouble,” one of guards said as they departed. The door closed with a heavy thud, leaving them in silence for a moment.

“It’s been a long time,” Wulfric said. Her eyes were the same as he had seen at her trial: unnatural, nearly all pupil and little iris save for a halo of luminescent emerald, the result of whatever taboo alchemy she had dared to experiment with.

“One tends to lose track of time down here,” she said. “How long has it been? Five years?”

“Closer to six. How have they been treating you?”

“It’s solitary confinement—for crimes I don’t even remember committing.”

“So you’ve said. I didn’t come here to argue about the past. There’s a—situation. A bad one.”

“Is that so?”

Ignoring her sardonic tone Wulfric reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a map.

“It’s like this,” he said, unfolding the paper on the table and pointing to the northern fringe. “Infants in this area have been disappearing for months. There have been weird reports of hybrid animals and birds that speak the human tongue. That has to be alchemy. The whole border region up there was a powder keg before this started. Now it’s ten times worse. Political posturing, angry diplomatic exchanges: all the usual nonsense. There are reports of enemy ‘irregulars’ crossing the border and carrying out hit and run raids. It could be a prelude to war.”

“Why are you telling me this? The military can attach a few extra squads of alchemists to the armies guarding the border. Problem solved,” she said.

“We would if we could. The country has already been at war for the past three years. East, south, west. Everywhere but the north.”

“How could they do such a foolish thing?” she said, half-astonished.

“A question for another time. The truth is there aren’t any armies on the northern border and there aren’t any military alchemists there either. If another war starts, we can’t fight on so many fronts. Our defenses will collapse and the country will be overrun.”

“Ah. Now this little ‘conversation’ is beginning to make sense.” She clearly sensed an advantage to exploit. “The army doesn’t have any alchemists to spare, at least any worth their salt. Leaving just me. So what are you offering?”

Wulfric slammed his hands on the table and stood up as if he were going to leave. He couldn’t let her dictate the conversation. He began pacing back and forth, pretending to be agitated. He jabbed his index finger at her.

“You’re lucky to be alive. The newspapers were screaming for your head; the rank and file in the military wanted you dead too, for what you did. I don’t know who pulled the strings to put you in here but the sentence ought to have fit the crimes. What is that punishment reserved for the worst alchemists?” He loathed resorting to cheap scare tactics but knowing her as he did it was the only way to demonstrate her lack of options.

“Psychosurgery; for most, a waking death,” she replied, visibly unsettled. Then her defiance returned.

“How many alchemists do you know who can transmute the elements the way I can?” she asked. She held her hands about a foot apart. They shone green briefly before the dampening effects of the room snuffed the glow out.

“I’m no expert but what you can do—shouldn’t even be possible. Look, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life down here, do you?”

“No, obviously.”

“If you want to join this mission, you do it on my terms.”

“Forget it, I’m nobody's puppet,” she said. He needed something to seal the deal.

“I can’t make promises. You’ll probably wind up dead, to be honest,” he said, “But if we do come out of this alive, I’ll do my best to get your sentence commuted.”

“Commuted,” she repeated under her breath. There was long pause.

“So are you in, or not?” he said.

“Melius anceps remedium quam nullum.”

“What?” It was so typical of an alchemist, answering cryptically in Latin.

“It means ‘better a dangerous remedy than nothing.’ Sure, why not. I’m in. You’ll forgive my not saluting.”

---

After listening to Wulfric’s description of the conversation Hartwin had a strong desire to question her boss’s sanity. “How do you expect to control someone like that? She’ll make herself disappear in a flash of green light the first chance she gets.”

“We’ll just have to make sure she never has that opportunity. She’ll do what’s she told, when she’s told.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Hartwin asked.

“If she tries to escape or hurt anyone you are authorized to put her down. Don’t wait for my permission. Don’t give her a second chance. Just do it.”

“Understood, Sir.”