The Gorgon Incident and Other Stories by John Bierce

Author:John Bierce [Bierce, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Dead Alchemists

Dead Alchemists is set fifty years before Mage Errant.

A bold alchemist is a dead alchemist.

Alchemy is a dangerous science— even in its most mundane aspects, alchemists work with countless toxic substances, powerful flames, molten metal, and other threats to one’s health. Alchemists needed to be cautious at all times— to act brashly was to invite horrible death.

Garen never took risks, and his teachers tended to approve, when they bothered to notice him.

Better a coward than a risk taker, in alchemy.

The first time Garen saw someone die was in his second year at Skyhold. One of his classmates was joking around and balancing a vial of acid on his finger and spilled it into a dish of rare salts.

The resulting explosion wasn’t powerful, but three students choked to death on the fumes.

The joking classmate who had caused the incident survived it. The investigation was short and swift. A mere accident would have been mourned but tolerated, but gross negligence of this sort was utterly unacceptable. The jokester’s exile from Skyhold was immediate and permanent, though some of the alchemists complained that they should have replicated the alchemical reaction for the prankster.

Alchemists weren’t well known for their sense of humor. They had a keen grasp of irony, however.

Quite a few of Garen’s classmates left the department altogether after that, transferring to either enchanting or healing— alchemical training had a decent bit of overlap with both. Others dropped out of Skyhold entirely.

Garen didn’t even consider leaving. Healers and enchanters were no more forgiving about this sort of thing than alchemists.

Besides, that sort of major shift in career path was a rather bold move. And Garen wasn’t bold in the slightest.

Ambitious, yes. Bold, never.

A distracted alchemist is a dead alchemist.

If you didn’t pay attention to your work, you’d ruin it at best. Burns, disfigurement, and death were even more likely.

Garen was the portrait of perfect focus, and he had absolutely no patience for the rest of his classmates. They were constantly getting distracted by their meaningless social lives, falling in and out of love with each other, and gossiping when they should be focusing.

Worst of all of them, to Garen’s mind, were Mayda and Bagram. She was beautiful; he was handsome. Both were constantly praised by the teachers— more even than Garen, though he deserved it more. Both were somehow athletic and tan, unlike the rest of the pale alchemy students, all withering away deep under the mountain.

They hated each other immediately.

Garen ignored their rivalry at first— he didn’t have time for the silliness of the other students. Garen aspired to more than a mere job in the alchemy labs— he would be great someday. He would advance the world’s knowledge of alchemy in a way that his petty, distracted classmates would never do.

Still, even he had to admit to Mayda’s brilliance. Garen broke his rule of ignoring his lessers, willing to tutor her. He was, after all, the model of a good alchemist— she could do far worse than to follow in his footsteps.

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