Gaslamps hung between the ornate uzhasgart archways of the stone corridor, their glow flirting with the shadows buried in the many doorways that lined the crowded hall.

  Elana trailed behind Sofia as the sculptor led her down through the Alchemist Guild to the uzhas vault. She shrugged deeper into her coat, seeking refuge from a chill that clung to the air despite the press of Alchemists hurrying to and fro. By studying the grey minds of those around her, Elana had established that the extract had a range of around one hundred yards.

  They reached the lower levels of the guild, and ahead, two spots of glowing cobalt slowly materialised in Elana’s mind’s eye, each constrained by a hidden cube. She could just make out the shape of a harpoon cannon barrel forming inside one cloud of blue. Then it disappeared. Fascinated, Elana continued to watch the shapes form and vanish while the blue cloud slowly diminished. By the time they neared the giant steel door of the vault, two rows of six cubes were visible beyond it, all with various pieces of machinery and weapons forming and disappearing inside them. At the centre of each cube, a grey mind floated.

  “How many sculpting chambers are in the vault?” Elana asked.

  Sofia glanced at her. “Twelve.”

  Elana nodded. So that was uzhas in the cubes… chambers. But why was it blue? Was that a result of sculptors bonding with it? If so, why were their minds still grey? Elana realised she almost wanted to test the extract now and get answers. Annoyed, she shunted the questions aside.

  “Wait here,” Sofia said, leaving Elana while she went to speak to one of the two guards by the door. Both men wore grey coats a similar cut to Elana’s Alchemist coat, including the fur-lined collar and hood. They also wore belts full of strength and healing extracts. And the half-masks clipped to their left biceps had a distinct predatory shape to them, while Elana’s own half-mask hung from her waist and had clean feminine lines curving the hardened leather. She wasn’t sure why she still carried the mask with her, it wasn’t like she ever went outside and needed protection from the frigid air…

  The guard nodded to Sofia and signalled the second, who pulled a lever. A tremor ran through the floor as the wide door rolled open along its groove. A steel plate slid behind the gear-like door and covered the groove.

  Sofia waved to Elana, who took a deep breath and entered the vault behind her.

  The twelve sculpting chambers spanned the side walls of the giant room. Heavy, steel doors with small, tempered glass windows sealed the uzhas in the chambers with the Alchemist sculptors. As she studied the uzhas, Elana noticed it didn’t swirl in the chambers.

  It writhed.

  An icy hand of dread clutched at Elana’s gut, and she turned her attention to the rest of the vault.

  Dozens of gaslamps hung from the high ceiling and bathed the room in light. A table—easily a hundred feet long—ran down the middle of the vault. Towering mounds of sculpted uzhasgart lay stacked on it. Alchemists surrounded the table, assembling various alchemtek contraptions. Harpoon cannons for the Sentinels, steam engines for the Transport Guild, auto-shears for the Harvester Guild. Every Guild in the city relied on the alchemtek built in this room.

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  “Hey.” Sofia jabbed her arm. “Stop gawking, we’ve got a job to do.”

  Elana tore her gaze away from the table and followed Sofia through the hall. She glanced at a chamber they walked past. In her mind’s eye she saw the grey mind of the sculptor, and before her, some of the uzhas morphing into the main block of a steam engine. Now she was closer, Elana realised that the uzhasgart constructs didn’t disappear when severed from, they turned black. A thick layer of dense black covered the floor of the chamber—dozens of pieces of uzhasgart.

  The steam engine turned black as the sculptor severed and then collapsed, their mind fading to a dull grey. Elana gasped.

  “What?” Sofia asked.

  “The sculptor in that chamber just collapsed.”

  Sofia’s eyes went wide, and she yelled, “Sculptor down!”

  The vault burst into action. Two guards sprinted to the sculptor’s chamber and activated the door. It rolled open—a smaller version of the vault door—and they hurried in. Moments later they reappeared, dragging the still form of a wizened old woman.

  Sofia let a breath whistle past her teeth. “How’d you know?”

  “I saw her mind drop,” Elana said, unable to drag her eyes away from the sculptor.

  “She’s lucky.”

  An Alchemist hurried over to the old sculptor, carrying a phial in one hand which she opened as she dropped to her knees beside the woman. The guards rolled the sculptor to her back, and one propped her head up while the Alchemist poured the extract down her throat.

  Elana watched, her hearts frozen in her chest. The room stilled as everyone waited to see whether the sculptor would live.

  After an eternity, the sculptor gasped, and a scream echoed off the concrete walls of the vault. The woman curled into a foetal position and continued to scream as the guards gently picked her up and carried her from the vault.

  The shriek faded to a distant echo that sent gooseflesh racing up Elana’s arms. She turned to Sofia and found the older woman gazing at her.

  “You understand it’s crucial you test the extract, don’t you?” Sofia asked.

  Elana nodded. “I’ve never actually seen the damage severing from uzhas does to a sculptor. How old is she really?”

  Sofia gazed after the sculptor. “If she’s who I think, as young as you—forty.”

  “She looked closer to two hundred.”

  A haunted look flickered over Sofia’s face and she pivoted and marched to the newly vacated chamber. “This one’s free. You can test in there.”

  Blood drained from Elana’s face as she stepped into the stone chamber—already emptied of the uzhasgart—and faced Sofia. The door rolled shut. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead and, though there was no chance of it freezing in the warm air of the heated chamber, Elana wiped it away. She drew a long breath. She was saving lives, she could do this.

  “Ready?” came Sofia’s muffled voice.

  “Nope.”

  A soft gurgle filled the chamber and Elana spun. Grey liquid uzhas seeped through a vent in the floor and pooled around Elana’s boots, leaving her feet uncomfortably cold. In her mind’s eye, she saw a long trail of grey that ran from the vent to one of the four huge tanks of liquid gas lying beneath the vault.

  Free of the freezing tank, the liquid uzhas began to boil and turn to gas. As it did, it brightened and changed colour until it glowed cobalt. The gaseous uzhas curled around her ankles, almost as though… curious?

  The gurgling stopped as Sofia shut off the uzhas.

  Elana pulled at her fingers until they popped. The sooner I do this, the sooner I can see Sergei and Mikhail…

  She closed her eyes and tried in vain to steady her breathing. Then she focused on the uzhas at her feet, and the tendril snaked out from her mind.

  The uzhas recoiled then, in a flash, snapped forwards and latched onto the tendril.

  Blackness…

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