Fever Blood

Chapter 115: The Bearer of the Soul

Every aspect of the monstrosity before her was filled with malice. There was no other way she could have described it. The aspects that composed his flesh, that made his blood run and his nerves fire off, all of them seemed warped and twisted, wrong in a subtle way, but stark enough to make his very existence a mockery of life.

A thought formed in her head. There was the nitrogen, as the chemists referred to it, wrapped in amongst itself, bound to its likeness, useless and inert. Oxygen floated as well, two of those strange symbols-that-were-not-symbols floating, chained together in twos, like links in a chain. And there, bound to the water, two smaller non-symbols bound to a single essence of oxygen. Mixed in, bound to another symbol, more nitrogen swam, probably sea salt. These swam in vast swarms, as plentiful as sand on the seashore, yet she could see each one with nigh-painful clarity

There were all the ingredients for aqua fortis, nitric acid, a deadly corrosive. All the individual pieces kept bound up and useless in water, in air, in salt.

Kazalibad spoke, and she saw the words tumble out of his mouth, deadly and envenomed, saturated with hatred, the odium visible to Indra in this strange fugue state. At that moment, she snapped.

She didn't know how it happened, but one moment, she was dizzy and the next, exhausted. The interlinked not-symbols warped, twisted around Kazalibad, linking themselves. Three oxygen, bound to one nitrogen, one hydrogen tacking itself onto a hungry-looking oxygen essence (how it looked hungry, Indra didn't know, but then again, she was seeing things she shouldn't have been able to anyway). Suddenly she saw all of those little jewels of reorganized essences for what they were, tiny and minuscule, surrounding Kazalibad's wet body like a cloud of luminous gnats.

And just like that, she slumped over.

Lord Solstael caught her. "Good heavens, woman, are you alright?" he asked.

"A... a bit of fatigue," Indra said, peering at the glistening gray hide. He still advanced, and he still was weeping blood. "We must run!" And then she noticed the smoke.

It started with a trickle, but then began to pour off of Kazalibad's wet skin. "It burns! It burns!" the beast shrieked, and the gray flesh began to bubble and hiss. Indra had seen that before once. Some guy in her alchemy class had gotten a drop of aqua fortis, or spirit of niter, and his flesh had corroded and bubbled like that.

She had done it. Somehow, she had done what alchemists had sought for years. She had done purest transmutation, had made one substance wholly into another. But she hadn't needed an alembic, nor a pelican flask and a putrefying vat, nor the various and sundry acids and solutions.

She had done it with her mind.

Somehow, Indra had just changed the water, the salt, and the air into aqua fortis. Green gas clustered around him, toxic chlorine, probably from the salt. Kazalibad howled, then turned back to face Laidu and Rhaedrashah, skin bubbling as new flesh replaced the old. "Was this your doing?" he snarled.

Indra didn't catch the answer, as the group ran, and fled to the safety of the alleyway. 

***

They rushed through the doorway of the warded tower just in time.

The door behind Kyra, a monstrous slab of steel, swiveled shut, and two University students wheeled it tightly locked. The two men grunted as they heaved against the wheel, which groaned, but finally rotated and sealed them in.

Kyra turned around, staring at the throng of people around her. Mostly comprised of students and teachers in voluminous robes, they stared at the strange group that had just rushed in. Two of the nobility, two scholars, and a pastor had rushed in after all. It sounded like the start of a bad joke.