Heir to the Throne (1/2)

WARNING: The following contains themes not suited for younger audiences or those of more sensitive disposition. Viewer discretion is advised.

Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.
- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

~Coastal London, England, Mantraverse~

Horace Irving's day had not been off to a good start, because he'd cut himself shaving.

And that was saying a lot. Because Horace Irving was the kind of person whom, if they stood still for long enough, would fade into the background noise of the universe at large. He was unmemorable in the same way that empty space is - nobody paid much mind to him or, even if pushed, remembered him at all. Friends would have called him a quiet sort and keenly interested in Alchemy, except that would require him to have any quality remarkable enough to obtain even one friend.

The disinfectant stung like a red-hot needle as he rubbed it over the gash on his neck. He clenched his teeth and tried to focus on the shape of his own nose instead.

He wasn't even a real Alchemist - and he would fully admit it if you asked him. He'd dropped out of St. Jerome's Alchemical Academy because the very mundanity of his being had translated to his own schoolwork. It wasn't that he was stupid - far from it. But it wasn't that he was smart, either, which was the problem. He'd sat so painfully in the middle when it came to grades that, in a rare moment of self-reflection, he'd realized that it held no career prospects whatsoever. 

And for several years, he'd aimlessly drifted down the current of the great river of life, not particularly caring if he touched shore or not. Until this job had come along, that is.

The sticking-plaster was layered carefully over the wound.

It still baffled him, even now, that he'd been paid so much to do what he was doing right now. Of all the people in all the world to find to do it, why on earth would you ever pick a failed Alchemist who nobody ever remembered? Surely, there were people actually much more qualified to do it than him? And why...?

He looked at himself in the mirror and heaved a sigh. Mostly because his eyes kept wanting to slide off what it saw and look at the wall behind him instead. Not even his own eyes wanted to remember him.

Oh, well. The money was good. It had bought half-decent equipment - not the professional stuff, but close enough that it didn't matter. The flat he was in was roomy enough and out of the way of anyone who might ask awkward questions. No landladies to come knocking for rent, no neighbours peering. It was close enough to the warehouse district that he didn't need to waste money on a taxi, so no paper trail there.

And the results were promising. Give it a few more months...

He stepped out of the bathroom, his cut still twinging. There was a lot to do today. Check on the cultures, top up the blood - he'd have to buy more chickens soon - get some milk, keep the Unhallowed Cradle ready for-

And then the front door burst open, and Horace Irving's day became significantly worse.

--------

For Christopher Leigh Baker, stepping into any place occupied by Victoria Thorne felt much like stepping into her office back at the academy. It had the same air of quiet, dignified luxury that came from a different time and place - one where one's status in life was determined by how big your house was, and how many rugs and fancy curtains you could put into the one room. And while the hotel room didn't quite match the opulence of a proper Victorian manor house, the amount of red velvet and golden edging on everything certainly helped it come within spitting distance.

Victoria Thorne was sitting at a chair in front of a small, circular table (not from this room), covered in a white tablecloth. There was already a tea set on there (how deep did that handbag go?), with the teapot (they already had tea things in the room, why did she even have that?) gently steaming, and plates set out with scones on them, each one heavy with jam and cream (from where?). And, naturally, she was sipping from her teacup.

She hadn't looked up from her tea things. But she must have heard him enter, because she spoke at once.

"Take a seat, Master Baker," she said, in her usual calm, schoolmistress manner. "Spit-spot."

And as though somebody had flicked a switch, Christopher Baker immediately acted in obedience. He made for the seat on the very opposite side of the table, where there was an empty chair, and took it. It was not the most graceful of movements - it scraped a little on the floor as he pulled it back, and he sat down a little heavily for his own liking. But he got there, and that was the important part.

There was a long, pregnant pause, in which Miss Thorne took a dainty bite of a scone. Christopher silently watched as she chewed, swallowed, then dabbed the crumbs and stickiness from her lips with a small handkerchief.

Then she spoke.

"Master Baker. Recite for me the Abhorrents of the Alchemist."

Once again, it was as if somebody had rung a bell for Pavlov's dog. Except that instead of salivating everywhere, Christopher simply cleared his throat. 

Alchemical Lore was one of those things that was Important with a capital I. Lore stretched back and forth through time, from the moment the first man grazed the first strand of Mantra with his fingertips to now, when Ez-Lyte fireworks were readily available on shelves. If you didn't know your Lore, then you were only half-way to being an alchemist - and not even a good one. You were expected to recite it on command, if any elder Alchemist demanded it. And the Abhorrents of the Alchemist was prime recital material, sitting snugly on the mental bookshelf between the Tenets of Nagari and the Noble Creed of Gentlemanly Conduct. 

It wasn't one of Christopher's favourites pieces of Lore. A lot of it went over his head, and the parts that didn't had... pictures. He'd woken up in a cold sweat for three nights straight after seeing them. But Victoria Thorne had commanded. And you obeyed Victoria Thorne, because even mountains would bend aside for her.

"One," he began, in a practiced monotone as though he were in front of the class once more. "The Brewing of Nagaria, that most awful of poisons. It is the bane of life and the tool of the heartless. It is to be destroyed when found and the maker punished to the utmost extent."

Victoria's expression did not flicker, nor did she look up, as she poured herself another helping of tea.

"Very good," she said, her voice the same level tone as it had started. "And the next one?"

Christopher didn't hesitate - he knew these by heart, and he'd be damned if he was going to skip any of them. "Two. The Forging of a Philosopher's Stone, which allows perfect transmutation. It is power undeserved, wealth unearned. It is the errand of fools and madmen."

"And the next?" asked Victoria as she added more sugar.

"Three." It was almost as if he was reading from a script, the cadence and rhythm flowing out like water. " The Making of a Rattenkönig. The idea of a hive mind, given life as a virus. It ravages and twists and destroys entire townships. It must be pulled up by the roots and killed."

"Next?"

"Four. The Incubation of a Homunculus-"

He stopped. She'd held up her hand for silence - and, as was the way of Victoria Thorne, the mere action alone had weight. This was a woman who had spent most of her life being in charge of things. Even now, she carried that aura with her like a perfume that would have made trees topple themselves if she'd ordered them to do so.

And she was looking right at him. That was like gazing into the eyes of something huge peering at you from beneath the ocean's surface and not knowing what it was going to make of you.

"How much," she said, slowly, "do you know about homunculi?"

Christopher blinked. "...ma'am?"

"It was a simple question, Master Baker." No harshness or sternness or exasperation. Just a simple, matter-of-fact authority to her town. "And it's 'Miss Thorne' in here, thank you."

The youth shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "...not that much, actually, Miss Thorne. We weren't ever told about them in the academy. Nothing except the fact that it's one of the worst of the Abhorrents. A perversion of nature, Mr. Karswell called it. He didn't ever seem to want to go into more depth than that."

There was an even longer silence.

"...he was right."

Then Victoria Thorne did something weird. She did not reach for a scone, or her teacup. She reached into her handbag and pulled out something, before placing it directly into the middle of the table. Bewildered, Christopher found himself staring at a glass bottle in which a brownish-gold liquid glistened. The noise of it still sloshing within the glass was like liquid gold running over marble, or maybe a clear spring rain over spider's webs.

The label read: WILLIAMS & SONS FINEST COTSWOLDS HONEY WHISKEY - Alchemically Fortified.

He looked over at her, and his eyes bugged out as, by way of explanation, she produced two small glasses. There was a thin, almost rueful and bitter smile on her face.

"You're going to need this," she said. "Because we'll be going straight into the deep end."

--------

It was the day after. How he didn't have a hangover was still beyond him, but that was the least of his problems.

Everything had happened in something of a blur. From the moment Dad had burst in and said something about "homunculi", everything had gone by so fast that Christopher hadn't had time to process it. They'd gone from being on the Kobber version of Earth to the Pearl to here in what felt like a matter of hours, and there'd only been a night in a hotel followed by the tent to break it all up.

And now, here he was. In a grimy old warehouse reeking of chemicals and blood in some London port, walking down the length of it and taking in every detail.

He was on his own. He didn't quite get the reasoning behind this - Miss Thorne said he didn't have the authority to arrest people yet, and it was best to leave something like this to those who had the power to do so. And Dad had said it would help, because he'd been thrown into the deep end too quickly, and something simple like this might help him ease into doing the actual heroic stuff later. Christopher hadn't wanted to voice the main protest in the back of his head - that he was still relatively new and could use the guidance - because, in that moment, it might have seemed rude.

But now, as he walked down the length of the warehouse, between tables and benches and desks, he was wishing they were, indeed, here. They might have helped deal with the sight of scattered test tubes and disused Bunsen burners, with looking at surfaces and implements crusted with old blood and slime, with a horrible heady reek that was somewhere between 'bad butcher's shop' and 'chemical waste dump' for potency.

Not to mention the rows and rows of jars, beakers and fish tanks. Most were empty. Or, at least, empty of an occupant. The liquid they were filled with - too thick and oily to be water - looked almost septic, like the juice of long-decayed apples, and their fumes filled the room with an acrid miasma. 

But that was merciful compared to what he saw in those that were occupied. Lumps of malformed, half-grown flesh, pale and veinous and sickly-looking - but... 

Alive.

He kept walking, his footsteps echoing with a forlorn hollowness.

They were alive. Even though there was no reason they should have been.

Some were barely foetal, with blind white eyes and stubby limbs. Some were serpentine strands with a single eye, or triskelions of clawed feet, or mere lumps with the suggestion of a face. And the bigger ones in the tanks, halfway between humanoid and something worse, trailed strands of their own flesh and innards behind them. But they reacted, as he walked past, as if his very presence outraged them. They wiggled and squirmed in their brine, some working their jaws, some bumping against the glass as they tried to get at him.

There was no point in which the raven-haired Alchemist's stomach wasn't churning as he walked past them, remembering Victoria Thorne's words.

--------

"Homunculi. You won't find any textbooks on them. No self-respecting alchemist, never mind Mr. Karswell, would tell you anything about them. And the Guild has made even talking about them a touchy subject. Because homunculi are, perhaps, the blackest of black marks on her history. Worse than even the creation of Nagaria."

Victoria took a sip of the whiskey as Christopher watched, his own drink in his hand. It was good whiskey, he had to admit. The sweetness of the honey did a lot to counteract the smokiness that was the main reason he didn't like whiskey. And, for some reason, although his head was beginning to buzz, he didn't immediately feel like the world was trying to dissolve into cotton wool around him, which was his usual reaction to booze.

"It started with a noble goal," Thorne went on, swirling her glass. "A couple unable to bear a child comes to the Alchemists. They take the egg of one, the sperm of the other, throw in some Mantra and let the result grow in an artificial womb. A long, delicate, nine-month process where even the slightest change in temperature can spell disaster. But if it works, the couple now has a new baby to be happy about. And that's how it was, for the longest time."

"Is this the part where you tell me how it all went downhill?" asked Christopher, before he could stop himself. And the moment he heard himself say that, he wanted to kick himself. 

That was what happened when you lived with Samuel Baker. A life of playing the unwilling protagonist of a bad fantasy novel had honed a cynical sarcasm you couldn't help but pick up when you spent time around him. He'd seen all the cliché's, and once he pointed them out to you, you kept seeing them as well.

But Victoria just gave a stifled snort, a twinge of a smirk on her face.

"As perceptive as your father," she said. "Yes, I'm afraid it didn't stay quite as wholesome as that. Because I'm sure you've heard about the Decadence, and the hundreds of years our kind spent acting above laws and defying good taste and morality. I shouldn't have to tell you what happened - you've already studied that in your Lore classes."

Christopher shuddered. "Yeah. That wasn't my favourite subject in that class." He sipped his own drink on reflex.

"No surprise there. And I don't suppose you could imagine what became of homunculi as a concept in that time? Because I doubt you were ever assigned something on that subject for an essay."

"No, Miss Thorne," admitted Christopher.

"Well, then..."

The sip rapidly became a gulp. A gasp left the headmistress's throat as she set the near-empty glass down.

"I don't need to tell you this," she said. "But bad Alchemy happens when you stop caring. About your hypotheses, about your processes, about the end result... all of it. And you're about to learn just how little we cared in those days."

-------- 

Phutt.

The sound made Christopher jump as something foul-smelling splashed onto the floor ahead of him. He turned his head to see one of the beakers, still frothing as the cone-shaped lump within settled back into position, the orange and diseased-looking tongue retreating within the top of it. Something clouded the solution it was marinating in, the greenish-yellow fluid simmering.

He pushed down the urge to be sick and walked on. 

He knew what he was supposed to do. Miss Thorne had given him the address and told him to look for any sign of somebody incubating these things. And now that he'd found it, he had to destroy all of this. But he wasn't sure how, or where to start. How the hell did you destroy so many things - so much flesh, so much glass and steel, all in one go? Even if he could just throw out some Calcination here and there you couldn't possibly burn everything in this place.

And suppose some of them got out? The ones that had legs, that would be troublesome. They'd fight back. And what did you do to kill something that was vat-grown? Could you even kill something that barely counted as alive to begin with-?

He stopped.

And then he started running. Because he'd just seen something at the back of the warehouse.

--------

"When the Alchemists became decadent, breaking international law to commit murder and fraud was only the biggest part of it. The part only the public became aware of. Behind the scenes, it was much worse."

Christopher blinked owlishly as he tried to pay attention to the words. He didn't want to just down the glass in his hand right now, but with everything being thrown at him right now, it was awfully tempting.

"You see, it didn't take long to realize that homunculi could be two very useful things. An easy to make slave race was the first one. A homunculus, improperly made, is nothing short of an automaton. They don't question orders, they can't feel pain and they have no sense of self-preservation. Some believed that they didn't even have souls. You could command one to throw itself into a furnace and it would do it before you'd even finished speaking. Hence why all the dirty and dangerous jobs were soon left to them."

"...and what was the second one?" asked Christopher, knowing he was going to regret the answer.

But Thorne merely quirked an eyebrow. "Come now, Master Baker. Surely you can deduce that yourself? Alchemy, like any other branch of science, follows the scientific method. And part of that method involves experiments to test the hypothesis. But suppose you've stopped caring to the point where animal or human test subjects won't give you the results you already know you want. What can you use then?"

It took Christopher far too long for his brain to put the pieces together. And when he did, he immediately decided to punish said brain for its hubris and threw back the remnants of his whiskey in one go, at a speed that immediately startled himself. The liquid burned his throat on the way down, and by the time he put the glass down onto the table he was panting.

It didn't stop the cold chill of horror running over his skin.

"...they grew their own test subjects," he said at last.

"Yes."

"...and they-"

"Yes."

A new glass was poured.

"Can you imagine that, Master Baker? An endless supply of fresh meat for you to do whatever you want to? Damn the scientific method, damn the rights of the subjects, damn... everything. And when you need as much meat as you can to test your half-baked and poorly-implemented theories, why care about getting that part right either? Who cares if the sperm and the egg are from the same species, when Mantra can fill in the gaps? Who cares if what crawls out of the chicken's egg was ever human to start, or has a face by the end of it?"

The glass was immediately shoved towards Christopher, who took it with trembling hands. He looked up at Miss Thorne, who's face was stony in a way he hadn't seen before. It spoke of terrible sights that refused to go away, of experiences that just clung to the back of the mind like stubborn limpets.

"...you talk as though you've been there," he said.

No reply. She continued to stare at him with that impassable face, those dark eyes. Not for the first time, Christopher wondered if he'd put his foot in his mouth again. You always felt what way whenever you talked with her - alcohol wasn't even needed at that point.

--------

"Have you any idea," said Victoria Thorne, her voice low and dangerous, "how much trouble you are in, Mr. Irving?"

Horace Irving reckoned he already had a pretty good idea. After all, he was kneeling on the floor of his own living room, hands tied behind his back and a pretty nasty goose egg forming. You didn't need much more than that to know how much trouble you were in. In his honest opinion, the woman pointing the sword at him was overkill. As was the man dressed in a clashing riot of purple, mauve and black glaring at him.

He knew the day wasn't going to go well the moment he got that cut.

"We have reliable evidence from eyewitnesses," Victoria went on. "And paper evidence, as well. We know you've been seen heading to the warehouses on Battersea Wharf multiple days a week. We know what you've been purchasing, and whom from. A lot of people will want to testify against you the moment they know what you're doing, and I doubt you'll find a single lawyer in the whole country willing to represent you, never mind London."

"Basically," growled Sam, looming like a trained attack dog, "pleading guilty is all you're gonna have going for you. And that's even before we get into the warehouse of horrors you've got cooking up on the wharfs. That alone is, like, three life sentences on a good day."

Horace swallowed nervously. He knew there wasn't any way he could talk himself out of this. He was well and truly fucked. But, even if it didn't help his case in the least, he might as well get it out into the air right now, just so everyone was on the same page about it.

"If I said," he tried, as slowly as a man navigating quicksand would move, "that somebody paid me to do it-"

"Oh, that's all right then!" snapped Sam. "That totally makes it okay! Just so long as it wasn't your idea-"

"Terrifying the suspect is my job, Mr. Baker," came the curt tones of Victoria.

Sam deflated. "Oh, yeah. Right."

"No, I swear!" Horace's voice came in a panicked babble - he'd slipped and was now frantically trying to pull his foot out. "I couldn't even affort this flat until I started! Somebody came to me in the pub and asked if I wanted a job and, well, you know how it is-"

"I don't believe I do," said Victoria.

"They offered me loads!" The proverbial knee was now under the surface. "Loads and loads! I thought that it was odd at the time, why pay somebody like me all that cash? But I wasn't doing well at my actual job and I hadn't done any Alchemy in a long time, so I thought, why the hell not? Beats scrubbing tables in some shitty local!"

Sam now had an eyebrow quirked. "Any idea who paid you?"

Horace grabbed that like a convenient jungle vine. "I dunno. Never saw her face, but I know she was a woman. She always came dressed up heavily - black robes and the like. I thought she might have been one of the Magpies, but then I thought to myself 'no, they don't dress like that'. But she said she'd give me everything I needed - the equipment, the samples, the Unhallowed Cradle-"

"The what?!"

Horace jerked back. Victoria's words were like a lightning bolt to the skull, making the primitive animal brain leap up with raised hackles. Her eyes bored into him like white-hot needles, and if he started to shrivel up under their intense heat and glare he wouldn't have been surprised himself.

"...I shouldn't have mentioned that, should I?" he squeaked, feeling like the man who just heard the vine snap in his hands.

"Not if you valued your case, you wouldn't have." Victoria's eyes were blazing with fury. 

"Sorry, am I supposed to know what one of those is?" asked Sam.

--------

The silence hung for far too long, like a shroud over a bed where somebody has died, before Victoria spoke again.

"It doesn't take a genius," she said, "to understand why the Guild immediately called for the process to be banned. The things that came out of the abuse of homunculi... they were almost worse than the political murders we committed, or the money we embezzled. A blanket ban, all across the globe. Of course, that just drove it deeper underground. People will pay an arm and a leg to have something like a homunculus made for... whatever purpose."

She looked over at Christopher with her dark brown eyes. There was a faraway quality to that look that was almost ghostly.

"Read. Never practice. That's the first great rule of Alchemy. Any fool can fail to transmute a lump of lead into gold. A good Alchemist - a really good Alchemist - understands how easy it really is, and that the real trick is not to do it. The Decadence is what happens when Alchemists forget to be quite so clever, and in some places the grass won't ever grow again because of it. 

"Never, ever forget, Master Baker. Promise me that."

Christopher swallowed, acutely aware of a sudden, unconscious weight upon his very being, as if the very fossil of history was leaning on him. But he did his best to meet that hard, searching gaze, and forced his lips and tongue into movement.

"...I promise, Miss Thorne."

A pause.

And then a smile, a genuine one. Not a half-smirk or a qirked eyebrow. A real, genuine smile of praise.

"Very good, Master Baker," said Miss Victoria Thorne.

--------

The machine hummed gently to itself as he reached it, a faint steam rising from somewhere about it. The very centre of it, a giant glass egg suspended in a sofa of corrugated pipes and polished bronze, reflected his face as he drew closer. Tubes at the very top of it were connected to rubber bulbs - what those did, he had no clue. Simmering inside was a deep, emerald-green liquid that bubbled merrily away - mercifully, it was not occupied by anything.

Christopher would not learn the name of this machine until much later. But in that moment, as he looked it up and down like a fascinated child, he was trying to rationalise something inside of himself.

Something about this device... it felt familiar. But that didn't make sense, because he'd never seen anything like it before. And yet he more he looked at he, the more he found himsel struggling to connect it to... what? A vague feeling, perhaps? The shadow of some forgotten emotion or sensation from long ago, of some vague warmth and comfort... 

But when could he have felt something like that? He hadn't felt anything like that since his bed back at the academy...

He looked around, instinctively seeking clues. A desk stood near to the machine - a complete mess, covered in disjointed papers and tools. But it didn't take a genius to surmise that if anything could tell him about this machine, it was buried somewhere in that future paper avalanche. He approached cautiously and began to sift through it as carefully as he could, tugging at papers like the world's most boring Jenga game.

A shadow fell over him. He ignored it. The roof was full of holes - most likely it was only a cloud passing over the sun.

Next to what looked like a journal, leather-bound and dog-eared, was a half-gallon mason jar, full of something pale and cloudy. Curiosity compelled him to pick it up and, after a brief struggle, loosen the top and unscrew it. To his surprise, the smell that hit his nose was oddly pleasant - a tart sugariness that, for a brief moment, shut out the stink of culture fluid and old blood.

He leaned in and sniffed. His brow wrinkled.

"...apple juice?"

And that was when the huge, toothy mouth swung down from above and swallowed him whole.

~TO BE CONTINUED~