The second floor corridor was more familiar than Stephen expected. Sure, crushed and twisted lockers weren't part of his childhood, but something was still there. Something. He hadn't studied many years at this school, but enough to remember the first girl he had feelings for, how she rejected him, and how Stephen's reaction was to flirt with one of her friends.
He was reckless once. At least before the Affinity Test crushed his soul.
Alert: Veinskimmer identified. Seventy meters, turning right. Milla informed.
Stephen made a motion to move, but Ashe placed a hand on his shoulder.
"I'll handle it. Look for your mother."
A clumsy "thank you" left his mouth as he watched Ashe head in the indicated direction. Harvis was saying something Stephen could no longer hear or didn't want to. His eyes turned to the nearest classroom: door ripped off and bent, wall partially destroyed. Crystals seemed to form the silhouette of a body on the floor. They glowed. They pulsed.
Stephen extended his right leg to step over what remained of the door and entered the room. The air was thick with a mineral smell, like chalk dust mixed with copper. Broken desks lay scattered like food left to rot, sheets of paper spread everywhere and covered in residue. Crimson red, silky gold, silver reflecting sunbeams, liquid metal simulating a mirror. So many colors, so many crusts, so many crystals that made the room seem like a living organism.
That's when he realized.
"All the children here, or almost all of them..." His heart sank before he could finish.
Stephen already knew how the Dragon's Tail had impacted the city. He also knew that some of the residue they found on the streets, and even some monsters they killed, were probably human before the explosion. Still, seeing it was different. Knowing that this myriad of colors was once a noisy classroom. A hand went to his mouth without him noticing, a natural reaction to contain the bile.
Analysis: third option of side effect for the Dragon's Tail. Beyond the already known options, analyzing the possibility that a critical volume caused direct transmutation into residue. Plausible theory. Hypothesis registered. Absence of data to confirm.
"This place is more than three hours from the laboratory," Stephen commented, the words coming out chewed. "How could it have caused a critical volume so far from the ignition point?"
Hypothesis: Laboratory or Chemical Center within a radius of up to one kilometer.
He lost a step and his free hand bumped against the teacher's desk, finding an encrusted and velvety metal. A light tingling whispered across his palm, making the stain left by Sulfur glow and dissolve.
Gold.
Analysis: Resonant appears to have awakened his third affinity as a side effect of the Dragon's Tail. Gold. Registered.
Stephen shook his head. He couldn't bring himself to care enough at that moment. He stepped back and left the room, heading to another one with an equally destroyed entrance. He stopped in front of the chewed door on the floor.
He blinked. "Milla."
I know. It was the closest the AI came to demonstrating humanity. Empathy. You noticed.
His lips were trembling, throbbing. Stephen blinked again. And again. And once more. He couldn't contain the first tear from rolling down as he felt every inch of his body grow cold. His heart became so heavy it couldn't beat fast.
"If..." He was betrayed by his voice. By his vocal cords. By his brain. By the world. "If... If my... If my mother..."
High probability. Milla interrupted him. If your mother was here at the moment of the explosion, the mathematical probability of being dead is 94%.
Stephen didn't know when he fell to the floor and burst into tears with his knees drawn up to hide his head. He also didn't notice when Ashe returned, sat beside him, and kept him company. Without asking, without touching, just... stayed there.
The kind of posture only someone familiar with grief would have.
Jenny and dad are still out there. I can feel it.
"Gold will ignite the Sulfur. It will amplify the power and shape it. Salt will crystallize it and sustain shape in the air. Then..." He repeated to himself, unlocking the metallic box with Sulfur.
Blue flames sparked when the Sulfur met his palm, trembling, crackling. In his right hand, the container with Gold particles was already open, so he just turned it over the Sulfur and concentrated on the reaction to prevent leakage. As he'd realized days ago, alchemy works like the mind. He needed to imagine the shape of an elongated projectile while the ingredients begged to leak.
The flames began to change shape between pops and hisses, becoming a golden-white projectile that looked like a lance made of light. Finally, Stephen pulled the Salt pouch from his pocket and tore it open with his teeth. He poured the white powder over the formed projectile.
"You're really taking your sweet time, huh?" Ashe raised her voice to catch his attention.
Ah, right. Ashe was distracting an Ashling so Stephen could test the new attack he'd spent the last four days developing.
The Ashling was a few steps away from her, a humanoid silhouette made of compacted ash dragging itself toward Ashe. Its eyes were dimmed embers pulsing in a slow rhythm. The girl maintained calculated distance, PoisonCane aimed but not attacking.
Stephen raised his hand. The golden-white projectile trembled between his fingers, the Salt shell crackling as it tried to contain the amplified energy. Too hot. The shape was unstable, like trying to hold water with bare hands.
He threw it. Ashe quickly retreated to avoid collateral effects.
Chk-VRRM—
The projectile crossed fifteen meters before the crystalline shell cracked. Stephen saw the white fissures spread across the surface like veins, and then—
The lance dissolved in the air. A collapse of colors.
There was no explosion. Just a wave of golden heat that dispersed in a three-meter radius, distorting the air like a desert mirage. The Ashling was at the edge of that wave.
Stephen muttered a "Fuck." Failed.
But the monster stopped.
The ashes forming its body began to glow. First at the extremities, then climbing up the arms, the torso. The Ashling was absorbing instead of fleeing from the heat.
Krr-hhnn.
The wet, dense sound made Stephen feel a slight vertigo. The monster kept pulling the residual energy, the embers of its eyes igniting to a vivid orange, then yellow, then white.
Analysis in progress. Milla narrated. Ashling core temperature exceeding absorption capacity. Thermal collapse imminent.
The monster shuddered. The ashes began to dissolve at the edges, floating upward as if gravity had inverted. The internal glow intensified until the entire Ashling looked like a silhouette of light.
Krr-hhn—
The sound cut off mid-way. The monster imploded silently, the ashes dispersing into a cloud that rose and vanished. Where there had once been a humanoid form, now only a dark stain remained on the ground and a few Antimony crystals. Hollow inside as if hiding an entire world.
Kill count updated. Milla informed. Ashling, rank D, second kill. Total: 19 kills.
Ashe approached, holstering the PoisonCane. Her light eyes examined the stain on the ground, then Stephen's face.
"Not too bad," she said. "For a first test."
Stephen nodded. His lips couldn't form a response. He still felt the weight of the classroom on his shoulders, the colorful crystals that were once children, the 94% probability echoing in his head like a cracked bell.
He sat down to start collecting the Antimony crystals in silence.
"That's kind of my job," Ashe added, seeming a bit amused.
He blinked and stopped. Ashe was right. It was much more efficient to let her do it, and not only that, he didn't know what could happen if he touched pure Antimony with residue from three alchemical ingredients still on his hands.
The girl approached and extended her left arm to start working. Stephen watched as the Antimony crystals rose like an alien spaceship was abducting them.
"It's a bit unorthodox," he commented, resting his hands on the asphalt. The Gold residue on his palms heated the concrete beneath his fingers, and Stephen pulled his hands back before it started to burn. "In theory, Flare Lance is very powerful, but execution takes time and it's unstable."
"It's because our Conductors are simple models," Ashe replied, pulling out a ceramic container with her free hand.
Stephen had fragments of memory about that. Maybe from some lecture at school, a conversation he overheard at the laboratory, or some television program. A Conductor varied according to the number of affinities. He'd never seen a Conductor designed for Heptabounds in action, so he could only speculate about everything it could do.
When she finished, Ashe offered a hand to help him up. Stephen accepted. It didn't take long for them to realize they'd forgotten one of the pillars of alchemy.
Both hands were engulfed by flames alternating between blue and an almost golden orange. The shock made them both break contact and step back. Stephen felt no pain; the affinity with Sulfur prevented self-harm. But he was worried about her. He looked at Ashe's hand expecting to see burn marks on the part the Conductor didn't cover.
It was intact.
Orange sparks still danced over her fingers, dying slowly as if they'd found a home.
Ashe was panting, staring at her own hand.
Analysis: Resonant demonstrated immunity to Sulfur damage. Prior affinity confirmed. Tetrabound. Harvis announced.
"When...?" Ashe murmured, flexing her fingers.
Impossible to determine exact moment of awakening. The affinity may have manifested at any point since entering the Dragon's Tail.
"Holy fuck," she said, a smile taking shape.
Three affinities left until Ashe needed to leave the Dragon's Tail. Stephen would need to awaken his four remaining ones before that. He looked at her face, and she probably sensed it, because she looked back.
Stephen gasped.
"What? Am I turning into a monster?" The smile was still there, but... faltering. Gray stains remained on her cheeks like signals.
And now...
"Your eyes," he said, stunned by the silver irises. "They're silver. A different reflection, as if... they were wet. But silver."
Analysis: The Dragon's Tail atmosphere contains elevated concentration of Mercury and Antimony in gaseous state. Extended exposure accelerates cellular metabolism as a side effect of passive transmutation. However, it doesn't only affect the metabolic rate. Alchemical vapors accumulate in tissues and present volatile effects according to each host's characteristics. Pigmentation, muscular structure, bone density, everything is subject to reconfiguration to optimize alchemical channeling. Harvis informed.
"Is it pretty, at least?" Ashe asked, looking around as if searching for a mirror. She obviously didn't find one.
"It is pretty," Stephen answered, unaware why he decided to split it's into it is. Unnecessary reinforcement?
Ashe blinked. "Wait, did you just say cellular metabolism? Are we aging faster?"
Precisely. Harvis responded. I don't have the database to present an exact calculation of the aging rate, but my scanner suggests that Resonant Ashe Henner has already surpassed twenty years of biological age.
"I was eighteen when..." She didn't need to finish the sentence.
"Milla?" Stephen called softly.
My estimate is that Resonant Stephen Marlowe possesses nineteen years of biological age.
They had aged two years in six months.