The Alchemist

“Who’s there?” a raspy voice called from the far end of the clearing.

Like a shot, Liv darted back behind cover, and began slowly working her way to a tent from which she could peek out whatever was causing the disturbance.

It was caused, as it turned out, by a dozen blue skinned, pointy eared creatures, several of whom bore long, clawlike fingernails. They **** along a slender, catlike creature in handcuffs and shackles. He was tall and broad shouldered, with thick black fur and bright yellow eyes. Yet he walked on two legs like any human would.

Man this world was fucking weird. Liv hunkered down and kept quiet, intent to wait them out.

“If that were a star rock,” One of the blue creatures rasped. “This entire outpost should have been flattened.”

She poked the prisoner with the end of a speer.

“Where is it, courier?”

The prisoner looked over his shoulder.

“How in the Abyss should I know?” He asked. “I saw the thing fall and heard it crash, same as you.”

“You’re the wizard,” The female blue thing said. “You should know better.”

“I’m an alchemist, not a wizard,” the cat-thing corrected in what sounded like perfect, if somewhat accented, English to Liv’s ears.

The female creature extended a long tongue, which teased his neck. The prisoner shuddered in revulsion.

“I don’t care what you like to call yourself,” She said. “You know things, and if you hold out on us, I might decide you’re a better meal than a mediator.”

Watching from the shadows, Liv remembered the words of the tablet. You’ll inherit their memories and knowledge, it had said of her new form. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on long eared, blue skinned creatures with weird tongues.

The answer came to her quickly. Ghouls. Undead. Evil. Ravenous, and they preferred their prey alive. That last detail was troubling.

They were also weak to her guns. She didn’t understand how, exactly, only that all dead things were.
She tried to think of what it would be like to get eaten alive by these things. She was in a strange world and a strange body. She knew she should hunker down and be safe. Still…eaten alive?

“Fuck it,” She whispered.

“Did you hear something?” Another of the ghouls asked, its ear twitching.

“I did,” The female one, who seemed to be in charge, repeated.

“Somethin’ ain’t right here, boss,” Another chimed in. “We should go.”

“No!” The lead one snapped. “The General told us to shut down this pass. We’re not running off because we jumped at shadows.”

Liv smiled. She’d show them a fucking shadow.

She waited just one more moment for the group to move past her. Then she spun out from her cover, planted her feet, aimed with both guns, and fired.

Her first two bullets smashed through the skulls of two ghouls. They fell to the ground, the holes in their heads smoking and then burning. The other monsters reeled, confused, buying her time to take more shots. She kept the triggers depressed, thumbing the hammers back. One bullet went wild, the other three hit their mark, and both creatures fell to the ground shrieking.

Liv felt a familiar sensation from her Army days; the battle high that clarified chaos and sharpened the world. She fell into a rhythm, thought disappearing as instinct took over.

Between the two she’d downed, and the two who were reeling, more than half were still upright, and they now moved to charge her from both sides. Liv stepped back and spun her guns’ cylinders open, carefully dumping the used shells. With a nimbleness of finger she could scarcely believe, she pulled bullets from her belt, letting them fall into the open cylinders, which she snapped close. The motions were quick and robotic, taking no more than a half second, and when she resumed her defensive posture, her guns were full.

Then, they were on her.

Two of the clawed ones had flanked her. Liv waited until the last second to tumble away from them, and they clashed into one another biting and clawing. Before they could untangle themselves, she emptied two shots into each of their heads. Their thrashing ceased, and they lay motionless in a heap of smoldering flesh.

A third ghoul bounded over their corpses, arms wide as it leaped at her. Its claws would have opened her from shoulder to stomach if she’d stood to receive it, but instead, she stepped forward and opened her arms. As it landed on her, she arched her back, and carried its momentum into a suplex that dropped it straight on its head. She followed that into a backflip, narrowly avoiding a biting attack from a fourth ghoul, and came up firing. Both ghouls died.

By now, half the creatures were dead or dying, but the two she’d downed at the start had recovered themselves. Five remained, and the fanned out around her. One gun was empty. She dropped it and cursed. These were not winning odds.

“Over here!” A voice shouted.

They all turned to look to find the prisoner, holding up his shackled hands. The creatures were distracted. Liv aimed the gun and fired a single bullet that shattered his chains.

“My turn!” He said, moving his hands to his belt.

He came up with a pair of old-timey bombs; metal spheres with hemp wicks. The prisoner extended clawlike fingernails, striking sparks off the metal surface to light them, then threw them at the monsters nearest her.

The bombs exploded with a heavy, concussive ****, sending gleaming shrapnel through the air. Liv dodged it, but the ghouls shrieked, cut to ribbons with smoking gashes.

For the briefest moment, the three remaining monsters shrank from the explosions. Liv turned on her heels, leveling the gun at the nearest ghoul. She fanned the hammer, taking it in the knee, then the chest, then the head, and spun sideways as one of the remainders charged at her. She emptied the gun into its neck, and the rounds nearly took its head off.

The last ghoul, their apparent leader, looked between Liv and the Alchemist, then swore and retreated. Liv raised her gun to fire after her, but it only dry fired as she ran off.

It didn’t matter. The battle was over, and its sole survivor had no apparent interest in pursuit.

For a moment, Liv could only stand there, riding the adrenaline high.

“Holy shit,” She whispered, looking down at herself in her gun in disbelief. “Did I just do that?”

She’d always been a solid shooter, but this was something else. That, she thought, was awesome.

---

As the alchemist worked to free himself from his shackles, Olivia used the break in the action to get a sense for herself. She’d discarded her duster to get a better look, and was awed by what she’d found.

Her new body was tall, but slender. Her legs were long and toned, rippling with lean muscle from what she could only assume was from long days walking long miles, but she was otherwise very lean. What she’d taken for white hair had actually been a fair platinum, with an almost silver glimmer where it caught the light. She kept it in a long braid that fell past her large, toned ass to about mid-thigh. It was pulled back from two long, pointy ears.

If you could get past her weird, bluish gray skin, Liv decided, Tsarra was actually quite beautiful. Really, that was putting it mildly. She had high cheekbones and full lips, and a terrific figure; large breasts, a thin waist. Her skincare was shit, but otherwise, she looked like a very athletic model.

Aware she was ogling herself, she turned to check on the cat, only to find him staring up at her. She realized she’d been posing a bit, and awkwardly stood at attention.

With such an obviously catlike face, it was hard to read his expression.

“Thank you for your assistance,” He said, breaking the silence between them just before it got too awkward. “I don’t know what they ultimately had planned for me, but I doubt it would have been pleasant.”

“Don’t mention it,” She said. “Though I gotta say, you didn’t seem overly bothered.”

The cat let out a chuckle. The sound was human enough that it took her off guard, though she tried not to let it show.

“That’s why they named me Allgood.” He said, then extended a hand.

Liv had no idea what he meant, but shook with him anyway. His hands were more akin to a human’s than a paw, with opposable thumbs and fingers, though, she noted, each had pads on them.

“Teco,” He greeted. “Teco Allgood.”

“Oliv….uh, Tsarra Vallano,” She said, nearly giving her real name before correcting herself.

He gave her what felt like a brief, searching look, but ultimately only nodded.

“I had deduced that much,” He said.

Now it was her turn to be surprised. Was she that well known?

“Have we met before?” She asked. It seemed like an innocuous enough way to ask.

Teco drifted back to his backpack, where he began to rummage.

“No. But one doesn’t travel long in the outer arc without hearing your name come up,” He said. “Unless there’s some other drow in a frost dragon long coat who fights with fire wands.”

“They’re guns, not wands,” Liv corrected, then stopped when he still looked puzzled.

A memory surfaced. Guns were rare. Only six people in all of Illia even used them. Liv was very close to remembering who the other five were. They were important to her - to Tsarra - but it couldn’t quite come to her yet.

“Uhm..small machines. They shoot bullets,” She explained quickly. “But not like…Well, here.”

She pulled one from her belt and tossed it at him.

“We get them made special for us. From a Goblin freehold up in the Mountains,” She said, amazed at how easily accessible this knowledge was now that she tapped into it. “They’re filled with black powder. The gun sets of an explosive cap. Wait, shit…do you know black powder?”

“I do,” Teco agreed, examining the shell. “Fascinating…”

He sliced it open, pouring a bit into his hand.

“Yes…I think I could duplicate the powder at least. Perhaps the cap, too, if I had enough time,” He said. “Sulfur, charcoal, something else…Saltpeter would be my guess, but I’d need to do an analysis to know for sure.”

Liv was impressed.

“You can tell all that just at a glance?”

“More of a smell,” Teco said. “I’m an alchemist. I’ve worked with all of them before.”

He pulled a small glass bottle from his bag, and dropped the bullet into it before returning to his search.

“Well, at any rate, it's interesting to see you back around,” Teco said. “The rumor is you’d vanished a few months ago.”

Liv grasped for something to say to that, but Teco didn’t give her the opportunity. He retrieved a long, rune covered whistle. He blew on it, producing a horrid musical note that made Liv wince and cover her ears. The whistle glowed, though, and he stowed it.

“What the fuck was that?” She asked.

“I apologize,” He said coolly, “I know I’m not much of a musician.”

“That’s fine. Just…what was it?”

He cocked his head at her.

“You’ve…never seen a Horse Flute before?”

Liv kicked herself. Of course she had. She’d only asked before she’d tried to remember. In fact, as soon as she tried, she knew it was a simple magic item that could summon one’s horse from several miles away. Even now, her long, tuned ears could hear approaching hoofbeats.

“I mean, yeah, of course,” She said. “Forget I asked.”

She slipped her coat on. Despite how heavy it was, and the hot sun beating down into the clearing, it felt cool as she slipped it on. She opened her mouth to marvel at this, thought better of it, and felt the answer come to her easily once she did.

Frost dragon hide. You killed it up in…some mountain rage or another.

She should know the last, but couldn’t quite reach for it. Some of Tsarra’s knowledge and memories seemed to come easily. Others not at all. It was infuriating.

A handful of horses were approaching the far end of the clearing.

“There’s my ride,” Teco said. “I’m not sure if my horse is in there or not, but I imagine at least one of them is tame enough to ride.”

He extended a paw.

“Thank you again.”

Olivia shook it, but found she didn’t want Teco to leave. She’d been alone in a strange world before she’d met him, and despite the risk in exposing herself, she didn’t want to go back to that.

“Where are you headed?” She asked. “I was on my way to Alestain.”

“I’m headed that way as well,” Teco said. “Would you like to head that way together?”

“Two can travel more safely than one,” Liv said.

Teco seemed to consider this, then nodded.

“I suppose you’re right,” He said. “You can take one of the horses, so long as you promise me you’ll leave it with the sheriff when we arrive in town.”

“The sheriff?” She asked, before she could stop herself.

“Right. They’ll return it to the owner, if someone comes in to claim it,” Teco said, voice cooling. “I’m not a thief.”

Stupid, Liv thought. Someone in her position would know that. Another bit of her past seemed to bubble up. She was a bounty hunter, and horse thieves were easy cash.

She **** a smile.

“That was a test, Teco. You passed.”

He seemed to visibly relax at this. With that, they swung into the saddles.

---

Liv let Teco set the pace, and he kept a steady and brisk one. Although Liv was a city girl who’d never been within arms reach of a horse before, Tsarra had apparently had a gift with the creatures. Following her instincts made riding easy.

For the most part, she and Teco rode in silence. He was a cat of few words, she was learning, and fairly soft spoken ones at that. For now, his presence in this weird, alien world was comfort enough.

Still, she was getting a little worried for the horses.

“You in a hurry?”

For a moment, she was sure he hadn’t heard her. But when he spoke up, he was practically yelling over the horse hooves.

“I want to make it past the Starscourge.”

“The what?” Liv asked.

Teco shot her a look over his shoulder, and she immediately felt foolish. She had to stop and think instead of walking into these situations. Fortunately he didn’t say anything.

Before long, the outlines of a city began to appear on the horizon, and Teco finally slowed. Liv slowed her mouth to match his pace, but he eventually stopped it altogether. She turned her own horse to face him.

“Is..something wrong?” She asked.

“Not as such, no,” He said.

He paused a moment.

“This may be a poor way to speak to someone who just saved my life,” He said. “But…is there anything the matter with you?”

Olivia shifted in her saddle.

“What do you mean?”

He paused again. Teco’s expressions were hard to read, but she guessed he was choosing his words.

“First I see you examining your reflection as though you’ve never seen it before,” She said. “You don’t seem to know what a horse flute is, or the Starscourge.”

She rifled through Tsarra’s mental rolodex and found what she needed this time.

“I know what the Starscourge is,” She interrupted. “It’s that scorpion robot thing prowling around outside the canyon.”

“A Ro…what?” Teco asked. “I’ve never heard anyone use that word before. And I was fairly sure you were about to give me a false name when we met in the clearing.”

His tone was firm, though neither sharp nor accusatory. He seemed more curious than offended.

“Boy, you don’t miss much, do you?” She said.

His ears twitched and his brow furrowed. It took Liv a moment to realize this was the catfolk equivalent of a smile.

“Thank you,” He said. “But to the point at hand…”

He knows something’s up, a voice inside her urged, Kill him

Tsarra’s voice, she realized. It was disturbing how casually the thought had come to her.

Liv took off her hat, wiping her brow with a sigh. She remembered the stone’s warning, and she could see the logic in it. Still, she’d clearly fucked up enough that he had her cornered.

She struggled for an explanation for a moment, searching for anything in Tsarra’s memory that might explain herself. But the inspiration that struck her came from all the stupid video games her kid brother used to play; something that could not only explain her problem, but potentially provide a solution.

“Okay…if I told you something, I have to swear you to secrecy on it,” She said.

“I think that’s the least I can do,” Teco said, though he was fidgeting with his saddlehorn. “Really, you can forget I mentioned it. It’s not really any of my concern.”

“No, it’s okay,” Liv said softly. “It…might be helpful. You know how you said I’d been missing for a couple of months?”

Teco nodded.

“There were rumors,” Teco agreed, carefully. “That you’d met with some misfortune on a hunt. That your old gang had settled their score with you. Some even said you'd taken on some extremely dangerous contract and not come back.”

Tsarra’s thoughts and memories ran through Liv’s mind in a torrent. Posing with her fellow gunslingers, six in total. Of being held in a pair of strong, red arms. Of Firing wildly in a dark woods, rain pouring around her. Of standing in a crowd, holding her breath as someone important approached.

None of it made any sense, nor had any context. Just sound and images. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

“Are…you alright?” Teco asked. Liv thought she heard a note of **** in the question.

“Fine,” She said. “Just…I don’t know what happened to me. It’s like…I know went off to do something, but there’s a big blank spot where my memory used to be. Of a lot of my memories.”

This was close enough to the truth.

“I think,” She said carefully, “That I ran afoul of a wizard or something. Maybe a…”

She searched for a monster that might be responsible.

“A mindflayer, or something.”

Teco snorted.

“If you’d run afoul of a mindflayer, we would not be having this conversation,” He said. “Still…It’s not unheard of for something like this to happen.”

He watched her closely.

“What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Liv said, “It comes and goes. I know who I am, but not much about my life. And there are all kinds of things I feel like I should know and I just don’t.”

“That much is obvious,” Teco said, then sighed. “Godsdamnit…I can’t just leave you like this. Not after all the assistance you’ve provided.”

“It’s okay,” Liv said. “Let’s get back to town. And if anything comes to me, I’ll figure it out from there.”

Teco considered, then nodded.

“That sounds like a fine place to start,” He agreed, finally.

---

Olivia wasn’t sure what to expect from a city in an alien world. That it might be fantastical or beautiful, she’d have been prepared for. What took her aback was how…plausible it looked.

Alestain was built out of a mountain. A waterfall ran down its surface, and a large number of clockwork mechanisms had been build alongside to take advantage of it. Smokestacks let clouds into the sky from elaborate forges, factories and mines, all standing above a lowtown made up dirt roads and low, wooden structures that would have been right at home in a Western novel.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Teco said, watching her.

“Definitely,” Liv agreed, though what she was really thinking was how much it felt like home.

“It’s a dirty, grimy city of mines, dingy saloons, smoke belting factories and companies that fight over ownership of everything that isn’t nailed down,” Teco said. “But I confess…I love this city. It’s one of my favorite in all of Illia.”

Liv smiled at the candor of his description.

“Oh yeah? Doesn’t sound so great,” She said.

In truth, it sounded like any number of US cities. She understood perfectly.

“Nothing is great these days. But the people here…they’re practical. Plain spoken. No one here has any pretensions,” Teco said. “Everyone here has either been sent east or descended from someone who was. Or they’re from some race that wasn’t allowed in the inner arc in the first place. It’s a city of misfits in that way.”

He didn’t elaborate on what “sent east” meant, but Liv could infer the meaning just fine. It was a form of banishment, likely from the more respectable parts of society. And she inferred something else; that Tsarra, a drow, was one of the latter, outcast by what she was rather than who.

“We should get you to a physicer,” Teco said, abruptly changing the subject. “It’s not healthy for you to be riding around if your mind is damaged.”

Liv thought about her coinpurse and frowned. Something told her she didn’t have much.

“I’m a bit light on money at the moment,” She said. “Not sure I can afford one.”

“Mmm…that is…unfortunate,” He said. “I’m afraid I don’t have payment for any sort of treatment either.”

They were riding up on a road into town now. A fence ringed the lower city, made from tall tree trunks banded together, with sharpened stakes at the base. But the gates were wide open, the guards more preoccupied with stopping carriages, and carts with large cargo holds than individual riders. They passed on through and into town without anyone sparing them a second glance.

“I don’t suppose you’d know how to go about making money here in town,” She said.

“I’ve got a package to deliver. That will net me something,” He said. “Apart from that? We’d have to buy our way into the upper city to find anyone who’d pay for good alchemy. And we catfolk aren’t the most popular in the brothels.”

She looked at him shocked, and he retired her gaze with twitching ears. Finally, she laughed.

“That was a joke wasn’t it?”

Teco performed a little bow in the saddle. Liv decided she liked Teco Allgood.

She turned to find several people congregating around a board. There were town criers shouting news, vendors selling wares, and a few figures pinning various signs or parchments to the board.

“How about this?” She asked. “We could see if any bounties are available.”

Teco tilted his head at her.

“Are you sure about this?” He asked. “In your condition…”

“My condition won’t get any better if we don’t have any money to do anything about,” She said. “If we need resources, that seems like a good place to get them.”

Teco seemed to think it over, then nodded.

“Fair enough. If there’s anything promising, I’ll accompany you and we can spit the proceeds,” He said. “Otherwise, we’ll think of something else when I’ve returned from my delivery.”

Liv swung out of the saddle and dropped to the road.

“Meet here in an hour?” She asked, then wondered if he’d even know what an hour was.

Fortunately, all he said was “That sounds excellent. I’ll see you soon.”

She tied the horse as he rode off, then approached the board, reading it over carefully. A gang of horse rustlers were terrorizing the owners of the Rocking Bee Ranch, taking off the herd bit by bit. There was a thief within the city who’d made off with iron ore, and the Mason Company was offering a reward for either its return, the thief’s capture, or both. A gang of Ghouls had been spotted near the Clearlake Oasis, the constabulary was offering a reward for their elimination.

As she read each, Tsarra’s aspect seemed to do some mental calculation for her, determining what the pay meant, how much work it would take, and how far she’d have to travel and at what expense. It all rolled out in her mind with instinctual clarity, and the answer on all of them was the same.

They were all shit jobs.

She took the last flier; she was fairly sure she’d killed the ghoul gang for free, and she might as well collect the paltry reward since she had. But she didn’t get very far before someone stepped from the crowd to call her name.

“Tsarra Vallano!” A shrill voice called.

Liv turned to find a human woman striding to her. She was shorter than Tsarra, though most people seemed to be. She looked to be in her late 30s, with bronze skin and red hair piled high into a braided bun. Her dress was a fine ball gown with an elaborate petticoat and a built in corset that hefted her massive bosom.

Lady Mason, heiress of the Mason company, a memory spoke to her. Rude, arrogant, vain…and very, very wealthy.

“Lady Mason,” Liv said, surprised. “I’m…surprised to see you down here in the low city.”

She scowled.

“I’m surprised to be here. But I have a problem,” She said. “One I thought I’d taken care of, but I need you to settle for me.”

Now this was an opportunity to truly get ahead.

“I’m all ears,” Liv said.

The crowd parted to give the two of them space, though Liv suspected they were still prying ears. Lady Mason spoke to her in a low voice.

“She’s back,” Lady Mason said in a low, urgent voice. “The Desert Fox.”

Liv only knew of one Desert Fox, but she suspected a Nazi general wasn’t who the woman referred to.

“And you thought you’d taken care of her?” She asked, hoping to get a little more information before she made a fool of herself again.

“Well, yes. I paid out a bounty for her **** months ago, but now she’s back,” Lady Mason said, taking Liv by the arm. “Come with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.”