Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Keeper
Chapter Thirteen

The Trial of Entry

Thea woke the next morning with a cold lump in the pit of her stomach. She realized that someone had knocked on her door, and then she remembered she had fallen asleep in her tiny room at Blackthorn and Burtree. She sighed as she thought about how she had left the ranch to come live half a world away.

Her parents had warned her about the jet lag from traveling halfway around the world. She hadn’t been tired enough to fall asleep right away last night, and now, it felt like the middle of the night, but she had to get up. It certainly didn’t feel like morning considering she couldn’t see a thing.

She forced herself to roll over and sit at the edge of her bed. Her eyes searched for her large window that overlooked the ranch. At home, she always used to grab a notebook and sit in bed writing while she looked out the window until she could hear the noises of her parents in the kitchen downstairs. But here in Blackthorn, her bedroom wall didn’t have any windows, and they didn’t have a kitchen downstairs. As far as Thea knew, Blackthorn had no downstairs at all.

She hugged her purple quilt around herself, wishing she could just go back to sleep, or, she let herself think for just a moment, go back home. But this was her home now, she told herself. And she would complete her Trial of Entry today. The thought made her stumble out of bed as someone knocked on her door again.

“Time to get up, Allie!” her dad called through the door.

“I’m up!” Thea shouted back, then she finally remembered the light in her room, and she reached out and felt for the floating orb. Her hand landed on the smooth globe, and with just a tap of her finger, the light began to glow, slowly brightening until it hurt her eyes. She hurried about for a change of clothes from her dresser. Before stepping through the door, she spotted C.C. on the corner of her bed, where she had curled up to sleep last night. The size of a small dog, she slept with her legs folded underneath herself with her nose tucked under her dappled gray wing.

“Morning C.C.” She reached out and gently picked up the Chimaera. She woke up with a frantic flap of her wings. Thea held her tightly until she calmed down and then she cradled her noctos against her tummy. C.C. snorted. “I know, I don’t want to get up either,” Thea whispered. Then she opened her door and left her room to see her parents waiting for her.

Her parents wore the white robes and cloaks of the Keeper’s Animarum. Her mother’s robes were trimmed in yellow, while her father’s were trimmed in dark blue. The sight of them reminded her of their conversation at dinner the previous night. They were her parents, but they were also doing a job for the Keeper.

“I’ll shrink her down for you,” her father said, holding out his hand for C.C. She let him take the Chimaera and he pulled something from his pocket and then shrank C.C. down to the size of a large pocket.

“I didn’t make her big last night,” Thea said. “Why did she grow?”

“She returned to her standard size,” her father explained as he handed C.C. back. “The size she was when you made her yesterday.”

“Well, we best get a move on so we have time to eat before your Trial,” her mother said.

They left their apartment and headed down the white hallway toward the Great Hall for breakfast. Thea felt strangely fidgety as they stood in line for food. She crossed and uncrossed her arms again and again, shifting her feet. As they went through the buffet line, her parents began bombarding her with last-minute tips and suggestions.

“Remember to focus on the Ostium,” her father said. “You remember, that part of the Insignia where your Kundalini can enter the Circle.”

“You’ll want to open yourself up and get ready for the Conversions,” her mother added. “If you need to, you can even chant the Word as you channel your Kundalini up your spine.”

Thea nodded.

“And don’t be afraid to try something, even if you don’t know what will happen,” he said. “You might have to try many different Conversions before you can replace something that will have the right effect.”

“Don’t be afraid to take your time either,” her mother added. “You have a whole hour to solve as many Conversions as you can, so you’re bound to unlock at least three or four Fragments.”

“I only have an hour?” Thea asked, and suddenly her face tingled as the blood drained from her cheeks.

“That’s plenty of time, trust me,” her father said. “I’ll be surprised if you don’t solve all seven tasks.”

“Don’t tell her that!” her mother said crossly. Then she turned to Thea and smiled. “It’s okay if you only solve some of the tasks, Thea. You can even decide to stop after only a few.”

Thea stared at her mother, her mouth hanging open. Never in her life had her mom given her permission to perform at less than her full potential. Wouldn’t it be like quitting to stop early? Why would she suggest such a thing? Suddenly unable to look her mother in the eye, she looked away and smoothed her curly hair behind her ear. She fidgeted with her cauldron of food, unsure if she should respond to her mother’s suggestion.

Her father shook his head, but he kept his mouth shut as he turned to search the vast room for an open table. Thea turned away too and looked out at the giant room full of tables and chairs, most of them full of Alchemists and Chemists eating their breakfasts. She would do her best, no matter what. Regardless of what her mother had said. But why had her mother given her permission to give up? Did she know something that Thea didn’t?

Thea followed her parents to a table and they all set fire to their cauldrons. Thea’s mind raced as she flipped through all her notes on the Conversion Circles and Code Words from the Beginner’s Guidebook. Her stomach in knots, she studied until her breakfast finished cooking, and to make matters worse, she had somehow managed to mess it up, overcooking her sausage and eggs into an inedible charred concoction inside her Alchemy cauldron.

Finally, the time came, and Thea’s parents walked her to the Keeper’s Chamber. The old man behind the oak desk seemed especially displeased to see Thea this morning. Instead of entering the Keeper’s door with the large tree engraving, they went further down the Antechamber to a set of massive double doors that mirrored the Keeper’s engraved oak doors, but instead of the Keeper’s seal, the doors had a different engraving of a large tree with an elaborate knot for a trunk. The branches and roots intertwined in a full circle around the knotted trunk of the tree.

They went through the double doors into a much larger room than Thea expected, even larger than the Great Hall. This room could probably hold every Alchemist and Chemist at Blackthorn and Burtree if needed. The walls and floors of the huge amphitheater were made of black and white marble swirling together in wispy patterns. Benches of stone formed circular rings surrounding a stage down in the center of the giant circular auditorium.

Thea stared up in awe at the magnificent ceiling of the gargantuan room. Giant black roots spread out along the dome of the ceiling. Thea guessed they belonged to the giant black tree far above them. The roots appeared to be petrified stone, polished as smooth as the marble.

Thea breathed a sigh of relief to see the mammoth amphitheater deserted. Their footsteps echoed through the empty chamber as they descended toward the center to a stage where seven pedestals each held up a Trial for Thea. She swallowed hard as she handed her notebook to her mother and stepped up on the stage. Standing in the center with the seven pedestals surrounding her, she couldn’t help but think about her Mentor. Would she need to do this without Todd there to support her?

The double doors far above opened wide, and the Keeper came in, followed by his Chimaera Sampson, but Todd didn’t appear. The doors shut again, and Thea stood and fidgeted while Sampson’s hooves clip-clopped on the steps as the two came all the way down to the front row of seats.

“Welcome to the Chamber of Trials,” the Keeper said as he held his hands out in a friendly gesture of welcome. “You have one hour to complete as many tasks as you can. Each task will unlock a Fragment for you to study. You may begin.” The Keeper waved his hands, and a giant sand timer appeared in the air above him. He turned the timer over with the wave of his hand, and the sand started to trickle down through the timer. Then the Keeper took a seat, and Sampson plopped down near his feet.

Thea stood frozen on the stage. Her parents sat down close by and nodded encouragingly for Thea to start. She took a big breath and turned her attention to the pedestals. So Todd wasn’t coming to her Trial. She didn’t need his support. She could do this by herself.

Thea recognized the Cardinal Insignia on the side of one of the pedestals, and she marched up. She noticed the directions on the pedestal, written in curling letters:

Retrieve the Marble.

Atop the pedestal sat a glass sphere covered in intricate designs, and inside, Thea could see a red marble submerged in water.

An Insignia had been engraved in the top of the pedestal, with a missing center. Four separate discs sat upon the pedestal, all the right size to fit into the center of the Engraving to complete the Insignia. Thea instantly thought of her lesson with Todd yesterday, freezing and melting water, and she smiled.

Thea chose the center disc with the Symbol for freeze, and she clicked it into place on top of the pedestal, completing the Insignia. She set the glass sphere of water on top of the engraving and took a slow shaky breath. Since the Insignias were engravings and not Thea’s drawings, Thea knew she would have a harder time performing the Alchemy. It would be like breakfast all over again if Thea didn’t focus. She took another breath and spoke the Code Word, “Duratus!”

The Alchemy tore at Thea’s body until she was freezing and suffocating; she wanted to stop, to just give up and go home and call this whole thing a huge mistake. But with her parents watching expectantly, Thea refused to give up. She took a big breath of air, flattened her palms on the pedestal, and started to chant the Code Word as the Alchemy froze her and left her breathless.

Finally, the power found a channel into the sphere, through the Insignia before her, and Thea watched the water start to go cloudy, then crystalize and snap, sending a giant crack down the glass sphere. Thea pushed for another moment, and the glass shattered into pieces, leaving behind the sphere of ice.

Thea gasped for air as she carefully brushed the glass off the pedestal. She lifted the sphere of ice with shaky hands and took out the center Insignia. She replaced it with the center Symbol for melt, then put the sphere of ice back down. She stared into the ice for a while until she found the marble locked inside toward the bottom of the sphere, and then she looked instead at the Insignia. Thea remembered that she could make the Alchemy Conversions easier if she focused on the Insignia.

“Dissoluendo!” Thea shouted, intent on performing the Alchemy as quickly as possible to limit the amount of time she had to be exposed to the power. This time, with her focus on the Insignia, the heat of the Alchemy had only a moment to build up around her before Thea channeled the power through the Insignia, and the air rushed out of her lungs; the sphere began to melt, soaking Thea’s shirt as it poured off the pedestal.

The last of the ice melted, and Thea stumbled away and fell to her knees, gasping for air. Her mother let out a cry and jumped to her feet, but her father grabbed her arm. “You’re fine, Allie. She’s fine, Fiona. Let her keep going.”

Thea sat on the floor of the stage for a moment to catch her breath, and then she struggled to her feet and staggered back to the pedestal. There, in a puddle of water on top of the pedestal, she found a glass marble with a tiny intricate red Insignia inside. With an intense surge of satisfaction, Thea slipped the marble into the pocket of her overalls.

Thea looked at the sand timer, and her heart quickened as she realized that a mound of sand had already gathered on the bottom of the timer. She hurried across the stage to another pedestal with the Insignia she recognized as the Azure Fragment.

To her surprise, another glass sphere filled with water sat on the pedestal with a tiny light blue marble inside. With a jolt she realized that she would need to replace other ways to break the glass. She visualized her lesson from yesterday and remembered what Todd said about making things fly through the air. She found the disc with the Air Insignia and snapped it in place upon the pedestal, then set the glass sphere on top and took a big breath. “Aera!” she shouted, focusing on the Insignia.

The Alchemy shot out of her like a burst of wind, and the glass sphere jumped off the table and landed on the stone floor with a dull smack. Thea struggled to draw air back into her lungs. Then she cringed when she realized that the sphere hadn’t shattered; she had only made a small scratch on the glass.

Thea replaced the sphere and squared her shoulders, standing with her feet firmly on the floor. “Aera!” she shouted again, focusing on both the Insignia and the sphere. The power had nowhere to go for a while, until Thea put her concentration on the Insignia. Before the sphere could roll off the pedestal again, Thea glared at the sphere. Unsure of how to control this Conversion, she held her hands up instinctively and tried to steer the sphere as it blew up into the air. Somehow, she got the sphere to climb higher and higher into the air. It sounded like a wind tunnel in the large room.

Thea kept the power going until the sphere almost touched the roots in the high ceiling of the room and her head started spinning from lack of oxygen, and then she dropped her hands and gasped for air. The sphere fell back down to the floor and hit the stone with the loud shatter of glass and the splash of water. The marble bounced across the stage. Thea stepped forward and grabbed the marble as it bounced up. She put the light blue spherical trophy in her pocket.

Thea recognized the Dynamism Fragment and moved to that pedestal next. Someone had engraved a complete Insignia on the pedestal without a missing center. She recognized the Translation Conversion, which could also make things fly. Along with the sphere, around the outer ring of the pedestal someone had left an assortment of objects—a feather, a rock, a maple seed, a seashell, a crystal, a pile of sand, and a mushroom.

Thea thought about how the Alchemist in the Keeper’s Chamber had made the letter fly through the air, and she chose the maple seed for her Component. “Translatio!” she shouted, and the glass sphere quivered for a moment as her Kundalini surged around her.

The power found an outlet, and the sphere zoomed through the air in a blur of yellow light. She found that this Conversion was more appropriate for making things fly through the air, and before she brought the sphere to the ceiling so she could drop it to the floor, she steered it around the room a few times, a smile tugging on her lips.

Thea brought her hands down and steered the glass sphere right into the stone stage, where it burst in a shower of water and glass. Thea flung her arm over her face and ducked out of the way as glass shards flew by her head. “Whoa!”

The yellow marble bounced across the stage and rolled under a seat in the front row of the amphitheater. Thea checked the sand timer, which looked about half spent. She realized she only had about thirty minutes left, and her heart started racing again. She quickly jumped off the stage and fetched the yellow marble, slipping it into her pocket.

Thea went to the pedestal marked with the Amalgam Fragment. This one felt the most familiar to her so far, and Thea immediately recognized two inner Insignias she could use. This Fragment included all the Transmutations. She remembered Separo, the Conversion for separation, but what could Thea take away from the Focus—the glass sphere filled with water—to get the marble out?

Thea furrowed her brow and leaned up against the pedestal, pressing the marbles in her pocket against her thigh. That gave Thea an idea, and she reached into her pocket for a marble. She held the marble in her hand, with the sphere on the pedestal, and shouted, “Separo!”

Unsure of what she expected to happen, she only watched as the marble started to move inside the sphere, making her grin. The marble slowly rolled halfway up the side of the sphere. Then the power faded away before anything else could happen, and the marble rolled back down to the bottom of the glass sphere. So she couldn’t separate the marble from the sphere. Then what could she separate?

Thea remembered all the Components on the last pedestal. Maybe one of them could help her with this task. She walked over, stared at all the objects, and slowly started to panic. She knew she didn’t have time to try all of them, and she felt seriously tired too, so she needed to be smart about this.

She had a feather, a rock, a maple seed, a seashell, a crystal, a pile of sand, and a mushroom. None of these Components seemed to fit, but she had a feeling one of them would be the key to solving this task. She glared at the glass sphere, and then it came to her. Glass sphere. She smiled and scooped up a handful of sand.

Thea took the sand back to the pedestal and shouted the Word again, holding up the sand. This Conversion hurt more than any other so far. It felt like hot iron melting over her body. She tried to focus on the Insignia and give the power somewhere to go, but she had to stop and stumble away, accidentally spreading the sand all over the stage. She sat there with her arms folded across her middle for a while, wincing at the pain.

“Take your time, Allie,” her father said. “You can do this.”

With renewed enthusiasm, Thea went back to the pile of sand and saw that only a handful remained. Just enough for her to make one more attempt.

Thea tried to catch her breath as she stood back by the pedestal. She stared at the Insignia until she noticed a part in the engraving that stuck out, like the engraver had started carving the Insignia there. The Ostium! The entry point for the Alchemy. Thea focused on that little loose thread on the edge of the Insignia and began whispering the Word, “Separo.”

Instead of building up inside her, the Energy just sort of left her. As she continued to whisper the Word, the Insignia slowly changed color and started to glow orange. This is how Conversions should really work, Thea thought as she watched the glass sphere start to change before her eyes. The Conversion began to return the glass to sand.

Like melting in reverse, little grains of sand formed on the surface of the glass, dropped down and sprinkled on top of the pedestal. Then with a whoosh, the water escaped and washed the sand away, leaving Thea’s shoes drenched and the orange marble sitting in a pile of wet sand on the pedestal.

Thea grabbed the marble and continued around the circular stage, feeling noticeably lightheaded. There were only three pedestals left. She recognized the Insignia of one—the Cerulean Fragment. For this Conversion she had three choices for the inner Insignia, and two Components: some sort of dried herb and a leaf. She lifted each disc and stared, slowly starting to panic as she realized that she didn’t recognize a single Symbol.

She nearly set the last disc down, but she felt something on the bottom of the engraving and turned it over. She found the word etched there, in looping letters:

Divinitas.

Thea laughed aloud and held the disc up for her parents to see. “The Words were right here the whole time!”

Her parents laughed too, with bright smiles on their faces.

Thea decided to try each Conversion to see what they would do. She snapped the disc into place and studied the Insignia for that telltale starting point. She found the small etch in the stone, grabbed the leaf, and spoke the word with her eyes focused on the Ostium.

Soon enough the Insignia started to glow dark blue, but nothing else happened. Thea let the power fade and wobbled on her feet, shaking her head as she tried to recover her strength. She realized that she might have to try this Conversion five more times before she found the right combination between the three Insignias and the two Components. She decided to try the herbs next.

“Divinitas,” she said again. The Circle started to fill with blue light, and then something shimmered in the sphere. Thea stared into the glass and saw something start to form inside. Like looking into a crystal ball, she gazed into the sphere and saw a tinier version of this very room.

A tiny person entered the tiny room, walked down the steps, and approached the stage. The seven spheres sat in their places upon the seven pedestals, and the person went from one pedestal to the next.

Thea squinted to try to see better, and surprisingly, the image inside the sphere slowly zoomed in until she could recognize the man in the crystal ball: The Keeper.

The Keeper continued going around the circle, putting marbles in each sphere. When he reached the Viridian pedestal, Thea paid more attention, since she still needed to retrieve that marble. The Keeper held a tiny marble up in his palm. He spoke a word and the marble grew to the size of a sphere.

Then the Keeper reached for the sphere atop the nearby pedestal. With the sphere in his hand, he spoke a Code Word, and the enlarged marble changed its appearance to look like a sphere. The Keeper put the disguised enlarged marble on the Pedestal and shrank the real sphere and put it in one of his pockets. Thea smiled at the clever illusion.

Thea kept watching as the Keeper moved on to the pedestal where Thea now stood. He held up the indigo marble and winked. Then instead of using a Conversion to put the marble inside the sphere, the Keeper opened a hidden compartment on the side of the pedestal and put the marble inside.

Thea almost ended the Conversion, but then she realized that she wanted to see what the Keeper did at the last pedestal. She summoned her last bit of strength and kept the Conversion going.

The Keeper in the sphere approached the final pedestal and put his palm against the top of the sphere. He rotated his hand, lifted off a piece of the glass sphere, and dropped the marble into the water. Then he simply put the glass sphere back together and walked away.

Thea stepped back, and with a wave of vertigo, she sank down to her knees. Her head spun with fatigue. She rested her forehead against the pedestal and tried not to pass out. Her consciousness wavered, and she realized with a start that she needed to keep moving or she would fall asleep.

Thea studied the pillar in front of her and found several Symbols where the hidden compartment could be. She tried each one, sliding around on the floor as she circled the pillar until finally, one of the engraved Crests gave way under her hand. She pulled it open and found the dark blue marble right there inside the hidden compartment.

Thea scooped it out and stared at it for a while, trying to regain her strength so she could retrieve the last two marbles. She craned her head to look at the sand timer, which had a giant pile of sand on the bottom. It looked like she had maybe ten minutes left.

Thea inhaled and pushed herself to her feet. She held onto the pedestal as her head swam with dizziness. Finally, she staggered to the Viridian pedestal. She sifted through the four inner Insignias and checked the Code Word for each one.

Unsure of what to do, she stood, trying to catch her breath, playing the image from the crystal ball in her brain over and over again, until it came to her. This sphere wasn’t a sphere at all, but a marble disguised to look like a sphere. She only needed to dispel the illusion. And she would replace the Component for that Conversion on the Dynamism pedestal.

She knew the Component, because she had used this Conversion to reveal the entrance to Blackthorn and Burtree. She turned and stumbled over to the yellow pedestal and grabbed the crystal. She returned to the Viridian pedestal as quickly as she could. Then she closed her eyes, because she realized that she didn’t know what the Conversion Circle looked like.

She blinked back tears of exhaustion and tried to think. Trial and error would take too much Energy; Energy she didn’t have. She needed to use the right Conversion Circle the first time.

Then she remembered the word she had spoken outside Blackthorn and Burtree, the Word for the Illusion Conversion: Visui.

She checked the back of each Insignia again, and finally, she found the one with the Word Visui. She inserted the inner Sigil into the Circle and clutched the crystal in her fist. She spoke the Word and watched the sphere slowly turn into a giant marble.

She sank to the floor as she slipped into unconsciousness.