In Tauris, the earth opens underfoot. Tawny sand is pulled hungrily into the sea and spat back upon the shores in drifts. The naval ports, slick with algae, are made of stone and brick, for trees cannot find their lifesblood among the dry substrate. The smell of fish and salt permeates the air. Sunlight bears down heavily, forming clouds of heat that waver above the ground. The Tauran people are as dry and barren as the land, filling their bellies with fish and kelp from the waters. In many parts of the country, the empty sands expand for thousands of miles, and in this, neither floral nor fauna live.

  At the port of Izevel, on the northern rim of Tauris, a small ship of captives arrives. These slaves are dark of skin and dark of hair. The people that welcome them are clothed in white silken cloaks, their faces hidden with shrouds of cloth that flutter in the ocean winds. The sea laps noisily at the docks and the voices of men echo around the port as four hostages step over the gunwale, shackled at the wrists. The cloaked Taurans move slowly, deliberately, escorting their cargo into the city of earthen homes that cradles the port. A desert native shakes the hand of the scruffy ship captain, dropping a bag of coins into his palm before the leather-bound captain returns to his ship, shouting callous orders.

  The city itself lies quiet. Small, simple homes of sandbrick shelter the few people who reside here. Roads laden with footprints lead to the center of the city, where women covered in linen bring water in buckets to be boiled for salt. They cure meat in meager huts of yellow adobe, smoking and salting the flesh. Their bodies are trim and sculpted from scraping hides, their skin tan and grizzled.

  A large earthen mound rests at the crux of the city, built centuries before. Cracks split its surface, and young builders on every side press cementing salve into each crevice, the sun drying it hard. The captives are herded into the great dome, accompanied by four white-cloaked Taurans. The city folk do not look up as the group disappears one-by-one into the mouth of the building.

  Near the great mound in the center of the city through winding alleyways is a dwelling of stone and brick. It is windowless and plain, though its shadow looms over the great dome in front of it. During the daylight, people do not enter here, nor do they leave this dwelling. As the sun creeps below the horizon, candles light in each home and families find their supper. Kiln fires are doused, meats left to cure. The house of stone and brick does not stir. Voices of the citizens murmur and laugh until each child has been fed and each candle has been snuffed.

  At nightfall, the residents of the stone and brick structure begin to move. They wear linen cloaks over threadbare clothing, tattered and torn, their faces hidden beneath hoods. They step on bare feet that gleam in the moonlight, revealing bones exposed through peeling skin. The mouths of these residents are ripped and pale. Where some have noses of bone and flesh, others do not. These are the cursed, dozens of Taurans afflicted with the peculiarity of living death.

  These pale of flesh and dark of eye make their way quietly into the mound at the center of the city, dipping their heads around the dark curtain that covers the northern opening. Inside, the assembly descends into the ground, the rounded walls rising above their heads. The floor below their feet is that of cemented sand, packed and dry, where lanterns lie to guide their way.

  At the rear of this room is a small, collected group of coffee-skinned captives. They are mostly women and children. Their clothes are rough and dusty with sand. Their eyes, anointed with the mark of the Lynac, peel open wide at the sight of the corpse-like visitors. Their shackles clink together softly as they begin to shake.

  Before the captives are several white-cloaked men, their hoods pulled back to reveal elderly faces adorned with intricate tattoos. They are freshly shaven on both their heads and their chins, bright eyes gazing knowingly at the group that steps into the mouth of the dome. One elder, a man with a Leviathan tattoo inked below the hairline of his forehead, stands before the rest, his marked hands clasped together at the front of his hips. He is older than the others, his body strong as if time had not ravaged him.

  The cloaked visitors form a loose group in front of the men, curious and expectant, shifting their feet about those around them to steal a glance at the man in the front. As the crowd settles, the man with the Leviathan tattoo steps forward to direct the moving corpses before him. He motions lightly to the floor below him, and footsteps shuffle apart to reveal a circle drawn in white sand under their feet. His voice, dark and deep, echoes in the flickering light of the dome.

  “For every reaction, there must be an equal and opposite reaction...” He pauses as the others come to silence. The gentle sobbing of a young captive fills the emptiness. The elder speaks again, his speech slow and deliberate. “Knowing this, your pitiful lives are the result of a reaction that was more powerful than we could have imagined. Know that we do not cure your ailments. This is not an apothecary. You will feel no relief from what will transpire here. In fact, what once tortured you in this life will itself evolve into an equal, yet disparate suffering in the next. We are not physicians. This understanding must be grasped by those who wish to see the next chapter of their lives, as it is dictated by this procedure. I can take four who can accept these terms.”

  From the crowd step forward several people, one of which falls at the feet of the tattooed man, begging. His left eye is nothing but a dark hole in his skull, and his right arm from shoulder to fingertip is ripped of all flesh and muscle.

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  “I cannot believe that this suffering could ever be matched. Please,” he pleads in a croaking voice. “I wish to be whole again!”

  The white-cloaked man looks down with pity, taking a hand and laying it on the head of the groveling soul before him. “Is there any one of you that does not wish to be whole? Your selfishness will keep you from life.” He speaks mockingly, removing his hand from the man’s head slowly. “Get up.”

  The man, shaking, stunned, rolls upon his hips and stands, grabbing the wrists of the alchemist before him, tipping on a right leg made of nothing but bone. The elder swipes the decaying man away, folding his hands again at his waist and looking amongst the crowd. The corpse of a man scrambles into the crowd, ripping through the bodies of the others to escape out the mouth of the dome.

  “Is there another that wishes to profess their great wants? We understand that you are suffering, and here are four chances to ease this suffering. However, you must grasp that this instance will not bring true happiness. If this is what you are looking for, do not come forward. I will turn you away.”

  A young man sporting a missing left arm speaks clearly from the crowd.

  “And if this opportunity does not bring us happiness, what incentive do we have to help you?”

  The elder blinks, gazing at the speaker. “Help us?” he says lightly.

  “Yes,” the man says. “You speak of a reaction that created our lives… a reaction, it seems, that was begun by you. What incentive do we have to help you rid yourselves of this ‘pitiful’ consequence if it does not bring us the happiness you know we are looking for?”

  “You are right.” The tattooed elder looks at the ground, stepping forward. He raises his eyes to the broken man in front of him. “We are responsible for cleaning up our own mistakes, yes? I see you have been here before,” he nods knowingly, narrowing his eyes. “Do you know what happens here?”

  The skeletal crowd around the young man grows anxious, moving slowly away from him. “You claim to heal the corpses,” he says. “You pick a body for each captive and the rest are turned away. You promise nothing. Again, what incentive do we have?”

  “You are given life from death,” the elder says. “I only warn that upon this change, you may not feel the way you expect to feel upon waking up to a new existence.”

  The young man steps forward to meet the elder. The left sleeve of his cloak is ripped away, revealing a scarred nub where his arm had been. “Then I accept the terms. Show me.”

  The alchemist steps aside, allowing the one-armed man to stand next to him. “And what, might I ask, is your name, my friend?”

  “Merek.”

  “Merek, we are glad to have you. Now, we must have three more volunteers.”

  A stirring from the small crowd gives way to three people—a woman bearing a desiccated jawline, a blue-eyed elder missing both his ears, and a young boy, who looks almost whole, yet his limping walk betrays his legs bereft of flesh and muscle.

  “Very well. Do you accept the terms?”

  As the four are accepted, the remaining crowd filters slowly out the mouth of the mound again, leaving the alchemists and their subjects to the flickering light.

  “Please,” the head alchemist gestures. “I need one of you to stand amidst the circle we have drawn upon the floor.”

  One of the dark-skinned captives, a girl in her twenties, is snatched from the back like a pig for slaughter, dragged by the shoulders to another, smaller circle they had not seen before. It lay beneath the feet of the tattooed speaker, small enough for two feet.

  Sobbing, the girl is situated in the center of the smaller circle as Merek moves himself to the center of the larger circle under the roof of the dome. He looks across the way at the young woman pleading in her chains. Her skin is caramel-colored and her hair black as night, nose slim and lips full. Above her right eye is a tattoo, five dark dots decreasing in size, beginning just below the thick of her brow. The others move aside as the alchemists take positions at multiple points on the outer edge of the circle.

  “What will happen to her?” Merek asks of the elder standing in front of him.

  The older man does not answer. Merek watches as the twelve elders about him lower themselves to the ground, their palms placed inside the circle. He hears the cracking of the torches in the dome and the crying of the woman across from him. She opens her eyes, brows dropping, her dark pupils sparkling with tears, and her gaze locks with his. From the mouths of the elders come a series of words he cannot understand. A tingling sensation crawls up his feet and into his chest, slowly spreading throughout his body. Where his left arm had been comes a sensation of warmth. The girl with the Mark begins to crumble, her knees buckling, her sobbing turning to a deafening keen. Merek reaches for her.

  “It's okay,” he comforts softly. “They’re here to help us.”

  The elders begin calling louder, their eyes closed. One man, poised behind the girl, pulls her upright again, knocking her feet inside the circle with a heavy kick. The other captives watch from a corner, and the three volunteers near the front are wide-eyed. The torches smoke, moving their shadows in unsteady dances upon the wall.

  Merek feels heat come to his nub of an arm, and the prick of needles pierces his skull. The girl across from him lets out a blood curdling scream, cringing into her left arm, crying out for her mother. Her shackles clamor. The man behind her grabs her arms to steady her.

  “Wait, what is happening to her?” Merek blurts, moving a hand to the nub at his left shoulder. He can feel the blood streaming through his chest and into his limbs. His eyes become foggy, his head swimming. Pain erupts from his left shoulder, and he grits his rotting teeth. Another unholy scream tears from the lungs of the young girl in front of him, but he cannot see her. Weakness creeps into his body and he falls to the sandy floor, throwing his left arm out to catch himself. He sees the cold eyes of the tattooed alchemist flicker in his line of sight before darkness consumes him.