The Alchemist Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Fey Grimes inclined his head. “Every son or daughter of darkness signifies a coming storm,” he said. “Only once every two generations do we see one.”

“All I did was blow coal dust,” I said.

“Not just dust!” said Fey Grimes. “Truth. You blew truth from the five elements.”

“I don’t see how this turns me into someone important,” I said.

Fey Grimes turned away from me. “Go. We of the pentachurch cannot interfere with the mission of Meliapolis, God of Darkness. You must forge your own path to your destination.” He paused. “If you do ever need assistance, the church will provide to the best of their ability. Now go.”

“Just like that?” I said.

Fey Grimes looked a bit pale. “We cannot interfere,” he said. “Or we risk being cursed with plague and blindness.”

Was Meliapolis really that much of a bad guy? I thought.

I decided to do as the priest suggested and left the confirmation chamber. Fey Grimes followed at a distance. Moray and the other scientists were waiting for me.

“That’s the fastest confirmation I’ve ever seen,” said Moray, upon my appearance.

Fey Grimes bowed. “Take care of this young one,” he said, to Moray. “While he may be biding his time now, he will most likely change our world in many ways.”

Moray bowed back to Fey Grimes. “Thank you, Fey,” he said. “I’ll be taking care of him for a while.”

The bells rang. Our competition was in an hour. We needed to get back to the dugout.

We traveled back through the city streets until we made it to the stadium. After entering, we retrieved our golem and got it ready for battle.

Our next match was against the architect mage guild.

“These guys have been in the top four every competition for thirteen years, and have won five,” said Moray. “We’re in for a tough fight.”

The golems entered the field. The architect’s golem was a solid cube with no protrusions.

“What’s their strategy?” I said.

I knew it instantly when the thing moved. It accelerated wickedly fast, barreling towards our golem.

“It’s got a core of gold,” said Moray. “But they’ve mitigated gold’s structural deficiencies with steel plate.”

I understood. With a core of gold, the golem was probably very dense. At the speed it was traveling, it could take out our golem in one smashing hit.

Our golem dodged with an inch to spare.

“Stay close!” I said. “That will give it less space to accelerate when it comes at us!”

“On it,” said Jones. Our golem drew a circle around the cube golem. The cube golem tried to accelerate and hit us. Without enough space to gather speed, it merely pushed our golem back a couple of feet.

As the golems collided, Canary swung with the chainsaw and rent a huge gap in the cube golem’s side.

The cube golem turned to face its ramming head towards us.

“We need to immobilize it!” said Moray. “Then we can hack it to pieces with our chainsaw.”

“If we drill into its shell and get the drill embedded,” I said, “We can stick to it.”

“Roger that,” said Jones. We backed against a wall.

The cube golem sped towards us. At the last split second, we unveiled our drill and the cube golem impaled itself on it. Canary revved up the drill and we were embedded.

With our chainsaw arm we tore at the cube golem’s armor. After a shower of sparks, our golem reached the gold core.

“TKO!” said the announcer.

A “technical knockout” happened when the control core of a golem was sufficiently damaged.

We had won. I held up my hand. “High five!” I said.

Moray tilted his head. “High?” he said.

“Just slap my palm with yours!” I said.

Moray, with a tentative motion, placed his hand against mine.

“Good enough,” I said.

 Canary and Jones looked at each other in confusion. I grinned at them and shrugged.

“When’s the finals?” I asked. “And who are we against?”

“We’re against the pure magic guild,” said Moray. “Another frequent champion.”

“What makes pure magic different?” I asked.

“It doesn’t go through any one element,” said Moray. “It’s a very versatile school of magic.” He paused. “Honestly, I don’t think we’ll be able to beat them. All of the wins so far have been flukes.”

“But we tried,” I said. “And even if they were all flukes, with the rate they’re happening at, we can hope for one more.”

“That isn’t a very scientific way to view things,” said Moray.

“I know statistics too,” I said. “And this is called the Gambler’s Fallacy. But I don’t care! I’m too pumped to give up.” I grinned. “And we have a bet to win.”

“Thanks,” said Moray. He turned to Canary and Jones. “We have half a bell chime,” he said. “Let’s retrieve the golem and fix what we can.”

We pulled the golem from the field and gave it the basic maintenance needed to keep it running for the championship match.

Then the finals began. Our golem was matched up against a tiny little beetle about the size of a baseball.

“Um,” I said. “Are they being serious?”

Moray looked visibly concerned. “They made it to the finals, after all,” he said. “We can’t underestimate them.”

Our golem began circling the beetle with slow, deliberate motions.

The beetle golem expanded with a frock like a peacock. A blast of wind moved like a spear and impaled our golem, sending the drill arm flying.

“It’s a concentrator!” said Moray.

The beetle’s frock retracted back into its body, and it darted backwards.

Our golem began circling the beetle again.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” I asked.

Moray shook his head.

“Concentrate, concentrate …” said Jones.

The frock popped back up and a spear, this time made of fire, shot at our golem.

It missed our leg by half an inch, leaving a searing scar.

“I think I’ve figured it out,” I said. “They’re bluffing. The concentrator takes time to recharge. Just run at them!”

“Gotcha,” said Jones. He revved up our golems walking gears and sprinted towards the beetle.

The beetle’s frock expanded one more time and fired a blast of water. Our golem lost half of its leg. Stumbling, it crashed to the ground near the beetle.

“Crawl towards them!” I yelled. “Cut the frock off!”

Our golem began to wiggle towards the beetle. The two golems entered a scrum. As the beetle tried to escape, we attempted to line up the chainsaw arm.

The chainsaw bit into the beetle’s carapace and tore off two legs.

“Finish them!” I yelled.

Our golem suplexed the beetle with a powerful motion and the bug was silent. After a couple of shudders, it broke down.

Two seconds later, our golem lost contact.

I could see the judges at the bench discussing with each other.

“Did we win?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Moray. “It looked close.”

“I think we made it,” said Jones. “I lost contact after the magicians, I know it.”

The judges continued to discuss. Then the announcer stood up. “The win goes to the pure magicians’ guild!”

Jones, Canary, and Moray were dumbstruck.

“We won that!” yelled Jones. “I know we did!” He stood up and looked as if he was going to rush into the field. Moray held him back.

“Calm,” said Moray.

Though, he looked as though he could calm a bit himself.

“Can we contest the ruling?” I asked.

Moray’s grip on the railing of the dugout was making his knuckles white. “We can,” he said, “But there’s never been an overturned ruling in the finals before.”

“I know we won, though,” I said. “They lost connection before we did.”

Moray took his hands off of the dugout railing and rubbed his temples. “In any other case, I would be fine having lost. But when we were that close!”

Even the crowd seemed to not be happy about the ruling. There wasn’t nearly as much commotion as after the other wins we had.

“I’m going to go to the judges and contest the loss,” I said, walking towards the exit.

Jones held me back. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ve helped us enough. I’ll be the one to contest the ruling.”

Moray and Canary nodded their heads.

If only they had replay footage that they could consult, I thought. But that was a long way away.

Jones went up to the judges, and I could see him speaking with them.

The magicians’ guild on the other side of the ring were looking smug. I wanted to punch them in their nasty faces. They lost and they knew it.

Jones came back, fuming. “They said that all decisions are final,” he said. “They can’t overturn the ruling even if they wanted to.”

The mood in the dugout was palpable. Everyone looked at me.

“Well,” said Moray, “We did the best that we could. Let’s just go home. We have a lot of things to take care of.” He seemed to be in a little bit of a better mood. “One of these days we’ll upend the whole order of things with your help, Markus.”

“I’ll try my best,” I said.

We retrieved the broken husk of our golem and brought it back to the workshop. Once there, Moray and Canary began to disassemble it.

“This plastic of yours worked wonders,” said Moray, taking out the drill arm’s PVC core. He flicked it. “We should be able to do things with this that weren’t possible before.” He sighed.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “It couldn’t win us the game.” I paused. “So Reginald is getting the dog?”

Moray shrugged. “I suppose so, yes,” he said. “But that won’t stop me from visiting him.”

The mood in the workshop was still under the weather.

Ah, oh no, I thought. Rachel probably lost a lot of money by betting on us. I stood up. “So, is it okay if I visit my shop?” I said.

“Of course,” said Moray. “You have no reason to be here anymore. I’ll contact you sometime soon so that you can keep teaching us with your extensive knowledge.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I’m just a little bit above average compared to the people in my world.”

Moray turned the PVC core underneath the light from the window. “I don’t think any normal person would be able to create this from tar, even if you had knowledge and the magic to work it with.”

“Um, thanks,” I said. I bowed. “I’ll be back.” I left the workshop and returned to the shop.

Rachel greeted me when I walked in. “Sorry about your loss,” she said.

She didn’t appear to be that distressed. “Sorry about your bet,” I said. “We did the best we could.”

Rachel shrugged. “I hedged my bets,” she said. “So I didn’t lose as much as I could have.” She put her arms on her hips. “And we have the ability to make much, much more money than we lost. Our shop has just received an order for two thousand plastic suits of armor to outfit the royal army.”

“Wait, what?” I said. “You made armor out of plastic?”

Rachel tilted her head. “Why are you surprised?” she said. “Didn’t they use plastic like this in your world?”

“No,” I said. “It was used as a cheap, disposable material that was easy to make and light.” I paused. “Can I see one of these plastic suits of armor?”

Rachel looked a bit sheepish. “Um, that’s not exactly possible,” she said. “We don’t have a way to make anything yet.”

I sighed.

Rachel held up her hands. “I’m sorry, okay?” she said. “I banked on the fact that you had some sort of knowledge about this stuff and could pull it out of nowhere like you’ve been doing so far.”

I felt a bit better. “So you haven’t tried to do anything without me,” I said.

“We’ve tried,” said Rachel, “But we haven’t gotten anywhere.”

“Okay,” I said. “Stop trying to use injection molding to create armor.”

“Is there another method?” I said.

“Yes,” I said. “Composite fibers.”

“Fiber?” said Rachel. “How can you make armor tough enough with just fiber?”

“You’d be surprised,” I said. “They do, in fact, make armor out of plastic fibers in my world.”

Rachel looked visibly relieved. “Thank god. I thought you wouldn’t be able to come up with a solution. We have two months to deliver the materials and I was worried that wouldn’t be enough time.”

“Great,” I said. I took an ingot of plastic off the shelf. “First,” I said, “We turn this into fibers.” I manipulated the ingot to produce a long line of thin fibers, which I then rolled into a yarn-like ball.

“Then you combine them,” I said. I stitched, using my alchemy power, a fabric made of the fibers. “While I’m not exactly certain what specific chemistry the armor of my world is, I know the basics. And with two months to experiment we can make something worthy of the royal army.” I showed the fabric to Rachel.

She took it. “It’s light,” she said. “So this will stop a blade?”

“When it’s working right, yes,” I said.

Rachel took a knife and tried to cut it. The knife was stopped four times, and the fifth time it tore.

“And if we improve upon this,” said Rachel, “We can fulfill the order?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Once we get the formula down, we can hire magicians to do the menial work.”

“On it,” said Rachel. “I already have a contact at the mages’ guild.”

“That’s all we need,” I said. “Let’s get started."