Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Keeper
Chapter Twenty-Two

The Augmentation Conversion

How could it be possible? Hermes Trismegistus was a character in one of Thea’s stories. He couldn’t possibly be a real person, let alone the first Alchemist. The whole entire walk down the hallway for her next lesson of the day, Thea pondered this conundrum. If Hermes Trismegistus was an actual Alchemist—the First Alchemist—then what did that mean about the character in Thea’s story? What did that mean about her?

Thea stopped abruptly when her eyes caught on a statue lining the hallway. Thea remembered that the hallways of Blackthorn and Burtree were lined with statues of prominent Alchemists. Maybe she could replace the statue for the First Alchemist.

Thea walked up to the statue and searched for the nameplate: Formosus the Founder, Code Keeper 875 – 980. Thea sighed, pausing at the entrance to the Yellow Hallway. Thea’s Paired Lesson would begin any minute, but she couldn’t help it. She just had to know if her dreams about Hermes Trismegistus were more than dreams.

Instead of going to her lesson, Thea turned around and started walking back down the main corridor. Each time she saw a statue, her heart leapt. She checked a statue of a woman next: Saint Margaret the Giver, 1105 – 1257. Then she found a statue of Aquinas the Breaker, 1407 – 1521. Continuing to walk back toward the Great Hall, Thea stumbled upon Isaac Newton, the Keeper from 1642 – 1739, and John Dee, the Breaker from 1642 – 1738.

By now, C.C. was fluttering with agitation, and she was worried her Chimaera would burst from her pocket if Thea didn’t calm down. She took a few deep breaths and decided that there were too many halls and too many statues for her to possibly replace the one she was looking for right now. Her best bet would be to ask someone she trusted about the first Alchemist.

But since she wasn’t on speaking terms with her parents, she had no idea who she could ask. Tajana would surely tell her, but she wouldn’t see her today, if ever again. Todd might tell her, if she managed to see him again today. Maybe Chadwick could tell her. She could wait until tonight after her lessons to go ask him.

Thea checked her schedule and saw that she would be studying the Effervescent Fragment next. She checked the map on the back and then she took off for the Orange Rotunda.

Finally she reached the end, where the corridor opened up into a large circular room, just like the Cardinal Rotunda. But instead of red, this Rotunda was orange. Orange-colored wooden cabinets hid amid the alcoves along the rounded perimeter behind the Alchemists’ desks. The orange Chemists’ tables and chairs spread out around the giant room. An orange sunset mural covered the rounded ceiling. Miniature orange-hued suns floated about the room.

The mural on the walls of the Effervescent Rotunda made Thea gasp with wonder. Chimaeras of all sizes and shapes covered the walls and ceiling, some engaged in battle while others merely stood in magnificent poses. She spotted unicorns, pegasus ponies, dragons, griffons, and all manner of mythical creatures. Magnificent Chimaeras decorated the Rotunda.

She looked all over the Effervescent Rotunda, but she couldn’t spot Todd anywhere. Weren’t Paired Lessons supposed to be conducted with the Mentor and Protégé together? Todd didn’t appear to be in the Rotunda. She just decided to ask, and she went up to the closest tutor in orange robes.

“Can you tell me—” Thea started, but as the tutor turned to make a face at her and the students nearby all looked up, she realized that she had interrupted their lesson. “Oh, sorry, don’t mind me,” she said, and she waited while the old man in the orange robes returned to his conversation with the two young Initiums in short orange tunics, both with their Mentors close by. The man curled his long white beard around his pointer finger while he listened to the two boys talk about a Conversion.

Finally, the man slowly turned away to begin walking to another group, and Thea stepped forward. “Um, excuse me, I’m looking for Maleficus Keegan?”

The old man blinked at Thea. “I am Maleficus Keegan,” he said in a creaky voice.

“I’m Althea Presten,” Thea said awkwardly.

“My heavens child. I was starting to wonder if you decided to choose a Focus.” The old Alchemist took two small steps forward, reached out both hands, and took Thea’s right hand. “Did you get lost?”

“I tried looking for …” Thea let her voice trail off.

“Well, you have come to the right place, now. I set all your materials here,” Keegan said as he turned and slowly walked Thea to a nearby table. Thea realized that while this might be a Paired Lesson, she wouldn’t have a group if Todd was busy studying the Azure Fragment. She would be working alone.

“Thank you, Maleficus,” Thea said haltingly, still unsure of exactly how she should be addressing her tutors. She sat down and looked at all the materials: a glass half full of water, a box of matches, a simple plant in a small pot, an inflated balloon, a pile of soil, a fat wriggling worm, and finally, a leather glove—with silver spheres sewn into the tip of the thumb and middle finger—labeled lightning glove. A simple stone Conversion Circle tablet sat on the table.

“The Code Word for the day is Augendi. Repeat after me. Augendi,” Keegan said in his creaky old-man voice.

“Augendi,” Thea said, and her Kundalini fluttered slightly.

“You will be enlarging very powerful Forces today. Might I suggest a high degree of caution.” With that, Maleficus Keegan walked away.

Thea took a big breath and set the glass of water on the Insignia. “Augendi,” she said with her gaze on the Insignia. The Insignia started glowing with a soft orange light almost instantly, but nothing happened to the water. Thea removed the water and put the balloon on the Insignia. “Augendi,” she said, but even though the Insignia began to glow, again, nothing happened to the balloon. She removed the balloon and put the soil on the Insignia. For the third time, nothing happened when she spoke the Code Word.

Then Thea remembered that she had heard this Code Word before, when Aunt Fanella defeated the lupitris back at the ranch. Her aunt had enlarged a match’s flame into a large burning ball of fire. Thea closed her eyes and pictured her aunt striking the match on her boot and holding it up. She had snapped her fingers together right as she had spoken the Code Word. Thea recognized the strange contraption called the lightning glove. Aunt Fanella had worn one on her hand, and Thea remembered that her aunt had used it to enlarge the fire. Thea pulled the glove onto her right hand, opened the matchbook and struck a match. She swallowed and whispered, “Augendi,” just as she struck the two silver spheres together, creating a tiny spark in her hand.

The tiny flame on her match exploded, singeing her entire arm. Thea dropped the match and grabbed her hand, groaning from the burning pain.

Maleficus Keegan approached quickly and grabbed her arm. “Confuto! Transvoro!” he said, and Thea’s arm instantly went cool as the yellow light of the Conversions sparkled in the Alchemist’s hand.

“Thank you,” Thea said breathlessly.

“I haven’t healed your arm, but it should soothe the burn for at least an hour,” Keegan said. “Do look into getting it healed soon.”

“Okay,” Thea said, wondering why Maleficus Keegan couldn’t just heal her. Perhaps he had never learned the Restoration Conversion.

Keegan patted Thea’s arm with a wrinkled hand and walked away.

Thea hesitated to try another Conversion. Somehow this didn’t seem like the kind of task for a beginner, and Thea started to wonder if Maleficus Keegan had accidentally given her a task meant for someone else. The worst part was that the Maleficus seemed too busy working with his other Chemists to come and help her, and Thea didn’t have a Mentor to guide her.

“That was the biggest fire Augmentation I’ve ever seen,” said a boy on Thea’s right. She looked over to see a Chandler wearing a green vest. He had rosy cheeks and sandy hair.

Thea wished she could say the same, but Aunt Fanella’s fire Augmentation had been huge. She remembered how the flames had completely engulfed the lupitris, and she breathed a happy sigh that her fire Augmentation hadn’t been that huge. The thought made her shudder. “Thanks,” she said politely. “I’m Thea.”

“Clark, and this is my Protégé Linus,” the boy said, pointing to an Initium with orange hair and freckles. “You’re a Spectrum Scholar.”

Thea blushed. “Yeah.”

“Why are you alone?” the other boy, Linus, asked.

Thea sighed unhappily. “My schedule is crazy. My Mentor can’t come to all my Paired Lessons.”

“You should come work with us,” Clark said with a smile. “We’re working on the same Conversions.”

Thea’s eyebrows went up, and she nodded with a smile on her face. Quickly, she gathered her notebook and moved over, bringing one of the chairs from her table. “The Maleficus won’t mind?” Thea asked as she sat down.

“He’ll congratulate us for having a smart idea, I bet!” Linus said, and the other two Chemists laughed.

“So, here is a hint for you two,” Clark said. “For each Conversion, one of these objects is a Component and another one is the Focus.”

Clark went on to explain that Linus had discovered the plant Augmentation first because the Component was the air in his lungs, and then he had stumbled upon the second Augmentation by accident, when he had left a sprinkling of soil on the Conversion Circle. Linus had been trying to enlarge the earthworm, but instead, when he held the worm and spoke the Code Word, the soil on the Insignia had grown bigger.

“Well, that’s because the Conversion is going to enlarge the Focus, whatever’s on the Insignia,” Thea said. “The Component is what you hold in your hand.”

“Oh, now I get it,” Linus said, and Clark and Thea smiled at each other. “So if I hold the soil and put the worm on the Circle, it’ll make the worm grow!” And he tried it, but nothing happened. “So much for that idea.” He reached to remove the worm, but Thea stopped him.

“Wait a second. Clark said one of these is the Component and another is the Focus. We should keep trying until we can replace the Component that works for the worm,” she suggested.

And so after some trial and error, Thea helped Linus discover that the plant enlarged the earthworm. She drew a circle in her notebook with an arrow pointing from the plant to the earthworm. Then she drew another arrow from the worm to the soil to show that the earthworm enlarged the soil. And finally, she showed that air enlarged the plant. “I bet it’ll make a circle when we’re done,” Thea said, and Clark nodded.

And so the Chemists began cycling through each Component until they discovered that the lightning enlarged the match’s flame, the fire on the match enlarged the balloon filled with air, air from their lungs enlarged the plants, plants enlarged the earthworm, the earthworm enlarged the soil, and the soil filled the glass of water to the brim. This completed the circle. They only had one thing left to prove: that water would enlarge the lightning, but Thea didn’t feel up for proving this idea.

Clark put on the lightning glove and said the Code Word with the glass of water in his hand. After a moment, he snapped his fingers over the Insignia. A tiny spark appeared and in the next instant, it arced up off his hand. “Well done, you two!” Clark said.

When Maleficus Keegan came by, he made a surprised face when they told him they had finished the task, and with a hearty congratulations, he excused them from the lesson twenty minutes early.

“Thanks for your help today, Thea,” Clark said.

“No, no, you helped me! Thank you for inviting me to join you,” Thea said with a smile.

“You helped too!” Linus insisted. “You’re really good at this. How did you figure it out so fast?”

Thea laughed uncomfortably. “It was just trial and error,” she said as they left the Effervescent Rotunda. The truth was that Thea would have finished the task even without the boys’ help. She had slowed down to let Linus take turns trying Conversions. He took much longer to get the Conversions to work. And even Clark, a Chandler, had needed a moment to enlarge the spark of lightning.

All humility aside, Thea was quick, and maybe it was pointless to try and deny it.