The Alchemist's world was made of silver.

He lived in an isolated fortress, on an isolated island rich in magic-neutralizing silver ores that were buried deep within the Earth. The Island itself was protected by a few layers of force fields and was exclusively accessible through one channel, which was a fixed portal in a guarded room at the Hero's Association Headquarters.

The fortress was a refurbished lighthouse that sat at the end of the earth, amidst turbulent seas that would, perhaps in a few hundred years, rise and engulf the island.

Either way, it wasn't a place anyone could easily escape from.

Apart from the silver ores in the ground, the walls of the fortress were also made of silver, and some built-in alarms and cameras monitored his activity. That activity was relayed in real time to a Watch Tower in the nearest city, and should the Alchemist even dream of making plans to escape the forcefield-protected Island, the Heroes would be alerted and deployed, ready to apprehend him by the time he reached shore.

On the Island, Aiden felt the additional weight of the magic draining from his body as he climbed the slight hill towards the lighthouse. It was just him and Monty–accompanied by two of Vacek's most trusted secret soldiers–who had come to see the Alchemist. The soldiers were here because Aiden and Monty could not use their magic, thanks to the silvers, and so if anything happened and they needed muscle, well, they at least had the muscle.

Yet, even as the magic drained out of him, Aiden still felt some alchemic influence shifting in his brain. He'd found a way to shield and even disable the psychic tracker Monty had placed on him. He could also speak directly into the mind of the Alchemist without alerting Monty to what was happening.

Or rather, he would have been able to do that if not for the magic-suppressing elements of the Island. He wasn't sure he could manage complex alchemic feats like that with all the silver in the environment.

It would be even worse inside the building, but Aiden would try his best. After all, Alchemy was harder to subdue than magic.

"Do you think he's going to tell us something useful today?" Monty wondered aloud. "Or is he just going to stay silent again?"

"That depends on how strong a truth potion you had them give him." Truth potions could compel one to speak when they would otherwise not, but they had to be strong to work.

"We can't go that strong. He won't survive it."

"Well then, we have to use other means of figuring out what we want."

Right now, Aiden's theory was that the Alchemist was working with the future-seeing pirate in some capacity, although Aiden hadn't known how the Alchemist managed it before.

Now, though, he had a fair idea.

As they got into the building, the wind blowing silence into the crumbling concrete walls, they heard the sound of humming. That gave them pause. The last time they'd come, the Alchemist hadn't been active. He'd been sitting on the floor of his barred cell, silently staring into space.

Now he was humming as he descended the stairs, his long grey hair dragging on the floor.

Aiden winced at seeing him. He looked haggard, his clothes tattered on his body, and his face wrinkled.

"Couldn't you get him a haircut at least?" Aiden muttered to Monty out of this corner of his mouth as the Alchemist drifted by.

"Sorry, that wasn't on our list of priorities," Monty retorted, and the Alchemist stopped in front of them and turned to eye them with a loopy smile, showing off yellowed teeth.

"Ah," he said. "You've returned."

"We have," Monty said. "We're hoping you'll cooperate with us today."

"Why not? I always cooperate. I am such a kind, good-hearted man, and such a compliant one too. As you have been so kind as to lend me this castle for my stay, I can't help but cooperate."

Monty and Aiden shared a look.

Sometimes, Aiden couldn't tell if The Alchemist was truly mad or if he was just the most sarcastic individual they'd ever met.

"I'm glad," Aiden said. "We're going to ask you the same question we asked you last time. Do you know this man?" He held up the sketch of the Pirate and showed it to the Alchemist, who shrugged.

"I know a lot of people."

"Have you met him?"

"I have never met him in my life."

Aiden didn't buy it, despite the truth potion the man had ingested. But now Aiden approached the question from a different angle.

"You may not have met him," he said. "But one of your golems has, haven't they?"

The Alcehmist turned to Aiden. "My golems were all destroyed when I was captured. The Association made sure of it."

"Did you make new ones? Or did you hide some of them to prevent them from being destroyed?"

"Why would I do that?" The Alchemist retorted. "I am a good man."

Monty snorted at the statement. "A good man wouldn't do half the things you've done."

The Alchemist switched his attention to Monty. "We can't help the way we were born or the powers we were blessed with. You of all people should know that, Mindmeister."

Monty flinched and said, "It's Monty. Mindmeister was my father."

"Yes, of course." The Alchemist smiled wanly. "You look so much like him."

Monty's face flamed, and anger jumped into his eyes. He looked like he wanted to hit the older man, and Aiden put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down.

"We've received news that someone is modifying pathways in Old Moulding?" Aiden said. "Would you know anything about that?"

Aiden had initially thought about keeping this a secret as his trump card. He'd thought about using Lexie's friend, Tate, to trap the Alchemist's golem, who was likely responsible for the pathway experiments, but seeing as Tate wasn't answering Lexie's texts, Aiden didn't think the boy would be on board.

Besides, if the Pirate and the Golem were really working together, then he would already know of Aiden's plan, and he'd likely be a step ahead. The question, though, was how connected the Alchemist himself was to all this.

The Alchemist thought about the question, and genuine puzzlement showed on his features. "I don't believe I know what you're talking about."

"Are you sure?" Aiden asked and said, "Would you swear a blood oath to that?"

A false blood oath under a truth potion could be life-threatening. Aiden didn't expect the man to actually swear it. It was a bluff designed to figure out if this old man was as crazy as he seemed.

But he nodded and held out his thumb, ready for his blood to be drawn. "I am a good man. I will swear it."

Aiden frowned. He seemed confident. Too confident. "Alright."

Aiden didn't draw the blood, but he asked the same set of questions again, in every way he could, to prevent any loopholes.

But it didn't get them any closer to an admission of guilt from the Alchemist.

That, of course, didn't mean that the Alchemist wasn't guilty. In fact, Aiden was even more sure that he was guilty.

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It was just going to be hard to prove it.

The Alchemist, though mad, would undoubtedly cover his tracks. After all, the man was a Level 10 S-Rank intellect (before the association started routinely drugging him to dull his intelligence when he wasn't in use), and either he or his golem was working with a man who could see the future.

Even if the golem was working independently, its urges and thoughts had to come from somewhere. He just didn't know how the Alchemist, as surveilled and guarded as he was, had somehow created a Golem in captivity who was now continuing experiments similar to the ones for which he was jailed.

The Alchemist had dabbled in genetic testing all his life. Once a lauded genius who was credited with advancing technology, reducing overreliance on magic and the Fae, and improving the lives of many, it all came crashing down when his diabolical methods were revealed.

His crimes included the kidnapping of both humans and aliens, enslaving of creatures, testing on unwilling participants, and, occasionally, manslaughter.

Despite all that, the Alchemist was alive, not executed for crimes against humanity.

Truthfully, the world couldn't afford for him to be dead because of how vital his discoveries were.

And neither could Aiden.

The Alchemist's experiments had continued even after he was first arrested and put in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in Viejo. He had secretly continued experimenting with the prisoners there until they eventually had to send him to this fortress to keep him away from civilization itself.

But now, somehow, he was back to his old ways and was instead using a sophisticated golem to do it, one that had enough independence to act on his behalf.

One that he did not have to control remotely.

One that could do his bidding without his knowledge, apparently.

It was terrifying to think about just how powerful this man was.

His creation of golems had also led to many medical breakthroughs.

And it might be the thing that would save Aiden's daughter as well.

For the past few weeks, Aiden had scoured the earth for information on the experiments that Neqal had performed with the human-Eldritch DNA splicing. Naem had told him that one of them had succeeded and lived after the experiments were concluded.

Though Naem could not confirm it, Aiden was now almost sure that the human was the Alchemist.

Now that he'd gotten a taste of it, he could sense that there were just too many parallels between the way Alchemy worked and the way Eldritch magic worked. The chaos potential felt similar.

It would also make sense–given how much the man liked to experiment–for the Alchemist to be born from an experiment himself.

The Alchemist had been sane for a long time before he went crazy. There were rumors that he'd been alive longer than most people know and that he was around even in the time of the Great Developers. They said that he'd been a great help to them and the First Mage.

Aiden figured that the Alchemist had lived longer than any human should, thanks to his Eldritch DNA, and he likely changed his appearance frequently by using his golem technology.

That being said, if he had lived this long as a human, then he must have found a way to suppress the metamorphosis into a full Eldritch.

Aiden needed to know how for Lexie's sake. Though Lexie's situation was different from the Alchemist's, it was the closest thing he could find.

Aiden had a few theories on how to help Lexie based on what he knew about Neqal's experiment and reading papers on the Ascended, necromancers who'd attempted the same thing.

It would probably involve a soul transformation that was difficult on the body. It would be lengthy and require careful monitoring, and it would involve a ritual whereby the caster would likely have to sacrifice themselves.

Aiden needed to know exactly how to do it. It was highly illegal and probably unethical, but it was the only way to save his daughter.

And, once he was done saving Lara, Aiden was willing to sacrifice himself to save Lexie.

As Aiden continued questioning him, he tried to probe into the Alchemist's mind to create the link. He thought he might have succeeded in creating a weak one and tried to speak across the channel, but there was no response, which probably meant that his magic wasn't strong enough.

Disappointment weighed on him. He didn't know when he would get a chance to come back.

"I don't think we'll get any better answers out of him," Monty finally said after nearly an hour of questioning.

"You're probably right," Aiden said, then he told the Alchemist. "You may go."

But instead of leaving like he usually would, the Alchemist hesitated. "There is another type of knowledge you want from me, isn't there?"

Aiden stilled and raised an eyebrow. Had the link been formed after all? It didn't feel like it.

"No," he said outwardly, while saying yes in his mind.

The Alchemist continued staring, but then he turned around and walked off.

Well, I guess that answers that.

"I hate coming here," Monty muttered as they left. "I hate meeting him. Everything about it makes me feel… unsettled."

Aiden felt the same way. Maybe it was excessive silver, or the depressing sight of an old man isolated from the world.

But it made him feel more pessimistic than usual.

It felt more impossible than ever to believe that all of this would have a happy ending.

***

Lexie considered what to do with this new piece of information that she'd just unearthed.

Tate was still ignoring her calls, but even if he did answer, it wasn't like she could confront him about this either. He'd probably just lie and say something else to mislead her and avoid the fact that he'd known her before their first meeting, and he'd never told her.

Well, technically, he did tell her that he'd seen her before, in Old Moulding, but he'd never told her that he knew her before her most recent soul injury. She was much younger in that dream, probably about two years younger than when she'd suffered her last memory loss.

And while it would be charitable to think that maybe it just slipped his mind, Lexie knew that he'd intentionally hidden the truth for his own selfish reasons.

Ha. And he wanted me to trust him again.

If Tate ever reached out to her again, Lexie planned on keeping this discovery to herself. She would take a page from his book and keep him in the dark on what she knew. In her free time, which she had less and less of these days, she planned on figuring out exactly who Tate was and what he wanted from her.

He probably wants his fate points back, whatever those are.

Her system screen rang and she saw it was her dad calling. Finally.

"Dad," Lexie answered, simultaneously activating the sound muffling card. "You okay?"

"Yeah, just coming back from a trip," he said. "How are you? Looking forward to leaving tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll finish packing tonight," she said. "You said I'm meeting Stella at the station in the Capital city, right?"

"Right. She should be there when you arrive, and you'll be taken to their estate. I'll try to come over too after I'm done with class, and maybe we can have dinner together."

"I'd like that." Lexie cleared her throat. "Do you remember Professor Madswick? The Necromancy professor who kept wanting to talk to me?"

"Yes."

"Well, um, it turns out that he knows I'm Chosen."

Her father was quiet. "What?"

"Yeah. He has something called Soul Sight, and he's met other Chosen before, and he can see these tags on our souls. Oh, and he's also the person who knew my name from the Undernet."

Lexie gave her father a brief description of their conversation and what happened in Journeyman's office, and when she was done, her father exhaled.

"I see," he said. "This might be a problem."

"Yeah. But I don't think he'll tell anyone yet."

"Why not?"

"Just a feeling. He wants me to be on his side. He said he can help us find Max if I agree to make a deal with him."

"No. I don't trust him."

"I knew you would say that. But I told him I would think about it and give him my answer later. Good thing the semester's ending."

"Okay." Lexie could hear him stewing on the thought. "You said his name was Madswick?"

"Yes. Pietro Madswick."

"I'll look into him."

"Good. Also, I leveled up last night. I forgot to tell you."

"You did?" Her father remarked in a significantly lighter tone. "That's very impressive, honeybee. Usually, your first level up doesn't come for several years."

"Yes, well, I have been working hard."

"I know. I'm proud of you."

"I'm proud of me, too. I got ten points. I want to put most of that in perception, since that's one of my lowest points, and the rest split between memorization, creativity, and logic."

"Hmm. How about belief? If I recall, you were quite low on that, too."

"Yeah, but based on my research, belief is mostly important in high charisma or religious roles. I don't want to be a politician or a priest, so I was just going to leave that as is."

"Belief also comes in handy to fortify your willpower against disappointment, which you will undoubtedly face once or twice in your research journey. Sometimes things won't work out as you want, and you'll get frustrated enough to want to give up, and that will be the only thing keeping you going. You should assign a point or two to it."

Lexie mulled it over. "Can I assign 1.5 points?"

"No, but good thinking."

Lexie sighed. They discussed it a little more, and she finally decided to assign 5 points to perception, 1 to belief, 1 to memorization, 2 to creativity, and 1 to logic. Her final substats after she was done looked like this:

Mental (S-Rank)

Class: Scholar – Bound Magic – Cards

Secondary Class: Undeclared

Affinity: Bound Magic-Cards

Level: 8

Breakdown

Logic: 98%

Wisdom: 85%

Memorization: 92%

Creativity: 91%

EQ: 80%

Talent: 83%

Thinking Speed: 90%

Perception: 79%

Belief: 69%

Mental Strength: 97%

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