Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Keeper
Chapter Twelve

The Invisible Stalker

After dinner, her parents led her out of the Great Hall and into the Keeper’s Antechamber; they walked down the vast Antechamber, and turned right down the very first hall which was straighter and wider than the multi-colored corridors, and tiled in white triangular marble tiles.

They walked for a while down the wide bending hall. “This is your aunt’s flat right here,” her mother said, patting the doorknob as they passed. Thea saw a golden nameplate like the one outside Todd’s door.

The Malus Residence

Silvanus & Fanella

Their Son Quentin

Thea’s eyes caught on the name Quentin. She hadn’t considered the possibility that her aunt could have a child. Suddenly Thea felt a spark of excitement. She had a cousin she had never met before.

“Then we’re right up here,” she finished, pulling open their door. Thea saw that they also had a nameplate, though her own name wasn’t listed.

The Presten Residence

Owen & Fiona

Their quarters were small, but comfortable. They had a fully furnished sitting room, with a polished wooden coffee table, two matching end tables, and a sofa with two matching arm chairs, all upholstered in white leather. Down a short hallway Thea found a bathroom and a large bedroom on the left and two bedrooms on the right. Her parents had taken the largest bedroom for themselves, made the second room into her father’s office, and gave Thea the first bedroom on the right.

Thea had a desk and a twin-sized bed covered with her purple quilt. Her bookshelf was already in the room, beside a short dresser. At first, Thea had been concerned about leaving so much of her things back on the ranch, but now she saw that she barely had room for her bookshelf filled with books and all her clothes. She tried to imagine living in these underground quarters and decided that she would have to figure out a way to get above ground as soon as possible.

Thea took Todd’s beginner’s guide to Alchemy to her new desk. She grabbed an empty notebook from her bookshelf and started taking notes. She read about how there were Seven Fragments and each one had six Insignias, each with their own Code Word, except for the Forces Fragment, which had seven Insignias, and the Celestial Fragment which had only five. Thea thought that it would make more sense for there to be an even six Conversion Circles for each of the Seven Fragments. Or even better: seven Conversions for each Fragment. It bugged her that it didn’t work that way.

The more she read, the more excited Thea became, until C.C. began to prance and pace across Thea’s desk, clicking and snorting softly. Thea stopped reading and patted the Chimaera’s back. When she touched her, she started to feel the connection her mother and father had mentioned.

It felt different than the way Thea had always imagined telepathy would work. C.C. could feel Thea’s excitement, and it put the Chimaera on edge, so that when Thea touched the Chimaera, she felt her uneasiness as if it was her own, but she couldn’t quite explain why she felt anxious. “Shh,” Thea shushed, willing herself to calm down until C.C. stopped pacing.

Thea felt a surge of curiosity hit her as she patted her noctos. Thea smiled in surprise, and C.C. timidly nuzzled her tiny nose against Thea’s other hand, where it rested on the table, still holding her pencil.

Thea wished that she could feed C.C. a miniature carrot, but instead she carefully rubbed C.C. behind the ears where Cecelia always liked to be scratched. Soon the Chimaera’s ear tufts began to twitch and she nickered happily, and Thea noticed that she felt calmer now too.

Thea went back to her note taking, absorbing all the basic Alchemy information from the book and spilling it back onto the notebook pages until she felt confident that she could return the book to Todd. It took several hours, but Thea worked diligently at the task, fully content to sit and take notes.

Once finished, Thea scooped C.C. up and slid her into her jacket pocket, then grabbed the book and went for the door. She left the room and went down the hallway. Her parents weren’t in the living room, and Thea stopped and tilted her head. She heard them talking in their bedroom, and she approached the door.

“Todd seems nice,” Thea’s mother said, her voice muffled from going through the door.

“I hope they make a good Pair,” her father replied.

“The Keeper always knows best when he Pairs Protégés with their Mentors. Don’t worry. They will do splendidly together.”

The conversation ended, so Thea knocked on the door.

“Hi Allie, what’s up?” her father said after opening the door.

“I was going to return this book to Todd,” Thea said.

He pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay, but come straight back. You need to meditate and get plenty of rest tonight.”

Thea nodded and went for the door. She gathered her bearings and took off down the White Ward. Once she reached the Keeper’s Antechamber, she noticed that even though it was much later in the day, the large colorful chamber still seemed rather crowded with people.

Up on her right she could see the door to the Keeper’s Chambers. Then behind her were the seven hallways, one for each color of the rainbow. She set off down the wide hallway, passing a red hall, an orange hall, and a yellow hall. Curiously, all the hallways gently turned and curved, which really did make Blackthorn and Burtree feel like a maze. The hallways started to blend together, but Thea kept tabs on her location thanks to the pattern of colored tiles on the floor. The main hallway had multi-colored tiles, while each hallway had tiles and lights that matched the color for that Fragment.

Thea found the blue hallway and almost turned down it, but then she realized that she could turn left or right off the main corridor down two different blue hallways. She didn’t remember which way to go, because she had only been following the Keeper’s Chimaera and the layout of Blackthorn and Burtree felt rather overwhelming to her.

“Excuse me,” Thea said, hailing a passing Chemist dressed in long blue robes. “Do you know where Todd Alder’s dorm is?”

The Chemist shook his head. “Ask the Bookkeeper,” he replied, gesturing down the hallway toward the Keeper’s Antechamber. Thea recalled the grumpy old man who sat at the desk with the enormous book.

“Thanks!” Thea took off, dodging the slow walkers and cutting in and out of the packs of people making their way here and there. Not for the first time, Thea wondered how to create those handy hovering clouds that so many Alchemists rode around. She also noticed that many Alchemists had tattoos like Aunt Fanella. She wondered if she would ever tattoo Circles all over her body. It seemed like a silly thing for someone like her to do, when she didn’t need the Circles to perform Alchemy. But as far as Thea could tell, the Circles made the Alchemy easier to control, so maybe she would try it.

Thea returned to the Keeper’s Antechamber and passed the Great Hall; she glimpsed the Keeper’s large oak door with the tree engraving. Many Alchemists in white robes lined the hallway, all glaring at her as she ran down the hall.

Thea came to a sudden halt. Someone collided with her from behind. “Excuse me,” Thea said, but when she turned around to see who had bumped into her, there was no one there. Something caught Thea’s eye: a sort of ripple through the air, but then it disappeared.

“Yes, what is it?” asked the grumpy Bookkeeper. The old man glared at Thea. “Well, do you want something or not?”

“Uh … yeah,” Thea said, though she kept staring at the empty space behind her. The hair on her arms stood up. Had some invisible person just run into her?

“Well, spit it out then,” the Bookkeeper said.

“Um, I need the dorm number for Todd Alder.”

“And why should I give it to you?” the old man demanded.

“Uh, well, he’s my Mentor.” Thea slid her hand into her pocket to comfort C.C., who had started to fidget when the invisible someone almost trampled Thea. The Chimaera’s nervousness started to spread to Thea, and she began to fidget too.

To make matters worse, C.C. started sending Thea a wave of fuzzy images and incomprehensible messages that made her head pound. As perplexing as her thoughts might be, Thea somehow knew that C.C. was trying to warn her that they were being followed by some invisible person.

The Bookkeeper checked his book and glared at Thea. “So he is. Well, if you were a good Protégé, you’d remember his dormitory number, since the Keeper had you sent over there earlier today.”

“Are you going to tell me the number or not?” Thea asked, unable to remain patient when her noctos flooded her consciousness with panicked thoughts, an invisible Alchemist stalked her, and this grumpy old man refused to be helpful.

“Absolutely not!” The Bookkeeper slammed his gigantic book shut with a flurry of dust. “Let this be a lesson to you, Hopeful. An Alchemist must remember all things, always.” He leaned over his book and glared at Thea.

Thea backed up and glared back at the Bookkeeper. What an awful person, Thea thought. Try as she might, Thea just could not remember if she had turned left or right down the blue hallway. She had simply been too enthralled with all the amazing sights to notice something as trivial as which way they had turned. She tried to picture Todd’s nameplate, but she hadn’t noticed the dorm number, so she couldn’t remember it now.

Thea sighed in exasperation and looked up toward the ceiling. Thea’s perfect memory was actually a magical memory. She’d learned how to summon images of the past when she turned three years old. She only needed to focus hard on the exact moment she wanted to remember. If she focused hard enough, she could recall which way the alepus had gone.

Thea closed her eyes and focused hard on the moment the Keeper’s Chimaera had led her through the halls. Slowly, she felt the power building around her until a surge of Energy flowed up her body. She focused hard on the exact moment earlier that afternoon, when the Keeper’s alepus had led Thea down all the twisting hallways to Todd’s dorm. When she opened her eyes, she saw the Bookkeeper seemingly surrounded by a transparent ghost image of himself.

Behind the ghost image, the actual Bookkeeper gave her an awkward face. “Look, she’s managed to remember something, I’ll wager.” He gave Thea a nasty smile and waved his hand for her to leave. “Move along now, Hopeful.” Then he went back to the paperwork on his desk.

Thea noticed the door behind the Bookkeeper’s desk. It opened, but at the same time, it didn’t! And she saw a shimmering afterimage of the Keeper’s Chimaera hop out, followed quickly by a ghost image of herself.

Thea looked up and down the hallway, quickly checking to make sure the ranks of Keeper’s Alchemists hadn’t noticed her performing her memory Conversion. Most of the Keeper’s Animarum stood at attention, gazing across the hallway without seeming to look at anything. But a few Alchemists in white stared back at her. No one made a move to detain her though.

Only Thea could see all the images of the past which filled the hallway. But some invisible person was following her. Whoever had run into her likely still watched as she gazed about the hallway, looking at something that only she could see.

“Stupid,” Thea said under her breath.

Then she broke out into a sprint after the ghostly afterimage of herself following the Keeper’s alepus.

Thea followed the ghost image of the Keeper’s Chimaera all the way up the main hall, right at the blue hallway, and down to the dorm with Todd Alder’s golden nameplate. She pounded on the door, fighting to catch her breath. “Todd! It’s me!” She knocked again as she looked over her shoulder down the hall. Even though she couldn’t see anyone coming, C.C.’s whirling thoughts told her that someone was still following them. “Todd?! Are you there?”

The door burst open; Todd stood staring at Thea. “What’s wrong?”

Thea rushed through the door, pushed Todd back into the room and slammed the door shut behind them. “Someone’s following me,” Thea said, and then she noticed a third person in the room. A man in orange robes sat at the table with a scowl on his face. His eyes and hair were as black as pitch, and his hooked nose almost perfectly matched the beak of the Chimaera that sat on his shoulder. Thea blinked in surprise as she recognized a golden griffin, and then she wondered what an Alchemist would call it.

“Venarius Malus, this is my new Protégé Althea Presten,” Todd said. “Althea, this is one of my tutors, Venarius Malus. He was just showing me how to Extract memories.”

Thea looked from Todd to Venarius Malus and back, painfully aware that she had interrupted their lesson, that she seemed crazy, and that she’d have to wait until the tutor left to talk to Todd about the invisible stalker. Would they make her wait in the hallway? Thea gulped.

“Venarius Malus, can we continue this lesson tomorrow?” Todd asked, and Thea had to hide a sigh of relief.

The teacher stared hard at Thea, obviously put out that his student wanted to end the lesson, all for Thea, a mere Hopeful. “We are almost done. Just have your Protégé take a seat, and we’ll finish up here, Todd,” the man said, not unreasonably.

Thea sat down at the table across from the tutor, while Todd remained standing. “Recite your learning for us, Todd,” the teacher said.

“When Alchemists are out in the world, they have to know how to extract memories from any Recreants that accidentally witness Conversions. The Extraction Conversion can affect a larger area and a longer period of time if the Alchemist puts more Energy into it. The Component is centella, an herb related to the mind. There is a charm that will protect from the Extraction.”

Todd held up his necklace, and Thea recognized the same silver circular charm that Aunt Fanella had shown Thea earlier that day, right after she had arrived in Norway. “This pure silver charm protects the mind from many other mind-altering Conversions, too.”

“Show us how it works,” the tutor said. “Extract Althea’s memories.”

Todd and Thea locked eyes. “But Venarius, it’s forbidden to Extract memories from any Alchemist or Chemist,” Todd said hesitantly.

“I’m glad you remember that, Todd, but Althea is not a Chemist yet,” the Venarius pointed out. “Hopefuls have no more rights than Recreants. Now, show me that you mastered your lesson for today.”

Thea looked back at Todd; he pushed his lips together in this way that told Thea he would do what he was told, but he wasn’t happy about it. Sorry, he mouthed to Thea, and then he held up the centella in the palm of his hand, and Thea saw a fresh tattoo there in his palm. Thea had only a moment to realize she was about to lose her memory of the invisible stalker when Todd said, “Separo,” and Thea’s mind went blank.

Thea found herself sitting in a chair at a table in a room with Todd. “How’d I get here?” she asked automatically, her heart fluttering. C.C. poked her head out of her pocket, and Thea softly pulled her out. For the first time, Thea’s Chimaera took flight, flapping her wings in smooth bursts as she flew around Thea’s head. Finally, she landed on Thea’s knee and fluttered her wings, her tiny hooves struggling to keep her footing.

Todd frowned from the other chair.

“Todd?” Thea said as she steadied C.C. in her lap. That’s when she realized her hands were shaking. “What just happened?” The last thing Thea could remember, she had been sitting in her own room studying the Beginner’s Guide to Alchemy. “How’d I get here?” she asked again.

“You just ran into my dorm room like a raving lunatic, talking gibberish, and interrupting my lesson.” Todd frowned at Thea. “So my tutor forced me to practice my lesson on you. I had to Extract your memories.” Todd stared down at his hands. “And now you don’t remember what was wrong. So we’re never going to know what you were going on about in the first place.”

Thea stared blankly at Todd, and then she clenched her jaw and jutted her chin out and her fists clenched in anger. “You erased my memory, just like that?”

Todd got to his feet slowly. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But it’s not like I had a choice.”

“Of course you had a choice!” Thea yelled. “I can’t believe you erased my memory! How am I supposed to trust you now, when you do something like that?” She pushed herself back in her chair so hard the table quivered, and the chair nearly toppled backwards as she got to her feet.

Todd crossed his arms. “That’s not fair,” he said hotly. “When a tutor tells you to do something, you have to do it; that’s just how it works here.”

Thea rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe they expect you to blindly follow orders like that. You didn’t even try to wiggle your way out of that one, did you?” When Todd shrugged at her, Thea scoffed and turned to leave.

“Hang on,” Todd said as he grabbed the Beginner’s Guide and took a few quick steps to catch Thea’s arm before she left the room.

Thea pulled her arm free.

“I don’t need a Beginner’s Guide anymore,” Todd snapped. “And by rights, my Protégé is supposed to inherit it from me.” Todd practically shoved the book at Thea, and she winced. For a moment this made Thea even more furious as she wondered what in the world Todd could possibly be mad about, but then again, she had been rather harsh with him. She hung her head in disappointment and pressed her lips together tightly.

Somehow, Thea had ruined her friendship with Todd, the one Chemist she could always trust and confide in, according to the Keeper. Everything was ruined, over something she didn’t even remember.

Thea took the book from Todd, mumbled something unintelligible, and turned to leave the small dorm, pulling the door softly shut behind her.