“You can.”
“I can’t last another round.”
Mr. Rudra nods, holding his gaze, considering.
Then he suddenly slams his hand down against the table. Ari jumps. The man’s fingers curl against the wood.
And as if the table is made of water, the man transmutes a knife out of it, pulling from it a blade molded from the table’s iron bars, a hilt from the wood. It happens in the span of a second. Then he stabs the knife deep into the table, barely an inch from Ari’s hand, the motion shaking the table so fiercely that it knocks over the glass, spilling water across the surface.
“If you tell me again that you can’t,” Mr. Rudra says, “you’ll be admitting that I traveled across the world to recruit a boy who fooled me into thinking that he was worth something. And I don’t keep what has no value.” He pulls the knife out, leans his elbow against the wood, and points the blade at Ari. “So. Are you worthless? If so,tell me again,so I know for sure.”
Ari stares at the knife. He should be frightened, and maybe he is—maybe this is his response to fear. But all the pain he has endured in here has exhausted him so thoroughly that all he feels is a calm rage. Perhaps he will die tonight. His entire body is still shaking, but something about the transmutation of this knife seems to tingle in the air, as if he can feel the way that the man had reached inside himself and torn a fragment of his soul from its source, had bound it to the elements in the wood and metal and created an entirely new object from it.
The illusion of Sam beside him whispers in his ear.You are about to become invincible.
The anger in him stills like a glass surface, and in that stillness, something calls from within himself. He feels an energy in him shift. There is a lurch in his body, a sudden brightness.
Ari looks at the water spilt across the table. He puts his hand in it. The rings of sacred geometry appear unbidden in the calm of his mind, then the latticework of ice, and this time, he grips something deep in his chest. And pulls.
The pain changes—turns sharp—as if a film of skin has been peeled from his flesh.
The water freezes in an instant. It happens so quickly that Ari doesn’t even see the change—it is simply liquid one instant and ice the next.
Ari is so startled that he tries to yank his hand back—but of course it is frozen to the spot, and he tugs uselessly for a second before his fingers finally come free in a burst of ice crystals.
“Ha!” Mr. Rudra tilts back into his seat and drops the knife onto the table, then claps his hands together. “So, you grow teeth when on the edge of life and death, is that it? I’ll have to be harsher with you. Do you see this,Archimedes?” He gestures at the ice. “Look at the uniformity of this first transmutation. The fine detail! He is a precise one.”
Ari’s head swims as he stares at the ice. Sweat is still drying on the back of his neck, and his hand is tingling from the cold. Pain buzzes through his body, alongside the thrill of his first transmutation. Something in his chest aches deeply, and he feels a curious sense of loss.
When something terrible happens, do we become the best version of ourselves?
“I’m not worthless,” he says to the man. And for the first time, his voice is not gentle but sharp, a wave of fury daring a response.
Mr. Rudra regards Ari with a thoughtful expression. Then he reaches out and grabs Ari’s chin with a firm hand. Ari winces, skin tingling.
“Now you’ll become a true alchemist,” the man says. “And what an exquisite blade you will be.”
