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Ethics had never really been his strong suit. He had listened to the lectures, proved he knew the path of questioning that would lead to the ethical answer. He knows the rules and taboos of Alchemy.
He wasn’t taught certain things. He wasn’t supposed to know what they were aside from the fact it was hypothetically possible.
But he’s done two taboos, and isn’t there a saying about how good things came in threes?
His first taboo is his glovecloak. Not the invention itself, but what it housed in each limb.
Six human souls. Former comrades, former friends. The guild he used to be a part of was no more. Officially disbanded after the tragic death of six of its seven members. He himself was terribly injured, and their bodies mangled beyond recognition.
Perhaps if he knew what he was actually doing, it would have ended much differently. It was something he had built a theoretical formula for in his head, something he had no drive to test properly. But maybe if he had, then maybe… maybe…
It had been a final blazing spell that had brought down the beast that had slaughtered their companions. Every limb of his shook, his body screaming in protest at the large drain of mana from his body. “Isn’t your mana pool too big for an alchemist?” Red or White would snark, and he’d launch into a defense of his field, on how potions required mana to kickstart reactions. And they’d laugh-
White’s head had been ripped off their body. That’s when the battle turned into a scramble for survival.
Stars wasn’t too far behind, gored by a set of horns.
Nothing Beastie did was working, and was rewarded with a pulverized ribcage for their efforts. What happened to the organs those ribs were meant to protect was best left unsaid.
Bruiser tried to stop the beast, All Above did they try. But those fangs tore through the armor as of it were air.
Bow’s arrows just couldn’t pierce the hide. The final two arrows plunged in at point blank managed to turn things around.
It wasn’t enough, of course. Magni could only stare as Red’s legs buckled and collapsed, the blood dripping from their nose and eyes boiling in the open air.
He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t- he had to- how could he-
Enough looking at this secret.
The harvest of their human souls was botched. He had just. He just wanted to save them. Six shredded souls, with no chance for rescue. The correct thing, the last chance at turning this from a moral defunctness to a mistake made in grief, was to allow them to dissipate into nothingness.
Six souls. Six arms.
He’s learned that people don’t question why his arms move when he explains that his glovecloak is connected to his spine, and the nerves that run down them. And it’s not like they have the energy to move when disconnected from him either.
His second taboo taught him that he hadn’t really botched the harvest of their souls, he had simply failed to harvest what made his former guild mates them.
The Philosopher’s Stone was meant to solve the issue. To fix his blunder, even if it meant he’d kill a thousand people. Even if it meant he’d condemn them to be nothing more than an everlasting power source.
It is by the 200th soul he’s harvested that he’s finally earned the ire of those in charge of death.
Fitting for Death to be able to sneak up on him, even with all his alarms and traps in his laboratory.
The gloves he’s wearing are slick with blood as he holds his hands up, and gloves three and four clutch the vial containing a simple golden wisp within. Gloves five and six grip the table for balance as he leans away from the sharp blade of the scythe that begs to give its kiss to his neck.
“Magni Dezmond.” It’s a woman’s voice that’s speaking to him, but his gaze is more preoccupied with watching the scythe blade.
“Uh huh?” He squeaks out.
“I seem to be missing 206 souls from my list.” He knew that something would eventually confront him for that, maybe not this early on, but he knew it would happen. His eyes flick over to that golden wisp. But the danger of the scythe ensured his gaze didn’t stray for long. “Did you really think that this would go unnoticed?” And despite how far he leans away, the edge of that scythe still presses against his neck. “That it would go unpunished?”
Despite the danger, his lips still twist into a smug grin.
“Well, maybe not this early on. I guess I underestimated how busy Death would be.” And his eyes look up the pole of the scythe. “But you aren’t actually Death, are you?” It’s the stern face of a woman who looks down at him, “he shed his human guise a long time ago.”
Her expression doesn’t falter. “You’ve done your research.”
“I’ve done more than a little research.” He feels the scythe cut into his neck, and the chill of Death grasps him directly. His bravado defense flickers, an abrupt squeal slipping past his mouth without a chance to stop. “T-That ain’t gonna do much.” His voice shakes just as much as he is, though the gloves he isn’t wearing keep still.
“And just what does that mean?” The smirk shakily returns to his face.
“How much do you know about alchemical symbols?” He tosses a question back, his voice trying to keep the cadence and bounce of his professors from long ago. Her expression of aloofness flickers with the telltale mark of confusion. “Because, I mean, come on. It’s kinda obvious what my trump card is here.” Her eyes search him, and his smirk only grows. He just barely bites back a taunting remark.
Her eyes snap back to his, and his smirk wavers. “Educate me then.”
“Come on, did you think that my hair was a cosmetic choice?” And glove three passes on the responsibility of holding the vial to four, and brushes aside his bangs. The purple mark stays exactly the same. “You can’t kill me, Miss Reaper.” He winks, and he supposes that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Death envelops him, and it’s the worst sensation in his life. It’s as if his body was simultaneously feverish and freezing. As if something had hooked into him and pulled to every direction, intent to rip him apart but either couldn’t, or wouldn’t. As if a thousand spoiled children had grabbed onto his very essence and pulled and pulled and pulled as though they were denied a toy and had decided to break it in retaliation.
He looks into a void and it looks back and it is hungry and furious.
And then there is light that fills his vision, soft and golden like salvation and it sinks deep within him.
He sits upright with a shriek, and the reaper looks horrified. His shrieking turns to him clearing his throat. There’s shattered glass next to him, and the distinct lack of a vial with a golden wisp as his gloves help him stand upright. He still clings to the edge of his workbench, legs shaking like a newborn foal and his grin once again smug.
His eyes hold a shine of something dark though. Be it something new, or just a hidden aspect to himself, it was clear to see nonetheless.
The Reaper can’t decide if her horrified gaze should rest on him, or her own hands.
“Like I said.” He wheezes out, “you can’t kill me. Not without destroying another one hundred nintey-nine souls first.”
Really, his own genius astounds him sometimes (disregard how he hadn’t been willing to actually test it out. Trials by fire had always gone well for him anyways.) The symbol he had implanted on himself was used in every resurrection potion, in every major healing potion, in every little thing that healed and pushed back death.
However, just an ordinary resurrection potion wouldn’t do. He had no one to apply it to him. And that’s even if a swing from a Scythe of Death wouldn’t render that null and void.
He just needed some extra oomf. Something that would completely interrupt the harvest of his soul, and allow it to get shoved back into his body.
Even if the destruction of one human soul couldn’t interrupt it, he’s fairly certain that destroying a human soul is exactly the opposite of what Death would want, newbie or not.
This was still a gamble, but he’d always been unfathomably lucky anyways.
“YOU.” He should save his self praise for later.
“E-“ Skeletal hands grip the collar of his cloak, and lifts him up, up, up, until his head brushes against the ceiling of his laboratory.
“YOU!” She seethes, and there is no human disguise staring him down. Just a skull with a pair of voids for eyes. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?! Just what you’ve destroyed?!”
“One of my ingredients to create the Philosopher’s Stone.” He chokes out, and the feeling of cool bone presses onto his forehead. The two voids stare into him, every little bit of him, from now all the way to his moment of conception, and further beyond to his previous death, and the death before that, and the death before even that, and so on and on that cycle goes until he himself is a golden wisp falling from the mouth of what can only be known as his creator.
“You really believe that.” She says with a dumbfounded horror. “Everything just serves to be a potential ingredient in the potion to find-“
“Truth.” He finishes with a pained grin.
She drops him, and he lands with a harsh thud and his head hits the ground hard enough to make him see triple.
“You’re a monster.” She says, “and when you finally die, there will be no salvation possible.”
He’s too busy coughing and trying to get proper airflow into his lungs to make a witty remark. It’s probably best he didn’t.
Now his third taboo. In hindsight, nothing could really surpass that taboo for the Philosopher’s Stone. But somehow this one feels far more intimate a betrayal of ethics than that.
He notes down the progress in each artificial womb, holding tiny little figures that would only need a potion of growth and a quick soul transplant to be indistinguishable from the original.
Tiny little homunculi, rows upon rows of Axels, Altares and Vespers in jars, slumbering away without any soul to really make them living.
His guildmates would be horrified at what he’s done. At all the little secrets he’s kept locked up in his lab.
But he refuses to lose another guild.