Heir to the Throne (2/2)

WARNING: As before, the following contains themes not suited for younger audiences or those of more sensitive dispotion. Viewer discretion is advised.

"An Unhallowed Cradle..."

Samuel Baker had never seen Victoria Thorne act the way she was acting now. Granted, he hadn't known anything about her until last year, and he hadn't learned very much about her even then. He Still only really knew three things, even now - that she was headmistress of an Alchemist school in London, that she was a skilled swordswoman and that she stood no nonsense from anyone. She was like Mary Poppins, if Mary Poppins flashed a piece everywhere she went and would skewer anyone who looked at her funny.

She was not a woman who flinched at anything, in short. So to see her now, looking suddenly and starkly haunted, was a shock to both the former Destined Hero and to Horace Irving, who was still bound and kneeling on the floor.

"It is... not something Alchemists like to acknowledge." The words came out of Victoria Thorne's mouth slowly, haltingly and unwillingly, as though she were trying to free a stubborn toffee from the back teeth. "It is one of the worst crimes of the Decadence, when they tried to do something far worse with homunculi than just making slaves or experimental fodder. It... it allows complete and total manipulation of genetic material. An Alchemist isn't limited to just sperm and eggs, or raw flesh, if they can throw it into an Unhallowed Cradle. Whatever you want, within reason, you can grow it."

She directed a piercing look at Sam. "Do you remember me telling you about the Stalingrad Incident?"

Sam blinked. "Um... no. Because you didn't. You just said 'let's not repeat the Stalingrad Incident' and then didn't elaborate no matter how many times I asked you."

"Correct. Because we don't talk about the Stalingrad Incident."

"...then why-?"

"But," Victoria carried on smoothly, as if the blonde hadn't spoken, "the Unhallowed Cradle was a major factor. The things it made possible, as well as what it could potentially make Thus, part of the global ban on homunculi included the destruction of every Cradle that could be found. But, thanks to a little... shoddy record-keeping on the Soviet's part, not all of them were accounted for."

And it was at this moment that Horace Irving, never the brightest bulb in the box to begin with, thought this was a prime opportinity to chip in once more.

 "That's right," he said, out loud with his entire mouth. "And do you have any idea how much a single one of them costs on the black market? Never mind making an entire new one from scratch. Which I'm pretty sure isn't possible anyway, because the original blueprints-"

There was a noise like ice being cut in half, and the tip of Blue Ben was suddenly much closer to the sweating Horace's face.

"Consider yourself lucky that, right now, we're not considering you fully culpable," Victoria hissed. "But the possession of an Unhallowed Cradle cannot be excused. It's the key to creating far worse things than abominations in mason jars. If we can prove you actually possess one, and no doubt we'll try our best, then you can expect us to leverage the full extent of the law and Alchemical Lore against you. Understood?"

Horace didn't even try to speak this time. A sword blade in your face was generally a good warning that you'd already put your foot in it.

Sam huffed. "Still, it's not much to go on, is it? A high-school dropout, paid by some mystery woman to make monsters in a warehouse? If you even believe even half of what this loser's saying."

"I wouldn't be so dismissive, Mr. Baker," said Victoria, still keeping her sword pointed at the trembling Horace. "It tracks with what we know about him and why he moved to this area of London to begin with. And who better to commit your crimes for you than somebody completely beneath notice? Nobody would ever suspect a man so average the eye slides right off of him."

"You don't have to be so hurtful," Horace murmured. But nobody listened to him.

"This is not a man of initiative," Victoria went on. "He's very obviously acting on behalf of somebody else, even if it is of his own choice. He'll be punished, no doubt, but until we have the full facts of the case, pinning the entire blame on him will be like throwing tomatoes at the puppet and not the man with his hand up it's arse. And we can only sort that out once the main business is taken care of."

"Speaking of which," said Sam, "I wonder how he's getting on with that."

There was a brief silence. Turning his head, Horace noted that the woman - Victoria - had suddenly gone silent and stony-faced. This seemed to surprise Sam yet again, who looked at her as though he thought she might have wandered off with the fairies. The silence dragged out a little longer.

"...maybe I was asking too much," she muttered. "I know it has to be done, and we couldn't wait for the Kingsguard to arrive, but... is he even up to it? Would it not have been better to have him report back and then...?

"Oh, he's fine," said Sam. "He's twenty now. He can handle himself."

"Unless he meets the Big One," said Horace, without even thinking about it.

"The what?" 

"Oh, that's the one that got too big for the-"

And it was only upon looking up and seeing the faces of Victoria Thorne and Samuel Baker that Horace Irving realised the full scale of how unbelivably fucked he was. He thought he still was only waist deep in the metaphorical quicksand. But the incredulous anger radiating from both of his captors was like a splash of ice-cold water to the face. He now fully understood that he was, in fact, neck deep in it, and there were no amount of stray jungle vines to pull him free this time.

"...I should really learn to keep my mouth shut," he lamented.

--------

The Big One had started in life as flesh taken from a human head, injected into a chicken's egg. It had been crudely grown in a tank that had once belonged to an aquarium that had long since gone out of business. Horace Irving had been particularly interested in this one, and had given it the highest-quality food he could manage to scrounge from local butchers who didn't seem to care as long as money changed hands. To say it looked like a hideously-deformed toad with three snake's heads would be innacurate; to say it looked like a screaming human face with two flabby arm-legs and three maw-tipped tongues would, while disgusting and less poetic, cut deeper to the bone. 

Over the months, it had grown rapidly - from the size of a frog, to as big as a puppy and able to live outside the brine, to the point where its body alone was the size of a small van. But Horace wasn't stupid - he knew that letting something like this wander free was a bad idea. And so he kept it chained up in a side room of the warehouse, where he fed it raw chickens and a bucket of beef blood every week. And it had been that way for at least a year since he'd started. He was hoping to, perhaps, cultivate some of it for use in the Unhallowed Cradle.

No, Horace wasn't stupid. He knew to keep it chained up. But he didn't know enough to keep said chains in good condition and not let them rust in a damp, foul-smelling warehouse on a London riverside dock. Time, wet, salt sea air and pollution had done the work of years, and on this day, when a strange noise had disturbed it, a single jerk of the neck had done the rest.

Now, the Big One was curled up in a corner of the warehouse. It was on the point of taking a nap, sides heaving with breath, the broken chain rattling from the iron collar around the centre neck.

 It was feeling pretty good. Master hadn't come around today, but that didn't bother it. After all, it didn't really need him to look after it anymore. The stranger that had come in hadn't put up much of a fight - they'd wiggled and kicked as they went down, but in the end they had been no more of a challenge than the live goats it sometimes got as a treat. The nasty metal stick had to be coughed up, though - that couldn't have been digested even if it tried. And perhaps the clothes would need to come up, later. Give it a few hours and it would find out.

Yes, it was feeling pretty good. Hopefully, when Master came around today, he'd see what it had done. Then he'd praise it, and fetch it another goat. It liked goats, on the whole-

The stupor of the nap suddenly cleared away. The eyes dotting the mottled, greyish body blinked as the Big One realized something.

It wasn't feeling so good anymore.

It lifted its three heads, and immediately the world lurched horribly. It made a croaking noise and staggered, heat prickling all over its flesh, a horrible throbbing rearing up like an angry snake in the brain. The pit of its stomach bubbled in a nasty way it had no frame of reference for and a horrible prickly feeling filled all three of its throats.

It lumbered out of its corner, seeking light - fresh air - water - something to ease the discomfort. In doing so, it crashed against the tables and shelves that filled the warehouse, upending them and everything on them in an avalanche of papers, tools, glass and worse things. Beakers and tanks shattered, spilling foul-smelling fluids everywhere. The things that had once occupied those vessel either writhed helplessly, shrieked and crawled desperately out of the way or simply splatted on the floor, dying instantly. The acrid stench of culture fluid filled the room like a fog.

The Big One gasped and heaved, swaying like a tree about to topple, the eyes rolling with insane bewilderment. The world span around it, the sun was too bright, its stomach was on fire. It didn't understand what was happening, nor could it possibly have any clue as to what could be causing it. Where was Master, Master could make it all better, why wasn't Master-

There was a horrible, unavoidable rushing sensation in its stomach. Something rose in its gullet.

And before it could stop itself, the homunculus lurched forward and coughed out it's last meal with the force of a cannon shot.

-------

"Miss Thorne?"

Victoria Thorne looked up from her scone. "Yes, Master Baker?"

Christopher was staring intently at the glass in his hand. It was still on his second helping of honey whiskey, the liquid slopping companionably inside the vessel.

"Why... am I not drunk yet?" he asked.

Victoria quirked an eyebrow. "Master Baker?"

"Because we both know why I drink slow, Miss Thorne. And it's not because I'm savouring it. The average pint leaves me reeling and the less said about tropical drinks, the better. And you're giving me fortified whiskey that, judging by the smell alone, is 70% proof. So shouldn't I be... well, not to be too crass, on the floor trying to not regurgitate my entire soul?"

"Oh, that would be your new model bezoar," was the reply as Thorne reached for another scone. "Do you remember, back at the hotel? When you had to take the glatisant-milk purgative?"

"All too well," said

"I exchanged your usual sort with this new model the geochemists just perfected. Not available for the public yet. There's a lot of improvements with them, but the upshot is this - they've finally worked out how to make the wretched things work for distilled alcohol. Now we shan't have any more poisoned whiskey bottles or wine glasses, thank goodness. And perhaps," and here a thin smirk covered Victoria's face, "you'll now be able to drink more than one glass of cider without falling over yourself."

The raven-haired youth gave a bitter chuckle. "After what I've learned today, Miss Thorne? Cider's not strong enough."

"Then drink up, Master Baker. Spit-spot. I didn't buy that whiskey to decorate my mantlepiece, you know."

--------

Christopher hit the concrete floor hard, the breath exploding from his lungs and pain surging up his spine, and rolled over half a dozen times before he came to a stop. He was soaked in bile from head to toe, clothes clinging to his skin and hair plastered to his forehead, close to wretching himself. But even as he lay on the floor, drenched in foulness, he still clutched the broken mason jar in one hand and he was grinning like a madman possessed.

He rolled over and directed a triumphant glare at the gasping, groaning Big One.

"Got you, you daft bastard," he hissed.

Putrefaction. The process of alchemically breaking down something. Otherwise known as fermentation. And what you got, when you fermented apple juice, was cider. Well, cider in the sense that drinking any amount of it was a bad idea, and not just for your liver.

But Christopher cared about that. In fact, he cared about that a hell of a lot. Because he'd remembered what Miss Thorne had said last night. It had been a flash-in-the-pan moment of inspiration, a desperate gamble based on nothing more than half-remembered talk. In the heat of the moment, fermenting the contents of that mason jar and then breaking it open inside the homunculus' stomach was all he could think to do.

And it had worked. A body used to taking in raw protein and sugar now had to deal with half a gallon's worth of pure ethanol inside of itself. And no bezoar to absorb any of it.

The drunken monster gurgled, finally understanding, and tried to lunge for him. But in doing so, it tripped over its own feet, lost its balance and sprawled. Christopher scrambled aside as it slid past him, knocking down more tables and shelves as it went, and made a dive for Great Flamel. Part of his brain, he part that noticed insane little details in the midst of overwhelming chaos, wondered why it hadn't come after him when the Big One swallowed him - perhaps the return signal was deadened by the beast's flesh? Something to be worked on later.

His fingers found the hilt as he hit the floor again, rolled and rose to his feet. The monster was trying to get back up itself, but co-ordination had long abandoned its brain and limbs for greener pastures, and the act was akin to trying to lift a crate while one's entire body had gone to sleep. It heaved and scrabbled, flabby hand-feet failing to find purchase on a floor that, in its own perception, kept trying to become a wall. The heads swung round again - but Christopher leaped, and the tooth-filled appendages crashed painfully together, screaming as he landed a fair distance from the monster.

"Access: Augment Mode!" The words left his mouth on instinct.

ACCESS GRANTED.

The clanking of Great Flamel snapping apart was drowned out by the disoriented, panicking bellows of the homunculus. But with the snapping of the armour onto his arm and the surge of power that rushed through him as it happened, his confidence rose like a tidal wave. He immediately brought the sword up in front of him as he observed his enemy as it finally got to it's feet and, still hideously delerious frm alcohol poisoning, swung around to face him.

Okay. Big. Body is van size, but necks alone are as long as the longest recorder python. Can swallow a man whole, and the teeth are the size of my head - clearly to be avoided. Strikes as fast as a cobra, but not very fast on the feet and, judging by it's movements right now, poor turning circle. Necks give it over a hundred-and-eighty degree range of attack, but they don't seen that flexible. With any luck, he  could-

One head immediately lashed out, the jaws gaping. 

By mere chance, Christopher managed to raise the blade fast enough, and the edge of Tarragon clashed against the slab-like upper teeth. The impact rattled up Christopher's arm and down his spine, making him stagger backwards. and the head reeled back at the same time, hissing in discomfort. Another head came for him, and this time the young Alchemist managed to force his blade to swing horizontally, the blade slicing a deep gouge across what might be generously called a "cheek" on it. That was enough for the thing to turn aside with a snarl of its own-

But the third and final head came too quickly to be blocked.

By chance, the Big One, still struggling with spacial awareness, didn't angle the attack in the right way. If it had, most likely Christopher would have been mulched, or cut in half. But instead, the upper teeth simply rammed into the youth's torso, the jaws clacking together mere inches from his stomach, and the force catapulted the raven-haired into the nearest wall. The thump of the impact mingled with the screech of warping metal, the wall denting beneath his back and the air rushing from his lung yet again.

With a choked groan, Christopher flopped down to his hands and knees. The world span around him and pain roiled from his ribs down to his belly from the impact. That was going to leave a particularly nasty bruise in the morning - or worse. Frankly, he was more surprised his entire body hadn't exploded from the seams at that one.

Join the club, said a voice in his head. Pretty sure the Weavworlders have jackets at this point.

He wasn't sure where that voice had came from. And, considering the horrible slithering and thumping noises up ahead, he knew he didn't have time to.

Looking up, he saw that the Big One was slowly dragging itself towards him. It was still swaying uncomfortably, heaving great breaths and feet scrabbling drunkenly on the floor. But all three heads were focused on him now, each mouth yawning open and strings of saliva dripping thickly from between the teeth. The beast might not have been in an optimal headspace right now, but it could easily focus on a stationary target - and a boy on hands and knees reeling from a direct hit to the stomach was certainly one of those.

The young Alchemist's mind raced frantically as the creature loomed over him.

Okay. Don't want to get bitten. Need to move quickly. Obvious weak spot is centre of mass - brain material must be in there, somewhere in that flabby bulk. A direct strike to that would do it. Circling around was not an option - aside from the obviously bruised ribs, the monster had too wide a range of attack. Too many opportnities to get swallowed again. Maybe...

He saw the muscles of one great, pink fleshy neck subtly tense.

Now.

He jumped.

And just in time. The wide mouth missed him by a whisker as it lashed out for him, and the soles of his boots found purchase on the pulsing flesh of the neck beneath. The next minute, his legs were pumping as they ran, almost as if on autopilot, his eyes fixated on the body just behind where the three horrible trunks met in a forking of flesh. The other two heads lunged for him at the same time - but he ducked, and the crash and scream that followed as the two maws collided was lost in the beating of his own heart in his ears.

The great body rocked sideways, and for a horrible instant he felt his foot slip and his balance lurch. But his other foot immediately pushed off, and he cleared the rest of the neck and landed atop the back, his boots digging into the spongy flesh beneath. The eyes studdling the bloated carcass rolled, squnting as they tried to focus on the thing on top, the thing that the monster now understood was the cause of its pain. He heard the heads twisting and snapping, trying to turn themselves around in a last, desperate attempt-

"CALCINATE!" he roared.

The blade of Tarragon, immediately flashing into white-hot incandescance, plunged up to the hilt into the Big One's body.

Greenish-black blood spurted from the wound, drenching Christopher Baker even further. A horrible hissing noise filled the air, steam rose all around him and engulfed him in the stench of burning meat and boiling chemicals. The warehouse rocked from the vibrations of the beasts' agonized scream, the huge bulk thrashing and twisting. The flesh around the blade blackened and charred, and Christopher clung to the hilt like a lifeline as he felt his boots slip and the flesh heave.

He prayed, silently, that he didn't fall off. If he lost his grip now...

Then he felt the body sag beneath him, heard the heavy, clattering thud of the heads hitting the floor, heard the last dying rattle of breath leaving the lungs.

He waited for a few more minutes, just in case. They seemed to pass like hours, in which he was only aware of the world past the reek in his nose, the clammy stickiness on his body, the ache in his fingers. He took in great gasps of air through his mouth, and immediately wished he didn't as the taste of burnt flesh and other awful things hit his mouth.

Then he yanked Tarragon free from the body, turned and slid down the side of the dead homunculus, landing foot-first on the floor.

He made the mistake, as he did so, of looking back at the corpse. If he was a clichéd action hero, he would have said something witty, like "Guess cider was strong enough". But as he wasn't, and as the stomach-churning cocktail of panic, nausea and awful smells finally caught up with his brain, he turned away and was violently sick instead.

When that was all over, he wiped his mouth and half-groaned, half-growled. He'd come in here with no idea of what to do or how to do it, but now things had changed substantially. He'd just survived getting swallowed alive, he was covered in blood and other nasty fluids and fizzing on an adrenaline high equivalent to a small bucket of uncut cocaine. And he was really, really hating this place and everything it had presented to him. All of this together meant that he knew very well what he should do now.

It was just a case of knowing where to start.

"Now," he muttered to himself as he looked at the carnage, "what's flammable around here?"

Then his eye caught the glisten of spilled culture fluid, and he realised that was a stupid question.

-------

The warehouse burned.

The Mantraverse trio - Sam, Victoria and a still-sticky Christopher - watched it from the opposite bank of the Thames. It was a tall, deep red flame that comes from burning certain kinds of chemicals and preservatives that nobody should ever touch or brew. It threw out a black, choking cloud that was almost demonic in colour and size, blackening the London sky above it. The smell that followed, a combination of a crematorium and a chemical waste disposal plant, was pungent even from here.

No fire engines were coming, no people were screaming and no Kingsguard were pulling up. Word had gotten out - how, Christopher would never learn - and the people of London had decided that one warehouse burnt down was an acceptable sacrifice.

At last, Victoria spoke.

"All in all," she said, "not bad form, Master Baker. Although perhaps, next time, you should seek to avoid dry cleaning expenses." She cast a sideways glance at Christopher, and he could see the corner of her mouth turning up in that half-smirk she used when she was pleased about something. Pride filled his chest for a brief moment.

"Gotta say," said Sam, grinning. "That thing, with the apple juice? Inspired. I gotta remember that for the next time something tries to eat me."

Christopher shrugged. "Flash of inspiration, that's all I can say. I'm just glad it worked. Did you get the man behind all of it, by the way?"

"Yes... and no." Sam sucked in air between his teeth. "He's behind bars right now, but he claims he's been paid to do it. He's got no idea whom by, though, so we're gonna have to do a bit of chasing. And I've no idea how long that's gonna take, with most of the evidence gone up in smoke just now."

"Well, that can't be helped," said Victoria. "Most of what was there would have been formula for making those homunculi to begin with, and would have needed to have been destroyed anyway. As for the Unhallowed Cradle... if it survives, we can use it as evidence. If it doesn't, that's one less of them in the world. So we win, either way."

"There's the journal Chris found," Sam cut in.

"Ah, yes. I was hoping we'd get to that."

Victoria reached into her bag and pulled out the journal - the same one, Chris knew, that he'd found next to the strange machine. It had been the one thing he'd been able to rescue from the warehouse as he'd thrown down the match and, pausing only to grab as much as he could hold in both arms, fled as fire blossomed and what abominations had survived screamed and burned.

"I've made a preliminary examination of this," she said. "Most of it seems to be in some sort of code. Nothing that can't be deciphered, obviously, but it's going to take time. I can recognize a lot of formulae in here - the Universal Consciousness Theorem, the Transferrence of Flesh, et cetra. But there's one or two things in here - diagrams and formulae and calculations - that don't quite-"

She was opening it as she spoke, and as she did so, something light and thin slipped out from between the pages. Without really considering what he was doing, Christopher darted forwards and snatched it out of the air before the wayward wind had a chane to cast it into the foetid waters of the Thames. Holding it between forefinger and thumb, he turned it over to look at it.

For a moment, his eyes saw without his brain understanding. He saw the woman, dressed in heavy black robes with gold edging, standing in a room that might have been a basement or attic somewhere in the world. He saw the dark hair falling over one side of her face, ill-kept like cobwebs that hadn't been cleaned away. He saw the one eye looking back at him from what felt like years upon years, and the almost sardonic, unsociable half-smile on the corner of one mouth.

And then...

"Mother?"

Christopher blinked. For a moment, he didn't know what had happened. Then the delayed memory of his own mouth saying that word hit him like a freight train. He looked up into the faces of Victoria Thorne and his dad, illuminated by the sickly red glow of the burning warehouse. The former had frozen into stoniness. The latter bore an expression struggling to pick between shock, fright and outrage.

"...what?"

~AS ABOVE, SO BELOW~
Coming Soon to a ZFRP Near You~