Alchemist Assault (The Alchemist Book 2) Read online

  Alchemist Assault

  The Alchemist Book 2

  Dan Michaelson

  D.K. Holmberg

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author’s Note

  Series by Dan Michaelson

  Similar Series by D.K. Holmberg

  Chapter One

  The letters swirled in front of Sam, forming a pattern that he could read, but not one he fully understood. Not yet. He was determined to try to piece together the answer and come to terms with everything that was here, but he hadn’t managed to do so yet.

  He looked over to Tara, who stood off to the side, hands held outward, glowing with a pale white light. Her jaw was clenched, and a bead of sweat dripped down her forehead.

  “Can you hurry?” she asked.

  Sam shifted the alchemy device in his palm. It was uncomfortable, and there were times when he wished he didn’t have it on him anymore. If only he could remove it, that would be beneficial, but there was also danger if he did. If he did, would he even be necessary anymore? Right now, because he was bound to the key—which bound him to the lock, or the almanac—he remained valuable within the Academy. Still, he worried about how much longer that would last, knowing that there would come a time when he would no longer have any worth to the Academy. At that point, he would be tossed out.

  “It’s not so easy as that,” Sam said. “I’ve been trying to use the pattern here, but it isn’t working the way that I think that it should.”

  “You’ve triggered this thing multiple times,” Tara said, looking over to him, the sweat still streaming down her brow. She was glowing more brightly, though there was a faint fluttering to it, almost as if she were going to lose control. “And we both know that you have been practicing.”

  Sam shrugged. “I have been practicing.”

  “And I know that it likely means that you have some connection to the arcane arts, even if you don’t agree.”

  That was a part of all of this that he disagreed with, yet Tara wouldn’t even open it for discussion. Instead, she simply claimed that he had to have some connection to the arcane arts for him to activate an alchemical device like that. It was far too powerful for him to be able to do so otherwise. Sam didn’t necessarily feel that way. Given his experience with it and his lack of ability with the arcane arts, he suspected that he truly had no connection to the arcane arts.

  “Zero tenet,” she said, looking to him. She lowered her hands, the glowing fading. “You know, it’s difficult for me to hold onto that kind of power for that long. It can go awry.”

  “When have you ever lost control of the arcane arts?” Sam asked.

  “It doesn’t happen often,” Tara said with a shrug. “But it does happen. I’m just saying that it is dangerous for you to leave me holding out like that.” She brushed a strand of her black hair back from her brow, wiping the sweat away. She glanced down at the almanac. “I can’t read it anymore. Have you stopped using the key?”

  “I guess I lost control over it,” Sam said.

  “We need to keep practicing,” Tara said, straightening and looking around the inside of the alchemy tower and room.

  They had co-opted a space as a place for them to practice, and they both knew that there would come a time when they would be pushed away from it. How could they not be marked eventually? Now that the attack on the Academy had ended and there was an explanation for what happened, there would be no reason for the alchemy tower not to reopen. Once they had an alchemist able to teach, there would be no reason for them to leave it closed. But, for now, it served as a place for them to practice. A place for them to have as their own.

  Sam tapped on the almanac; the massive bound book written with strange alchemy symbols that he had been trying to work through unsuccessfully. He looked down at it, once again trying to trigger the key, but couldn’t get it to work quite right. He pressed on it. It was a silver band of metal that fit into the palm of his hand, with thin filaments that ringed the first three fingers. It was painful from time to time, though he somehow managed to flex it as he squeezed it within his palm. He tried not to think about that part of it, though he knew that he would need to come to terms with it at some point.

  “I can try to activate it again…”

  Tara shook her head. “Don’t bother. I think I remember what you were telling me. The first few pages are all basically the same. And this one has aspects of angulation I can remember from what you said, but it is the pattern that is particular,” she said, frowning as she shook her head. “I’ve been trying to make sense of it, but it’s almost like the answer is there, but it’s not.” She looked up at him. “Let’s see if I can’t do it.”

  She began glowing.

  That was often the only sign that Sam had that somebody was tapping into the arcane arts. As he didn’t have the same ability with the arcane arts, he wasn’t able to do the same thing, but he could see it. As far as he could tell, that was a unique ability that not many people within the Academy had. It was another reason Tara seemed convinced that he had access to the arcane arts, though Sam had always been able to see the use. His sister had tapped into the arcane arts from a very young age, using it to freeze things. It was a useful skill, one that had left Sam thinking that they would be able to one day escape Erstan. When they finally did, he had thought they would be safe.

  The alchemy tower was proof of that mistake.

  The air still stunk from the attack. Whatever had happened here had poisoned it, killing the alchemists who had resided here and called it home. Sam knew very little about them. He had asked several of the instructors who knew about his connection to the almanac, but none had really spoken much about what happened here or who had been involved. It was almost as if they feared talking about it, feared that it would somehow open themselves up to some similar danger.

  The shelves were empty, though. Books on alchemy had been moved elsewhere. Many of them to the library, though Sam suspected that instructors had come in bearing particular spells of the arcane arts to protect themselves from what they believed a toxic fume and stolen away those books. How many of them had come looking for the almanac? How many of them had thought they could come and steal the secret of alchemy?

  Sam was the one to find it.

  The pattern shifted. Sam noted how Tara created a beam of pale white light that angled off at 90 degrees before twisting and heading back down to the floor. When it did, she tried to turn it upward, but it intersected with another beam of light, and then it exploded, sending her staggering backward.

  She swallowed, brushing herself off. “Maybe not quite like that,” she said. “I thought I remembered it better than that.”

  “I think your last angulation was off. You were at roughly 100 degrees rather than 93 degrees.”

  It was a strangely specific angle that needed to be made, and though Sam had no ability with the arcane arts, he could see it, and he kne
w the theory behind it well enough to recognize what needed doing.

  “I’m aware,” she muttered, leaning over the book. “I wish it would tell me what I needed to do to hold that angle. It’s hard to make that sharp turn and then force it into a broader angle.” She shook her head. “It feels like I’m straining against myself, but this is on an early page within the almanac, so it seems like it should be easy, shouldn’t it?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to understand the almanac the same as you, but there isn’t anything useful to it.”

  “Not useful?” Tara looked back to the almanac, frowning even more deeply. “Look at this.” She took another step back, and the pale glow began to build from her again. According to Havash, those with the arcane arts would smell the vistam, that residual use of magic, if they were especially attuned to it. Sam couldn’t smell it, and given that his only ability was to see the use of the arcane arts, he doubted that it mattered.

  Tara quickly formed several different lines, angling them harshly, and he knew immediately that it would fail.

  “Tara —”

  He wasn’t fast enough.

  He tried reaching for her, but doing so would only interrupt her angulation again, and he knew that was a danger—but at the same time, Sam could see that the pattern that she was forming, the way that she was trying to create angulation, would lead to something worse. He could feel how that power building, and he could see the bright glow, but as soon as she turned it, inverting it downward 30 degrees rather than twisting it upward 30 degrees, he felt the burst of air.

  Sam was tossed back.

  He slammed into a bookshelf behind him, striking the back of his head. He winced, stars bursting in his eyes.

  Sam blinked, looking around. He could still see Tara glowing. He let out a relieved sigh. There was a part of him that feared losing that ability, especially within the Academy. That ability had kept him safe, and he had no idea what would happen if he lost that.

  Tara was lying on the ground.

  Sam raced over to her, worried that he was going to have to run her up to the infirmary, but she sat up, shaking her head and wincing.

  “By Kal, that was stupid,” she groaned.

  “Which part? You thinking that you can just ignore all the mistakes that you’ve made, or you not bothering for me to repeat it?”

  He helped her up, and she looked around, shaking her head again. “Probably all of it.” She sighed. “Maybe we should get up to the dining hall. It’s probably time for us to eat. We can practice after we eat.”

  “Or we can go to the library.”

  She looked over. “Do we really need to go then?”

  “We have to keep up appearances,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Maybe you do.”

  Sam sniffed. “We should both keep up appearances. Even though we can get to the library whenever we want, we still have to make it look like we can’t. We have enough people talking about us already.”

  “Nobody knows what happened.”

  Sam wasn’t going to argue with her, but there were enough rumors about them rolling around the Academy now. Especially after what had happened to them and how they had been a part of the attack. Most thought that they had been dragged by the Secundum into the attack and didn’t know that they were a part of it anyway.

  Still, eventually, he suspected it would all get out. At least some version of it. The Academy wasn’t so large that things like that warranted being uncovered.

  “Well?”

  Sam smiled. When he had first arrived, he had been very concerned about where his next meal would come from, when it would come, and how much he would be able to eat. Upon learning that food was provided and that he wouldn’t have to go hungry during his time in the Academy, some part of him had changed. It was the part that had once been afraid of the emptiness in his belly, the part that had snatched it any piece of trash that might be edible, saving it for himself or his sister, and it had disappeared gradually. Remembering that now left him worried that it would come again.

  Eventually, he feared that it would. How could it not?

  He couldn’t do the arcane arts. Tara might believe otherwise, but eventually, Sam, despite his natural gifts, would not be able to stay. And when that happened, what would he do?

  He been saving his stipend. The Academy provided a small amount each month for the students, and he hoped that his sister was saving some of her stipend so that he could borrow from it, which left him thinking that even after he left the Academy that he wouldn’t suffer the way that he had before, but there was that part of Sam that always worried. It was the part of him that feared ending up on the street again. It was the part of him that had begun to plan the moment that he had come to the Academy, thinking that if nothing else, he could be ready for the next time that he ended up on the street.

  Tara watched him, silent.

  He took her hand, and they headed toward the stairs.

  Later in the day, they would use the Study Hall to sneak out of the alchemy tower, but it was better for them to simply leave directly at this point in the day. It would raise fewer questions.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, he paused for a moment.

  “You have to be careful,” he said. He looked over to Tara and felt guilty at cautioning her like this, but he had been thinking about it for a while. “We’ve been through so much already, and I worry about you.”

  Tara started to smile. “You worry about me?”

  “I do. You are so quick to try these different angulation patterns, and we don’t know what will happen. We don’t know what they are. We saw what happened when we used one against Ferand, but—”

  Tara laughed softly. She motioned for him to start up the stairs, and he approached it slowly. The alchemy lanterns glowing with the pale green light illuminated the staircase, though they did not push back all of the shadows.

  “Aren’t you the one who has been trying to learn as much as possible while you’re here?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m just trying to do the same thing,” she said, looking over to him. “And once you have better control over the arcane arts, I suspect you’re going to do the same thing.”

  “It’s not a matter of me using the arcane arts,” he said.

  “Zero tenet,” she said again.

  Sam shook his head. Zero tenet was the belief that you could use the arcane arts.

  He had never had that belief. There had been no reason for him to. While he might now have a device of alchemy connected to him, bonded to him in a way that he couldn’t remove, even if he wanted to, that wasn’t the same as having access to alchemy.

  Tara didn’t seem to understand, or if she did, she simply didn’t care. She believed that he did, and that was enough for her.

  “Fine. If I somehow have a connection to the arcane arts, I will probably practice as much as you do.”

  “It’s just a matter of learning from a resource I don’t have otherwise,” she said. “That matters.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, and Tara pushed the door open, listening for a moment, before hurrying forward and motioning for him to follow.

  Once out in the hall, Sam glanced over to the kitchen, tempted to go visit Okun, but he followed Tara up to the dining hall. Once inside, they found the hall filled with students. The room was massive, arranged by each tower, such that each tower had its own table and the students all gathered there. They were often arranged by year within the Academy, though not the tolath tower. There weren’t enough students. As he did every time he came to the dining hall, Sam’s gaze drifted to the sharan power and his sister. He found her seated amongst a group of other students, many of them older, which left him worried, but thankfully Gresham wasn’t sitting near her today.

  Tara took his hand, pulling him with her. As he passed to the sharan table, he heard an amused muttering.

  Barlands boy.

  Those words stuck in his m
ind. The name had been started by Gresham but had taken on a life of its own.

  Tara pulled on him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He couldn’t. He didn’t fit in. He knew that. More than that, since coming to the Academy, he had known that it was short-lived. There was a time limit on his stay within the Academy. It didn’t bother him, though maybe it should. Rather, he wanted to take every advantage of it that he could.

  He gathered his tray, glanced over to the sharan tower, noting that Mia made a point of looking away from him, and then took a seat at the end of the table. His only other friend within the tower was sitting among other students, and Sam didn’t want to interfere with James fitting in.

  He waited for Tara to join him. When a tray set down in front of him, he looked up, expecting it to be her, but instead found a familiar sneer looking down at him.

  Gresham was a fourth-year student, like Tara, and lived in the sharan tower with Mia. He had taken an immediate dislike to Sam, though he wasn’t exactly sure what he had done to earn that ire, other than coming from the Barlands.

  “How long before they banish you?” Gresham asked.

  “What makes you think they’re going to banish him?” Tara asked, coming up behind Gresham and sliding her tray onto the table next to Sam.

  Gresham snorted. “Oh. Look at who Stone decided to take under her wing. The little Barlands boy.” He leaned closer to Sam. “I heard what you did to the library. As soon as the council learns, do you think they’re going to leave that alone? They need the supply of arcane arts users.”

  Sam glowered at him. He straightened. Gresham might be more skilled with the arcane arts than him, but everyone within the Academy was more adept with the arcane arts than him. Sam knew that he had the quicker mind, though. “What do you think the council is going to do when they learn that the Nighlan infiltrated this place?” He raised a brow. “What do you think your father is going to do when he knows that I helped defeat them?”