The Combat Alchemist

Backstage and out of the crowd's eyes, Lukas was better able to clamp down on his emotions. The excited chattering of people and the knowledge that he actually had to talk to some of them didn't help, but he was starting to wrestle back control. The panic-induced, instinctive reaction had originally come over him like a tsunami, and with little time to react he'd been forced to fight instinct with instinct.

It was like flexing a muscle for an extended period of time, and he was starting to get tired. He was beginning to learn how to control what was happening; it wasn't much, but the internal struggle was beginning to flip in his favor, even before stepping out of the limelight.

Getting off stage took enough pressure off that, once free from all the eyes, he could actually pay attention when someone was speaking to him.

"You did pretty good," Akira said, nudging him with her elbow, "A little too rigid, but solid nonetheless."

Lukas merely grunted, unable to do much else at the moment.

At that moment, Kora came over, a look of concern written across her exquisite features. "Lukas, are you alright? Your aura was fluctuating the whole time we were on stage."

Akira looked between Kora and Lukas, her expression shifting to match her mother's, "Wait, what? Lukas, what's wrong?"

Holding up a hand, he forestalled any other questions or badgering, taking a few seconds to gather himself. "Panicked," he managed. "Emotions tried to turn off like before. Did anyone else notice?"

"Like before?" Kora asked. "Like when we first met?"

Lukas nodded.

"Could be useful, if used properly," she mused. "Can you control it? Is it one of your abilities?"

Shaking his head, Lukas ran a hand through his hair. "Complicated. Did anyone else notice?" he asked again.

"I don't believe so, no. Your aura was retracted well, and too far for any copper to read. As for anyone else, it would've been political suicide to try and probe your aura with you standing next to me."

Lukas let out a sigh of relief, but Akira wasn't ready to let things go. "Hang on. Is it still happening?"

"Yeah, but I think I'll have it handled in a few minutes," he grunted.

"Is there anything we can do to help?"

"Let me leave?" he asked hopefully. A hope that was crushed when he saw the rueful smile on Kora's lips.

"You have about five minutes," she said, patting him on the shoulder as she walked past.

*

Thankfully, Kora was gracious enough to give Lukas a little more than five minutes, but it was just that. A little. He used that time as best he could, quickly sitting down and turning his sight inward. Akira, for her part, stood over him like an anxious guard dog. Lukas appreciated the gesture, but her presence was distracting, so he was forced to send her away. She didn't seem happy about it, but she willingly left him be.

Finally alone, Lukas had a chance to really focus on what was going on inside him. He would've liked to do so before, but with so much attention on him and his guard up sky-high, he hadn't been able to.

Now he took a peek inwards… and found it annoyingly unchanged. He'd expected some sort of shake-up or disruption in what he usually saw, but there was nothing. It was all as he remembered. There was the darkness that made up most of the space, and the glowing white orb of consolidated experience right where it should be. There were even a few dozen loose motes of experience hanging around. Lukas could even make out the faint lines of his channels and—

'Wait,' he thought, stopping his inspection to take a metaphorical step back and take it all in at once, 'The orb, it looks like a moon, and the motes like stars. My channels… are those meant to be constellations? Alright, what the hell is this?'

Lukas began looking at everything, scrutinizing every last detail to try and gather some hint as to what this was all about. The investigation didn't yield any answers as to what this inner place was, but he did find some small discrepancies that held a clue to his original purpose for looking here in the first place.

It was hard to tell due to the mostly monochrome color palette of the space, but some areas were definitely drained of their color. This left certain areas dull and less luminous than others. Upon closer examination, Lukas found that the areas furthest from the orb were most affected.

A few moments later, he found a shifting line of delineation between the dull and lit-up portions of the inner space. He studied it for a few seconds before coming to the realization that that was his struggle. The dull area was the collapse of his emotions. The question was, why was it collapsing toward the orb? No, that wasn't right—it was the color that was collapsing inward, leaving the dull nothingness behind. The fight was trying to pull the color, the emotions, back outward.

The question remained. Why was it centered on the orb of experience? What link did it have to his emotions? Was it his soul?

Knowing he wouldn't find out on his own with what little time he had, Lukas reached out through his blessing, "Sera!"

"Something wrong?" she responded, a hint of worry in her voice.

"Is there a connection between emotions and the soul?" he asked, no longer needing to grunt out a few words like a caveman.

"Considering how the soul is the seat of consciousness, I'd say so, yeah. Why?"

"Okay, and what link does the soul have to my visualized orb of condensed experience?"

There was an extended period of silence, followed by a stream of expletives and curses in the name of what Lukas guessed were various gods.

"Damn it, what?"

"Sol's shiny ass, Lukas, how do you keep stumbling ass-backwards into things you're not ready for?" she swore.

"What?" he asked, totally confused.

A heavy sigh transmitted through the blessing. "Look, if you're talking about what I think you are, then you've stumbled upon a requirement for progressing through bronze and into silver. You don't have time for us to talk about it right now, so it will have to wait. Now why do you ask?"

"I think my emotions are trying to clamp themselves up into that orb—my soul, or whatever."

"Separate from your aura?" Sera asked, sounding completely confounded.

"Yes," he confirmed, before explaining what he'd found.

Another moment of silence followed. "I'm sorry, Lukas, but I've never heard of anything like that before. If your emotions are trying to retract into your soul, then try some aura techniques. The aura is an expression of the soul, and emotions should be a part of that, so theoretically it should work. But again, I've never heard of anything like this."

"I'll try, but I don't have much longer. At least seeing what's going on has helped me handle it a bit better. I can at least talk in complete sentences now."

Doing as Sera suggested, Lukas attempted to use various aura exercises to limited effect. He had to focus on using them solely on his emotions, something that was easier said than done. Even once he was starting to get a feel for it, only certain tricks would work. It was like trying to drive a car with poles from the back seat.

Unfortunately, time wasn't on his side. He was pulled from his concentration when a hand landed on his shoulder, dragging him out of that strange space and nearly making him lose control.

With a jolt, he looked up to find Akira standing over him. "Come on, my mother can only delay for so long. Did you get things under control?"

"No," he grumbled, allowing himself to be helped up off the ground, "But I learned a few things, and I should be alright for what comes next."

"Good," she smiled, patting him on the back, "because that comes now."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

*

For hours, Lukas was paraded around the ballroom, stuck between Akira and Kora as they showed him off to various members of the Anuk family. What followed was a stream of questions Lukas either didn't want to answer or couldn't. How was he supposed to know about some obscure fact about Lighthollow when he'd never actually been there, or tell them about his first time meeting Kobi, Akira's father, when he just learned his name in the same conversation.

"So, what village near Lighthollow are you from?"

"An alchemist, eh? That's not an easy class to get. How'd you manage that?"

"What kind of training do you have? It's not easy impressing the future patriarch."

"That's an exquisite-looking mask. I just have to know where I can find workmanship like that."

"When are you planning your social debut, now that you're on an Anuk team?"

"How was the trip from Lighthollow? It couldn't have been easy all alone at your rank."

It went on and on without apparent end. The only bright side was that people quickly came to the conclusion that Lukas was a man of few words, helped by the fact that Akira and Kora handled any tricky question that would've left him fumbling. It also helped that the moment Lukas was face to face with the crowd again a new wave of panic reignited his internal struggle. It left him rigid and talking like a caveman once more.

He was left trying to take control with aura techniques while also trying to pay attention to what was being said. It put him under a lot of pressure and forced him to multitask, straining his intelligence and perception. This left him with what he considered a training exercise—at least that's what he told himself in order to lower his stress and nervousness. He was still sweating buckets, but his armor's self-cleaning enchantment handled that.

"Ah, Lukas, this is Lance and Lyla, my nephew and niece, and their team," Kora said, placing a hand on Lukas' back, pulling him from his daze.

His eyes cleared to find two familiar elves before him, and behind them were two humans and a cannid. He recognized them as the team he'd run into after his first training session with Akira. It had been a while since he'd seen the group, but it was definitely them. They were out of their armor, and without their weapons, wearing something more formal.

Lukas was still learning about the customs and fashion of this world, and would no doubt be doing so for years to come. Even still, what they were wearing matched exactly what Lukas would expect from a formal event in a fantasy world.

The elf twins wore matching expressions of reluctance and uncomfortable awkwardness, even if their body language and auras seemed calm and collected. The humans looked more worried than anything, like they were about to watch their teammates get crushed to death. As for the wolfman, he seemed entirely nonplussed, even a little amused, though he tried to hide it.

"We've met," Lukas said, drawing various reactions.

Akira and Kora were taken aback, surprised that Lukas had actually talked to someone they hadn't forced him to. Lance winced as though Lukas had flicked him between the eyes. The humans' worry grew, as did the cannid's amusement. As for Lyla, she threw her brother a side glance Lukas knew all too well. He'd received it from Cas plenty of times, and it practically screamed "I told you so!"

"When was this?" Kora asked, looking between Lukas and the team.

Lance let out a nervous laugh. "A few weeks ago, Ma'am, we ran into him out on the grounds, on our way to training and—"

"Please, Lance, how many times have I told you to call me Auntie?"

"Of course, sorry… Auntie. A-anyway, as I was saying, we came across Lukas and we introduced ourselves. We'd never seen him at the estate before, so we figured he was new and wanted to greet him."

"Tried to recruit him is more like it," the cannid snickered before yelping, the human man having stomped on his foot.

"Shut it, you hairy idiot," the woman hissed.

Lance's bronze skin turned a more tawny color as he paled, Lyla leaning over and whispering, "I told you he'd remember."

Kora watched on, her typical neutral expression present, though Lukas had interacted with her enough to recognize the shimmer of amusement in her eyes. Akira, for her part, tried to hold back her mirth, same as her mother, but couldn't quite keep the smirk off her lips.

"I—I'm so sorry, Ma'am—Auntie," he sputtered out, "I didn't know he was meant to join Akira's team; if I had, I wouldn't have tried."

Kora's expression cracked, and she gave him a motherly smile. "You have an eye for talent, and don't worry about it, sweetheart, that was before we'd decided whose team he'd join."

"Would have been a problem if you snaked him from under me, though," Akira added cheekily.

"Heh," Lance squeaked.

"Now, you two, where's your mother? I expected her to be on us the moment we came out," Kora pivoted, and Lance looked as though he'd been saved from the jaws of death.

"She's over with Yumi and the others," Lyla said, nodding off towards one part of the crowd. "She told us to come and introduce ourselves. Lukas, you've met Lance and me; the humans are Merida and John, and the cannid is Mathias."

They continued to speak with the team for some time, Lukas doing very little talking. Though he did learn a bit more about the team. Merida and John were actually twins, like Lance and Lyla. As for Mathias, he was a friend of John's and was handy with a sword. They all came together during their guild assessment in the winter and had worked well as a group. Shortly thereafter, they had formalized the team and had been working together since.

Lukas didn't have much to add to the conversation, as most questions were answered by Akira and Kora or were repeats of questions he'd already heard.

Eventually, the team excused themselves, the next group who had been impatiently waiting eagerly taking their place. It was a bit annoying; he had preferred talking to Lance's team since they weren't complete strangers, having met them once before. That, and Mathias, the wolfman, had helped keep things more casual. It seemed he shared Lukas' lack of care when it came to reverence and formality.

The rest of the evening was spent meeting and speaking with more Anuk family members. It was incredibly tedious and boring, so much so that he began to calm down. The panic that had been bubbling in him since the evening had begun slowly turned from a freaked-out boil into an awkward simmer.

The struggle taking place in that strange internal space became a one-sided fight. After learning which aura techniques and exercises worked the best, Lukas improved his usage of them. He also learned more about what exactly was happening inside him. There wasn't anything concrete he could take away, just a few concepts and ideas. He wouldn't be able to turn into a robot or anything like he had when meeting Akira, but he'd be able to stop it from happening again.

Frankly, Lukas never wanted to be able to shut down like that again. It was how he'd felt all his life back home, void of emotion, drifting through life on autopilot in a world without color or meaning. He had lived that way for over twenty years, and it had cost him enough already; he didn't want to live that way for another second.

Then again, far too many people were interested in the nature of Lukas and Akira's relationship, and being able to run on autopilot seemed preferable to hearing those coy questions over and over. The situation was only made worse by Kora, who would answer before either Lukas or Akira could. Her responses always a little too vague for Lukas' liking, something about how they'd grown closer over the last few weeks and only time would tell where that brought them.

It was a supremely uncomfortable topic. Lukas was not at all open to a relationship of any kind. Ignoring his complex feelings about the subject, he was an outworlder, for crying out loud. Being his girlfriend would be more dangerous than fighting a horde of beasts. At least in that scenario, the danger was right in front of you.

Some people didn't find the situation as annoying as he did. Sera was having an absolute blast. At least at the beginning of the night she'd tried to show some restraint on Lukas' behalf, supporting him through his nervousness and anxiety. That mask of solidarity had slowly been chipped away through the night, until she was floating around him and the others like a mischievous genie only he could see.

Akira herself seemed amused, if embarrassed, by the constant inquiries, but she was no match for the goddess's howling laughter every time Lukas grimaced or flushed.

Mercifully, the night was coming to a close. Those that had already met Lukas and made their rounds began leaving. It was as if they were all waiting for someone else to be the first to leave, because once one did, many followed. This took a lot of pressure off Lukas, and the fewer people there were in the ballroom, the more at ease he felt.

He was able to take full control of himself, wrestling down whatever had tried to come over him. It left him feeling mentally and spiritually exhausted, which made sense considering he'd been doing what could be considered aura training for hours. He didn't mind, though; it left him too tired to really care about the remaining people.

Lukas was even able to have a relatively normal conversation with one of Akira's great-uncles. He seemed like a nice, down-to-earth guy; most importantly, he wasn't too nosy. They mostly spoke about the happenings of Pinewood, and what Lukas could expect throughout the year since he was new to the region. He even told Lukas about a few interesting places to visit.

The conversation reminded Lukas of Lyric and Leanna. It had been some time since he'd seen them, and he resolved to stop by their place sometime in the future.

"Anyway, I should get going. I wouldn't want anyone thinking I'm making moves. It was nice meeting you, Lukas," he said, offering his hand.

Lukas took the silver ranker's hand and shook it. "And you, Shiro."

He watched the man head for the exit, leaving Lukas with an upside-down goddess floating nearby.

"You did good," Sera said seriously, readjusting herself to be right side up before landing on the ground. "Things could've gone a lot worse, but you handled things well, all things considered."

Lukas turned to face her, well aware that it would look as though he was simply staring out into space. "Thanks. You and Akira really helped mellow me out earlier. I'm just glad it's over."

She patted him on the back, a sly grin etching its way onto her lips. "It was funny watching you squirm whenever someone said you and the elf girl would make a handsome couple, though. Pure gold."

"Yes, thank you," he sighed, "your input is always valued."

"Of course it is. Why do you think I give it so often?"

The sound of approaching footsteps had Lukas turn, finding Akira walking over. "Hey," she said, "who are you talking to?"

"Myself," Lukas said.

She tilted her head slightly. "You do that a lot."

"Helps me think," he lied, with a shrug.

"Well, we're free to go. Do you want to head out?"

That perked Lukas up. "We can go, it's done?"

"Yeah, my mother gave the all clear. The two dozen or so people left have already met you and are just sticking around to talk."

"Finally," Lukas groaned, earning a chuckle from Akira.

"Come on, let's go to your place."

He looked at her with a raised brow, ignoring the suggestive look Sera was giving him. "You want to go to my guest house? Wouldn't you rather stay at the lodge?"

Akira looked back over her shoulder toward Kora and a small group she was speaking to. "Yeah, except my mother likes to give me pointers and ways to improve after stuff like this, something I'd like to avoid."

Less than ten minutes later, they were in Lukas' residence, and he flopped down on the couch, sending up a plume of chalk dust. Akira waved it away and sat next to him with far more grace.

With a deep sigh, Lukas allowed himself to relax after such a stress-filled week. "I'm so glad that's over. I'm never doing anything like that again."

Akira was attempting to wipe the chalk out of her silky dress when she looked at him, grinning. "Really? That was just practice—you'll have plenty more of those."

Throwing his head back, Lukas let out a groan, earning a peal of laughter from Akira.