Alenna knew the moment was upon her the second she heard the door slam open.

The man that stood in her doorway was no hulking warrior, possessed no long limbs or bulging muscles, but then again, Alenna didn’t need him to. All she needed was a willing host. Someone who wanted to grow stronger.

‘Did he send you?’ Alenna asked. The man nodded, so she gestured him over to her operating table.

This wasn’t the first man that her benefactor had sent her way—far from it—but it was the first since she’d found the answer. There, in that book that Lore’s friends had retrieved for her, had been the spell that she could use to stop the corruption spreading—a ward sustained by the lifeforce of its host, a ward that prevented the corruption from reaching the brain steam.

It had taken a few attempts to perfect the spell, of course. Alenna regretted that nasty business with the metal mage, and even more so all the damage that had followed. Ama would have been lost without Alenna’s intervention, but that large gentleman warrior should never have been hurt. That life weighed on Alenna, but she kept herself going with the knowledge that if she was successful, no lives would be lost to the malae ever again.

As the man settled on the stone platform, Alenna tapped the enchanted gems, and they blossomed into life, casting a vivid light all across the patient.

‘What do I call you?’ she asked.

‘Simm,’ came the reply, ‘though people call me the Councilman.’ This last bit seemed like it was added as a second thought.

‘Simm it is,’ Alenna replied, which seemed to cause the man to grumble. ‘Do you know why you are here?’

‘Yusef said you could make me stronger. Unstoppable, in fact. He used the words “perfect soldier”.’

‘And just what would you give up to become this perfect soldier, Simm?’

‘Everything.’

Alenna nodded. ‘Correct answer. Let’s begin.’ She turned away for the metal cabinets at the rear of her room, and began undoing the first lock. With this first lock, protections fell away—wards against sound, against light, against anything she could think of. There was no overdoing it when it came to caging the malae. Inside, crammed into a box too small for it, was one of these creatures. Alenna was comfortable enough with these boxes for now to know that she could hold it without danger to herself, though she still kept both eyes on it for any sign of escape.

‘The malae have always been a problem in the Beached Armada,’ Alenna said as she placed the mala box down and set out her tools. ‘The first one ever reported was found here, you know that? It was a few years after the invasion—that long ago. The invasion force, they’d had no real trouble with the people living here, but battling the malae? That nearly destroyed them.’

She took a step back, making sure she had everything in place—the patient, the mala, her tools, and the borrowed spellbook.

‘And as a result, we lost our ways. We forgot our central tenet—fight fire with fire, use our enemy’s strengths against them. That applies for monsters just as much as it does for people, I reckon. And the greater the strength, the greater the power we can extract. That’s how I’ll make you the perfect soldier, Simm. I’ll imbue you with the power of corruption. Are you ready?’

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‘Oh, yes,’ her patient replied.

‘Good.’

Alenna got to work. It was the ward that she’d focus on first; this was the most important step, and there could be no flaw in her work. If the ward had even the slightest gap, the corruption would find it in time. Her patient would end up one of those walking monsters, barely conscious yet just conscious enough to know that the corruption now controlled them. And Lore’s friends weren’t around right now to handle one, so she would need to be extra careful.

The ward glowed as she established it, before fading away as she tied off the magicks and allowed the man’s soul to feed it. She kept her hands on the man’s neck, just where she’d placed the ward, testing it, pushing at it, seeking any sign of weakness. But Alenna was right; she’d perfected it.

‘OK, Simm,’ she said. ‘You’re about to feel a slight pinch.’ Before her patient could react, Alenna lifted the box, pressed it against the man’s chest, and slid open one side, exposing flesh to corruption. She slid the side of the box back into place a moment later. There was no point overdoing it; even the slightest touch would fester, though it would take longer to do so. This gave Alenna time to escape if anything did go wrong.

The man cried out with pain as the mala touched his flesh, and the ward briefly glowed into life once more, reacting to this corruption. This ward would stop the corruption spreading to the man’s brain, but in theory it would also prevent the patient from spreading corruption with his touch. If such a powerful being could spread corruption as easily as that, then Coldharbour was doomed, so this really was the most important aspect of the procedure.

Alenna opened her mouth, beginning to talk to distract the man from the pain. He was turning into a living weapon, but he was a person, too. She would spare him the torture as much as she could. ‘I know it hurts, but it’s for a good cause. Think of all you’ll do when you’re the strongest being to walk Alterra. You’ll be able to destroy all the malae without risk to yourself, their corruption unable to hurt you. You’ll save us all. You’ll be worshipped. Doesn’t that sound good?’

The doctor lit her torch and pressed the flames against the wound on the man’s chest, causing him to cry out louder.

‘It hurts to become a god,’ she said. ‘But it’s worth it.’ It had to be.

After Alenna finished up the procedure, she stepped back from the patient as far as she could manage, her back up against the wall. She would give this Simm as much space as she could, but she needed to know whether or not this procedure had been successful. If it had, she would give him his orders. If it hadn’t… well, that didn’t bear thinking about right now.

The man stopped screaming. His breathing grew quieter, then silent, and then Alenna could no longer see his chest rising and falling.

‘...Simm?’ she asked.

The man didn’t reply, though his eyes were open.

‘Simm, are you—’

At that moment, the corrupted man swung his legs down from the platform, and he stared at her in silence with cold, black eyes.

‘Oh, good,’ Alenna said, relieved. ‘You’re alive. That’s good. Could you just reassure me that it’s still you in there?’

‘It is still me,’ the man replied. His cold eyes didn’t change.

Alenna resisted the urge to swallow. ‘OK, great. The hard part is done. The next part? You find the malae. You kill them. You save us all, and—’

Simm charged forward from the stone table in a flash, his limbs empowered by the corruption surging through them. Alenna barely had time to blink before the man’s hand was around her neck.

She tried to cry out, but the man squeezed tight. All she could do was gasp for air.

‘That sounded like an order,’ the patient said. ‘I’m done taking orders from the likes of you. You think I care about being worshipped? You think I care about this world anymore, now that I know what the Council intends? No. I care about only one thing now: revenge.’

Alenna gasped for air, struggling against the firm hand wrapped around her neck. ‘Please,’ she wheezed. ‘Let me—’

The perfect soldier squeezed.