Chapter 25

  Power brought without paying a price is a hollow thing.

  The beautifully unique carriage turned heads as it took turns navigating the streets. The rubberized wheels were attached to coil springs that glimmered in oil, glinting their delicate craftsmanship as the springs contracted and expanded with the bumps in the road. The body of the carriage was fashioned out of folded steel, the metal molded like clay and glossed with marron and black paint. Any visible rivets were touched up like gold and silver buttons on a decorative jacket.

  The sleek armored behemoth was escorted by cavalry on horseback on all sides. Each patrolman eagle eyed and alert on tall stallions of healthy flanks. No one dared to be one the one to halt or even slow the armada in its pathing.

  The exterior metallic, the insides were of softest leather with intricate stitching, carved mahogany paneling with silk curtains and lush padded upholstery.

  Gwen peeked through a slip of the curtains, observing as people and neighborhoods blurred past. The suspension working to its maximum to make the ride as smooth as possible, almost giving the illusion to the passenger that the it was indeed the world that was moving by and not the carriage itself.

  One other sat opposite Gwen. Dressed entirely in black, in pantaloons and a trench coat with a loose shirt underneath. Anyone could have mistaken the individual for a man if they were wearing the broad hat that rested on the adjacent seat.

  Without the hat, however, it was very much a woman in the trench coat. She had a butch haircut with one side cropped short to let the other side swept over stylishly.

  She was still as a statue, her eyes closed in concentration.

  Gwen silently observed her most lethal bodyguard, Thelma Espaar, maintain her vigil of detection spells. It was always impressive to observe a master at work. The only indication that she was casting spells was her right hand that reached inside her coat and was holding onto her concealed wand. That she didn’t need to draw her wand out for spell craft was another trait of an accomplished wizard.

  Gwen couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at her lips. For all of Thelma’s deadliness, she wasn’t the deadliest creature in the carriage.

  As the districts of the Capitol went by, Gwen couldn’t keep away the boredom. She had grown weary of Isca, become immune to its charms and vices.

  Just about the worst thing for Gwen Croft was a thing that depreciates. A capricious creature, few things held Gwen’s fancy and everything that didn’t went discarded.

  She worked too damn hard to let useless things waste her time.

  That was one thing everyone got wrong about Gwen Croft. Her power and prestige weren’t because of her wealth, her inborn talent, or luck. No. Her power was hers because she had bought it fair and square, and paid the appropriate price.

  For all the advantages she was born with, Gwen Croft hadn’t rested on her laurels. No, she had built upon her fortune though blood, sweat and tears. She had earned her position by sheer effort of will, the endurance of pain, and the splurging of wealth.

  A merchant’s daughter, she knew better than most the business of trade, of the price to be paid for owning something truly priceless.

  And. She. Had. Paid.

  If only the price was always as simple as money. Alas, it rarely was with things that truly mattered.

  Her freedom had demanded the fa?ade of her engagement to Sabina’s bastard. While her inheritance facilitated the need for convoluted politics and backdoor dealings with the insidious Lady Webb.

  The first inclination of their destination was, as always, the smell. Even before Gwen could see the tens and tens of stacked chimneys spewing vibrant colors into the sky, it was the smell that greeted them before anything else.

  The scent was almost impossible to describe because of the many smells combining together in varied combinations. With a gust, Gwen felt a minty citrus on her nostril. As the wind changed, the next waft brought something with heat like pepper. Then came the slightly euphoric twang of kerosene like incense.

  Soon enough the cluster of chimneys to towers and spires divided the landscape. Half of it was the Alchemist Guild of Isca, a vast campus of an estate protected by parapets with tall minarets interspersed on either side of the gates in the cardinal directions.

  The other half the landscape was taken up by the oil painting of a mad sky by the smoke from the chimneys. A splash of purple. A flourish of lime. Dash of orange. Wave of pink.

  The plumes of color eventually frizzled out into the blue sky as they got higher, giving the impression of a rainbow swirled by a paintbrush on the palette of a sky.

  The only colors that Gwen couldn’t spot were white, black and grey, the most usual colors of smoke that were. It certainly led credence to the rumors that the alchemists were in on painting the skies in their whimsy and fun.

  Gwen smiled. Isca still had its charm.

  The escort paused for a moment at the guard post and were granted access without much delay.

  As the carriage went through the gates, Thelma opened her eyes and looked in silent confirmation to Gwen. The message clear, that they were secure for time being.

  Gwen didn’t particularly enjoy visiting the Alchemist Guild. It irked her that she was dependent on something outside her agency. Her visits to the guild all but revealing her purpose to the world as to why she was visiting the alchemists.

  The Crofts were all for keeping their affairs secret and could have easily assembled their own laboratories and hired private alchemists. Cost be damned. But the guild remained the safest place for alchemy, very much like a hospital was the best place for treatment or a library was for finding a book.

  With what was at stake, the Crofts had pragmatically taken the loss to their pride and availed the guild of its services. If anything were to go wrong, it was best to be in the one place best suited to handle the task.

  Alchemy had come a long way in the past half century. In the past, alchemy had been an unspecified craft that aligned more with cooking alchemical ingredients in crude rituals than anything else. It was only mages who were born to abilities conducive to alchemy that went on to become alchemists worth their salt. Even then, half of their concoctions were as likely to kill as they were to empower.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  In the eighteenth century, alchemy has since come a long way and found its biggest advocate in science. Irony abounds!

  The scientific progress with a greater understanding of chemistry dragged along the branch of alchemy in their advancement. Alchemy came to be a more precise craft as it was paired with the scientific method of experimentation, observation and conclusion. Newly invented techniques and equipment for laboratories, along with a greater knowledge of human biology also magnified the scope of alchemy.

  All of which amounted to the fact that the newer generations of mages and wizards could be mode more powerful with lesser risk to their lives. The consequences of which shaped the new world. Still did.

  Gwen’s carriage took a circumvented route, round the main buildings and bigger annexes of the guild. They skirted the thoroughfares and avoided crowds, but such an escort couldn’t contrarily avoid a gathering audience.

  Gwen observed the various people pass by her window. They were almost all of them alchemists; so they were almost all of them mad by some stretch of the imagination. To be an alchemist meant that you partook of your concoctions and were frequently nearby or the cause of explosions. It was part of the job description.

  Only one breed gave alchemists a run for their money for eccentricity; artists!

  Eventually, the carriage arrived at a secluded wing of the guild. Outwardly, it looked more like an estate house, but Gwen knew better having been a regular visitor.

  It was one of the few private buildings dedicated to serving peerage with the most ancient lineage or customers with the deepest pockets.

  Without ceremony, Gwen disembarked and was escorted into the building. The main hall looked very much as any hall would in such a household and didn’t give away any secrets to is real purpose.

  An assembled team in pristine lab coats awaited Gwen’s party. They bowed in unison, with a man at the front stepping forward.

  “Pleasure to have you, Miss Croft,” he greeted. “Everything is prepared and we only need to perform the preliminary tests,” he reported.

  “No time to waste then, Alchemist Dronn,” Gwen ordered. She turned to her captain of the guard, “Wait here. And be ready,” she issued the threat loudly. The captain nodded and the people in lab coats took a few uneasy glances.

  If anything were to happen to Gwen Croft, none of them would live past the night.

  Only Thelma accompanied Gwen with the team of guild members.

  Exiting the main hall, they passed by corridors and Gwen knew that each of them led to sterile rooms of torture, healing and power, all rolled into one.

  Gwen passed by a door she had gone through when she taken injections in her bones and spine.

  Another door had led to a medicinal bath that had burned her alive and flaked her skin like shed snakeskin.

  A corridor went to a room where she had taken blood purification potions that made her blood corrosive like acid.

  She glanced at a hallway that led to the surgery rooms where they had injected her organs with alchemical infusions.

  There were many more rooms. And Gwen had visited those rooms. All in the pursuit of power. To becoming more than what she was when she entered those rooms.

  A stronger Gwen. A stronger wizard.

  All wizards took potions and pills to expand their aether wells and make their bodies more attuned to the aether. It was the standard practice not only in Ithica, but across the continents.

  But mediocrity wasn’t for Gwen Croft. Paltry potions and pills that were consumed by the masses wouldn’t do for the heiress. No. She had undergone the most exclusive treatments that were at the cutting edge of transfiguration for her ascension.

  A tenet of alchemy dictated that alchemy could only transform what already existed. The same applied to Gwen, as she was made anew in her own image, improved upon piece by piece into something altogether more magnificent than she would have ever been.

  The undertaking had been an arduous one, one that verged on being inhumane in is gore and transgressing the boundaries of decency. But it was one that Gwen had passed through and emerged transformed.

  It had cost a king’s ransom. Fortunately for the Croft’s, they could afford many ransoms worthy of kings, not just the one.

  The cadre of lab coats arrived in a domed room. At the center of which was a cylindrical chamber of glass with metallic ends. Cables connected to the bottom of the chamber like roots crisscrossing across the floor. Up above, more cables dangled from the roof like branches of a willow to connect to the top of the glass tube.

  “We will prepare the array,” Dronn spoke to Gwen. “Please go with Healer Riya for your tests,” he waved at an adjoining room.

  Gwen obliged. The tests were a mere formality. She had abstained and cleansed her body for the past week in preparation for today. She would not leave anything to chance.

  With the tests, complete, Gwen was handed a thin papery gown to wear and nothing else.

  Gwen never shied from nudity. What she did mind was being without her magical foci, her two wands and her crystal bracelets. She felt naked without them. Exposed and weak.

  Thelma cleared her throat and Gwen’s gaze snapped to her. “I have them,” Thelma spoke in a surprisingly low voice for such an imposing woman.

  “I expect them back,” Gwen said in bravado, dismissing all doubts.

  Back in the domed room, Gwen stepped up to the chamber where the lab coats awaited her. She had booked the array a month in advance and given how she was going to be travelling soon, she wouldn’t have the time to commit to such pursuits in the near future.

  They alchemists injected her once in both arms and then had her drink three potions, before stepping aside as a portion of the glass chamber opened for entry.

  Gwen slipped off her gown where she stood and entered the chamber. The door closed behind her.

  Nearby, the group of enchanters set to work on their arcane console that looked something akin to a cross between a printing press and a huge typewriter with glowing runes engraved in its machinery.

  The aether gathering array activated.

  Seconds later, the very air thrummed with energy. The cables all shimmered and liquid starlight pulsed within them from the underground and above like steam from a furnace.

  The light rushed across the cables like a comet and flooded the chamber, Gwen all but disappearing in the glare. The only thing visible were the faint runes that where projected from the glass into the air.

  Despite the awe-inspiring spectacle, the lab coats treated it like a mundane occurrence. They were much more occupied with recording their readings and prepping for in case of any emergency.

  Within the chamber, Gwen was flooded with aether.

  She meditated and cycled to absorb the energy within her well. The suction was immediate as the aether seeped into her body like water on a sponge.

  Gwen cultivated the aether into every space of her well and then began to infuse it, pack it with more potency. From mist, the aether quickly turned liquid. But that wasn’t enough. Gwen went on to compress more and more aether upon itself.

  With compression, the aether started forming granules like grains of sand. Gwen rapidly gathered the granules in a vortex, cycling the aether faster and faster to gain more consistency. She had to be careful and not let the aether solidify in her well. That was not the purpose of her visit today.

  Gwen maintained the aether to the consistency of thick sludge. Then she worked to increase the volume.

  By this stage, the amount of pure aether that flooded the chamber could have lighted the streets of Isca for a whole week.

  The minutes felt like hours as Gwen was entirely focused on filling her well as quickly as possible. Her prodigious capacity worked against her in this instance, for it took her longer to fill her well with aether and made it significantly more difficult to the hold the maximum capacity.

  Gwen persevered and her body saturated to its peak with aether.

  Now was the purpose of her visit to the guild. Gwen then had to expand her well by expanding the excited aether within her to push on the metaphoric walls of her body and expand her meridians.

  While Gwen had gone farther than most wizards ever did in their lifetime, she was quickly reaching her limits. Every small gain took ten times the effort it had taken in the past. Where she would have achieved consecutive breakthroughs before, now it merely amounted to the barest of nudges forwards.

  Gwen didn’t let that deter her.

  The aether cut off from glass chamber to reveal Gwen floating and glowing in a haze of excited aether that seeped out of her as she increased the tension of the aether against her well.

  Muffled sounds echoed within the glass chamber and blood dribbled from the corner of Gwen’s mouth. A few lab coats gathered nearby to observe Gwen and view the transforming runes on the enchanted glass chamber.

  Past the three hour mark, making a note of the readings, Alchemist Dronn calmly stated, “Depressurize the chamber and prepare the medical team for Miss Croft.”

  Thelma stepped forward just as the glass panel to the chamber opened with a hiss. She stepped inside and quickly covered Gwen while taking her by the shoulder.

  Gwen was barely conscious, but she knew that she had succeeded in her endeavor. Whether she had gained an inch or mile, she had taken a step further. Gotten stronger.

  She had paid the price once more.