The bread sat like lumps of coal in Andrew’s pocket. He had one in each, and plucked crumbs from the right pocket as he paced within his chambers. He didn’t touch the bread in his left pocket at all.

The sky gradually darkened. Andrew went to the door, then pulled away from it. Time ticked along. Fifteen minutes had passed since he left Doctor Davis in the dining hall. He’d planned to go straight to the beach from there, but the thought of moving while there was still light felt too dangerous, too obvious. So he waited, paced, and waited.

Twenty minutes passed. Half an hour.

Andrew turned to the window. Should he climb down? The moon was out now. But, no. He was too late. He allowed too much time to pass, and now he didn't have enough left for a return trip. Sighing, he sat on the bed and pulled his hands out of his pockets.

He felt both frustrated and relieved.

I guess I didn’t really want to go, even though I'll need to eventually.

Andrew's right hand went back in. The bread was full of holes now, and felt like his fingers were exploring the surface of a lump of hard cheese. He pinched a tiny bit, brought it to his mouth, and as he let the crumb moisten on his tongue, he toyed with the idea of not leaving the castle at all. Could he somehow let reality slip away until it was too late to look for it again?

The sun went down completely, giving the moon free reign of the sky's light. The hour was up. Andrew rose from his bed and started towards the laboratory.

Passing through dark hallways, Andrew kept his head low. The sheep homunculi were out and about, some busy lighting the torches on the walls, others cleaning up the residues of day. He didn't want to look at any of them. His hand went to his left pocket, patted the intact piece of bread, and kept walking.

He was early. No lights were on inside the laboratory, and nothing was moving. Andrew took a match from a desk by the wall and struck the lanterns. Light flooded the room, glancing off the sleek marble slab. It made the alchemy circles dance.

A smaller wooden table was flush against the slab, a dark cube protruding from its middle. Andrew went over and saw that the cube was a sheet of black cloth covering something underneath. He gently pinched a corner and lifted.

"Naw!"

A brightly-feathered bird battered its wings against the steel cage. Andrew dropped the cloth and lept back in surprise. His fingers drifted towards the bread in his pocket.

"Gawd!" the bird cried once more, muffled slightly by the cloth covering its cage. "Oh Naw!"

The door flew open, making Andrew jump again.

“Is everything prepared?” asked Doctor Davis as he strode into the room, the ends of his white coat trailing behind him.

Andrew took a second to find his voice. “N-not yet, Doctor.”

“Then get to it!”

Andrew scurried around the Doctor, pulling out trays of equipment from their perspective drawers. He wheeled a trolley of potions and stones over by the Table, placing four fist-sized gems in each corner of the marble slab.

“Have you reminded yourself of the difference between Life and Vitality Water?”

“I won’t make the same mistake, Doctor.”

“You will not make any new ones, either.”

The Doctor stretched his hands into a pair of rubber gloves, then stepped over to examine his workbench. It was aligned with all sorts of steel tempered tools, all of which Andrew had seen him use before in various ways. As the Doctor flicked a few scalpels into place, he looked excited, happy even.

“Send for Ignar.”

Andrew’s hand went to his left pocket. “I’ve actually been thinking about something, Doctor.”

“Do it later. Ring the bell.”

“It’s about our future experiments," Andrew insisted. "I was thinking if there might be people who would willingly become test subjects.”

The Doctor wasn’t listening. He went over to the cage and yanked off the cloth with a flourish. The bird slapped its wings and crowed.

"Oh, Naw! Oh, Gawd!"

Feathers floated to the ground. They were so red it seemed like the bird was bleeding. "Gawd! Naw!"

“Much prettier than a rabbit, isn’t it?” Doctor Davis said as he leaned in to look at the bird. “Ignar caught it. Impressive, how he did it.” He shot a wry smile at Andrew. “I’m thinking I should give your position to him. What do you think about that?”

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Andrew said nothing. He went over to the opened door and rang the bell that was hanging off the wall.

They heard Constantia’s screams long before she was brought into the room. Dragged behind Ignar, she was still bound by her hands but her feet were free. She trailed grime and blood behind her as she stumbled up the stairs. The leather bit in her mouth had slipped and her cries rang through the lab.

“You monsters... You're beasts, worst than monsters!”

“A strong voice,” said Doctor Davis. “It would be interesting to see if this one can talk after.” He waited until Ignar hauled her to him before asking, “What is your name, child?”

Constantia’s expression froze as she took in the laboratory. Her eyes darted from the Doctor to Andrew.

“Don’t look at him,” Doctor Davis said. “He will not help you. I’ll ask again. What is your name?”

She had been fighting, Andrew could tell. There were faint blue patches on her cheeks and arms, no doubt from where Ignar might've hit her. Those will bruise. But it won't come to that.

“Constantia,” she said in a small voice. "Summers."

“Do you have family, Constantia?”

Again, Constantia's eyes darted towards Andrew. He looked away. “N-no. I was… I live in an orphanage.”

“Good,” said Doctor Davis, though Andrew wasn't sure who this news was good for. “Put her in place, Ignar.”

Grinning, the wolf-man jerked Constantia along by her collar. Tears streamed down the girl's swollen cheeks as she stumbled on drunken feed. As she passed Andrew, she whispered in a choking voice only loud enough for him to hear, "She better be safe."

Andrew stepped aside. Then, as Ignar took Constantia to the table, he spent the last few moments of preparation fiddling with the potion bottles.

“Up you go,” said the wolf-man. With a thick paw of a hand, he grasped Constantia by the neck and threw her over. She let out a pained sob, and before she could recover, her hands and feet were chained to the stone, one limb pointing to each corner. She kept on sobbing.

Ignar bowed his head towards the Doctor. “We are ready, Master.”

Doctor Davis stepped up to the Table. The joy on his face was gone. His face was an emotionless mask, one carved with the look of great concentration.

“Let us begin,” he said, then frowned. “Ignar, could you silence that churlish ruckus first?”

Ignar raised a fist and cracked it across Constantia’s mouth. Blood splattered across the stone. Andrew stared at the bird in the cage. It was looking back at him, its little black eyes unblinking. Andrew had the uncomfortable feeling that it knew what he was hiding. He felt for the bread in his left pocket. It was there.

Ignar raised his fist again.

“That’s enough, Ignar,” said the Doctor. “You did well. Now leave.”

“Thank you, Master,” Ignar said. His thin lips pulled back into a yellow grin. “I will await your call.”

Doctor Davis waited until the door to the laboratory was shut before saying, “The bird, Andrew.”

Andrew obeyed. He set the cage down between Constantia’s legs. It sat snugly against her inner thighs, as if it always belonged there, as if Constantia Summers had grown up to fulfill this exact purpose.

Doctor Davis brushed Andrew aside and held out a bottle of yellowish liquid.

"Wind Song," he announced, then began to pour. The liquid dribbled down the black bars. The bird shrieked as drops landed on its feathers, seeping through the red.

"Oh Gawd, Naw!"

When the bottle was half empty, the Doctor brought it towards Constantia, drizzling the rest onto her legs, then up towards her belly and chest.

“It’s cold,” Constantia whined. “Gods, it’s so cold.”

“It’ll be over soon,” Doctor Davis promised. “Are the stones in the correct places, Andrew?”

Andrew didn’t answer. He was staring at Constantia’s body. Where the liquid seeped over, the skin had started to turn grey.

The air turned sour. Andrew was snapped out of his daze as the alchemy circles on the slab began to glow. Brilliant red light seeped through Constantia’s body, illuminating her insides like a powerful torch. She started to wriggle, then thrash against the chains holding her down. But it was useless. Fear bleached the color from her face. Her eyes bulged. She opened her mouth to scream something, but Andrew couldn’t hear the words over the roaring in his own ears. He felt electricity build along his own skin, coursing along the nerves and roots of his very being as standing on the other side of the Table, Doctor Davis began to chant.

“Illud non moritur, quod polleat usque morari.”

Andrew had heard the chant the Doctor used for his transmutations. But each time the words felt new, too alive to be familiar.

“Temporibus miris, Mors, potes ipsa mori!”

The Doctor spoke faster. Words tumbled out of him in a stream. Andrew felt them manifest in the air, kissing his skin like cold butterflies. He closed his eyes, feeling the power behind them, the evil to their promises. His fingers hovered over the Table, picking up the vibrations coming off it. He pictured the jagged red diagrams peeling off the marble, reaching out to him, wrapping around his mind with their powerful tendrils…

A foul stench blew through the room.

Doctor Davis bellowed, “Life Water!”

Andrew’s eyes snapped open. Constantia had gone still. Dark flames wrapped around her body, bubbling into her skin like she was a wax figure. Andrew threw himself over to the trolley, his hands fumbling for the right potion. He froze. There is was, the green vial next to the light green one, the one that would botch this experiment and kill the subject. The two vials were so similar that anyone could’ve mixed them up.

But Andrew never did. He’d meant to give the Doctor the wrong one yesterday. He hadn’t wanted another empty-eyed abomination stalking the halls of this dark castle.

“Quickly! Now!”

Andrew’s fist closed around the glass beaker. He hadn’t wanted that woman to suffer, so he botched the transmutation so she would die.

But was death really an escape?

Flames erupted along the edge of the alchemy table. Doctor Davis howled as his sleeves burst into orange tongues of fire.

“What the devil are you waiting for?!” he cried, his voice breaking with fear Andrew had never known the man to possess. "Help me, gods be damned! Ignar!"

Andrew whirled. The beaker flew through the air, crashing into the spinning inferno. With a whoosh of broken glass, the beaker’s contents went up in a purple cloud, taking the fire along with it.

The Doctor's fearful cries turned into triumphant ones. “It is work-”

But before the words could even finish leaving the Doctor's lips, Andrew heard the sound of stone cracking. He looked over to the head of the table, just in time to see the large sapphire, placed in the direction of North, shattering into dust.

And then he was flying to the ground. His head smashed into something hard and his eyes failed him. Andrew tried to scream or to breathe, but all the sound and oxygen had left his lungs. It felt, in that instance, like the world was a balloon and they’d just been caught playing with needles.