01: Reprieving

"Can I eat him now?"

Andrew stirs at the sound of the strange voice. It's deep and low, almost a growl. He feels it resonating through his bones with its inhuman quality.

Then the world seems to churn, waving under him, turning his groggy mind into jelly.

"We don't know he's dead yet," says a different voice from the first. This one is feminine.

"But he hasn't moved," growls the first, just as something rough and wet nudges into Andrew's foot.

"Stop that!"

The feminine voice is coming clearly now. She sounds familiar. Andrew tries to focus, to let memory unveil the unconscious mystery from his mind. He feels heat, water lapping at his heels. He opens his eyes, then closes them almost immediately against the hot sun.

"See, he doesn't move."

"Wait. I think he did."

Andrew feels the ground beneath him quiver. Water splashes on his shins, cool and welcoming. A shadow leans over him.

"More," he tries to say to it, but only managed a raspy wheeze. But whoever is above him seems to understand. Andrew hears the sound of a canister being unscrewed, followed by a stream of water trickling right into his open mouth.

Cold. Merciful. Andrew gasps it down hungrily.

"Can't eat him?" the inhuman voice asks. "I waited so long."

"I'll find some shellfish for you," says the female. "Would that make you feel better?"

Andrew feels the world shake under him again as the first voice says, "Oh yes." And the shaking almost makes the stream miss his mouth. He cranes towards it, swallowing it all. He can feel it hitting his stomach in the wrong way but that's a problem for future him to deal with. Right now, all he cares about is consuming as much of the heavenly liquid washing over his face as he can.

Too soon, it stops.

"No," he croaks, searching blindly to the sky like some pathetic baby bird. "More."

"That is all you get," says the female voice. "If you want more, you'll have to work for it." Andrew feels her presence near. She's leaning right over him, whispering in his ear. "Equivalent exchange, remember?"

A spark ignites inside Andrew's mind, chasing away the dizziness of sleep. He opens his eyes, but the shadow has moved away and he's left staring into the light once again. He turns his head, tries to roll on his side, but his body will not listen. He collapses back down, his flesh betraying him with its weakness. "Wait," he says, but there is no one to answer him. Behind him, he hears the sigh of water being parted, and then it's quiet.

Andrew wakes sometime later with the sun no longer in his face. Still, the damage is done. His eyelids feel like they've thinned into parchments and burn when he opens them. The sun is setting. There's water all around. He's lying on a wooden raft the size of a double bed, drifting aimlessly in a world unknown to him. But as the realization of the horrors of his situation is still dawning on him, Andrew feels his stomach rolling.

"Oh, no..." Struggling to his side, he heaves and vomits out the water he drank earlier. He tries in vain to hold back, even cupping his hands together to catch the liquid, but it dribbles between his fingers and through the cracks in the logs beneath him.

"Gods... be damned, no!"

Andrew lays back down. He wants to wail, to cry, but even this is too taxing. Through half-opened eyes he watches the sky turning from orange to purple. Over on the horizon, balls of white hang from the heavens like a field of cotton. And all around him, everywhere Andrew looks, is water.

He remembers the voice. Just like that, he remembers.

He gets up to his knees, ignoring the splinters piercing into him. Memory floods into his mind, battering reality into shreds. The fire, the siege, the start of all this chaos caused by none other than...

"Victoria!"

Andrew lurches towards the edge of his raft, memory striking him back into hysteria. The water is a rusty orange color from the setting sun, the waves swelling in dizzying circles. Andrew plunges his face into the water. "Victoria!" he screams, ejecting bubbles across his face and eyes. "Victoria!"

The water is turquoise, darkening into black below. Andrew waits. Silence answers him from the deep. Finally, eyes and lungs burning, he pulls out for air.

Panting and shaking, he tries to think. It's too difficult. Exhaustion takes place of hysteria. His consciousness is stuffed with cotton. Andrew lays back down, closes his eyes, watching the image of Victoria opening like a puss-filled wound.

That red hair, those sea-blue eyes...

Not that.

Andrew pushes on, past the painful memories, past the good ones to come to the end, to the last time they saw each other.

Did she look back when she left him? Did it matter?

Andrew shakes his head, the log below him grinding into his skull. No, he supposes it doesn't. One way or another he will die here, because if there's one irrefutable law that governs the realm of men and gods alike, it's that there can be no two alchemists living at the same time. Such is the teaching left behind by his former master, and one Andrew has proven to be true himself.

Lying still on his raft, Andrew falls back into unconscious rest, thinking of how he may kill the love of his life.