Alyn shot up the stairwells, grinning with excitement. The offensive odor of the living corpse hardly bothered her now that it marked something so interesting, so new, and so utterly bizarre.

Her hand ran over the thin wall, running over the flaking paint and chipped wallpaper that poorly concealed holed and moth-bitten plaster and crumbling brick. The boards of the stairs were mismatched, repaired by students and teachers constantly since the school's opening. Some were the original wood, some were artificial wood or synthetic vinyl, and others were sheets of metal. It created a cacophony of sounds that chased her with each step, up and up and up. There was a pattern on the wallpaper, but there was so little left of it that it made little sense, and by the third level, it was mostly chewed away to expose the plaster beneath. The tunnel homes of long-dead insects wounded the thin walls like bullet holes.

There was noise at this level, and as Alyn stepped into the hall, she saw multiple heads poked from the six doorways along the corridor, noses pinched against the stink, and voices raised in complaint.

"What's that smell?"

"What's the hermit up to?"

The girl followed their glares to a hole in the ceiling, from which a steep, narrow steel staircase unfolded, and she tumbled towards it. They led her to a landing, which stopped at a wall. A platform spread from left to right. She clambered onto the landing.

The ceiling of the cramped space was slanted so that if she stood by the wall where the staircase ended, she had to hunch. If she walked away from it, about a meter, there was a partition wall with an open door.

"You'll cough up anything I care to give you, idiot," came a harsh, unkind drawl from behind the wall. Alyn peeked through the doorway, into a cozy blacksmithing classroom. Octienne's friend prowled the floor. "You are extremely malnourished. Recovery won't be immediate. Drink the damn water, and don't ask for more than what I give you."

Abraham limply sprawled in a wooden chair, clutching a tin mug. He meekly obeyed the giant and hiccuped quietly after a few swallows.

Alyn crept into the attic room. The boards creaked under her weight.

The whiskered bear of a man turned his head, brown eyes narrowed. Loose strands of hair shadowed his eyes, making the dark circles beneath appear darker. His lips twitched downwards, his whiskers shifted.

The young journeyman extended her hand and bounded towards him, all cheer. He was supposed to be delighted to meet her.

He regarded her blandly; cold brown eyes glancing over her, lip curled. His hair was graying, carrying scattered traces of dark brown and tawny color. Thick black rubber boots protected his shins, scuffed with burns and ashes from his trade. A hole, burned straight through the right, revealed his big toe in its thick stocking.

His whiskers quivered in a scowl and his cold gaze moved from her extended hand. He ignored the gesture to look over the rest of her, quickly. "An orphan," he muttered.

Alyn took a step back to take him without craning her neck. Perhaps the oversized clothing added to her impression of his size—or perhaps it was merely the comparison to her own malnourished frame and inferior standing of four-feet and nine inches (and a centimeter). His patched, fraying, and faded trench coat covered his palms when his arms were straight. When bent, the sleeves slid just to the heels of his hands, where he wore threadbare fingerless gloves in stained black. His bracers, straps faded to a blotched brown and pushed out by a pot belly, attached to grayed slacks that were carelessly stuffed into his boots.

"I'm Alyn," introduced Alyn. A sheepish smile unmasked the gap between her two front teeth. She withdrew her rejected hand and buried it in her well-worn bomber jacket pocket. Delighted, indeed.

The stranger shook his head and grumbled something under his breath. His gaze lifted to the doorway.

"William," he said and strode to greet the alchemy master.

Alyn folded her arms, unsatisfied with the giant's vague acknowledgement. She chewed her lip.

"Master Hughes!" Master Octienne returned, "You can help him, can you not?"

"Blast it, William!" the giant, Hughes, swore through clenched teeth, grabbing the alchemist by the arm.

"Language, Hughes," Octienne scolded, peering at the grip on his bicep.

Hughes pulled him outside of the attic room and closed the door, which left Alyn with the exhausted stranger from beyond the barrier. Abraham guzzled the last of the water in his mug and dropped it to the floor. He curled into his chair, yawned, and closed his shadowed, milky eyes.

Alyn crept to the door to listen to the muffled voices behind. She lifted the flap of her faded aviator's cap and itched the hair away from the sensitive pink underside of her long, inhuman ear. She scratched the fur of its topside, which was tucked up in the cap, uncomfortably cramped against her skull. It always felt nice to let the air touch her freakish ears.

"... thinking bringing a refugee here? The plague is contagious, Octienne. That is the reason that no other towns are accepting Ban-Ken refugees, if the poor bastards do manage to escape those blasted walls," the stranger, Master Hughes, growled. His voice did not sound like that of a kind man. It had an unyielding grit, the kind of grit that made the hairs stand on Alyn's nape. The kind of grit that made her cautious. "This town is full of imbeciles. Oddly enough, I didn't think that you were one of them."

"Oh, mark me, Hughes," the alchemist muttered, "I wouldn't call myself a fool for trying to save a life. I know you can help him. You're the only man in the darned country, excluding the city itself, that can. Don't you deny it."

Hughes snarled. "Well, unlike you, William, with your bleeding damn heart, I use my head." A footstep clunked on wood. "Haven't you noticed what he's wearing? And obviously, carrying the plague, we know he's from the city. The good people of Ban-Ken, the people that deserve to be saved, don't dress like that. He is a guard. What makes you think he's worth saving?"

Alyn picked up on the familiar shuffling sound of Master Octienne's slippers. After years studying under him, she recognized the nervous habit like a sixth sense.

"He's barely alive," breathed the alchemist. "You know as well as or better than I that the Shirs immunize their guards against the plague."

"Yes, so clearly he must have done something very wrong," Hughes snapped, "Wrong by their standards or by our standards, we don't know. But he's carried that tie with him all this way, so there's obviously some attachment to his old position, even still. I'd not give him my trust if he carved his heart right out and handed it to me."

"Then how about you tell me the cure formula and I can help him myself!" Octienne quipped. There was a silence, broken by a creak in the floorboards. "All right, all right. It's personal. Fine. You go ahead, then. Please, Hughes, for pity's sake."

The stranger heaved a bitter, heavy sigh. "Against all my better judgements... I'll do it. But you have to do something for me."

"Of course."

"How soon can you prepare a batch of my potion?"

Octienne gasped. "Heavens! You couldn't be out already, could you?"

"Ban-Ken's situation is getting worse by the month, Octienne. A plague-bearer outside the walls? It's unheard of, and I can't help but wonder if it is accidental, or more sinister—and I will question your man on this, have no doubt. Regardless, I'm leaving town. I need the potion for the road. It's time to finally get off my ass and do something about the blasted Shirs and their carelessness," Master Hughes spat. "And I'll need a prescription for the potion, as well."

"Oh, wonderful! Drew, that is wonderful!" Octienne gushed. "If I start now, I can let it brew overnight and have a barrel ready by morning!"

The giant grunted. "If the brew is ready tomorrow morning, then I will leave tomorrow morning. I'm sure nobody will miss me here. My students can be transferred to another teacher. You can take care of that, I'm sure."

"Yes, yes. Of course, I'll take care of it."

Alyn heard heels thudding on the wood floors. She knew Octienne to be light in his slippers. Hughes' heavy gloved hand fell on the door's handle, and Alyn quickly tumbled back.

The door caught the toe of her boot and brought her down.

"Oof!" Her hands flung to her ears and she hastily secured the flaps of her cap to cover them. She stared up.

Master Hughes dully regarded her, his whiskered lip curled. He kicked her legs from his path and pushed past, hard enough to bring out a yelp. "Eavesdropping. Typical! Octienne! Take her away."

Octienne chuckled behind the man's back. He cut himself off to fix Alyn with a glare, head shaking in disapproval. Alyn frowned and hugged her knees to her chest. She huffed indignantly.

"Actually, Master Hughes... she's had quite a bit of contact with the refugee. I'd very much appreciate it if you could make sure that she hasn't caught anything."

"Caught anything?" Alyn squealed and, horrified, pictured herself in the same sickly state. "But, you said—!"

The blacksmith laughed derisively, throwing his head back. "You can't be so foolish as to actually—"

Octienne sternly set his brow. "Hughes."

The scruffy hulk rolled his eyes and shook his head. "I'll look."

"Thank you," the alchemist nodded with a smile.

Master Hughes took the mug from Abraham and refilled it with water from a keg. He placed it by the zombie's legs and gestured to the door. "I'll walk you to the lab."

"Ah!" Octienne stepped back onto the stairway's landing. "Wonderful."

Hughes stopped before he closed the door and leered at young Alyn. "Don't touch anything, stupid girl."

The girl bristled, and her fingers gnarled to fists. She met the blacksmith's steady scrutiny with a glare, which was answered with a door in her face. The two masters' footsteps receded down the stairs.

Abraham moaned.

The girl pushed to her feet and tripped to the blacksmith's cluttered teaching desk. She poked his pens and patted his pile of books, touching freely, out of fleeting spite, what she was told not to touch.

Her interest in such harmless action soon faded, and she dropped to her rump in the master's chair. Her head tilted as her eyes fell upon a hard-covered royal red book where color appeared in slivers at the edges of the real—real!—paper pages.

"Food?" Abraham croaked.

"Yeah, I'm hungry, too."

"Crumbs."

She pulled the book out from beneath another and curiously opened it to a random page, which depicted a brightly colored image of a character in a peculiar suit of metal, with a flowing red cape attached.

"Ooh." She thumbed over to the next page and found another picture, but this page had more words. She turned the page over again.

"Lavender..." the stranger sighed, his eyes closed. He smiled dreamily.

Alyn looked up and acknowledged the pleasant smell for the first time with a long inhale. She closed the book and tucked it under her arm, hopping off the chair. The flowers perched in a rectangular pot on the windowsill, where they strained to capture whatever sun they could from the thick, polluted cloud cover over the settlement.

He must have taken them from the labs, she thought. Must like the way they smell.

Really, there was no use in keeping plants for non-alchemical reasons, as the costs often outweighed the benefits, and as such, meretricious or non-alchemical plants were only bred by collectors or environmentalists or the wealthy. The seeds for meretricious plants were hard to come by and expensive. Even after managing to get a hold of some, they required such care to maintain. There simply wasn't enough natural sunlight, or water.

Alyn put down the book on the bench at the semi-circle window and inhaled the petals. They were well cared for.

As she drew back from their sweet embrace, the heavy approach of Hughes clunked on the steel stairs. Alyn froze, her fingers suddenly cold in the pot.

The man trudged into the room and batted the door shut behind him.

Alyn turned and hid the book and the flowers behind her as best as she could with her body, but one hand remained in the flowers. She feared moving it quickly would draw more attention. Despite her stillness, the great bear's eyes locked on her and he bristled. His ears, cheeks and nose took on a red hue, and his massive fists clenched.

"You!" he snarled, and she jerked her hand away from the flowers behind. The blacksmith raised his great meat hooks to swat at her. "Get away from those! Away!"

Alyn scrambled a few paces, startled. "I was just...!"

"Keep your filthy hands to yourself, stupid girl," Hughes barked. He cupped his hands around his precious flowers and spoke to them rather than to her. "You were told not to touch anything. Just leave, girl."

"But..." Alyn looked to Abraham. "What if I caught that man's sickness?"

The blacksmith laughed. It was a harsh noise, like a bark. Condescending. "Oh, please. What did you do, drink his spit?" He shook his head and waved her off. "There is no way that you have picked up the illness. Get out, stupid girl. Get out." He picked up his book, shaking his head irritably. "Stupid, stupid girl."

Alyn frowned and puffed out her chest.

He thrust a finger towards the door. "Go."

Alyn bowed her head and glared at her feet. She slunk to the exit and sat by the door. Her legs crossed and her arms folded over her lap. With a huff, she muttered an insult too quiet to be heard.

The blacksmith took no notice. He neatly replaced his book on his desk and bent over the dozing refugee, who spread-eagled in his chair as though tossed there by a wind. Wavy locks curled over his cold eyes. His whiskers shifted in contemplation. He drew a silver flask from his pocket and straightened out to take a swig.

He leaned his hand on the back of Abraham's chair and kicked the man's shin to rouse him.

"Did you come here alone?" he questioned.

Abraham hauled up his heavy head and dragged open his slimy eyes. He eyed the alcohol first, then gradually lifted the weight of his tired scrutiny to his interrogator. "I am alone," he rasped.

"You are now," Hughes agreed impatiently, "but did you leave Ban-Ken with others?"

"All dead." The stranger lowered his gaze. "Two are a few miles from this town, by an old train."

Hughes snorted. "Octienne may be optimistic, but I am not. I doubt you survived your companions by sheer miracle." He lifted his flask. "Miracles don't exist. Snakes do." After a swallow of his drink, he set the flask beside a barrel on the counter by the window. He dragged his grubby fingers over his face. "I can't believe that Octienne interrupted my perfect schedule for this bullshit. You don't really believe that you deserve to be saved, do you? Give me your wrist."

With one boot, he pushed Abraham's chair nearer to the counter. The refugee clung to the wood. Once still again, he whined.

"Your wrist," demanded Hughes.

The sickly man moaned and heaved his bony wrist into Hughes' grasp.

"I'm not a snake, sir. They were malnourished to begin with, and I was not. Having a few more pounds is all that saved my life, by God, I swear! They died of natural causes!"

His filmy eyes wept, from plague or emotion, Alyn couldn't decide. She felt sympathy for him. Master Hughes turned the man's wrist over so that his knuckles faced the ceiling and unsheathed a knife from his waistband.

Abraham started. He tried to pull away, but with barely the strength of Hughes' little finger, there was nothing he could do. Alyn gasped and sat forward.

"Hey! I thought yous was s'pposed to save the man! You can't...!"

"Shut it!" The blacksmith snarled. He didn't even spare her a glance. "Keep struggling and I'll slit the underside."

Abraham whimpered and stopped, though his finicky trembling involuntarily carried on. "P-Please. Please, sir. D-don't—Don't kill me. I-I... I'm too young! I-I've come all this way! Dear God... m-mercy!"

Hughes flourished the knife like a pen and pressed its point to the refugee's flesh. Abraham pleaded and cried.

Alyn jumped from her seat and flailed her arms. "No, sir! You can't!"

She grabbed a hold of his forearm and tried to pull his knife-bearing hand away from the frightened refugee. He roughly threw her off.

"Don't," the blacksmith warned. He pointed the knife at her and deterred her heroism with an intimidating sneer. "Keep your damned hands to yourself. I told you to leave." He repositioned his blade over Abraham's wrist and pricked through the skin of the whining man. He dragged the knife diagonally down in a line. The wound wept runny, discolored blood. "The cure causes a buildup of heat inside the body, enough so that a handful of cells will burst, including the mutated ones causing the illness. Vasodilation ensues, hot blood flows through the dilated arteries to promote the carrying of heat away from his core, but besides through sweating and evaporation—inefficient with no sun, don't you think? Foolish girl—the heat won't go anywhere. It needs an opening to escape from, or it makes an opening by itself for heat to be released, along with pus and cell debris. Like baking bread. I can promise you that this way is more humane." He lifted his knife and drew a second, smaller line in the flesh, across the other. Both cuts, forming an 'X', were deep.

Alyn frowned. She hesitated and hovered at Abraham's side. The master was very far from conventional, she thought. "I- I don't get it. I don't get any of it." But she saw Abraham relax with understanding.

Hughes held a piece of cloth to the wound. With his other hand, he sheathed his knife and drew a capped syringe from a pocket in his trench coat. "Are you still here? Blast, child! Do I have to throw you out myself? I am busy. And you don't want to see this."

Alyn stepped back.

Abraham squinted up at the giant. "Un... untreated cure? But, that's..."

"Outdated," interrupted Hughes shortly.

"Impossible," finished Abraham, perplexed. The refugee's brows pinched. He licked his raw lips. "What did you say your name was?"

The blacksmith bit the cap off the syringe and spat it to the floor. "I didn't." He dropped the cloth from Abraham's oozing arm and flicked the tip of his needle as he knocked out the air bubbles. "This will hurt."

Abraham's eyes fell to his lap, and when Alyn searched for them, she found that the pathetic film had lifted by some illusion, replaced by a calculating clarity that she couldn't understand. She felt a chill up her spine, a sense that made her wary.

She knew the master's name, for she'd heard it from Octienne. Master Drew Hughes, the reclusive blacksmith; and one look at him told her that he wasn't interested in sharing his name with the refugee. One look at the refugee told her that it was likely best he didn't know.

"May I have your name, sir?" he asked.

"Why?" Hughes barked. He wielded his syringe like a weapon. Abraham's arm continued to seep. The unhealthy mixture of blood and pus dripped to the floorboards. "Suddenly interested?"

The refugee's eyes dulled. Just there, in that moment. He raised his pitiful gray gawp again to meet Hughes' cold gaze. "Just curious about the man saving my life." A faint, close-lipped smile accompanied his lie. "I am Abraham Walters. It's nice to meet you, mister...?"

Alyn chewed on the inside of her cheek and retreated behind Hughes, watching the stranger with new caution, suddenly uncomfortable. Her boots shifted.

"Master," snapped Hughes. "Master Smith, to you."

"Apologies, Master.... 'Smith'..." Abraham shivered and wiped his yellowed brow. His eyes gave away his bitter disappointment at the false name, but with an irritated twitch, he let it go. Perhaps he knew that he was arousing suspicion. He regarded his arm. "I feel faint," he squeaked. "You're bleeding me out, sir."

Hughes narrowed his eyes. He clenched his fist around the bleeding wrist of the living corpse and forced his needle into the crook of the man's elbow. The weasel squealed and squirmed.

"Ah! Ah, ah!"

"There's a black market for the untreated cure. Retired scientists from your laboratories don't always keep their confidentiality."

"Y-Yes, I-I assumed nothing else!" the refugee whimpered. "I just had a moment of hope, that's all!" He thrust out his other arm, wrist upturned. There was a little tattoo, like an oversimplified eye. The blacksmith's eyes widened, then narrowed. He grimaced and glanced off to the window.

"How silly of me!" Abraham continued, with a hysterical chuckle, "I'm faint. I'm tired. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, and I am dying. Excuse my confusion. I suppose I shouldn't be hoping for miracles anymore. Please, sir! Please!"

Hughes sneered and injected the red solution. "I don't have pity for you. As far as I'm concerned, you should have been left where you were." He pulled out the needle and discarded it on the counter.

Abraham's eyes bulged and he groped at where he had been pricked. His frail body went rigid.

"Stand back, girl," grunted the blacksmith.

Alyn hid tentatively behind him, clutching a fistful of his coat. He shifted away and prodded her fingers off.

The refugee moaned in anguish. He trembled and rubbed at his arm. His fingers twitched and his eyes flicked back and forth.

"What's happening?" Alyn asked.

The giant peered at her. "For the last time, girl, you don't have the plague. Octienne was just being... bothersome. You can leave."

Abraham screamed and fell from his chair. Alyn recoiled, gasping. He writhed and kicked. Steam trickled from the cut on his wrist.

Alyn stared in absolute horror at the man on the floor. Every movement he made bruised him, yet he would not stop moving. Sporadically and violently, his limbs pounded the floor and threatened to snap. His tortured, ceaseless howling grated on the girl's sensitive ears, and the flesh around the blacksmith's incision bubbled.

Master Hughes picked up his flask and lumbered to his desk. He slouched in his chair and pulled a stack of papyrus slabs towards himself, apathetic to Abraham's wails. "Sook."

Alyn bit her thumb and scurried after the blacksmith. He ignored her. She crouched by the feet of his chair and cowered behind his desk. Though the imagery startled her, and the sounds crushed her heart, she couldn't resist peeking at the suffering snake.

Abraham's cries subsided gradually to moans, and after an agonizingly long few minutes, he fell out of consciousness. His breath staggered. The cut on his arm, cauterized from the inside out, left a permanent and ugly scar.

Master Hughes lifted his gaze to the man when he grew silent. He swirled his silver flask and ran a pen over a stained slab of papyrus.

Alyn scanned the corpse from a distance. After thought, she approached the fallen man and stared at his bright red arm. His skin already looked healthier. Malnourished and taut, but clearer. The yellow tinge was less prominent.

Hughes rose to bat her away. His aggression towards her had reduced to meager annoyance. The annoyance one might have for a tormenting fly. "Again, child, you may leave."

Alyn blinked and pointed to the tattoo on the man's right wrist, the one that looked vaguely like a squashed eye. "What's that tattoo? Is it s'pposed to mean something?"

Hughes crouched beside her and gave her only his words in the acknowledgement of her presence, not his attention. "It means nothing. Anyone can tattoo themselves." His eyes followed his hands to the refugee's pockets.

Hughes drew three items from the man's left pocket and nothing from the right. He poked the trinkets around in his palm and abruptly stood. "Go and tell Octienne to meet me here at five."

"I'm not your apprentice. You can't order me..."

"Go. Now."

(A/N: in the illustration, the dialogue bubbles aren't relevant. It was just an artwork posted on my DeviantArt a year or two ago! Wasn't specifically made to illustrate this chapter, but more to show some story aspects to followers of my art. Decided to upload it here anyways.)