The boat slides gently across the sand, marking the end of its journey with a sigh that sounds almost human.

Andrew jumps off the side, his feet once again touching ground. He kneels down, grabs a handful of sand, and rubs it all over his face.

“You know that’s never getting out of your hair,” Victoria says.

“Worth it,” Andrew says, looking over the raft that has done so much for him over the last months.

“Here.” Victoria leans across, a sharpened stick in her hands. “Last time I came here I made a wheelchair. But from here, you’re on your own.”

Andrew shakes his head. “I don’t need a weapon. Even if any homunculi are alive, they are literal sheep.”

“I know,” said Victoria. “I saw the burned bodies.” She holds the spear out further. “And I’ve seen him.”

Andrew takes the spear, not wanting to ask more. He thanks Victoria, then turns and stalks off into the island.

There is no green. The townsfolk burned everything in their path, and in each direction Andrew turns, he sees nothing but the colors of ash and dust. But, as he goes further inland, he finds mushrooms growing out of a blackened log.

A few hundred steps later, he finds ferns and grass sprouting from the gaps in the cracked dirt by his feet.

Life goes on, it seems.

As the castle’s spires come into view, the air grows crisper. The smog of charcoal lessens and the path opens to a bridge leading into the castle gates.

There is nothing there, of course, only ruins and the iron mechanisms of the draw bridge. To its west is an overturned carriage, the one Andrew has used to transport his victims.

Never again.

He goes around. The walls are spotted with arrows and stained with smoke, but otherwise stand firm. Eventually, Andrew wraps around the entirety of the castle and approaches the broken bridge from the west side.

It’s then that he spots a figure, sitting in the shade of an overturned cart.

Andrew gets closer. When he gets about twenty feet, the figure lifts its head and stares at him.

Sunlight trickles over the shadows, making the lizard’s eyes gleam.

Andrew lowers his spear. “Bartholomue?”

The lizard’s tongue darts out between his lips. “Young Master.”

“No way.” Andrew hurries over. “You’re alive!”

Bartholomue rises unsteadily. He has no arms to support himself, and the rest of his body has turned back into a more reptilian state, so every movement he makes looks like he’s doing some sort of writhing dance.

Andrew stops in front of the lizard man, surprise and relief mixing into one.

“I thought Doctor Davis… he…”

“He did,” Bartholomue says. “But he does not kill me.”

As they talk, a deep, mournful sound comes from the castle. It echoes through the walls in one unbroken note.

Bartholomue’s smile looks like a grimace. “Have you returned to finish the doctor’s work?”

Andrew nods. “I need to get across the moat. Do you know a way?”

The lizard answers, “Not long after you left, a girl comes through. She made a bridge. I burned it down.”

“I wished you’d waited.”

“Me, too.” The lizard starts slithering towards the bridge. Andrew follows.

When they reach the bridge’s base, Bartholomue turns to Andrew and says, “Use me.”

“What? How?”

Bartholomue turns his head to the sun. His eyes close. “You know. You are the Doctor’s assistant.”

“I’m not going to-”

“Andrew.”

Andrew stops. This is the first time he has heard his own name uttered from the lips of the lizard cook. It sounds too foreign that he doesn’t think Bartholomue even knows what he’s saying. But when the lizard opens his eyes again, they are clear.

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“The Doctor has not been bad to me,” he says. “Even though he has taken from me, he has given me more than I had.”

Andrew chuckles humorlessly. “I… somehow doubt that.”

“My human body was ill,” says Bartholomue. “I suppose the Doctor never told you that.”

“No,” says Andrew.

“That is why,” Bartholomue continues, looking directly at him now. “I wish to do this for him, to aid in the finality of his life.”

Andrew takes a deep breath. He watches as Bartholomue lays down by the edge of the moat, stretching out his green body straight. Then, the lizard closes his eyes for the last time.

“I am ready, Young Master.”

Without another word, Andrew walks over to Bartholomue. He places his hands on the ground, and with a flash of lightning and grinding stone, the lizard disappears.

In his place is a completed bridge, reaching over the chasm to the castle’s front gate.

Andrew looks down at the empty place by his feet. Only a scorch mark stands in the place where his cook has been. There is no fanfare or ceremony. Only destruction marks the existence of homunculi.

He only hopes the same fate will not befall Victoria.

The inside of the castle is in an even worse state than the day Andrew left it. The walls have peeled from the heat of the fire, the carpet is gone and all the furniture have been trashed. It seems like before setting fire to Andrew’s island, the people of Minerva had ransacked his home too.

He doesn’t blame them. He only wishes they did a more thorough job. How easy it will be if the alchemy table is destroyed with everything else.

Picking his way through overturned tables and demolished walls, Andrew finally reaches the staircase. The steps have stood through the damage but when Andrew walks on them, he hears ominous groans which make him want to turn back.

He distracts himself by counting the steps.

As he does, he sees the images of his childhood flash before him. A decade spent within these old walls, all lost now to fire and time. Andrew places his hand against the doorknob of the laboratory. So many times he has gone up these steps, opened this very door, and ended so many lives. Now, he will end one more.

He opens the door.

At first, nothing seems different. The windows are still shattered, wind still blowing ashes across the destroyed equipment. In the middle of the blackened floor is still the alchemy table, its marble surface still clean, the diagrams still red.

Even the Doctor is there, though there is something new about him.

He sits bound in a wheelchair, his lizard arms sliced off at the elbows. Steel chains wrap around his body like bandages, leaving barely enough for Andrew to see the man’s features, burned as they are.

Doctor Davis does not say anything, but his eyes follow Andrew as he comes closer.

Andrew stops in front of the wheelchair and crouches down. “I’m back, Doctor.”

Davis remains silent. His hair is all gone and whatever flesh left on his body has sagged around the chains like putty, and when Andrew places a hand on the Doctor’s leg, the texture of the skin is similar to the dried fish he ate on the sea.

Davis opens his mouth, showing shrunken gums and a few blackened teeth. “You shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t want to,” Andrew says. “But I have to put an end to our evil.”

“It is not evil,” says Davis. “It is merely progress.”

“For you,” Andrew says. He stands, raising his spear. “And for a long time, for me too.” He jabs the spear forward, into the doctor and the wheelchair.

Davis lets out a weak gasp. His eyes lock onto Andrew’s, then they roll back as Davis takes his last breath,

Andrew leaves the doctor and walks to the Table.

He places a hand on the cool marble. How many times has he secretly wanted to use it? How many restless nights imagining all the creations he could father with alchemy?

Andrew traces the blood-stained lines. He used to be fearful of them, then curious, then thirsty. Now, there is little else than disdain and conviction.

He takes his place at the head of the table.

The marble hums to life at the merest thought. Andrew needs only to ask, and the alchemy table answers, but he holds back. He doesn’t want to know. The time of changing the universe has ended. Now, it is time to pull back the curtains.

Andrew chants the words of transmutation. He closes his eyes, light filling behind them. He pours out his soul into the brightness, feeling it pouring back into him, promising more knowledge and power than any boy can hope to grasp.

He smiles to himself, imagining Davis standing in this exact spot, feeling these exact same feelings. And then he understands.

As the electricity builds inside the room, tossing broken stone and debris around in its hurricane, Andrew focuses everything he has into the table, and commands it to explode.

----------------------------------------

Andrew has always wondered what the end may be like. During the darkest days out on the ocean, he has allowed his mind to picture the worst things he can imagine. Fires and brimstone, devils and pain. He did that in the hopes such awful things may deter his body from giving up.

Never does he expect, however, for the end to actually come in the form of a beautiful girl, with flaming red hair and eyes the color of seagrass.

Andrew feels water splashing his face. He blinks, his eyes stinging.

More water. This time at his lips. Andrew cracks them open, allowing the liquid to seep down his throat.

It is cool. Fresh. Not the kind extracted with the Water Maker.

Andrew opens his mouth fully, guzzling the water as fast as it can come. It’s over too quickly. He reaches out his hands for more.

He hears a familiar giggle.

“This reminds me of your first day on the raft.”

Those words are like sunshine chasing away the storm clouds of his mind. Andrew opens his eyes, and sees a pair of bare feet standing in the sand next to his head.

Andrew sits up, gasping, “Victoria!”

The red-haired girl smiles. “You did it.”

Andrew looks back into the forest. It is lush once more, the woods replacing all the destruction. He turns back to Victoria. “Your legs.”

Victoria kicks at the sand. “Just like you said.”

They both look at each other, then laugh.

Finally, it was over.

Andrew gets up, holding onto Victoria’s arm for support. “What now?” he asks. “Do you… want to live on this island with me?”

When Victoria shakes her head, Andrew tries not to look as disappointed as he feels.

“I want to go home,” Victoria says. “And I think you ought to follow.”

Perhaps it is because his home is gone, or perhaps the evil that has bounded him for so long has disappeared, Andrew’s world opens up in front of him.

“I’d love that,” he says, surprising himself at the sincerity of his own words. “But… how do we get off this island?”

Victoria laughs. She points to the water, where a wooden raft is floating on the shoreline.

“I hope you’re not sick of sailing to do it one more time.”

Andrew shakes his head, and smiles. “No, because this time, I’m not running away from anything.”