Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The layman’s credo of equivalent exchange, that The Other will return as much as it is given, is but a reflection of humanity’s puerile belief in the inherent fairness of the universe. In truth, The Other always takes more than it’s offered. Output is not determined by any balanced equation, but by the focus, talent, and energy of the alchemist.

Alchemy Demystified, p. 3.

Winter has Hero City in a chokehold. I have to dab my lips with balm every morning before heading out to run errands, and still they’re as red and cracked as meat that’s been left in the freezer too long. It’ll be colder Underground, where the goblins and assorted fae peddle the ingredients I’ll need to carry out my shadier business transactions. I move through Hero City’s masses, avoiding elbows and swinging arms, determined to get to Cavern Row, the narrow street leading to the declivity that opens down to the goblin tunnels.

Humans avoid Underground, one of the few places left on Earth where metal isn’t allowed. I only risk it because, despite the mountain of manure my life’s turned into, I'm still a Doctor of Alchemical Sciences (A. D. S), a fully certified alchemist for the Human Empire. The cops might actually give something approaching a fuck if I disappear down some goblin’s throat. The Human Empire has appearances to maintain.

Cavern Row’s unique odor hits me before I spot the food hawkers lining the sidewalks. Supposedly, the sell chicken, pork, and steak, but I suspect they mostly sell the ass meat of those animals. As I near my destination, the stink of rotting meat, piss and God-knows-what-else from the overflowing garbage cans mingles with the scent of frying meat.

“Wanna a hotdog, Julian?” someone shouts.

“Not looking to get the runs today,” I call back. Insults are fine, but disregard is not something that goes unpunished anywhere near fae country.

A hulking goblin, skin brown and mottled like dried shit, hovers over the hatch leading Underground. He’s never told me his name, and I’ve never asked. I’m over six feet and he still towers over me, but I’ve tried not to think much about the specific numbers. Like all goblins, he has a jaw that resembles a canine’s, razor-sharp teeth, and thick eyebrows that almost always touch each in the middle.

I had to teach myself to tell goblins apart by mottly skin color patterns, piercings, tattoos, and the like. They’re not fond of not being recognized by humans.

“Your business?” he asks in that weird fae accent that makes me feel like they’re not talking English, or any other human language.

“Trade with old Elata,” I say, like I do every time I come here.

He opens the hatch with one smooth flexing motion of his left arm, and the moist air from the tunnels joins the other components of Cavern Row’s perfume. My ears groan at the noise of screeching hinges, almost like metal, though I’m sure it can’t be that. It’d be useful to touch it, see if I can work out what it’s made of, if I could transmute it into a weapon on the spot. I’ve never tried, and I bet I’d lose an arm if I did.

A year going down Underground, and the first steps down the hatch always make my insides squirmy. It’s easier today because there’s no sun, so the change in light from Above to below is not so drastic, but it’s still far from pleasant. Humans are almost universally afraid of the dark, an evolutionary instinct left over from millions of years of being cattle. It’s a miracle I didn’t run right back out the first time I worked myself up into trying this trip.

About ten feet deep and angled downward, when the light from the hatch wouldn’t help my way at all, flickering glimmers appear in the air above me. I don’t know if they’re sentient fae or just glowing insects from the magic world, nor do I know which option would be worse. Mostly, I try to just be thankful they help me see a little better.

Twenty more feet down or so and I spot Fresiq and Ibnoc, two goblins who commonly guard the real entrance to Underground. They look more like what I expected goblins to look like when I first visited: short and stout, their jaws dog-like but in a funny rather than scary manner, and their ears squished into bumpy protrusions of skin. I’m not sure how they can hear.

“Well, if it ain’t little Julie,” Ibnoc sing-songs as I approach, and that’s weird because it’s not like there’s anything special about me coming down here anymore. “Speak of the Human alchemy devil.”

“What,” I say, the soles of my feet itching all of a sudden. I want to head back up, more so than usual.

“You are such a dumbass.” Fresiq, always the more even-tempered of the the two, slaps Ibnoc on the back of the head before nudging a cart at me. “Fork over your metal.”

Why would Fresiq and Ibnoc be talking about me? I visit almost daily and have never caused either of them a lick of trouble. No smuggling of weapons, metal, drugs, or any other random thing the goblins forbid. Only thing I bring with me is answers for their odd question about how Humans live up Above: what we’ve done with electricity, our flying metal birds, and our habit of cutting each other open when we get sick (it took me a while to work out that the last question was about surgeries).

Well, my bills aren’t about to pay themselves. I reach into my bag for my pair of daggers, the keys to my closet of an apartment, a handful of change, and my Federal Alchemist badge. The first time I visited, I also had to hand over some buttons and the zipper to my pants, which took some creative alchemical maneuvering to avoid going around pantless. Now I just dress like an old man from . . . however long ago it was that people didn’t have zippers. I’ve gotten pretty good at transmuting plastic. One of these days I should try for a zipper.

I also have to fork over my phone, not because it’s metallic, but because goblins don’t trust Human technology. Sorcery. It’s all the same to them. I don't argue much because it's not like the phone works Underground at all. Even the apps that work offline get all fritzy if I go in deep enough, and sometimes I do.

When I close the flap over my bag and start to move around Fresiq, Ibnoc reaches up and grabs my shoulder. “Trying to get one over us, alchemist?” he all-but-spits at me.

“What, no!” I wrench away, then hear a low voice.

“He’s got more.”

“I don’t . . .” I start a second before I spot it.

Another fae, goblin or not I can’t tell, is standing behind Ibnoc, so short it would barely reach above my knee. Its skin is as black as molten crayon, and its pores are visible and glistening where the light from the floating insects catches it. I can’t see the opening of its mouth, and something obscures the shape of its jaw. Its teeth are hidden.

“It’s got metal hanging all over him.”

“Okay, you guys know that’s not true,” I tell Fresiq and Ibnoc.

Goblins chosen to guard the entrance to Underground are sensitive to metal, though no one knows how or why. Rumors are the NSA tried to research how their sense works to get better airport security, but it’s not wise to believe all the nonsense someone sees fit to blather about online. The point is that Fresiq and Ibnoc got their job because they’re allergic to metal, more so than the average goblin. They can’t even get up Above without risking goblin anaphylaxis.

“Keeqee’s nose is better than ours,” says Fresiq.

I glance down at the little black goblin, or whatever it is. Not a human face; can’t read the expression. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t have any.”

“Where’s he hiding it?” Fresiq asks the crayola-goblin.

“It’s in him.”

“Alright, take ‘em off,” says Ibnoc, gesturing at my waist.

“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t shove a lump of metal up my ass.”

Neither Fresiq nor Ibnoc looks impressed by my outburst. I get the feeling I’m not getting past this point without proving that I’m metal-free, but I refuse to get a prostate exam at thirty-one from a pair of suspicious goblins. I don’t need Elata’s business that bad, I tell myself. There are some things I’m still not willing to do.

“It’s all over inside him,” crayola-goblin says. “In his fingers and toes and limbs and belly and head. He’s made of metal.”

Fresiq and Ibnoc look at each other. “That’s crazy.”

“He’s unnatural,” insists Crayola.

“Well,” I say, then grunt.

“Spit it out!” orders Ibnoc.

“. . . There’s the iron in my blood.”

Ibnoc rears back. “Why would you put iron in your blood?”

“I didn’t put it there!” In the back of my head, the situation is a little funny. “Humans . . . we just got iron in our blood.”

“Impossible,” says Fresiq. “We eat humans--I mean, we used to.”

Before I can start considering how to respond to that, Crayola speaks up, startling me. “Is that why . . . is that why your kind is cursed?”

“I really don’t know how to answer that.” Every time I look away from Crayola, it slips from my mind, like I don’t have object permanence when it comes to it. I don’t like it and I decide not to look away from it.

Fresiq and Ibnoc start talking in the Old Tongue, too fast for me to understand even if I was looking at them, clumsily trying to read the expressions in their goblin faces. I keep my eyes fixed on Crayola and slowly I get more details about it . . . like the fact that it’s a her, though I can’t say what about it makes it “female” in my head. Fae don’t have the same secondary sex characteristics as humans, and their clothes, whether gaudy or plain, are worn by any gender. Her eyes are amber-yellow, stark against the deep blackness of her skin. Color aside, her features are oddly . . . human-like, and the more I look at her, the more I feel like we’re talking.

Slowly, the knowledge that she finds me as disturbing as I find her blooms somewhere inside my gut. I think now that once I stop looking at her, I won’t forget her.

“Julie, we decided you can go,” Fresiq says, snapping me out of some internal daze.

I look up. The glamour that hides the way to Underground fades. An archway to fae country is visible to me three steps behind the goblins and Crayola (I know she’s not a goblin after all, and I’d rather not think about how creepy it is that I know that now).

“Go on,” says Ibnoc.

It never feels good to walk that threshold, every day subtly different than it was before, but today it feels worse than usual.

Fresiq and Ibnoc’s weird welcome, the strange crayola fae who feels the iron in human blood waiting at the door to Underground, Fresiq and Ibnoc babbling at each other in the Old Tongue and letting me pass even though there’s no way they believe the iron-in-human-blood thing . . . It all means something and I doubt it’s anything good for me.

But my bank account isn’t going to replenish itself and sometimes, it’s better to face the oncoming storm head on. I go on Underground.

Chapter Text

The Human Empire does not have to thank the collapse of fae hierarchy for its existence; considering goblin refusal to do away with their bartering economic system, such a collapse was inevitable. It’s much more accurate to say that the Human Empire was born the first time an alchemist refined orichalcum.

The Human Empire: A History, pg. 10.

The atmosphere changes the instant I step over the arch. I squint to shield my eyes from the deceptively dim light of the floating insects living inside the curtain of magenta fog. Even though I know I’m Underground, looking up always makes me dizzy, as if there isn’t a roof of rock over my head. It has to be all the open space Underground making me terrified everything’s about to collapse on me.

Except for the handful of scary goblins who are tower over me, I’m taller than most things down Underground. The fae scurry around me as I slice through the winding streets. I’m always disoriented for the first few minutes. Underground’s noises are different the din of the streets up Above. There are no honking cars, no people yelling at each other, and no whisper of factory fumes rising to the sky. Instead, there’s the clanking of pots, the clucking of chickens, the buzzing of the glowing insects, and the chatter masked in the lilting noises of the Old Tongue.

The passageways vary in length, width, and height. Though I’ve followed the polygonal symbols leading to Elata’s shop hundreds of time, I still fear that I’ll get lost in the maze of tunnels one day. I swear they change shape and size; some days I have to bend down and half-crawl through a narrow tunnel. Others I feel like I'm swimming in a vast open field in a foggy night. Today I find the seven signs without having to squeeze into anything narrow even once. For once, I will not have to bend my neck to pass Elata's threshold.

Inside the shop, screeches from a cage monkey greet me. I’m pretty sure it’s an endangered animal, but I very much doubt Elata will care. My eyes pass over its teeth, the smudge of blood drying by its right nostril, and I try not to see it. Better not to focus on the suspicious bottled organs lining the wall behind the counter either. Once, I saw a liver large enough to be human and decided it must’ve come from a cow.

Animal organs I could get at any butcher shop Above. I come to Elata for her more esoteric wares, the ones she doesn’t consider valuable enough to place behind the counter. Her isles are brimming with pixie dust, moonlight weed (though there’s no moon Underground, so who knows where it’s from), goblin hide, vampire hair, shredded harpy feathers . . . etc. etc. etc. Most of it is bullshit, I’m completely sure, but that doesn’t matter. I need things that have been Underground so I can extract the ingredients to make Orichalcum out of them.

Randomly, I grab several jars off the shelves, my only requirement being that the material inside them look dry. During my first few trips, I tried to track which ingredients had the highest yield of what I need, but months into my business with Elata, I had to accept that there’s no rhyme or reason to it. My only option is to pray for luck, or do my alchemy in Elata’s shop. She would never allow that, so praying it is.

Elata’s at the counter when I make my way back there. The musty, mossy scent of her shop, which I’ve gotten so used to I barely notice it when I walk in anymore, intensifies as I approach her.

“Julie,” she says, the sound wheezing out as if her throat is too narrow. Everything about Elata looks off. Her belly is as round as a barrel, but her limbs are as thin as twigs in November. Her cheeks are sunken in as though she’s starving, but she has the largest double chin I’ve seen anywhere. She’s the only goblin I know with skin smooth as glass, evenly beige throughout. If her teeth are sharp, they’re hidden behind thick lips. “My wares welcome you to this humble shop.”

“Right,” I say as I deposit my jars on the counter. The monkey screeches. I don’t look at it as I reach into my bag.

Today, I’m bringing Elata leftover plastic toys. I picked them up from a dumpsite near a Toys R’ Us thanks to a tip from one of my customers who works there. Sometimes, they dispose of toys they can’t sell and a lot of the cheaper ones are made of pure plastic, without a hint of alloys. Makes it easier for me to bring Elata some detailed trinkets without having to slave over my table extracting every last trace of metal out of them.

Elata’s spindly fingers pick up a figurine of that green-dressed Disney princes from the frog movie. Her vertical eyelids blink and a wheeze of air escapes through her lips. I bite the inside of my cheek to hold back a smile.

“You bring a bounty today.”

“Yeah.” I gesture at my side of the counter. “It’s why I was so liberal with the jar picking.”

“Too liberal,” she says, placing the figurine down as though it were a delicate treasure. Then she picks up a bobblehead of some cartoon character I don’t recognize. It’s a blue bear with purple polka-dots. “Those virgin-picked thistle leaves cost as much as your arms.”

I try not to remember that once upon a time, goblins literally bartered human body parts. If the more suspicious jars behind Elata’s counter are anything to go by, they still do.

“And I had to break the Empire’s laws to get those,” I say. She doesn’t need to know that being caught rifling through garbage would’ve earned me maybe a slap on the wrist. “And they’re a hundred percent plastic. On your table, you’re seeing dozens of happy goblin kids playing with no risk of nasty allergies.”

“Why would I give these to kids?”

“Because they’re toys?”

“What do toys have to do with kids?”

I shake my head. We must be losing something in translation. “Never mind. My point is that whatever you’re planning to do with these,” I gesture at the figurines, “they’re safe. Worth at least ten jars of the stuff I need.”

“Six jars, and you’d still be fleecing me.” She didn’t say four so the day’s finally taking a turn for the better.

I’ve developed a system by now. Unless another customer comes in, Elata will argue with me for at least twenty minutes. At first, I left her shop with little arguing, used to transactions Above where the price is the price and whining to a cashier will only waste time. I’ve gotten better.

“Eight jars!” Elata says about half-an-hour later. “That’s a violation, Julie.”

“Eight jars, or I’ll take my business to Drafas.” I’ve been to that creepy bastard once or twice, and every time he looks at like he’s imagining me roasting. Mostly, I use him as a threat to get more out of Elata.

“Alright,” breathes Elata. “Eight jars, and curses on your greedy hide.”

I look down, make a point of setting aside those “virgin-picked thistle leaves”, though they look like random weeds to me. The monkey, who had quieted, goes back to screeching as I put the jars inside my bag.

“Stupid thing.” Elata slaps the side of the cage. It quiets and plasters itself to the other side of it. “I’ll skin you alive before boiling you.”

I wince inwardly, but better she skins monkeys than humans.

“Julie,” Elata says as I turn to the door, walking around the counter to stand in front of me. “I’ve been tasked with delivering a message."

“. . . Okay,” I say, fighting the instinct to step back from her. Goblins take it badly when humans do that, but it’s not like my repulsion is misplaced. Goblins are--or at least used to be--our natural predators.

“His Majesty, King Stryrdunn, requests a meeting.”

“What?” More importantly . . . “How does Stryrdunn even know who I am?”

“It was not my place to ask.”

I step back now, angling towards the door. “Well, no. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I would be in your debt if you waited for His attendant here.”

Maybe under other circumstances, that might’ve been a tempting offer. “Sorry,” I tell Elata. “That won’t mean much if I’m cooking.”

“There must be somewhere you’d be willing to meet him,” Elata rushes out as I open the door. “He’s a King!”“Up Above,” I say without turning around, “nn a public place, with lots of marked exists and surrounded by racists policemen carrying guns.” That might be a little much, but I need to make it clear that I have no interest in getting tangled with fae politics. Not anymore than I already am.

I rush out the tunnel that led me to Elata’s. It’s turned much narrower now, and at one point I have to turn sideways or my shoulders wouldn’t have fit through. I’m spat out to a wider passageway, but one where I have to bend down or risk my head catching on stalagmite. It’s not the first time something like this happens, but today it makes me understandably jumpy.

Two left turns and a three more passages later, I find the first sign with any directions to the archway: a Greek omega symbol with an arrow pointing to the left. The first of seven. I breathe a little easier and turn to my left.

It takes longer than usual to find the next sign, just long enough that I begin to worry I made a few too many left turns. It tells me to go to the right. I go on and after the seventh right turn, I decide to stop counting them. But I can’t. I find my third sign on the eleventh right turn. An omega with an arrow pointing forward.

I walk so quickly that I dimly start worrying that my precious jars are going to break in my bag. Fortifying the glass would require pausing Underground to draw the right arrays. Not only would it extend my time here, it’d make any goblin passing by antsy to see a human performing alchemy. Not that I've seen any passing by in a while, but still. For all I know, there's a crowd of them waiting at the next turn.

Every sign is farther away from the previous one and leads deeper Underground. Or at least it feels that way. Sounds become fewer and dimmer. It’s been some time since I heard any speech in any language. There are less glowing insects to light my way. The magenta smog sinks lower and though it doesn’t smell like anything and it isn’t cold or hot, I feel it moistening the inside of my nostrils.

I don’t know how long I’ve been walking when I find the seventh sign. Long enough that I’m getting a little winded. Still, I’m relieved to see the last omega symbol even though the arrow is pointing me back to where I came from. That’s just how Underground works. They say it’s a living maze, that no road is ever on the same spot twice. So I start walking back, trying not to be resentful.

And I walk and walk and walk, eventually half-jogging forward, worries about my jars distant. I do start running when I spot what might be a fork in the road, certain that when I get close enough, I’ll see Fresiq and Ibnoc waiting behind the archway.

But I don’t see that. I see another old piece of wood nailed to the uneven wall, an omega sign with three arrows; one pointing me back the way I came, one to the left, and the last to the right.

My energy deserts me. I notice there’s a thin film of sweat coating my hairline. My heartbeat is throbbing in my ears. My bag is dragging my shoulder down. This has never happened before. The signs are nonsensical, but there’s always one arrow sending me in one direction. I don’t know what to do with a sign that says something else.

My only option is to go back to Elata, though I’m not sure how. I look up at the sign, hoping to see the Elata’s polygons. That's how it's supposed to work. You wish for a place and Underground shows you the way. But the sign doesn't change.

I hear, or maybe feel, something coming behind me. I’m not surprised to see a hulking goblin when I whirl around, its features obscured by a black hood. I stumble back, cursing my stupidity. I’m too exhausted to do any quick alchemy.

Except something nasty when it touches me, and maybe I’m ready to go that far, even down here in fae country.

I don’t get the chance. The magenta smog bleeds red and sinks down over my head. Instinctively, I stop breathing.

It doesn’t matter. The red smog suffuses into me, through my ears and nose. Everything goes black.

Chapter Text

Many cartographers have gone mad trying to map Underground.

The Empire’s Atlas, pg. 497.

Prickly, short hairs scratch my cheek and drag me out of fitful sleep. The stink of wet, moldy basement tickles my nose and the sound of dripping water hammers at my head. I try to straighten up but a headache squeezes my temples, forehead, and the back of my head and neck, forcing me to lie back down. Hard to say how long I’ve been out, but it’s been long enough that my right hip hurts from the awkward position they dropped me on . . . wherever I am.

I let out a grunt, remembering too late something I read somewhere about the importance of keeping still and quiet when waking up in an unfamiliar environment so if anyone’s watching, they don’t realize you’re awake right away.

Probably read that in some cheap thriller at an airport somewhere. I am Julian Fuentes, D. A. S., PhD, son of two upper middle class professionals, former honor student and graduate of two Ivy League schools. I’ve never been blackout drunk and I’ve never so much as touched marijuana. I’ve never had a speeding ticket. I’ve never cheated on any girlfriend. My taxes are always in on time. If you’d told me a year ago that I’d ever wake up in a strange place Underground with my head pounding, I’d have laughed.

A hand grabs my shoulder, its palm rough with protruding bumps, and pulls me to a seated position. I suck in a whimpering breath as my eyes flash open. My vision swims before I squeeze them shut again. There’s a wall of some type I can lean against, thankfully. It hurts so bad, from between my shoulder-blades all the way up to the space in my forehead right between my eyes, that I couldn’t sit up without help.

“Maybe the Aifour broke him,” a rough voice suggests.

“Pray not,” says another one, smoother but somehow scarier. “His Majesty will kill us and feed us to vultures if he’s damaged.”

It doesn’t take much brain power to guess who “His Majesty” might be. The pounding in my head intensifies. I can’t tell if it’s out of fear of the Goblin King or fear of what that red gas might have done to me. Though I’m no medical doctor, I know that all-encompassing headaches accompanied by nuchal rigidity are never a good sign. I try to roll my neck a little, slowly. It’s not pleasant, but I can rotate my head without wanting to pass out. By the time I’m trying to touch my right ear with my right shoulder, it feels like the pain is receding away from my neck.

Any relief that gives me vanishes when I begin to open my eyes and catch a glimpse of the magenta fog permeating the air around me. I might’ve seen a bulging limb covered by drab, buzz-cut fur too before I squeezed my eyes back shut. What’s worse? The smog that turned red and knocked me out, or goblins that have recipes for every piece of my anatomy?

“Alchemist!”

I sense, or maybe hear, something walking towards me. Instinct nudges me back. The thin, sharp ridges of the unrefined granite that makes up the walls of Underground’s caves scratches the back of my head through my thick hair. An image of the fairy insects that live in the purple fog thunders through me--clusters of them accumulating near the roofs and walls. I think maybe my head is nestled in a nest of them and, headache forgotten, I half-jump from where I’m sitting, my hands flying to my head.

“He looks fine,” the rough voice says as I glare at the insects in the fog, tangling my fingers through my hair.

“One his size could keep a belly full a whole week,” the smoother voice adds, melting the glare off my face.

My breath stutters, blood rushing in my ears, as I tell myself to calm down. There’s no logical reason Stryrdunn would risk a problem with the Empire by eating a federal alchemist, even one as disgraced as me. I don’t know why the bastard wants to talk to me, or even why he knows my name in the first place, but there are meals less troublesome than me walking around Underground.

If was a badass, I’d say something to that effect to the two goblins in the room. But I’m not, so I settle for taking comfort in the fact that my headache is almost gone. It has to be one of those magical things that hurts worse the more you think of it directly, or if you stand still, or fuck me if I know. I just need to be grateful it’s going away.

“This one’s too mousy for an alchemist,” says the smooth voice. “Nothing like the ones born in the caves and deserts where the humans first hid from us.”

“Fuck you,” I say before I can think better of it.

“Might be more threatening if you stopped fidgeting, kiddo,” says the one that sounds like what a goblin might sound like if they smoked for thirty years. “Sit back down before you say something you regret.”

“I’d rather stand, thanks.”

“A polite one too,” he says, making a noise that might be a chuckle. “I’m gonna do you a solid, little one. Keep that mousy deference when His Highness comes to see you, and you might get outta of here alive.”

The word “might” does little to calm me. I look around in case there’s a weapon, or maybe something that’ll help me recognize where I am. As if. I’m Underground, where nothing is ever in the same spot twice and things haven’t advanced in centuries. Maybe longer.

Old furniture made of fur and leather litters the crevasse they’ve got me in. A red blanket-type thing embroidered in golden thread sits on a sofa that looks incongruously modern, like someone traded in an Ikea divan for goblin nails or whatever crazy shit’s popular for dieting nowadays. The glowing insects float about near the roof and walls, clustering around patches of multicolored moss pushing through the interstices in the rocks. Water drips from a fat crack in the roof near a narrowing that leads to a passageway out of this particular chamber.

There are no doors Underground, only caves and passages of varying size.

“You’re the alchemist who helped Drugarm, aren’t you?” asks the big one with the smooth voice.

As usual, it’s hard to say what a goblin is thinking just by looking at its face. This one has a creepy asymmetry going on; his eyes, forehead, and nose are what might be called “normal” in size, but they sit on the widest mandibles I’ve ever seen. Two sharp cuspid teeth gouge out at the air, missing his upper lip and cheeks because his mouth isn’t aligned quite right. He’s dressed in fur and leather adorned with patterns that might belong to a noble goblin house. Or maybe it’s just fashion. What do I know?

“Why would you help a goblin?” he asks.

“Why not?” I shrug.

Drugarm peddles what he swears are milk teeth from growing goblins. I traded with him once and didn’t manage to extract a milligram of orichalcum from these “teeth”, so maybe he’s not lying. Either way, he seems nice enough as far as goblins go. One day, while I walked back to the archway from Elata’s, a grimy boulder fell from the roof and crushed his stand. Most of Drugarm’s right leg ended up under the boulder too, but thankfully his pelvis had been spared.

Maybe I should’ve bowed my head and kept going, but goblin screams don’t sound all that different from humans screams. Well, they do, kinda. But they don't make me feel much different. By then I’d already been practicing solid alchemy for a few months and I couldn’t tell myself that I just didn’t have the skill to help. So I did, and almost got myself killed. Goblins don’t react well to the sight of a human performing alchemy, even if it's to help one of them.

“Nothing like the old ones,” repeats Huge Jaw.

Before I can register that, a cluster of goblins makes their way a through the only passageway out of this place. I can’t suppress a little jump that makes Smoker Goblin chuckle, but I don’t have the energy to pay attention to him. My gaze is fixed on a goblin, one about my height that looks the most . . . human I’ve ever seen. He’s wearing, of all fucking things, a tailored suit I probably couldn’t have afforded back when I had a real job.

A little goblin that wouldn’t reach my knees scurries forward to fuzz with the red blanket on the Ikea seat so, by the time the human-looking goblin gets there, the blanket looks like a cushion. The goblin sits down, adjusting the lapel of his navy-blue suit like he’s a CEO sitting at the head of a conference table. Two goblins, huge in both the vertical and horizontal direction, flank him. I don’t need to glance at them to know I won’t discern anything distinctive about their features. Smoker Goblin and Huge Jaws step forward to bow before Suit while I stare, probably with my mouth hanging open.

“Dr. Fuentes,” says Suit. He's black--not goblin-black, exactly, black like a human would be if humans didn't have subtle imperfections. He has wicked sideburns as white as newly-fallen snow, which would look normal enough if not for the fact there's not a single wrinkle on his face.

“Stryrdunn,” I assume out loud.

“How dare you.” Huge Jaw doesn’t sound so smooth as he shoots to his feet, turning to me with his jaw unhinged.

I take a step back, not that it would have done much if one Stryrdunn’s flanking goblins hadn’t reached out to grab him by one of his bottom teeth, holding him back without a word.

“It’s fine,” says Strydunn. “I’m not his sovereign.”

Maybe it shouldn’t, but that makes my heart race a little slower. “How do you my name?”

“Who doesn’t know the alchemist who tore down Teresa Pakova’s proposal to get vampirism recognized as a chronic disease?” says Stryrdunn, lacing his fingers together and . . . smiling.

It’s a little smile that approaches the features of a smirk and stops just short enough that it can’t be called such; the kind of face a lawyer might make when someone’s said something that makes him look dumb, but he doesn’t want to seem out of control. It’s so human that, coming from a goblin, it makes my skin crawl.

“I really wish people would stop giving me credit for that.” The Empire was never going to recognize vampirism as a disease and for once an overwhelming majority of the populace agreed with them, barring a group of tree huggers convinced that any sentient creature was deserving of a caring society blah, blah, blah. All I did was provide the High Court Justices with the numbers for an opinion more nuanced than ‘because vampires are icky’.

“Pakova does,” says Stryrdunn, “and somehow you’re still alive.”

“I believe her exact words in regards to that were ‘the dead don’t suffer’.”

That human smile again. “Alive and free to go about as you please.”

Not really, but I’m not about to get into semantics argument with a goblin. “What do you want with me?”

“I want to know if you hate Pakova as much I suspect you do.”

“Hate is a strong word,” I say, “but it might not be quite strong enough in this case.” Pakova has taken everything from me; she’s driven me to do things that would’ve made me nauseous a year ago. Most days, I’m grateful my parents died long before I ever laid eyes on her because by now, she’d have killed them. Or worse.

“Then I’ve made the right choice inviting you here,” says Stryrdunn.

“I think we’re operating with different definitions of the word ‘invitation’,” I say.

“Because you would seize the opportunity to strike back at Pakova,” continues Stryrdunn as if I didn’t interrupt him, though one of the guard keeps a hold on Huge Jaw as he fidgets.

“How do you mean?”

“I have no doubt that Pakova does not intend to fade and lick her wounds for long,” says Stryrdunn, leaning towards me slightly. “She will try again to manipulate the Empire’s laws in her favor--”

“--I’m sure, but what does it have to do with me?”

“Human,” spits Huge Jaws.

“Be silent or leave my Court,” says Stryrdunn.

Huge Jaws goes still, and so does rough voice who’s steel kneeling before the Goblin King. I remember his advice and resolve to put on a more deferential air, at least until Stryrdunn says his piece.

Chapter Text

Every supernatural being elicits instinctive disgust and terror among humans . . . except for vampires. A vigilant human must embrace that piece of wisdom and hold it close to their souls if they wish to survive.

A Human’s Manual to Practical Self-Defense, pg. 573

“It might be difficult for one young as you to comprehend,” says Stryrdunn, “but humans once relied on me for protection from vampires.”

I don’t bother to try and voice the obvious thought. How could a human think a goblin would be safer than a vampire? You can make more blood, but you can’t grow a new limb.

“With goblins, your kind expected death,” continues Stryrdunn, “but death was preferable to life hungering for your kin’s blood, hunted by every beast Underground, every being Above, and every phantom weaving through fog, shadow, and legend.” He smiles, showing me teeth too flat and small to have any business in a goblin’s mouth. “And now you file documents permitting sullied beasts to try and turn you, sign petitions demanding that vampires be extended your Empire’s support and protection. Your ancestors, the ones still living in my muscles and belly, would boil in shame and rage if they knew.”

“You ever heard of the internet?” I ask. “Because political forums in particular would love to have you.”

Stryrdunn’s lackeys don’t react, Huge Jaws included, making me suspect that at least some of them didn’t understand the mild jab. But Stryrdunn himself gives another one of those not-smiles. “Would your posts in such forums look like mine?”

I look away.

“Your testimony at the vampirism reform hearings suggests they would.”

“Stop,” I say, ignoring how the goblin guard has to use both hands to hold Huge Jaws back. “I wasn’t at those hearings for political opinions.”

And good thing too. I’d been a jumbled mess every time anyone asked about whether or not vampires could be considered “human” in the scientific sense, whatever that means, but when they asked me about our blood reserves . . .

“Then why were you there?” asked Stryrdunn.

“For numbers.” Numbers are numbers, blunt and clear regardless of what the Empire, Pakova, or anyone else might want. And they say that the Empire can barely supply hospitals and trauma centers as it is, let alone the overnight demand that would be generated if all of a sudden, millions of legally-recognized humans clamoring for blood to be psychologically and physically stable flood said hospitals. On a daily basis. For multiple transfusions a day. Or whatever the Empire would have decided to call blood-sucking.

“Do you think your numbers will have changed by the next time Pakova makes a play?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I can’t look into the future.”

“They won’t be,” says Stryrdunn.

“That’s future Empire’s problem, and considering how pissed the general population is at vampires in general right now, it’ll be a future when there’ll be less than a memory of me left.”

“You care nothing for your kin?” Stryrdunn’s lip curls and with his human face, it feels like there’s an old grandpa-veteran questioning my manhood. Or something like that.

“Sure I care.” I shrug. “I’m just self-aware about how frivolous my caring is in the grand scheme of things.”

“Self-minimization,” says Huge Jaws. My eyes flicker to him before I can get a hold of myself and force my gaze back to Stryrdunn. “A coward’s weapon against loyalty and duty.”

“Agreed,” says Stryrdunn.

“Then will you just let my cowardly self go?” I make a curtsy-motion before remembering it’s a girl-type of gesture, though goblins don't put much stock on that sort of thing so maybe it doesn't matter. “You wouldn’t want the Empire down here over some coward.”

“I,” Stryrdunn starts as I head towards the exit tunnel, “in my diminished state, still bow to stand against Pakova and her ilk, even in defense of those who rejected my protection so long ago.”

I can’t suppress a chuckle a chuckle at that.

“My responsibility is so dear to me that I will admit, even to you, that I need help.”

My feet grind to a halt.

“Help from who?” I don’t see how it could be me, a mess of a alchemist who’s no good outside a clinical laboratory.

“I need an ally among Pakova’s inner circle,” says Stryrdunn. “Someone she’d enjoy boasting to so I have the opportunity to thwart her plans. Someone like you, Dr. Fuentes.”

“Me?” I whirl around, what little sense of self-preservation I had forgotten. “I’m not in Pakova’s ‘inner circle’,” I spit the words out, put finger-quotes around them, “I’m her latest fucking chewtoy.”

“You humiliated her,” says Stryrdunn, nodding approvingly, “and you still live.”

“If you can call it that.”

“Pakova wants you to submit, to parade you among her enemies as a warning,” says Stryrdunn. “If you go to her, she will welcome you.”

“I can’t.” Just thinking about being anywhere near her makes me want to claw my own eyes out. I can't imagine what it would be like to pretend to be one of her sycophants.

“She will hurt you, feed off you, perhaps even rape you,” continues Stryrdunn in the worst motivational speech ever. “And all the while, you’d be funneling information to her enemies, watching her plans unravel and knowing it was thanks to your actions.”

“I really can’t,” I insist.

Stryrdunn stands in a swift, liquid motion. The little goblins at his feet glide off to the side as he walks forward. Somehow, I hold my ground as he strides toward me and stands so close I can see flecks of gold in his strangely human brown eyes. “There are two things your kind, with you soft bones, flat teeth, and clawless fingers, are good for: alchemy, and acting. Go to her, bow your head, exaggerate your whimpers, and pretend to adore her.”

“You’re wrong; we’re so much more than that.” Why can’t the damned fae see the world we’ve built? If nothing else, the Empire should be an inescapable reality for them. “We organize, investigate, and build. We’re the only species in this world that conquered their predators. We only act for fun now, and it's not fun for me.”

“Don’t come to my kingdom spewing your government’s propaganda,” says Stryrdunn. Something in his tone prompts one of his goons to step closer to us. “You’re at the fringes now, not so different from the rejects that come down here to trade their hides for a smidgen of protection.”

“Yes, I am.” I’m making several leaps of faith here and if I’m wrong about even a single one of them, I won’t make it back Above. “You’re gonna let me walk out of here because the stark, ugly truth is there are bigger monsters than you who pissed around me. If I don’t show up to my shitty job later today, the Empire will jump at the excuse to march its army right up your ass. Or worse, Pakova will do whatever the fuck she does to things that play with her food.”

There’s some rustling going on behind Stryrdunn, but I’m afraid he’ll unhinge his jaw and swallow me whole if I take my eyes off his.

“So why don’t you stop this circus here, because I’m not falling for it.” I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, if I ever did. My mouth keeps flapping, tongue dancing around words in a desperate hope that I’ll find the magic words that will get me out of here. “I’m gonna head back to my people and do you the favor of pretending you didn’t kidnap an Alchemist for the Empire.” My instinct is to beg for freedom, but something smarter in me knows Stryrdunn will be more offended by a weak display than by anything I could ever say.

Stryrdunn lifts his arm, like he’s going to make a fist, and my knees almost buckle. “With this much backbone,” he says as one of his goons moves behind him, “you won’t stand the paralysis you’re living under for much longer. Don’t come back to my kingdom until you’re ready to fight back.”

Instead of the punch I expected, Stryrdunn hands me my bag. I grab it with a fleeting thought for the stupid jars I came down Underground for in the first place, then retreat and present my back to the goblins once I’m several paces away from Stryrdunn.

My breath comes out in shallow gasps all the way out and my heart climbs higher in my throat the more signs I find. At least the tunnels get shorter and wider, keeping away from the more congested areas Underground until I go through the archway and run into Fresiq and Ibnoc. They try and greet me with the usual joviality before handing over my stuff.

“Exciting trip today, iron blood?” says Fresiq, handing my bag over as Ibnoc snickers.

“A fucking rollercoaster,” I say, then ignore their excited questions about what exactly that is.

“Next time, then!” Ibnoc shouts when I start jogging out, desperate to get away from the purple mist in the corners.

My calves throb at the sight of the stairway to the hatch leading above, but I push through, ringing the bell to call the tall goblin that has to open it for me. Sometimes, he takes a while to answer and this time I might throw caution to the purple-infested air and use alchemy to get out. I feel like the tunnels are closing in on me.

Mercifully, the goblin opens the hatch right away and I stumble out like the vultures are at my heels, the jars on my bag clinking so loud I can hear them over the buzz of human speech in the street. A pitiful, dry sob heaves out of my chest as I rush away from the hatch, tepid sunlight hitting my eyes and making my temple throb. The farther away I get from Underground, the more I notice that my body feels like a truck’s run over me.

My tongue’s as dry as sandpaper, my eyes are dry and itchy, and I’m ravenous even though I’m so nauseous that I can’t stop myself from vomiting a little bile into my mouth. The wondrous chatter from stupid tourist waving around selfie sticks pounds at my eardrums. Most times I worry about the dumb ones that insist on visiting Underground, but today I hope all of them go down and run into the meanest, hungriest goblin in the labyrinth.

By the time I’m two streets past Cavern Row, the whining from my stomach is worse than the bite of the cold winter wind on my face. The aroma of sizzling meat draws me to a street vendor, though nothing in her cart looks even remotely appetizing. A short, stout woman with leathery brown skin ignores the disgusted frown I can’t keep off my face and hands me a kebab skewering pork dripping fat and an unbranded bottle of water.

“Eight bucks,” she says.

“Come on, really?”

She stares at me with flat, expressionless eyes.

Right, there’s no negotiating prices Above. I hand over the money and keep walking, trying to avoid the crowd of harried humans until I reach one of the mini-gardens scattered throughout the city and sit down beside a homeless man hunched over a bottle of hooch. The crowd bustles around me as I bite down on the meat, then curse as my gums and the tip of my tongue are scalded.

Still, just the taste makes my bellyache recede, which makes me wonder about how exactly that works, what fat and salt must mean to the parts of my brain responsible for making me jumpy and ready to fight for my life if necessary. I grunt and start blowing on my kebab, curse at my cracking lips, then open my water bottle with a shaky hand. Either the water is from the dirtiest tap in the city, or the red smog left a rancid taste in my mouth. I cough, almost choke, but still power through and drink until I have to pause for a breath.

That last one almost make me jump to my feet, except it just freezes me on the spot. I want to rush back to my house and take a boiling hot shower, to scrub my hair and beard, to drown my mouth in disinfectant, to shave--or better, rip my hair out its follicles with hot wax until I bleed and I’m a hundred percent sure the mist is off me.

I don’t know how long I would’ve stayed sitting on that bench if a pair of cops hadn’t passed by demanding IDs and chasing off homeless people. The clean-shaven, teen-looking bastard who threatens my silent companion tries to make a stink when I show him my badge, so I turn the plastic bottle on my hand into a plastic hand giving him the middle finger. He makes a face and tells me to go home before he charges me with blah, blah, blah and Disrespecting an Imperial Officer.

All the energy has been drained out of him and I still need to go to work, so I hold back any arguments and head home to shower.

Chapter Text

Everyone knows the Empire’s elections are rigged. What few people realize is that the smaller the election, the more rigged it is. The Other help us all.

Politics Daily Forums - 11/27/2015

A compulsion to shave hits me as I shower in near-boiling water, scrubbing at my skin like it’s an old cooking pot dirty with dried grease. I stopped shaving properly months ago, desperate to not hear from anyone about blood and vampires anymore. I didn’t care if it was from vamp sympathizers who thought I was racist, or from loyalist who got it in their heads that I’m some hero; I just wanted nothing to do with it.

My cheeks look too pale, and skinnier than I remember. I get fleeting urges to scratch, but my skin might be too fragile for that now. For an insane second, I consider shaving my head too, but my wavy brown hair doesn’t grow that fast and I got it in my head to grow it out until I look like an illustration from one of those old-timey fantasy books. Back when alchemy was more religion than science, a long mane of hair was almost a requirement for anyone in the field.

My phone buzzes, prompting me to stop staring at myself like an idiot. It’s the daily Imperial email reminding me that I need to review the proposals up for vote today, that I haven’t touched my Civic Duties account for almost a week, and don’t I know that a citizen who doesn’t vote is a citizen who doesn’t care about the sacrifices the Empire makes for his wellbeing and safety every day? And if you don’t get to your duty by the end of the month, sir, there will be a fine.

The fines hadn’t meant shit to me once, but now I got three alarms to remind me that I must vote or skip a few meals to appease the Empire. Two days left this month, and I don’t want to check how many ballots. It’s no point in looking at my bank account to see if I can let the penalty slide this once. Can’t risk Underground anymore, and to add insult to injury, I got a measly two grams of orichalcum from Elata’s last jars. Cursing, I slip on my coat and leave the safety of my basement. I’m already late for work.

Imperial trucks are blanketing Hero City’s streets with salt in preparation for the first true winter storm of the year. People curse without attempting to jaywalk around them, making the sidewalks are more crowded than usual. Despite my fears, no one recognizes me as I muscle my way down the subway stairs on thirty-third street, twitching at the cold air numbing my cheeks. Snow is falling by the time I reach seventieth street, two blocks away from where the train spat me back up to the city proper.

People walk a little faster, wrapping scarves over the mouths. A few hobos are waving cardboard signs about how many humans freeze in Hero City during the merciless winters. “The Other bless you, sir,” a skinny woman with graying hair tells me when I force myself to deposit a few coins in her hat.

The smile I try to force probably comes out as a grimace. I try not to regret parting with my money as I make my way to Fast Alchemy, the struggling commercial shop that took me in after Pakova schemed me out of the hospital and decimated my savings account. Whatever problems I have, at least I’m not worried I’ll freeze to death anytime soon.

“Look who’s finally gracing our office with his presence,” McCreed says when I stumble into Fast Alchemy, wiping snowflakes off my shoulders.

I glare in his general direction, then take the three strides that lead me to the back of the shop. Once, I had the resources of an entire hospital floor and its ancillary labs at my disposal. Now I have a corner in the ground floor of an old building bordering the subway with piss-yellow lighting, its pipes hollow and covered in dust, mold, and spiderwebs. My boss micromanages me worse than any professor in the so-called ivory towers of academia.

“You barely beat your first appointment here.” McCreed has followed me to my desk, his ruddy cheeks a starker contrast than usual to his pale green eyes. “I have a reputation to maintain, Julian. It says so right on my sign.”

"I got here on time, didn’t I?” Much as I hate this job, I treat it as seriously as I treated every transfusion I ever supervised. “Cut me a little slack and maybe consider that I got caught up with something important.”

“But not so much you couldn’t shave.” McCreed jabs at his own chin.

I look away despite myself.

McCreed makes a satisfied noise. “You better thank The Other for the accident at the 7-W line today--”

“--why would I be glad for that?”

“Because all our clients are late,” finishes McCreed, stabbing the air between us with his short fingers. “Walker and Johnston called to say they’d be in later. Be ready when they get here.”

“What about Veronica?”

“Out for lunch,” says McCreed, halfway turned towards the front. “Work on your customer service smile.”

I suppose I shouldn’t hold it against McCreed that he takes his business so seriously. He’s just an aging man trying to survive in a city crushed under the Empire’s decadence and paternalism. My chair groans as I drop onto it, starting to lay out my little orichalcum baggies. Seven to show from my last trek Underground. Seven more glamours or, as I like to call them, temporary face lifts.

Veronica whirls into her desk a few minutes later, when I’m examining the fifth baggie for purity, wincing as I siphon out a few granules of mundane dirt. Today, she’s sporting a magenta curls with sparkling streaks of silver that reach the small of her back. Despite the garish colors, the tint complements her dark skin and stands out against her white dress.

“Goodness gracious, Julian,” she breathes as she removes her white scarf. “What did you do with your face?”

“Uh,” I rub my chin lightly. “I just got an itch.”

“I like it,” she says, beaming as she takes out greasy sandwiches from a brown bag, then walks over to me. “Normally I like my men bearded, but you manage to look less baby-faced clean-shaven.”

I grunt, reaching for the sandwich she hands me.

“Not much of a bounty today, huh?” she asks, gesturing at the orichalcum on my desk.

“Not much of a bounty ever again,” I say.

Veronica’s eyes widen, and her Adam’s apple bobs as she falls on the chair in front of my desk. “What do you mean?”

More than anyone else besides me, Veronica has a stake on my ability to travel Underground. Women, some of considerable economic means, come to Fast Alchemy rather than the hundreds of beauty salons with teams of untalented but fully certified alchemist because . . . well, me. I use the orichalcum to erase years of their faces without a destroying their ability to make facial expressions, then Veronica employs her alchemy and eye for fashion to do their hairstyles. They walk out of here looking like the stumbled out of a magazine cover.

So I tell Veronica of my last trip Underground and my terrifying encounter with Stryrdunn. Without my backing her, she might not find much work with McCreed unless she’s willing to go back to the type of assignments she did pre-transition: backing up the rest of McCreed’s muscular alchemists during raids at vampire clubs, drug dens, and other less-than-savory endeavours. Her bubbly personality and affinity for rainbow colors and glitter would be less than helpful when trying to intimidate a fanged beast that could slam the average human through a concrete wall.

“There has to be some other place to get orichalcum,” she says, lacing her fingers together as if in prayer.

“Sure, if you got money.” So many things would be so much easier with money.

“Does McCreed know?”

“Not yet.” I suspect he’ll fire me once he finds out. To this day, McCreed hasn’t gotten over how little business my supposedly impeccable reputation brought him.

Mrs. Walker, a short dowager approaching seventy who’s decided to brave the senior dating world since the tenth anniversary of her husband’s death, strides in before Veronica can say anything else.

The worried frown lines melt off Veronica’s forehead. “Mrs. Walker!” she says, turning to the older woman with a beaming smile. “I’m so relieved you could make it. I couldn’t live with myself if I don’t help you with that nice retired general.”

“Oh, you’re such a dear, Vero,” Mrs. Walker says as I clean my desk. “And Julian! It’s so nice to see your face again.”

I like Mrs. Walker. She tips with gourmet truffles from a bakery I could only on special occasions even back when I worked at the hospital. When she’s not fighting her aging skin, she finances Imperial Solidarity, a large non-profit that tries to help addicts stay clean.

“Maxwell,” she orders the wide bodyguard who follows her everywhere, “go turn on that TV to the Imperial Court Broadcast. Rumor’s that they’re forcing a premature vote today.”

“On what?” asks Veronica.

“That’s what I don’t want to miss,” says Mrs. Walker, taking my hand so I can help her climb on the dentist-recliner-looking thing McCreed procured from The Other only knows where a few days after he hired me.

I push all thoughts about Underground, orichalcum, the Empire, and votes as I examine Mrs. Walker’s face. The best creams that money can buy did little to diminish her skin’s loss of collagen fibrils, or to halt the acceleration of her keratinocyte turnover time. That’s not unusual, and it wouldn’t be much of a problem if Mrs. Walker just wanted me to erase all evidence of aging off her countenance, but she’s way more sophisticated than that.

“Make it look like I aged gracefully,” she told the first time she came to Fast Alchemy. “I want to be a handsome seventy-year-old, not a twenty-five-year-old lizard.”

Realistic glamours are a challenge, even for experts, nevermind for someone who spent his training learning the the components of blood at different stages of maturation and how to carry out massive transfusions safely. In a way, Mrs. Walker has saved me during the last few months. She gave me a reason to study human anatomy with the same fervor I studied human bone marrow, to obsesses over the microarchitecture of skin, and to painstakingly infuse orichalcum parallel to Langer’s lines, then build support along the orientation of natural muscle tension lines. People recognize those instinctively even if they don’t know what the orbicularis oculi muscle is.

“I’m taking of adding a few reddish highlights today,” Veronica says while I work.

“We’re going for dignified, sweetheart,” Mrs. Walker says. “By which I mean conservative. This gentleman once served directly under the King’s second-cousin.”

“I don’t mean blood-red or neon-red,” clarifies Veronica. “I mean a little darker shade of brown, like . . .”

“Castaño,” I say.

“Like what?” asks Mrs. Walker.

“Similar to Mademoiselle Trudeau,” says the bodyguard, his smooth voice almost startling me away from my work. I think I’ve heard the man speak once or twice before. “The starlet.”

“Yes, I know who she is,” says Mrs. Walker. “I don’t think that shade suits my complexion.”

“It’ll be the same scheme, but with your natural hair color,” says Veronica.

“Please, I need you to stay still and quiet,” I say to Mrs. Walker.

It’s time to move on to the right side of her face and the hardest part of the job is to make the two sides match. If they’re perfectly symmetrical, then I’ll court the uncanny doll effect Mrs. Walker (and all clients) hate so much. If I make it too uneven, the glamour will be obvious.

Mrs. Walker sits perfectly still, relaxed in the way I taught her, while I infuse miniscule amounts of orichalum into her thin superficial layer of keratinocytes. Veronica and the bodyguard are frozen too, all but holding their breath as I work. Once, Veronica told me that I look like an sculptor when I’m doing these masks, that it’s beautiful to watch. It’s flattering, I guess, but I don’t know any other way to work. I’m aware of the blood flowing through Mrs. Walker’s face, of the oil and dried flakes over her skin, of the near-invisible hairs prickling the pads of my fingers, and the microscopic granules of transparent orichalcum flowing from the air beneath my fingertips into Mrs. Walker’s body.

My focus is absolute, but it doesn’t engage my senses in a way that removes me from the world around me. I know when another of McCreed’s alchemists comes to the back, though I cannot tell which. I know when Veronica grows bored of watching me and returns to her dyes. I’m at the corner of the nose, approaching the alarfacial groove, when the crisp voice of a reporter coming from the TV catches my attention.

“Sources close to the Imperial Court suggest that Chief Secretary Winthrop, the newly-appointed leader of the Electoral Committee, will announce an emergency vote regarding the Promotion of Practical Alchemy bill, more commonly known by the rather innocuous acronym PPA . . .”

Those news threaten my concentration, so I stop listening and focus entirely on Mrs. Walker. It’s a superficial procedure, unlikely to cause her harm beyond the psychological distress of a less-than-perfect glamour if I jumble it up, but there’s no need for her to suffer even that much. I push through, as concerned with my limited orichalcum supply as I am with her satisfaction.

“There,” I say.

“Everything okay?” asks Mrs. Walker.

“Yes, of course,” I say too quickly, hating how strained I sound.

Veronica comes to my rescue. “His best work yet!” she says, handing Mrs. Walker and mirror.

Mrs. Walker beams, offers me bright compliments or thanks. I’m not listening and barely remember to respond with a smile of my own before I’m walking closer to the television mounted on the wall opposite us. Carter Carmichael, the alchemist who walked in while I was working with Mrs. Walker, is watching the screen intently.

“To be honest,” a political talking head in a navy suit is saying as I stand next to Carter, “it’s surprising that the Empire waited so long force this bill to our attention. An overwhelming majority of the population supports the PPA--”

“--hold on,” interrupts another guy, “I wouldn’t call the sixty percent or so that most generous polls give this bill ‘overwhelming’--”

“This shit would’ve helped me two years ago,” says Carter.

If it passes, the PPA will require every Imperial Alchemist to mentor at least five people through the Imperial Certification Exams. Anyone between the ages of eighteen through twenty-four would be eligible for the preliminary exams, and those scoring in the fortieth percentile would be guaranteed a mentor from the pool of available Imperial Alchemists. Carter just turned twenty-five.

“It’s a travesty that the Empire is trying to force our alchemists away from their research and work to play teachers,” says someone on the news.

“Shit, taking an apprentice used to be part of the job,” says Carter, then turns to me. “It’d still affect you if it passes.”

“Yeah,” I breathe.

“What about the rest of us?” a pundit argues. “Alchemists keep retreating to their ivory towers to study the cells at the base of our butts, and everyday people scramble for plumbers, medics, miners, or just plain fighters.”

“The need for combat alchemists is minuscule,” argues the other pundit.

Carter snorts.

“Really?” the aggressive talking head fires back. “Goblins and vampires aren’t advancing on our borders?”

“How do you feel about this?” demands Carter.

It may not affect directly him anymore, but I know Carter supports the PPA. For someone like him, a married veteran with a little girl to feed, an Imperial Alchemist badge would’ve meant something I’m only just starting to comprehend.

“A year ago, I was on the fence about this,” I say, thinking of how I'd tried to imagine taking a younger alchemist under my wing. “Now I’m scared shitless it’ll pass.”

Carter starts to say something, but a new reporter pops up on the screen. “We’re getting some breaking news everyone,” she says, touching behind her ear. “Secretary Winthrop’s staff has confirmed that she will make a statement about the PPA.” The image cuts to a shot of a stout woman with an austere, platinum blond bob cut walks up to a podium in front of the stairs to the Imperial Court. “Ladies and gentlemen,” says the reporter while the woman shuffles some papers. “The Secretary is ready to speak.”

“People of the Empire,” starts Winthrop, raising her chin, “over the last few years, it’s become clear that our kingdom cannot go on without adequate contribution from our smartest, most dedicated Imperial Alchemists . . .”

“They have the votes,” I say.

“Do they?” asks Carter.

“The wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.” I sigh and hold my face with my hands. For years, the Empire has been trying to force Imperial Alchemists into intensive training programs geared towards graduating specialists in “practical alchemy”, the new euphemism for combat alchemy.

“You think it’ll pass?”

“I’m sure it’ll pass. I’m fucked.” Another mouth to feed when I can barely keep my belly full, that's what this means at best.

At worse, the Empire is handing Pakova another target.