She held his gaze firmly. “We need to know for certain, Eik. We need to know if she’s actually going to die this time.”

“I know.”

“It’s dangerous to snoop around. Very dangerous. But if Menka wasn’t properly dealt with… she’s not going to botch a murder attempt three times in a row. She will kill us next time.” Sonja was pale. “I can’t take being in the dark. I can’t sleep.”

Eik could see her hands trembling as she white-knuckled the hem of her shirt. Dark bags hung under her eyes. She was always so calm and collected that Eik hadn’t expected her to be this nervous. No, it made sense. She had every right to be feeling this anxious.

In fact, he was feeling it too. Burying his mind deep into his alchemy learning had done wonders to keep it occupied but when he lay in bed at night, trying to fall asleep, his stomach was in knots. His breathing wouldn’t settle and his heart wouldn’t relax.

They were in the clutches of the Nidafjeld Alliance. There was no denying that. Whether that was a good thing or a civilization ending thing only time would tell. The fact of the matter was that there no current alternative.

He believed Atla when she claimed that other civilizations — stronger civilizations — would take any opportunity to commit omnicide on Earth for their own benefit, and the Gohkamorian’s own indirect admission to his kin’s merciless, yearlong incursion into Earth confirmed as much.

For now, all he and his teammates could do was to bite the sour apple and try to steer this ship, on board of which was every fellow human, through this storm and try to hit as few rocks as possible on the way.

“I agree,” he finally said. “We can’t just leave it be.”

“We’re going to have to figure out a way to find out for ourselves what her fate is.”

After Eik and Sonja shared their intention to ascertain the truth of the alliance’s claim regarding Menka Tokanami, the four of them began to wander the halls of the headquarters whenever they had time.

Eik still continued to spend his evenings deep in concentration in front of the alchemy cauldron but during the daytime they split up to look.

Besides the decidedly disturbing undertaking, it was a great opportunity to explore the grounds of the headquarters. He found a garden absolutely overflowing with fruit trees, among which were an enormous plot of nothing but orange pear trees.

Two hours away he found what he at first had mistaken for a gigantic, raised training platform, but while it was certainly both gigantic and raised, it turned out that training platform was not quite right. He talked to some men there who were constructing a breathtaking skeleton of metal beams all around it and found out that this would become an arena used in the upcoming tournament.

They promised him that it was always a blast, livened up the place significantly, and that it was something he could definitely look forward to. Knowing that his participation was expected, Eik wasn’t so sure that he could.

Although he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t excited. Recently he had realized that the thought of dying scared him without a doubt but that the thought of fighting awoke something more akin to anticipation deep in the pit of his stomach.

With each day that yielded no results they expanded the search grid. But as it broadened, so did they come to realize that the place truly was far, far too large to reasonably expect anything to come out of their hopes to find anything that could cast light upon Menka’s fate.

It was difficult to even say what they were looking for. Anything. It just felt like they had to do something to not go crazy. To feel like they were working to resolve their issues instead of waiting for the pieces to fall however they would.

***

Eik sat at the table that had become his seat of choice since he’d started his studies. The multidimensional matter sat comfortably in his hand, swirling and looping like a ribbon in the wind. He’d held it there for almost ten minutes, just trying to relax into the sensation of it.

With a deep exhalation, he began the second phase — the one he had failed so many times now. Slowly and deliberately he pushed it down through his arms to his hand. Here he kept it for a moment and let it churn as he regained control.

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It had taken another three days to realize that letting it go too quickly through his hands caused it to rush out like a stick of dynamite. And then three more to progress to here.

At a snail’s pace it flowed through each knuckle of his fingers until, finally, it slid up against the inside of the skin and came out like a thick smoke. Gradually the alchemical mix began to glow faintly as it became permeated by the energy.

Eik could tell that something was happening but he didn’t dare to so much as crack an eyelid for fear of losing even a sliver of the concentration he was holding on to so desperately. He inhaled but his racing heart forced him to release it again in a trembling breath.

Once he had expelled all of the energy he had managed to scrounge up with his novice ability, he put his face close to the mixture and inspected it. Was this what it was supposed to look like? He’d managed to catch a glimpse of the faint glow just as he opened his eyes but it had faded as soon as he had noticed it.

Besides that it didn’t really look any different at all. He’d have to find Mikla and ask him if he had actually done it right.

Just as he put his nose to the hopefully finished product and gave it a good, deep sniff, the front door burst open with a loud bang, shock jolting him so hard that he squished his nose into the sticky concoction.

“Geh!” he grunted as he slid off the chair and onto the floor.

“Oh… Uuh, sorry,” Heath said from the doorway. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Uh huh. What’s up, Heathy?” Eik asked and blew out the mush that had gone up his nostrils, happy that the mixture hadn’t been something worse. He got off the floor. “Did you- Did you find something?”

Heath’s mouth tightened into a line. “No, and that’s the problem. Eik, we’re never going to find anything like this! It’s been six days and I’m tired of it! I know you are too!”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong. What do you propose?”

Heath hesitated for several seconds before he spoke. “It’s going to sound a little uncomfortable, but I already talked to Sonja about it.”

“Okay…” Eik drawled. “And what did she say to it? And more importantly, what is it?”

“Well, okay, hear me out…”

***

“Guys… This feels a little risky, to be honest,” Michael said as they approached the doors of the fracture hall. The guards scanned them for their identities before letting them through. Two fractures were active this time, one with a group and the other with just one person waiting for something.

“It feels risky because it is risky.”

“So why are we doing it?”

“Because we can’t think of a better idea,” Heath said.

“Yeah, okay, fine.”

This time Mikla was the one to open the door of the small office. He’d noticed them through the large window that offered a full view of the fracture hall and come out to meet them before they had even had a chance to knock.

Eik caught a glimpse of Ihasu over Mikla’s shoulder. She was reading something but had looked up when the door opened. She smiled warmly and offered a wave which he returned, Mikla smirking like an unruly fox. Eik considered punching the fracture specialist in the shoulder but reconsidered it once he remembered that the smaller man could literally slap him into a different universe.

“What can I help you with?” he asked.

“We’ve got a request,” Sonja said and stepped in front of the guys.

Mikla tilted his head and waited for her to continue.

“We… would like to see Menka Tokanami.”

The black-haired man’s eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline. “You want to—… Why in the world would you want to see her? She tried to kill you. Twice. I recommend just forgetting that she exists.”

Sonja glanced back at her teammates. “Closure. We did everything we could to help her son and, while we weren’t able to save him in the end, we did not deserve to be hunted down like that. We want to tell her how we feel.”

If the size of one’s ears changed according to how intensely one was trying to listen in on other people’s conversations, Eik didn’t doubt that Ihasu’s would have been flapping around like an elephant’s.

Mikla regarded them for a long moment as he seemed to contemplate a response. He scratched his hairless chin as he frowned. “Alright, we can take this to Atla, I suppose. She’s got the final say. Give me two hours to finish my shift and I’ll take you to her quarters.”

They strolled through the pine forest where Eik had met with Mikla before as they waited, walking along the winding paths and breathing in the fresh air. Two hours later they stepped through a fracture and into the same front room of Atla’s quarters where she had greeted them after the Crucible.

When they brought up their wish to see Menka again, a look of positive surprise crossed her face. She was quicker to agree than Mikla had been, promising to take them to Menka’s prison cell the next day.

That night Eik succeeded in reproducing his accomplishment from earlier and made a second successful batch of alchemical pain killers. It was as if that first breakthrough had refined his body and mind somehow. Where he had been forced to take breaks as he guided the energy through his body before, it now slid through without a need to stop like a viscous honey — still slow but magnitudes faster than before.

Following the final step of the recipe, Eik pulled out a small wad of a non-toxic wax-like substance that he had bought from the store on the corner downtown. Mixing the sticky pain killer carefully into the wax, he rolled the medicine into about a dozen balls.

Over a small fire he heated the balls just enough to harden the surface wax to a brittle shell that could easily be bitten through. Mikla approved wholeheartedly of his accomplishment.

“Any alchemist who hears about the speed at which you managed to do this — as well as anybody who endeavors to gain power — will kick themselves with envy,” he laughed. “What’s your next project again?”

“I’m going to try for Kiq’s Temper.”

“Oh, right. Be careful with that one. It’s a little volatile.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard.”

In the morning Atla led them through a portal that spit them out in a different fracture hall. A ten minute walk found them waiting in front of a thick metal door, guards once more scanning their identities.

Once their identities had been confirmed, one of the guards took a whole minute to unlock the heavy door and told them to follow him inside. He stepped in ahead of them and held it open for them as they entered, his face concealed by a mask that hid even his eyes from view.