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memento mori

Chapter 9 - Smoke, Salt, and Asbestos

Masterlist

CW: nonhuman whumpee (changeling), "it" as a pronoun, witch hunt (literal, old-fashioned witch hunt), parental abandonment/betrayal, chronic illness, torture, post-traumatic stress/horrible headspaces, stoning, shock collar, electrocution

===

I wonder sometimes who is more vicious: the Unseelie or a small town of humans when turned against a single person. In my experience, though the Unseelie are dangerous, they aren't irrational. Seldom is the small village not consumed by irrational rage when focused on a similarly small target. For that reason, I always recommend alchemists to avoid small villages. Though the anonymity seems tempting, their favor changes like the wind and will leave you with nowhere to go but to hell.

===

Was it dusk or dawn that day? Briac always wanted to say that it was dusk, but it could’ve just as easily been dawn. What did it matter, anyway, dusk or dawn? The flames from the torches had stained the gray of the clouds red anyway.

Had Briac considered Sean a friend? That time felt so long ago. Sean’s father worked at the smithy and being around him always made Briac’s asthma worse.

Well, it wasn’t quite asthma, Briac had learned. The pain in its lungs was from the very thing that had revealed it.

Iron.

Iron in the air. Iron in the water. Iron in the doorknobs that made its hands turn red. At first, they’d thought Briac had some sort of atopy, had they called it?

However, that fateful day in July, Sean had poked Briac in the arm with a metal pole. Briac was confused until the burning, stinging, searing pain started. It screamed for Sean to stop. It screamed that it would beat the shit out of him. It had promised to take Sean to his father, the constable, for hurting it.

“Briac’s a changeling! I knew it!”

Right - Sean had never been a friend. They’d gotten into more bar fights that Briac cared to admit. Those fights were only proof of its insidious, inhuman nature. It fought a good person over nothing.

The bar had gone deathly silent. Even Briac had stopped screaming.

Changeling.

An evil word to the humans of small villages like the one it had once called home. They were the sick, horrible replacements for children stolen by the Unseelie. To utter the word could send people to their children’s sides with an iron spear.

Nobody wanted their child to be replaced by such a beast. After all, if a changeling had replaced your child, that child was surely dead. Your own flesh and blood gone in the blink of an eye, replaced by something that wasn’t even human.

Sean had narrowed his eyes at it. “I’ll give you ten seconds to start running. Since you were a good fae, I don’t want to have to make this worse than it’s gonna be.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Briac had been filled with unholy rage at the implication. “What sort of sick fucking trick are you playing on me?”

“Briac, everybody knows! You’re the only one who doesn’t.” The words had been shouted amongst the suspicious eyes watching the two intently. “You don’t have asthma. The iron from the smeltery burns your lungs. You can’t drink water because our water had iron in it. You can’t even open a fucking door without your hands turning red! How long did you think you could trick us for?”

“I’m telling the truth!”

“Like hell you are. Start. Fucking. Running.”

The tone in Sean’s voice was dangerous and filled Briac with feral energy. Without another thought, it bolted out. The only thing that protected it from its lungs collapsing was the adrenaline rushing through its body, almost entirely replacing its blood.

Briac heard the clamor of angry voices and raised pitchforks behind him. Iron pitchforks. The torches, lighting the walls of the buildings in the late-dusk darkness, came next.

“Kill him!” Briac could’ve recognized that shrill scream from anywhere. “Kill him! He stole my son!”

Briac paused in its tracks, turning around to see its mother. There were tears in her eyes as she screamed for his death.

“Die! Die you fucking monster!”

She’d picked up a stone and thrown it at him.

For a minute, Briac could’ve sworn that the alchemist assigned to watch it had thrown a stone at its face. However, as it looked up, it realized that the rock had flown from between the bars of the cage-like carriage the alchemists had stuffed it in.

Lightly, it touched the scar under its eye.

Tears welled in its eyes as it remembered the pain of the stone piercing its cheek. For some reason, that scar had never healed correctly, even if it wasn’t from iron.

Its own mother had scarred it.

Briac cautioned a look at the alchemist in the carriage. He was watching Briac with intense caution as well, as though ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

I can’t cry.

I can’t cry in front of him.

He’ll know that I’m trying to manipulate him.

Its heart was heavy, remembering her tears and the absolute look of betrayal. How could it ever move on from having hurt her in such a way? It knew it shouldn’t suffer regret. That wasn’t an emotion of the fae. However, that part of it that had learned to be human felt regret and despair deeper than any other emotion it had ever felt before.

---

Silvanus looked at Maximilian in disbelief. “You did what?”

“We needed to have the fae creature moved for you. Someone in a different retreat was able to take him in.”

Silvanus was bewildered through the drowsy headache he knew as his migraine hangover.

“Why did you need to move him? He was my experiment.” Silvanus cringed a bit at the anger in his own tone. He hated referring to a living being like that, but it wasn’t like he had much of choice when talking to someone like Maximilian.

“You’re Keeper first and foremost, Silvanus. Though experimenting is an important part of alchemy, your role is perhaps more important than any progress towards Magnum Opus. You’re responsible for the longevity of the art of alchemy. Your job is to make sure that alchemists are safe and to keep the Library. That Library is the most important alchemical artifact we have.”

Silvanus was quiet for a long while. He’d suspected something much more nefarious when Maximilian had mentioned that Briac had been moved. However, Maximilian’s explanation made a lot of sense, even if it didn’t sit well with him.

“We don’t want you to be distracted from your true duties.”

Silvanus nodded along, pretending to be content with Maximilian’s explanation. After years of growing up around the fae, Silvanus was something of a perfect liar to people inexperienced with fae trickery. Even Maximilian who’d known him for years couldn’t tell the difference between Silvanus’ truths and lies.

“I want to ensure that he will be treated fairly. It is also my duty as Keeper to ensure that the practice of alchemy is focused on our sacred arts and does not involve more suffering than necessary.”

Maximilian nodded his head sharply. “Of course. I did much of the same during my years as Keeper. I can help you set up an audit for about a month from now. It’s best to give the poor creature some time to relax and adjust to the new surroundings before throwing everything into a storm again with an audit.”

Silvanus easily read between the lines. I won’t let you see him for a month. You need time to adjust.

“Of course, Maximilian. I only want what’s best for everyone involved. You know how difficult it can be.”

Maximilian laughed a hearty laugh. “That’s why I retired. Too many difficult moral decisions and not enough science for my liking!”

Silvanus put on a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Thank you as always for your guidance, Maximilian.”

“Of course, Silvanus. I’m proud of you. Never forget that. You’ve had to overcome a lot to be where you are today. It takes moxie.”

“Thank you for the kind words,” Silvanus bowed deeply.

“No need for the traditional bows. You’re not my apprentice anymore.”

Maximilian turned around and headed towards the stacks. As he left, he waved his hand as though not a thing in the world could bother him then. Perhaps that was how it was, after years of difficult decisions wearing your morality down and pushing you into retirement to hold onto what little sanity you had left. Silvanus could only hope he wouldn’t retire before he turned thirty.

---

Cruel arms clasped onto Briac’s arms as a blindfold was tied around its eyes to match the tie in its mouth.

Briac did not fight the alchemists as they forced it to its feet and out of the cart. They never stopped when it stumbled. Briac couldn’t help but find the feeling to be too familiar for comfort.

The air changed very suddenly as its lungs began to burn. Though not as severe as in its home, Briac could recognize the feeling of iron in the air from anywhere.

It broke down into a coughing fit. The arms pushing it forward refused to relent.

“Keep moving!”

If there was one thing it knew better than the pain of iron in its lungs, it was when to bow to its betters. It didn’t want to feel the pain of the collar again, so it hurried to stand and keep moving despite all the coughing.

Eventually, they reached a room where the smell of iron faded and was replaced, instead, by that of smoke. The room was insulated, Briac soon realized. It explained well the stuffiness of it.

A sharp kick to the back forced it to its knees. The alchemist guards pushed it down onto the ground using its arms, twisting and pulling with no regard to its pain.

Soon enough, the blindfold was lifted off and in front of it stood a tall, raven-haired woman.

“Arch Alchemist Valentina will now see the fae creature that calls itself ‘Briac.’”

She waved a hand to the guard who’d spoken.

For a moment, Briac might’ve believed her eyes to be full of pity before she grabbed its hair and forced it to look up at her. The pain in its shoulders, neck, and back was made so, so much worse as the collar cut into its neck.

“Disgusting. Silvanus is an extremely talented Keeper and you had the audacity to try to bring him back to your side? By what, faking that you wanted death? I bet it was all an Unseelie trick to bring us down and steal our knowledge.”

Briac felt tears in its eyes. Those manipulative, self-pitying tears it cried while in pain.

She glared at it. “What? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

Briac knew not what it could say that would improve the situation anymore than remaining silent.

“Shock it.”

The guards all let go as convulsions of white-hot pain, similar to the one before, flashed through its body. It screamed and clawed at its neck, begging in half-bitten-off words for the pain to stop.

“I want it tortured. I want to know who this fae creature works for and why it came to the Hall. Do not stop until you’re sure that it isn’t a threat to Keeper Silvanus’ work. If and when you can be sure of its purpose here, dispose of it.”

The guards gave a hefty, “yes, ma’am,” before lugging Briac off, back into a basement that stunk so badly of iron that Briac could hardly stand from its coughing.

The door swung open quickly as the guards clasped Briac in its iron chains to the wall. One delivered a quick blow to its side before whispering to it,

“Lucius will have fun with you.”

Just as quickly as the door had opened was it closed in the same haste, leaving Briac curled in a ball on the ground, in iron chains.

As it sat there, awaiting its fate, it could’ve sworn that its face was bleeding from the scar of that fateful day.

I wish she really had killed me back there. It would've been better than this.

===

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i don’t like how this turned out at all so here. just take it as it is

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⌖ ANYDEER IN THIS THREAD SMOKE WEED?

I need more images of women smoking weed

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