The bell above the heavy iron door of the apothecary did not ring; it sizzled.
Corros wiped a thick, yellow-green bead of moisture from the bridge of his nose, careful not to let it touch the copper spectacles perched precariously there.
The droplet fell, striking the oak floorboards with a sharp hiss and eating a clean, smoking dime-sized hole straight through to the damp cellar below. He didn't bother looking down.
He had reinforced those floors with lead plating twice this month already, and the month was only half over.
"You're leaking again," muttered a voice from the dim shadows near the curtained back room.
Corros didn't blink his pale, slightly bulging eyes. He merely reached for a glass scraper resting in a dish of neutralizing lime, dragging the edge expertly across the back of his right hand. A greasy, viscous sludge peeled away from his pores, smoking furiously as it met the lime.
"A minor metabolic inconvenience, Coby," Corros rasped, his voice sounding like two dry slates grinding together. "The humidity in this ward always accelerates the filtration. The kidneys process the vitriol; the skin expels the excess. A simple chemical truth."
Coby stepped into the flickering amber glow of the gas lamps. He was a low-level courier for the Iron Grin syndicate, draped in a heavy leather cloak that smelled faintly of river mud and cheap tobacco. He tossed a heavy velvet pouch onto the scarred mahogany counter. It landed with a dull, clinking thud.
"Fifty sovereigns," Coby said. "Half upfront, half when the shipment clears the harbor checkpoint. Boss wants forty vials of the high-grade. The kind that eats through reinforced hull plate in under three minutes."
Corros picked up the pouch with thumb and forefinger—fingers that were permanently stained a sickly, translucent amber. He hefted it, listening to the golden jingle, before tossing it casually onto a copper scale.
The metal of the scale hissed in protest where the bag brushed it, but Corros ignored it. He weighed the coins, his mind already calculating the purity of the gold against the cost of the raw sulfur and saltpeter required to replenish his stocks.
"Forty vials," Corros murmured, turning away to slide open a heavy iron cabinet. "A delicate distillation. It takes a toll on the constitution, Coby. My pores have been working overtime. One might say I am literally sweating capital."
"Just mix the acid, Corros," Coby spat, leaning against the counter. He quickly snatched his hand back with a curse as he accidentally brushed a stray drop of condensate that had pooled on the wood. He stared in horror at the smoking, charred circle left on his sleeve. "Damn it, man! You're a health hazard just sitting there."
"Business is hazardous, Coby. Survival is merely a matter of proper neutralizing agents," Corros replied smoothly, pulling a rack of heavy lead-lined vials from the cabinet.
He took a thick glass pipette and began to siphon a bubbling, violet-hued liquid from a massive earthenware vat in the corner. As he worked, sweat—or rather, the insidious, volatile secretion that defined his cursed existence—pricked at his forehead.
He had long ago forgotten what human sweat felt like. Normal perspiration cooled the body; Corros's secretion heated it, burning away his own epidermis if he wasn't constantly vigilant with his scrapers and neutralizing baths.
Some alchemists spent their lives chasing the Philosopher's Stone, dreaming of turning lead into gold. Corros had achieved something far more practical: he turned his own biology into a weapons factory, and in a city like Larc, weapons were worth far more than gold.
When the forty vials were neatly lined up in a padded wooden crate, Corros slammed the lid shut. He slid it across the counter.
"The balance upon delivery," Corros said, his eyes gleaming behind his copper spectacles. "And tell your boss that if he intends to use this on the Harbor Guard's new ironclads, he owes me an extra ten percent. Premium metallurgy requires premium dissolution."
Coby grabbed the crate, glaring at the alchemist with undisguised venom.
"You're a leech, Corros. One of these days, that acid of yours is going to eat right through your own heart, and nobody's going to shed a tear."
"Perhaps," Corros replied, offering a thin, yellow-toothed smile. "Until then, my heart remains remarkably well-insulated. Good evening, Coby."
The bell hissed again as Coby departed into the smog-choked Oakhaven night.
Corros locked the heavy iron door, threw three deadbolts, and immediately retreated to his private washroom.
Stripping away his stained linen tunic, he stood before a full-length mirror framed in tarnished brass. The glass was pitted and clouded in a thousand tiny spots where errant splashes had etched the surface over the years.
He inspected his torso. It was a roadmap of torment and profit. His skin had lost its natural pigmentation decades ago, replaced by a tough, calloused sheen resembling boiled leather. Tiny, microscopic vents dotted his chest and arms, weeping the clear, oily precursor to his signature brew.
It was a lingering gift from an ill-fated experiment in the Royal Academium's lower tiers twenty years ago. While trying to synthesize a universal solvent—the ultimate solvent that could dissolve any container—his apparatus had ruptured, bathing him in a pressurized cloud of unstable alkalis and catalytic isotopes.
The Academium had cast him out, terrified of his toxic physiology. The medical boards had declared him a walking corpse, giving him six months to live before his internal organs liquefied.
They had underestimated human greed, and Corros's stubborn refusal to die.
He discovered that by consuming massive quantities of mineral-rich salts, heavy metals, and alkaline ash, his body could stabilize the reaction, filtering the caustic agents out through his integumentary system. He wasn't dying; he was manufacturing. Every drop of sweat was a potential bounty.
A sharp rap at the back alley door interrupted his self-inspection.
Corros frowned, pulling on a fresh, acid-resistant canvas smock. He grabbed his iron scraper and marched toward the rear workshop. The back door opened into a narrow, lightless alley that smelled permanently of refuse and coal smoke.
Instead of a criminal syndicate runner, however, the visitor was someone unexpected.
A young woman stood in the shadows, her face half-hidden beneath the hood of a wet cloak. She was trembling, though whether from the biting chill of the rain or sheer terror was difficult to discern.
"Closed," Corros said flatly, his hand resting on the iron latch. "Come back tomorrow during business hours."
"I don't have tomorrow," she whispered, her voice cracking. "They're coming tonight. The Dawn Vanguard."
Corros paused.
The Dawn Vanguard—a radical faction of zealots and rogue mechanics dedicated to purging the city's criminal underbelly and 'cleansing' the alchemical guilds. They preached purity through fire and steel. They were also the sworn enemies of the syndicates Corros supplied, and occasionally, enemies of Corros himself, though they usually found his shop too hazardous a target to bother with.
"And what does a revolutionary's panic have to do with my ledger?" Corros asked, his tone devoid of sympathy.
The woman threw back her hood. Her face was pale, smeared with soot and dried tears. She reached into her cloak and pulled out a heavy, intricately carved silver astrolabe. Even in the dim light, the metal caught the sheen of the lamplight, gleaming with embedded jewels.
"This belonged to the Grand Chancellor of the Vanguard," she said breathlessly. "I took it from his desk before I ran. I know what you sell. I know about your... condition. I need something that leaves no trace. No blood. No ash. Just... nothing."
Corros stared at the astrolabe. His opportunistic heart gave a distinct, greedy thump. It was a priceless artifact, easily worth ten times what Vance had paid him for the forty vials of acid.
"You want to assassinate a Vanguard commander," Corros stated, a dry chuckle rattling in his throat. "Or perhaps silence a witness?"
"Both," she said, her eyes flashing with desperate resolve. "They have my brother. They're holding him in the sub-basement of the old customs house. If I go to the authorities, they're in the Vanguard's pocket. I need a compound. Something I can pour into their main water cistern or apply directly. Something absolute."
Corros stepped aside, gesturing into the warm, sulfurous gloom of his workshop. "Enter, child. Let us discuss chemistry."
The workshop was a chaotic museum of destruction. Shelves groaned under the weight of crystal decanters filled with glowing, sloshing reagents, jars of pickled specimens, and rows upon rows of lead-lined containers. A small hearth burned in the corner, venting a pale, bluish smoke through a ceramic flue.
Corros moved to his workbench, his joints popping with a dull stiffness. He began pulling down jars from the top shelf, his movements calculated and precise.
"Absolute destruction is an art form," Corros lectured, his voice dropping into the rhythmic cadence of a master craftsman. He picked up a vial of heavy, dark-red liquid—Regia-Seven, his own proprietary blend of nitro-muriatic acid and dissolved platinum salts. "Most novices think acid is about burning. It isn't. It's about molecular displacement. It coaxes the bonds of matter into forgetting they ever existed."
He set two lead phials on the wooden table.
"This," he continued, pointing to the dark-red liquid, "will melt flesh and bone into a grey sludge within seconds. But it reacts violently with iron, creating a plume of choking chlorine gas that would alert the entire building. Not subtle."
He reached for the second jar, containing a clear, viscous gel that shimmered with an oily sheen.
"And this," Corros smiled, showing teeth that were slightly discolored by chemical fumes, "is my masterpiece. Corrosive-Delta. Developed from my own somatic secretions, concentrated and stabilized with organic binders. It is completely odorless. It adheres to skin, wood, stone, or metal. It does not splash. It does not boil over. It simply... sinks."
The girl—she had given her name as Mara—stared at the gel with a mixture of awe and revulsion. "How does it work?"
"You apply a single drop," Corros whispered, leaning across the table, his pale eyes boring into hers. "It will feel cold at first. Like ice. Then, the molecular bonds begin to unravel. By the time your target feels the heat, their nerves will already have been dissolved. It works from the inside out, eating through armor, flesh, and bone until nothing is left save a small puddle of saline residue. Clean. Efficient. Indetectable."
Mara swallowed hard, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the lead phial. "And the price?"
Corros tapped the silver astrolabe sitting between them on the table. "This covers the two phials of Delta, plus a neutralizing pouch for your own safety—should you spill even a drop, you will lose that hand before you can scream."
Mara hesitated for only a fraction of a second. Then, she pushed the astrolabe forward. "Deal."
Corros scooped up the treasure, sliding it into the deep, lead-lined pocket of his smock. He carefully wrapped the three phials in heavy wool and placed them inside a small tin box, handing it across the counter.
"Remember," Corros warned, his voice dropping to a harsh rasp. "Once the seal is broken, you have ninety seconds before the container itself begins to degrade. Do not fumble."
Mara took the tin box, clutching it to her chest like a newborn child. Without another word, she turned and slipped back out into the rainy alley, vanishing into the Oakhaven night as quickly as she had appeared.
Corros watched her go, a dry smile stretching his thin lips. Business was brisk tonight.
An hour later, the shop was quiet again. The gas lamps hissed softly, casting long, wavering shadows across the floorboards.
Corros sat at his desk, admiring the silver astrolabe by the dim light. He traced the delicate gold filigree with his amber-stained fingers, marveling at the craftsmanship. It was a magnificent piece of loot, worthy of a master thief, let alone an opportunistic alchemist tucked away in the city's rotting underbelly.
Suddenly, a sharp, stabbing pain lanced through his left shoulder.
Corros gasped, dropping the astrolabe. It hit the desk with a soft clink. He clutched at his shoulder, his breath hitching.
It wasn't a normal ache. It was a deep, burning sensation—not from the outside in, but from the inside out. For the past twenty years, his body had maintained a precarious balance, a delicate equilibrium between the toxic output of his organs and the mineral defenses of his diet.
But tonight, the filtration had been heavy. The distillation of Corrosive-Delta had required a massive spike in his internal metabolic rate.
He stumbled toward the washroom, his vision blurring slightly at the edges.
"No," he muttered, gripping the edge of the lead-lined sink. "Not now. The ledger isn't balanced."
He reached for his neutralizing lime, his fingers clumsy and shaking. He grabbed a handful of the white powder and slammed it against his chest, pressing it desperately into his skin.
A violent hiss erupted from beneath his smock. Smoke billowed upward, stinging his eyes. The lime turned an angry, bubbling black as it neutralized a massive surge of acid that had suddenly burst through his pores—a surge far more potent than anything he had ever experienced.
Corros collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath. The floorboards beneath him—even with their lead plating—began to bubble and smoke where a puddle of his own making had leaked from the hem of his garment.
He looked at his hands. The skin was translucent, glowing with an internal, sickly violet light. The veins beneath his flesh looked like rivers of liquid fire.
He laughed, a harsh, rattling sound that ended in a cough.
"Insatiable," he whispered to the empty room, tasting copper and bile on his tongue. "Always... wanting more."
Outside, the rain continued to fall over Larc, washing the soot from the cobblestones, carrying away the waste of the city through the gutters.
Somewhere across town, a revolution was burning, and a young woman was slipping through the shadows with a tin box of death in her hands.
And in his dimly lit apothecary, Corros pulled himself back up to his feet, reached for his iron scraper, and went back to work. There were still orders to fill, coins to weigh, and a city full of desperate souls willing to pay any price for his poison.