Alchemised

Helena Marino wakes up in the dark, desperate for someone to find her and alleviate her pain. She tells herself she must survive.

Light floods the stasis chamber where Helena is being held. She hears panicked voices trying to get her back to sleep. When she wakes again, the voices are discussing other prisoners and the High Necromancer. She loses and regains consciousness several more times. Finally, Helena is greeted by unfamiliar people informing her that she “should be dead” (9). Suddenly she remembers being captured near the Alchemy Tower. She starts remembering the events of the recent war, too. She realizes many of the dead were reanimated and turned into necrothralls, or animated corpses. She remembers some of her friends dying. She struggles to address the vivimancer woman, or healer, before her. She remembers that she was part of the Resistance and loyal to Luc Holdfast and his kin—a lead family in the Resistance—but doesn’t know why she is in captivity.

The woman reveals that Luc is dead and that all of the Undying are the High Necromancer’s followers now. A devastated Helena can’t believe she’d forget Luc dying.