The Alchemist's Apprentice

Memories and Duties

Lilly hadn’t held any grand fantasies about yesterday. From the start she’d been clear that fixing the substation was a blip on the grand plan. However, she hadn’t imagined that just fixing it was only the start in this city as well.

For one thing after she bathed ate and dressed, she found herself whisked off to check over the tower’s workings and make some minor fixes to parts that had malfunctioned overnight due to the sudden startup. 

Pidgeons nesting in one of the intake turbines had caused a jam, there were noise complaints from the residents nearby, ingredients hurriedly pulled out of storerooms yesterday had to be tallied up and compensated for and a hundred and one other things had to be done. 

By lunch she was coordinating with Byron on the matter of the earth tremors that would likely occur in the next several hours, measures were already being taken, but only she could give precise information on how intense and how many shocks should be expected.

Before she knew it, she was being carried, exhausted back to bed by Fel in the evening.

“Strike me down now, for it would be a mercy compared to living another moment.” Lilly stuffed her head into her pillow.

She’d kept the skill assist on way too long again. She’d resolved not to do it but, she’d barely lasted half an hour before she turned it back on. Even after she removed the glasses, her mind was swimming. To describe it, it was as though every thought was spoken aloud and every sentence she started, someone else finished it for her- far better than she could have herself. 

Fel lifted up the glasses from the bedside and squinted at them. 

“These seem to mess you up. Whatever they are.”

“I am a child, and yet my immature Psyche is being stuffed with thoughts like a turkey laid before a particularly over-enthusiastic cook. And yet to my eternal lament I simply cannot do without them at the present. Perhaps if people stopped asking me questions, I wouldn’t have to subject myself to the answers.”

“That. That there. That is exactly what I mean. I’m not letting you use these tomorrow.”

“Oh. How tragic.”

“Go to sleep miss snarkypants.”

“I need to charge up my mana battery first. I have a whole day of accumulated magic to dump.”

“And then?”

“Set the drafting quill to draw up the synthesis patterns for making replacement parts-“

“Wrong answer~” 

Lilly felt a sense of foreboding, but although she almost sensed the flip coming, she couldn’t begin to stop it. She started squirming and then gave up escaping Fel’s hold almost instantly.

“… If I don’t do these things now, I might be too late later.”

“You also might die of overwork. Then you’ll definitely be too late- so hush up and sleep.”

Lilly gave up. She had a long way to go yet, and she was bone tired. She fell asleep the moment she closed her eyes.

Lilly awoke to her second morning in the mayor’s house with Fel sprawled out in her bed and drooling on the pillows.

The conflicting, foreign thoughts from the previous day had mostly gone, but like a particularly bad sunburn she’d been left feeling tender in the aftermath.

“Alas, there’s only so much I can do… hnn… Are the thoughts not gone, or is it me that’s changed?”

The speech assists were the worst. Other skill assists involving knowledge or motor skills tended to only guide her thoughts when she was actually doing something associated with them, like drawing or calculating- but the speech related skill assists triggered constantly whenever she was talking or thinking about talking. As difficult as objective introspection was, she felt sure that even after just a few days since she first used them, her mind could have been permanently altered.

Unfortunately, they were also the skill assists she couldn’t do without when relaying accurate instructions from the AKS girls and discussing things coherently with adults. 

Fel woke up, sniffed and grabbed Lilly’s head.

“Stop thinking difficult thoughts. It’s too early.”

“Ow. I don’t think your sense of smell is that good.”

“Of course it is. I wake up to the smell of someone moping, I see you looking down in the dumps, two and two is four. Feel free to praise me anytime Boss.” Her tail swooshed as she started gently scratching at Lilly’s scalp- until the girl wriggled away, giving a parting glare before getting dressed.

“So what’s the plan for today Boss?”

“It’s Lilly and after I recharge my battery, I’ll head to the next… thingie. And I’ll fix it. Charging the battery will take a few days.”

“You mean we’ll head. Can’t get rid of me now.”

“But this is your town?”

“The world is my town. Don’t pretend I’m not useful, so use me~ It’ll be fun.”

“… You aren’t going to leave me alone, are you?”

“Nope.”

Lilly sighed and finished getting dressed.

When she reached for her glasses, Fel snatched them from the bedside table, seemingly without moving from where she was lying. 

“Time for a day off.” 

“I haven’t agreed to that. It’s not like I haven’t worked hard before, during the production of ‘knight’s calling’ we slept four hours a day in the dressing rooms!”

“Really? When was that?”

“The year of the Porpoise- that’s not my memory! I’m not even using the glasses right now, why do I remember things I haven’t done!” Lilly felt dizzy. It was one thing to suspect her mind was being influenced, but she’d subconsciously felt that it would just sort of, wear off when she stopped using the skill assists. Worse still, when she’d reached for memories of ‘working hard’, it had felt so natural to use that example! Somehow despite being a memory full of people she’d never met in a place she’d never been to, it didn’t feel alien at all!

“I’m taking two days off. Even if I want to, do not let me put that thing back on my face.”

Fel patted her on the head, 

“Good girl. If you need someone to nurse you, just grab one of the maids. I’d offer to help, but the last person I cared for lost the will to live pretty quickly.”

“Your concern is touching… if anyone comes looking for me, can you just get rid of them, I want to clear my head for a bit.”

“No problem. I’ll take care of you, by taking care of them. Y’know. Forcefully.”

 Lilly rolled her eyes and flopped back onto the bed. Searching her mind she tried to find if she had any more distinct foreign memories by running through her memories in chronological order- which didn’t work very well.

“Fel, can you ask me some questions? It might help me fish out any foreign memories.”

“Sure.” Fel flipped herself off the bed with a smooth motion and began stretching.

After half a minute, she asked abruptly; “When did you have your first drink?”

“Piers tavern, with my father, a shot of ald whiskey…. Why was that even clearer than some of my real memories, I’m, they aren’t even the same gender?”

“First’s tend to leave an impression. Have you killed anyone before?”

“N-….” Lilly suddenly turned an odd shade of puce and clamped her hand to her mouth before answering, “An artist. A thief, I killed a thief with a pallet knife! Right through the eye! Gods, how much of this… this, crap is in my head!”

“Nothing in life is free. Alchemy, or that toy of yours.” Fel’s usually flippant voice was calm, which simply invited Lilly to snap back at her.

“I knew there were risks, but this is like flipping up a piece of furniture you thought was fine and finding mold and insects underneath it!”

“Another thing you haven’t done?”

“RRRGGH” Lilly slammed her fist into pillow-  and neatly punched a hole through it and the mattress below. Almost as an afterthought, a burst of downy feathers fountained up, covering Lilly, the bed and a good portion of the room. Sitting amidst the unintended devastation, Lilly stared at her own hands, as if they were as alien as the thoughts in her head. Eventually, a response came to her that felt closer to her ‘own’ than anything that morning, to the point that it pushed past all her doubts and went straight to her lips.

“The maids will kill me.”