Queens & Liars-Sequel to Three Broken Kingdoms (Completed)

Chapter Nine: Alchemy & Duelling

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.