Aaron was growing increasingly frustrated with his progress in alchemy. It had been six years since he had distilled the immortality elixir. Seven since he had created gold from lead. Yet nothing had happened since.

No progress. His attempts at the alkahest, a universal solvent, and a cure-all healing potion had gone nowhere. To be fair, he had been continuing to manufacture gold for his mother, as well as the immortality elixir she so craved. He had even learned to make emeralds and sapphires from gravel, diamonds from graphite and platinum from iron.

But such things weren't progress. They were simply an alternative method to add to them wealth.

Medea wasn't impatient. She had everything she had ever wanted: infinite life and wealth, a suitable Heir, Miras, Asriel and Kallias all in her grip. His mother saw no reason to hurry. They had eternity to expand their knowledge of the secrets of alchemy.

Universal solvents and miracle cure-alls could wait their turn. When they could get gold from lead, there was little need to perfect the transmutation and turn common dirt-or better yet, desert sand-to platinum.

Only Aaron was discontented. It was his nature to long for more. To wish to get better and better. His curiosity could not be sated.

"Have you ever heard the phrase: you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place?" Lysandra had asked him once. "We run out of lead; you change the material. The elixir has side-effects; you patch it up."

"I'm not satisfied with staying in the same place," he had replied brusquely. "I have to progress, sister. It's in my nature. I get bored in the same place."

"You do know everything you've done, don't you?"

"I know," he had replied. "And I could sit on my bum, making more gold, priding myself on what I did when I was sixteen, or I could find something to do with my life."

Now he stared desolately at his equipment, feeling miserable.

Ten years ago, Aaron had graduated high school at thirteen, afresh with brand new ideas of how to reshape the world around him. Ambition was burning in him, so he enrolled in the University, the only one in all of Kallias.

He'd taken mathematics, political science and his doctor's course at the same time and done them in two years as opposed to the usual four.

He'd met Cynthia there and fallen in love with her. A few months later, she had deserted him and then died in a bandit's attack. He'd felt like he couldn't breathe for months afterwards. But Lysandra had stayed by his side in those dark times. Eventually, he'd managed to rebuild the splintered parts of himself.

Then, on a whim, he taken the alchemy course. 

Six months into the two-year syllabus, he had made gold through his private study at home. Everyone had been amazed. Despite this discovery, he'd continued the course, and begun to learn about the immortality elixir. A scant year after his transmutation, he had distilled eternity.

He had been seventeen years old at the time. Now, he was forever seventeen, his sister forever eighteen and their mother frozen at fifty.

Six years had passed since that glorious achievement, and nothing of more significance had followed. The glow of his discovery had begun to wear off. Alchemy became something the Kallians took for granted. It hardly affected anyone but the court, after all. They still got taxed. None of them got to live forever.

If Aaron had stopped there, his name would be forever marked in the history books. No one would forget him. He would have been Aaron Crimson, Aaron Golden. Schoolchildren would learn his name. Historians would study him and wonder at his achievements. Awards would be named after him; academies of alchemy would be dedicated to his work.

He didn't care about any of that. All he wanted was to pursue knowledge. To grow his understanding. Lysandra and his mother thirsted for power, but he hungered for knowledge. Aaron was in one word, curious. But curiosity didn't seem to cover it.

Knowledge was to him as a feast to a starving man. It was the vital sustenance of his very soul. From such a young age, Aaron needed answers. He longed to understand the world around him better. The curiosity was like an unbearable itch. He either scratched, or the sheer need to swallowed everything else. Once an idea came to him, he neither ate nor slept. It consumed him completely.

And this...this stagnation weighted on his mind heavily. What to do, then, when there is nothing more to discover?

And there was more than that. Aaron felt he was missing something. Something essential. He would be overcome with a feeling of being so close, so near, that he might reach out his hand and grasp it.

It was the most elusive of memories, just out of reach. It was like one of those dreams, shifting just of your recollection, allowing you the merest hint of feeling but remaining impossible to grasp. There was something more. He was so close-he knew he was. And yet, it was just out of his reach.

Sometimes he felt like it might drive him mad.

He reached down and picked up one of the gold nuggets. Worth a fortune, probably, though merely yesterday it had been a piece of lead, worthless. His eyes scanned over the rest of the pile of jewels: silver made from pumice, sapphires made from sandstone, diamonds from graphite and platinum from dull iron. They all sparkled gloriously in the sun. To him, they were worthless. Vain, sparkling, material things.

Wealth for the greedy. Ridiculously long life.

This wasn't alchemy. Aaron was sure of it. This was nothing but the merest practice of a great art that predated gods and witches.

Whenever he transmuted lead or distilled the elixir, he felt a sudden rush of power. Alchemy was the noblest, greatest science in the world. There was more to it than this. Everything he had done was merely scratching the surface of what could be.

And the possibilities were endless and glorious. Endless and glorious, and just out of his reach.

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Jasper

The palace felt unbearably lonely without Lysandra and Talia-the elf was off on an army mission-his partners-in-crime. They were the only ones who knew the truth about him, and without them to share that truth with, he felt very alone. He had to wear the mask of Medea's devoted servant still; and sometimes he wondered if he was losing his real self to this pretend Lieutenant Merson.

And who was Lieutenant Merson?

He was Medea's most devoted follower. His hatred of the rebellion and the God-Born was legendary. He despised Myra Isidore with a burning fury. He believed devotedly in humanity's superiority-and vengeance.

That was how Jasper thought of the mask he wore. Lieutenant Merson. As though he was a different person entirely.

He thought of himself as merely Jasper. Jasper, who loved Myra with all his heart, Jasper, who was dedicated to saving her people as well as his own. Jasper, who wished his aunt would forgive him. Jasper, who's sole ambition was a life with Myra, a life where they didn't have to be divided by aeons of hatred.

Burning suns above, Myra. With that damned crown of her head, forced to betray her people. The thought twisted his heart apart. He knew how much she loved her people. How could she bear to betray them like this? Like he had betrayed his. It would bear even heavier on the valkyrie.

He yearned to tell her that he was on her side, that he had never betrayed her, that everything he did was for her, and her people. Lysandra had told him that if he cared about Myra at all, he wouldn't. He knew she was probably right. For all her brilliance, Myra couldn't lie if her life depended on it.

Which it very well might.

Do something useful, Lysandra's voice nagged him. Don't just sit there feeling sorry for yourself.

Jasper sighed. Somehow, across miles, she still managed to nag him.

A knock on the door made him jump. Sighing, he went up to check who had come.

"Sir," one of the nervous younger servants said. "The general Hadlow wants you to join him, sir. He says it's quite urgent, sir."

"Thank you. Would you mind going and telling the old fart to find some other idiot to nag?"

"I-er-I," the servant stammered.

"I'll be along shortly," he sighed. "Tell him that, will you?"

"Of course, sir."

Once the servant was gone, Jasper debated not going. But of course, as Hadlow's lieutenant, he would probably have to show up, unless he wanted to get demoted. And when everything was now ready and in place...he couldn't afford that.

Fiddling with the lieutenant's ring on his pointer finger, he went to see the old grump-fart himself.

"Hello Merson," Hadlow grunted as he entered the room.

"Hello general," he replied reluctantly. "Why am I here?"

"I've been meaning to talk to you about young Petyr."  The general said vaguely. "He's made a Challenge to your position."

Jasper drew in a deep breath. Any member of the army could Challenge their direct superior at any time. It was how he'd climbed from a captain of twenty men all the way to Lieutenant General. If he was to lose to Petyr, he'd be back to a charge of five hundred. Then he'd have to Challenge someone else-either Petyr or the other Lieutenant in Kallias-to regain his position.

"Well, then," he scoffed, faking confidence. "He can very well do just that and see how it turns out for him."

"Petyr's not bad with a blade," Hadlow counselled. "If I were you, I'd chose something else."

"Giving me advice, General? I thought you were meant to be neutral."

"I hate you, boy," he grumbled. "But I hate that upstart Petyr more."

————————————————

It is important to mention that for all Jasper's skill with a bow, he is absolutely useless with a blade, or any other melee weapons. He had ascended the ranks of the army so well by slipping something in drinks that may or may not belong to his superiors.

Petyr, he decided, would be no different. A hint of a dizzying poison, not enough to kill but enough to make him useless in a fight. Petyr was known for having a little too much to drink at a particularly disreputable tavern most nights, so slipping something in his beer would be nothing, really. A child's trick.

He took the bartender aside, paid him a coin for his trouble and a coin for his silence, and left him a nice, dissolvable powder. He left strict instructions for it to come later in the night, when his opponent was too drunk to notice what was inside the next beer.

The waiter gave him a wink as he watched in the darker corners of the inn. Excellent. Petyr would wake up with a bad headache and no ability to fight decently.

Indeed, Petyr looked disheartened and uncertain as he entered the ring against Jasper. A Challenge couldn't be withdrawn once made; there was nothing he could do to avoid the humiliation that was about to come his way. They raised their swords just as the referee blew the most horrendous whistle in the Lost Continent.

Petyr, raging at his current state, charged Jasper with his blade high in the air. In a subtle and devastating move, he slipped his foot out and dodged to the side. His opponent crashed into the sand, and he pressed the edge of his blade to the back of Petyr's neck.

The referee blew the horrifying whistle again, and the match was over.

Hadlow gave him an approving nod. He breathed a sigh of relief.

The con continued, then.