The Alchemists' Bane Read online

  The Alchemists’ Bane

  The Dragon Striker Chronicles Prequel

  Dan Van Werkhoven

  Ancel Haegler

  Copyright © 2017 by Daniel Van Werkhoven

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  First Edition

  ISBN- 978-0-6482212-4-1

  Mark IV Multimedia

  Cover Art by Ariel Van Werkhoven

  To Brittany Van Werkhoven, the woman who tirelessly watched me go from wannabe author to published author.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Thank you and please leave a review!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Sentinel Code Excerpt

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter One

  Elana Koskova ran her tongue over her dry lips. “Well, no point putting it off, it’ll either explode or it won’t…” she murmured as she picked up a small hammer in her shaking hand. She held the hammer above a trail of frozen, muck coloured extract—

  —and swung.

  The extract shattered into fine powder, coating the ice tray. A sigh of relief escaped her lips. No trip to the Alchemist surgery today. She gingerly scraped the powder into a beaker of alcohol and grimaced as the pungent aroma of rotten fungus assaulted her nose.

  “Sovereign Sculptor, what’s that stench?”

  Elana started. She’d forgotten her supervisor, Sofia, was there. “Winter blister root,” Elana said, and placed the beaker in a cradle made of black, metallic uzhasgart, then pulled a matchbox from her coat and lit the burner under the beaker. Once satisfied with the level of flame, Elana wiped her hands on the thick leather of her azure Alchemist coat and turned to Sofia.

  The petite, middle-aged Alchemist sculptor lounged on Elana’s bed—the lone piece of comfortable furniture in the lab. Sofia had her hazel-eyed gaze fixed on her manicured nails. Above her, a gaslamp hung from the low ceiling and cast its warm white light on her as she removed a speck of grime that dared to tarnish her nails.

  “The extract should be ready in five minutes,” Elana said.

  “About time. I need to report to Voronin Master in an hour,” Sofia said as she tucked a stray lock of mousy hair behind her ear.

  Of course. That explained why Sofia’s maroon roll-neck shirt exposed just a hint of her ivory throat. As if the corset and lack of coat weren’t obvious enough. Elana fingered her own roll-neck shirt, which she kept carefully tucked up to her chin. Only her husband ever had the pleasure of seeing her throat, she made sure of that. The thought of Sergei sent a pang through her two hearts.

  Elana cast a glance at the bubbling sludge of the extract, then walked to the lab’s single window and stared through the frost-covered glass at the encroaching dusk. She rubbed her eyes, trying in vain to ease the gritty burn that plagued them. She needed sleep.

  Far below, the gaslamps lining the street flickered to life and steam curled from their uzhasgart hoods as the ice coating them melted. From her vantage point on the fourth floor of the Alchemist Guild, Elana could see the twinkling lights of the Warrior Guild a few miles away. It loomed, a dark giant over the city that surrounded it—a giant dwarfed by the hulking Alchemist Guild.

  Longing tugged at her. It’d been two years since she’d seen Sergei, and since she’d given their son, Mikhail, a hug. Now, in only minutes, she’d be finished with the cursed telepathy extract and be free to see her family again.

  With a wistful sigh, and ignored by Sofia, Elana returned to her workbench.

  The alcohol finished boiling away and soon only a thick, brown sludge remained in the beaker. She turned the burner off and picked up the beaker, disturbing the sludge. The fetor of winter blister permeated her small lab, and she stifled a cough as she poured the finished extract into four uzhasgart phials, and capped them. Elana picked up a phial and stared at the swirling lines of the black metal. She sucked in a deep breath and faced Sofia—still focused on her nails. “I’m done. It’s over to you now.”

  Sofia looked up and arched a single, delicate eyebrow. “If you think I’m going to put that vile muck in my mouth, you’re dumber than I thought.”

  Elana blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard.”

  A knot formed in Elana’s stomach and she swallowed. “But I’m not qualified to test the extract—”

  “Then you better improve the flavour, otherwise my report to Voronin will say the extract is incomplete. Still.”

  Elana stepped back, the room spinning around her. This couldn’t be happening. “Please, Sofia, don’t do that.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” Sofia said. “You’re the one refusing to finish your job.”

  “It’s not my job to test!”

  Sofia launched to her feet, eyes flashing. “It’s your job to do what I tell you. Do not forget why Voronin pulled me from the sculptors and made me babysit you.”

  Elana took another step back and smacked into her workbench. She hung her head, gazing at the phial of telepathy extract clutched in her thick fingers.

  Sofia sashayed over and gently took Elana’s chin in her hand, lifting her head. “Can’t you understand that I’m giving you the opportunity to redeem yourself? If you test this extract, you could save dozens of sculptors. I don’t want to rob you of that privilege.”

  Sculptors were relying on her for this extract. It’d take weeks to improve the flavour, how many sculptors might get hurt by then? “All right,” she whispered.

  “I knew you’d be smart.” Sofia returned to the bed and perched on the edge, watching Elana.

  Elana uncapped the phial and swilled the sludgy extract. Sovereign Sculptor, please let it work. Elana drank the extract. She shuddered as it oozed down her throat. It wasn’t so bad—

  A dull blade of agony ripped through Elana’s head and she sank to her knees, a scream tearing from her throat. Grey spots exploded in her vision. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the grey remained.

  Slowly the pain faded and Elana’s screams diminished to a whimper.

  One of the grey patches—a network of pulsing and twisting intertwined threads—floated in front of Elana’s closed eyes. With the pain now only a dull throb, Elana braved the world and opened her eyes.

  Sofia crouched before her, brow furrowed. The grey patch clinging to Elana’s vision blurred Sofia’s features.

  Elana shook her head and blinked, trying to clear the blur. It refused to move.

  “Did it work?” Sofia asked.

  Elana rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. My vision is affected, you have this blurry grey mass hanging to your head.”

  Sofia rose. The grey moved with her.

  “Huh,” Elana said, pushing herself off the floor and swiping a strand of white hair from her eyes. She gazed around the lab absently as she tugged at her knuckles, popping them. Grey dots still hovered all around her, some close, some faded and distant
. Minds?

  “I would’ve carried you to the bed,” Sofia said, “but you are way too heavy.”

  Elana glanced down at her plentiful curves. I’m not fat!

  “Can you communicate telepathically with me?” Sofia asked.

  “I’ll try.” Elana focused on Sofia’s mind and a pulsing, cobalt blue tendril snaked from Elana’s forehead. She shrieked, and the tendril disappeared.

  “What is it? What did you see?” Sofia asked.

  “This weird… cobalt thing slinking from my head,” Elana said with a shudder.

  “I didn’t see anything, try again. Maybe it’s the extract?”

  Elana waited a moment for her hearts to calm, then focused on Sofia. An icy chill raced up her spine, and she shivered as the tendril coiled out. It reached the older woman’s grey mind. “Anything?” Elana asked.

  “No.”

  The tendril slithered around Sofia’s mind, almost as though it were trying to latch on.

  “Still nothing,” Sofia said.

  Elana sighed, and it vanished. “I imagine we both need to take the telepathy extract for it to work.”

  “Oh no. No no no.” Sofia lifted her hands, palms towards Elana. “You will take it down to the vault and try it on uzhas.”

  Elana’s chest tightened as panic welled. “What? No. I can’t do that. I’ve never bonded with uzhas.”

  “It’s perfectly safe. It’s only severing contact with uzhas and turning it into uzhasgart that hurts. Usually. And isn’t that what you designed the telepathy extract to solve?”

  “Well, yes. But—”

  “Then get your fat butt to the vault and test the extract.”

  “I’m forbidden to leave my lab without an escort,” Elana said.

  “Oh for the love of… fine. I’ll come hold your hand. Satisfied?”

  Stomach churning, Elana watched Sofia march to the door. I’m never going to see Sergei and Mikhail again…

  Chapter Two

  Gaslamps hung between the ornate uzhasgart archways of the stone corridor, their glow flirting with the shadows buried in the many doorways that lined the crowded hall.

  Elana trailed behind Sofia as the sculptor led her down through the Alchemist Guild to the uzhas vault. She shrugged deeper into her coat, seeking refuge from a chill that clung to the air despite the press of Alchemists hurrying to and fro. By studying the grey minds of those around her, Elana had established that the extract had a range of around one hundred yards.

  They reached the lower levels of the guild, and ahead, two spots of glowing cobalt slowly materialised in Elana’s mind’s eye, each constrained by a hidden cube. She could just make out the shape of a harpoon cannon barrel forming inside one cloud of blue. Then it disappeared. Fascinated, Elana continued to watch the shapes form and vanish while the blue cloud slowly diminished. By the time they neared the giant steel door of the vault, two rows of six cubes were visible beyond it, all with various pieces of machinery and weapons forming and disappearing inside them. At the centre of each cube, a grey mind floated.

  “How many sculpting chambers are in the vault?” Elana asked.

  Sofia glanced at her. “Twelve.”

  Elana nodded. So that was uzhas in the cubes… chambers. But why was it blue? Was that a result of sculptors bonding with it? If so, why were their minds still grey? Elana realised she almost wanted to test the extract now and get answers. Annoyed, she shunted the questions aside.

  “Wait here,” Sofia said, leaving Elana while she went to speak to one of the two guards by the door. Both men wore grey coats a similar cut to Elana’s Alchemist coat, including the fur-lined collar and hood. They also wore belts full of strength and healing extracts. And the half-masks clipped to their left biceps had a distinct predatory shape to them, while Elana’s own half-mask hung from her waist and had clean feminine lines curving the hardened leather. She wasn’t sure why she still carried the mask with her, it wasn’t like she ever went outside and needed protection from the frigid air…

  The guard nodded to Sofia and signalled the second, who pulled a lever. A tremor ran through the floor as the wide door rolled open along its groove. A steel plate slid behind the gear-like door and covered the groove.

  Sofia waved to Elana, who took a deep breath and entered the vault behind her.

  The twelve sculpting chambers spanned the side walls of the giant room. Heavy, steel doors with small, tempered glass windows sealed the uzhas in the chambers with the Alchemist sculptors. As she studied the uzhas, Elana noticed it didn’t swirl in the chambers.

  It writhed.

  An icy hand of dread clutched at Elana’s gut, and she turned her attention to the rest of the vault.

  Dozens of gaslamps hung from the high ceiling and bathed the room in light. A table—easily a hundred feet long—ran down the middle of the vault. Towering mounds of sculpted uzhasgart lay stacked on it. Alchemists surrounded the table, assembling various alchemtek contraptions. Harpoon cannons for the Sentinels, steam engines for the Transport Guild, auto-sheers for the Harvester Guild. Every Guild in the city relied on the alchemtek built in this room.

  “Hey.” Sofia jabbed her arm. “Stop gawking, we’ve got a job to do.”

  Elana tore her gaze away from the table and followed Sofia through the hall. She glanced at a chamber they walked past. In her mind’s eye she saw the grey mind of the sculptor, and before her, some of the uzhas morphing into the main block of a steam engine. Now she was closer, Elana realised that the uzhasgart constructs didn’t disappear when severed from, they turned black. A thick layer of dense black covered the floor of the chamber—dozens of pieces of uzhasgart.

  The steam engine turned black as the sculptor severed and the sculptor collapsed, their mind fading to a dull grey. Elana gasped.

  “What?” Sofia asked.

  “The sculptor in that chamber just collapsed.”

  Sofia’s eyes went wide, and she yelled, “Sculptor down!”

  The vault burst into action. Two guards sprinted to the sculptor’s chamber and activated the door. It rolled open—a smaller version of the vault door—and they hurried in. Moments later they reappeared, dragging the still form of a wizened old woman.

  Sofia let a breath whistle past her teeth. “How’d you know?”

  “I saw her mind drop,” Elana said, unable to drag her eyes away from the sculptor.

  “She’s lucky.”

  An Alchemist hurried over to the old sculptor, carrying a phial in one hand which she opened as she dropped to her knees beside the woman. The guards rolled the sculptor to her back, and one propped her head up while the Alchemist poured the extract down her throat.

  Elana watched, her hearts frozen in her chest. The room stilled as everyone waited to see whether the sculptor would live.

  After an eternity, the sculptor gasped, and a scream echoed off the concrete walls of the vault. The woman curled into a foetal position and continued to scream as the guards gently picked her up and carried her from the vault.

  The shriek faded to a distant echo that sent gooseflesh racing up Elana’s arms. She turned to Sofia and found the older woman gazing at her.

  “You understand it’s crucial you test the extract, don’t you?” Sofia asked.

  Elana nodded. “I’ve never actually seen the damage severing from uzhas does to a sculptor. How old is she really?”

  Sofia gazed after the sculptor. “If she’s who I think, as young as you—forty.”

  “She looked closer to two hundred.”

  A haunted look flickered over Sofia’s face and she pivoted and marched to the newly vacated chamber. “This one’s free. You can test in there.”

  Blood drained from Elana’s face as she stepped into the stone chamber—already emptied of the uzhasgart—and faced Sofia. The door rolled shut. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead and, though there was no chance of it freezing in the warm air of the heated chamber, Elana wiped it away. She drew a long breath. She was saving lives, she could do th
is.

  “Ready?” came Sofia’s muffled voice.

  “Nope.”

  A soft gurgle filled the chamber and Elana spun. Grey liquid uzhas seeped through a vent in the floor and pooled around Elana’s boots, leaving her feet uncomfortably cold. In her mind’s eye, she saw a long trail of grey that ran from the vent to one of the four huge tanks of liquid gas lying beneath the vault.

  Free of the freezing tank, the liquid uzhas began to boil and turn to gas. As it did, it brightened and changed colour until it glowed cobalt. The gaseous uzhas curled around her ankles, almost as though… curious?

  The gurgling stopped as Sofia shut off the uzhas.

  Elana pulled at her fingers until they popped. The sooner I do this, the sooner I can see Sergei and Mikhail…

  She closed her eyes and tried in vain to steady her breathing. Then she focused on the uzhas at her feet, and the tendril snaked out from her mind.

  The uzhas recoiled then, in a flash, snapped forwards and latched onto the tendril.

  Blackness…

  Chapter Three

  Last Elana checked, the uzhas vault hadn’t included a chasm. And certainly not one big enough to swallow a city.

  Nor one filled with writhing uzhas.

  Elana pursed her lips as she eyed the gaping hole before her. The cobalt glow from the uzhas lit the coarse ceiling, creating a million stars from the crystal that laced the rock. She slowly turned a full circle. Behind her, a tunnel disappeared into the black while she stood on a narrow ledge that, as far as she could see, circled the chasm. The cavern itself was devoid of any smell.