Third Day Three
It felt good to be able to unburden herself to someone, Lillet Blan thought as she slipped through the dawn-lit corridors to her room. If her experiences held true, she had only three more days to figure out some way to deal with the Archmage and Grimlet, or else time would loop back again. Or maybe it would loop back again anyway. She’d made the first loop just in time to save herself from the Archmage, but had that actually been the trigger? It wasn’t as if the Philosopher’s Stone had been right there for her to interact with at the time...
She shook her head in frustration. There were still too many questions! But at least she’d solved the mystery of the stolen Titania grimoire and the identity of who’d freed the Archmage. And maybe with Bartido’s help, she could make some progress on the other problems.
I wish we’d had more time to talk, she thought. But it had taken long enough just to tell her story, and work her way past his initial reluctance (which, she had to admit, hadn’t been anywhere near as bad as she’d feared), so they’d agreed to meet and talk more later in the day.
Besides which, the Alchemy lab was probably the worst place she could think of for a comfortable talk.
She hoped that Margarita would be all right. She was obviously terrified of what could happen to her, and without Professor Gammel’s protection it was entirely possible that her fears could come true. Lillet didn’t really understand how certain parts of the country could burn witches and others couldn’t—Lillet’s own family and neighbors had been excited for her when she’d proven to have magical talent, as a way for her to earn a better life than that of a country peasant, even if magic was a little spooky.
It didn’t do any good to save Margarita from the Archmage, after all, if it just led to her meeting the same end at the hands of the law.
Lillet’s mind was still racing through the various situations and problems she still faced as she changed into her nightdress and cap, but even mental excitement was nothing compared to the exhaustion caused by being up all night, conducting a magical battle, and having multiple confrontations with her friends. She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
“Maybe I should have gone to Professor Gammel,” Bartido said darkly. “You should have seen Ms. Opalneria this morning. She was absolutely in a fury over the Archmage’s soul container being stolen. Mind you, I think it’s the first time I’ve seen her interrupt our work and get an actual reaction out of Dr. Chartreuse other than bored irritation. She ought to count that as a win.”
“Ms. Opalneria interrupts your work?” That was odd; she wondered what it meant. Was the alchemist up to something shady? Amoretta’s existence, certainly, was out of the ordinary...
Bartido chuckled.
“She’s got the hots for Dr. Chartreuse. Really, she’s like a lovesick schoolgirl, the way she carries on.”
Lillet tried to work her brain around the idea of the prim and reserved Ms. Opalneria acting like a lovesick anything, and failed miserably. It was just one of those things she’d have to see to believe.
“Mind you, she’s pretty hot when she starts getting excited. You’ve gotta like the Doctor’s willpower. Can’t say I’d have the strength to keep turning her down.” He shot her a huge grin.
“Geez! Could you be any ickier? I don’t know how Amoretta puts up with you!”
“Ohhh. don’t like me looking at other girls, do you?”
“...You know, this is a really tall perch for you to be such a smart-aleck on.”
They were sitting on the edge of one of the exterior corridors, a kind of arched breezeway that ran around the outside of the level. Lillet hadn’t wanted to risk talking anywhere near the professor’s research areas, and the library was out, too. She remembered seeing Margarita lurking and possibly listening when she’d been talking to Hiram and Bartido ten days ago.
Technically, I suppose it was today that I’d talked to them, just...two todays ago.
If this kept up for much longer, Lillet was afraid that she could end up getting very confused about what had and hadn’t happened from anyone else’s perspective!
In any case, she’d picked this open area since it would be almost impossible for anyone to get close enough to spy on them without being seen. Bartido had complimented her on her knack for intrigue, which she wasn’t sure was all that complimentary.
“But anyway,” he was saying, “you don’t have to be jealous of Amoretta. Sure, she’s pretty. Heck, she’s gorgeous—“
“You’re not really helping your case, Bartido.”
And it
did bother her, the idea of Bartido leering at Amoretta. It definitely raised her hackles to think of him saying something like “she’s pretty hot when she starts getting excited” about the homunculus. Moreover, Lillet recognized at once the difference there, between an amused snort at his appreciation of Ms. Opalneria’s looks and a genuine upset at the idea of his directing that same leering eye at Amoretta.
“You didn’t let me finish. Sure, she’s easy on the eyes, but...with her it’s like looking at a painting, or a sculpture, or that view out there.” He waved his hand at the panoramic view of the countryside offered by the open walk. “There’s nothing personal in it.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, you saw her there in the lab last night, so maybe you already thought something might be going on with her...” He hesitated, probably not sure if he should be giving away the secret, so Lillet solved his distress for him.
“She’s a homunculus, isn’t she?”
“Huh, so you did know. You’ve got a good eye.”
Lillet shook her head.
“No, it’s just that I’d learned it already, in one of the past trips through these five days.”
“Mm, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
“Point. Anyway, yeah, Amoretta is Dr. Chartreuse’s greatest creation, a homunculus that can exist outside of her flask and live an independent life. And she’s really amazing. She’s a genuine person, created through alchemy, not just an approximation of real life. But that’s just it; I helped create her. I was there when she first took shape, when her body stabilized for the first time, when she first opened her eyes and spoke. I watched her go from a complete blank slate to learning all kinds of things about the world, picking up in days what would take a normal person months. It would just be
weird to look at her as a woman after all that. I mean, I like a pretty girl as much as the next guy—“
“More than the next guy, I’d say.”
“If the next guy’s Hiram, yeah. But it’d just be creepy.”
“I see. That actually makes sense to me.”
Lillet was glad to know it, too. There was something wrong with the idea of a man building a woman through magic and then seeing his creation as someone to lust after. But learning that Bartido had been involved in creating Amoretta gave her another idea.
“I have another question, if you don’t mind.”
“I never mind answering questions from pretty girls.”
His open appreciation and broad smile made her blush a bit despite herself, something she had a sinking feeling that Bartido wasn’t going to miss.
And get the wrong idea about! she huffed mentally, a little bit more forcefully than even she believed. It was just too strong a reaction, like...like she felt guilty for even giving him
any reaction he could construe as approval.
And it was so silly! She actually
did like him—he was smart, friendly, and had a sense of humor, all things she liked in a person. Even his confidence was nice, when it wasn’t leading him to make piggish comments about women. He reminded her a little of a male version of Margarita.
Though hopefully without the secret agenda! Yet it almost felt like when she responded to his friendly flirting, she was betraying something, and it left her with a faintly sick sensation.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess I just looked down a little bit too long,” she lied, not wanting to get into a personal discussion aor put Bartido’s hackles up with a flat refusal to talk about it. “It took a couple of seconds to get my bearings.”
“You should be careful. Even if you’re not scared of heights they can sneak up on you. Anyway, what did you want to ask?”
“Well, it’s about Amoretta. I didn’t really understand it when I heard it the first time, but...there was something about an angel being inside of her? What does that mean?”
“Well, it means what it says. That’s the doctor’s technique.”
“An angel?”
Bartido nodded.
“So far as anyone can tell, a homunculus doesn’t have a soul.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not sure if that’s true. I mean, Alchemy only operates according to the laws of magic that God made, so if an intelligent creature is created through Alchemy, would God deny it a soul?”
“I don’t really know,” Lillet said. “I mean, I’d never even seen a homunculus before I came to this tower.”
“I don’t know, either. It just seemed kind of unfair to me, that’s all. But what’s definitely true is that they’re flawed and unstable lives. They can’t even leave their bottles, or they die. But Amoretta’s different. She definitely has a soul, or at least she has a spiritual core inside her that acts like one. It’s the bridge between the constructed biology of her body and the alchemical magic that sustains her.”
“Oh, I see. The core channels the energies of the flask even when she’s not inside it.” She almost started asking about some of the technical details of Amoretta’s creation before reining herself in. There were a lot more important things to worry about than her curiosity over esoteric magic! “And, that’s the angel, then?”
Bartido nodded.
“That’s right. Dr. Chartreuse used the spirit of an angel as Amoretta’s core.”
“But how? Is there magic for summoning angels? Is that even possible?”
He shrugged.
“Search me. I’d love to show off and say that I know, but I haven’t got any idea how he did it. I don’t think it would be as simple as him just summoning an angel and commanding it to surrender its life. He’s pretty fixated on his research, and he can be oblivious to the fine details, but he definitely knows the difference between right and wrong enough to know that using one of the heavenly host as experimental fodder is pretty far outside the lines of ethical magic.”
“I agree; he warned me against trusting devils, because they were at the root of every evil.”
“I think, though, he was hoping that as Amoretta’s creator, he’d be able to use the angel’s knowledge of Heaven to expand our knowledge of the ways of God and holy beings.” He grinned at Lillet. “The joke was on him, though, because she doesn’t have any such knowledge, or any memories from before she was created. But even so, she’s still an incredible success. Dr. Chartreuse proved a number of different theories about homunculi just by her being alive, and he’s learning more almost every day. So even if she isn’t a gateway to holy wisdom, she’s still amazing.”
“She really is,” Lillet murmured in agreement.
“But! She’s also got nothing to do with our problems, and while you might have all the time in the world—“
Lillet winced.
“Don’t say that! I mean, I’m glad that I’ve gotten a second and a third chance to get away from the Archmage and Grimlet, but sooner or later I need to find out how it’s happening and figure out a way to stop it! I don’t want to keep living these five days over and over again, seeing my friends get hurt or killed so many times.” The idea of witnessing Amoretta’s death all over again terrified her. And it might not be just once, either. If the circumstances were right, then time and time again she might—
No! I won’t let that happen! I’ll save her from that fate, I have to!
“Well, then, there’s only one thing to do. You’re going to have to find the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know, but I’m betting you must have managed it at least once already, or else you wouldn’t have gotten into this situation in the first place.”
“I don’t remember anything like that, though.”
“You might not be able to. After all, we are talking about magic that can control time. Who knows what the side effects of that might be?”
She thought about that. Then she remembered the first night this had happened, when she’d tripped on the tattered hem of her nightgown.
Except that her nightdress hadn’t been tattered when she’d come to the Tower. It had been brand new, a gift from her parents (“At least you can get a comfy night’s sleep while you’re doing all that studying”) that she’d never before worn. And it wasn’t tattered
now. But it had been, two of those strange loops of time ago.
Why? How?
“So, you think that...this has happened before? That there were loops of time that I
don’t remember?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. At some point you had to do something that began it all. The only question is, what and when?”
“I wish I knew.” It was terrifying, the idea that days of her life had just been erased from her memory by magic. Who knew what she’d done, what she’d seen...and then she thought of people like Amoretta and Bartido and Margarita who’d lost not just their memories of those days, but the actual days themselves. Their actions, thoughts, hopes, dreams, their heroism and their suffering, all of it wiped out and erased, with none but God to ever know of it. Of course, this meant that those who’d been killed got another chance at life, so there were some very good things about it, but even so, the thought of having moments of one’s existence out-and-out ripped away and rewritten that way, that something so important could be so ephemeral and fleeting...
I have to do this, she vowed to herself.
For all of their sakes, I have to make it all come out right. I won’t let all of this be in vain.
“But because it happened once, we know that it’s possible to get to the Philosopher’s Stone again,” Bartido was saying enthusiastically. His voice had an odd timbre to it when he got so excited, Lillet noticed, but she didn’t point it out. She’d save it for when she needed a good zinger to embarrass him when he was getting a little too full of himself.
“Well, if anyone knows anything about it, it would be Professor Gammel. I can ask him tomorrow.”
“I don’t think he’s likely to just tell you,” Bartido sounded dubious.
Lillet smirked at him.
“But right now, I’ve got his stolen book,
and the Archmage’s soul container. Maybe we can work out some kind of deal.”
“Damn, you’re sneaky.” He gave her another dazzling smile. “I knew there was a reason I liked you!”
Over the noise of her laughter, neither one of them heard the scratching of a rat’s claws as it scuttled away down the corridor floor.