Caustic Distillations

Chapter summary

• Core event: Hajnalka is interrupted during a volatile centipede venom distillation as her laboratory floor collapses and Vencel Szilágyi breaches the aerie with a colossal burrower-mantis to abduct her.
• Continuation: Opening chapter of the novel establishing the vertical karst world and the inciting abduction.
• Closing hook: Vencel overpowers Hajnalka after she burns his chitin graft and drags her down over the jagged precipice into the lightless abyss.

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Text

Hajnalka

A hairline fracture creeps across the neck of my third glass alembic.

I steady the brass clamp with two fingers, holding my breath against the acrid, sulfurous vapor pooling beneath the hood. Three weeks of careful titration of abyssal centipede bile sit inside that sphere, bubbling at a heat that could strip human skin to the bone in four seconds flat. I need ten more seconds of steady boiling. Just ten.

Then the stone bench shudders beneath my palms.

The vibration does not come from the alpine gales lashing the high limestone cliffs of Bakonyerdő. The wind rattles the stained glass in the north tower; it does not hum through three feet of solid, reinforced karst bedrock.

Liquid sloshes in the retort. A drop of dark amber acid strikes the iron burner and spits violently, sizzling into white smoke.

"Stop moving," I tell the floorboards.

The stone does not obey. The shudder sharpens into a rhythmic, grinding impact directly beneath my boots.

Someone is chewing through my foundation.

I slide the cooling plate over the flame and secure the retort with a leather-wrapped tong. If my laboratory collapses into the gorge, I refuse to go down without my reagents. I reach for the rack of defensive distillations near the drying cabinet: four sealed vials of caustic lye and a heavy glass grenade filled with raw queen-gland solvent.

The center flagstones buckle upward with a sound like snapping timber.

Dust explodes in a suffocating cloud of crushed mortar and subterranean musk. Chunks of white limestone crash into my mahogany shelves, shattering a row of tincture bottles. The stink hits me before the dust clears—damp rot, fermented chitin, and the metallic grease of deep-abyss arthropods.

Out of the fractured floor rises an iron-black sickle.

It is three feet long, serrated with translucent spines, and wet with pale slime. Another scythe-limb follows, clawing into the polished stone with screeching force. The triangular head of a burrower-mantis thrusts into the sunlight of my aerie, blind milky lenses twitching as its mandibles snap together with the concussive crack of an axe against hardwood.

Behind the beast stands a man.

He climbs out of the chasm onto my ruined floor as casually as a guest stepping off a carriage. He is broad, coated in gray rock dust, and clad in boiled hide laced with segments of dark, iridescent insect carapace. Along his left arm, the black chitin is not armor; it grows directly out of his flesh, plates fused seamlessly into his skin from knuckle to collarbone.

In his right hand, he swings an iron lantern emitting a pungent, oily gray vapor that clings to the air.

"Down, girl," the man murmurs. He taps the mantis on its neck joint with the flat of a heavy dagger, then slides the blade into his belt sheath and hooks the smoking iron lantern to a leather loop at his hip. "Not the bench. I need the glassware intact."

The twelve-foot killing machine gives a low, clicking rattle and settles its scythes against the broken rubble, obedient as an overfed hound.

The man turns to face me. His features are sharp, arrogant, and framed by tangled black hair. His eyes fix on mine with the heavy, unhurried weight of a predator that has already checked all the exits.

"Hajnalka," he says. The name sounds like an iron bolt sliding home. "You keep your workshop too bright. It ruins the eyes."

"You ruined my floor," I say. My voice stays flat, cool, and perfectly level. I keep both hands behind the edge of my workbench. "And you have five seconds to remove your vermin before I dissolve its nervous system."

His lips curve into a slow, mocking line. "Vencel Szilágyi does not take orders from surface noblewomen. Especially ones wearing linen smocks soaked in centipede poison."

Vencel Szilágyi. The exiled swarm-warlord. The heretic who grafted subterranean rot into his own bone. The scouts in the lower valley whispered he was dead, butchered by his own horrors in the lightless shafts.

Clearly, the scouts were incompetent.

"You came all the way up the karst chimney for a conversation?" I ask, fingers closing around the cold neck of the grenade flask. "How flattering."

"I came for your hands," Vencel says. He steps over the shattered remains of my limestone desk. He does not rush. He moves with a terrible, calculated leisure. "My brood needs a master alchemist. You need a domain that does not bore you to death with tea and linen."

"I prefer linen to insect feces."

"You'll learn to appreciate the scent." He reaches toward me with his unarmored hand. "Come quietly. The mantis gets hungry when we linger in the sun."

"I have a counterproposal."

I bring the flask from behind the bench and shatter it directly across his chest.

The glass bursts. The amber centipede solvent sprays in a wide, vicious arc over his shoulders and left arm.

The caustic venom reacts instantaneously. It eats through boiled leather with a furious hiss, throwing off acrid yellow smoke. The occult chitin along his grafted forearm bubbles and scorches, turning brittle and black under the chemical onslaught.

Vencel lets out a harsh, sharp snarl of real pain. He recoils a half-step, shaking the burning acid from his sleeve.

Most men would have collapsed screaming as the flesh melted from their joints. Vencel merely flexes his smoking fingers, staring at the pitted, ruined chitin of his forearm with savage fascination.

"Caustic titration," he breathes, his gaze snapping back to me, alight with feral, hungry delight. "Fast. Clean. Deadly."

I do not wait for him to finish his appraisal. I lunge for the side door leading to the garrison terrace, drawing a narrow skinning blade from my belt.

I make it two steps.

A hand like a steel vice clamps around my wrist. Vencel jerks me backward off my feet. The impact knocks the breath from my lungs as he slams me against his chest, trapping my arms against my sides in an iron grip. The heat radiating off him is suffocating, carrying the sharp scent of burnt chitin, iron, and deep-earth moss.

"Let go of me, you savage," I bite out, driving the heel of my boot hard into his shin.

He does not flinch. His unarmored arm locks across my waist, crushing my ribs so tightly I can barely draw air.

"You burned my graft," he whispers directly against the shell of my ear. His voice is a rough, low rasp that vibrates straight down my spine. "Do you have any idea how long it takes to grow six inches of carapace?"

"Next time I'll aim for your throat."

"I'm counting on it, alchemist."

He kicks a bag of my distilled reagents toward the hole with his boot, then shifts his weight. The burrower-mantis turns toward the darkness of the pit, clicking its mandibles in anticipation.

"Hold on to your pride," Vencel says, dragging me toward the edge of the shattered floor. "The drop is five hundred fathoms, and I don't intend to catch you twice."

Before I can scream or drive my elbow into his jaw, he pivots and steps off the stone precipice, plunging us both into the pitch-black abyss.

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Chapter notes

• Hook of this chapter: Vencel drags Hajnalka directly off the precipice into the lightless abyss shaft.
• Next chapter preview: The terrifying vertical descent through the karst shafts down into the swarm's domain.
• Foreshadowing: Hajnalka's ability to burn occult chitin with custom solvent establishes her primary leverage against Vencel's biological armor.