Authors Blog: Wow first chapter up yay finally!!! I hope you guys like it!!! Now, just to clear up some things, I am not doing research for this chapter. It refers to the creation of the Philosopher Stone, none of which is true…I think…anyways don't think its truth; it's just my story line.

Thanks to my new wonderful Beta, HoldOnToYourTunaCans, for her amazing work at fixing my horrendous sentence structure! She makes reading enjoyable. Love you!!! :)

The Truth Behind Melancholy

Prologue:

Dante was one of the greatest alchemists ever. Her husband was a state alchemist for the Amestris Military. Together they had two children, twins. Their son, blonde with gold eyes like his father, their daughter blonde as well, but with cold blue eyes instead of gold. Their son had no intention of ever becoming an alchemist, while their daughter, Mary, wanted more than anything to become a great alchemist just like her mother and father. She became the first female state alchemist at age 25. The people then knew her as the Freeze Alchemist, though in history books she is listed as the Blood Alchemist.

When their son was 18, he died from mercury poisoning. It tore the family apart. The father was not seen for 2 years after his son's death. In her father's absence Mary became obsessed with her alchemy and, under her mother's watchful eye, learned many new things in preparation for her state alchemist exam.

After she received her license, her father soon returned. He found her to be designing a stone that would allow any Alchemist to do alchemy without Equivalent Exchange. She called it Project Philosopher's Stone. She made many prototypes using her creation of red water, but all failed.

Her father gave her ideas about the red water, but nothing worked. One day in front of the tank of red water she cut herself on the splintery bench she was fixing. A single drop of blood touched the red water and sent it into a frenzy. She knew now what must be done to create her all-powerful Philosopher's Stone. For years she planned the destruction of a city's population to create her stone.

Finally she chose the city in which she would commit genocide and set to work. The production of the stone was more brilliant than she could have ever imagined. A bright red glow came from the city as hundreds of screams rang through the air. No one broke free of the circle surrounding the city. The military, suspicious of her previous actions, had followed her for weeks. However, they were too late to stop the city's destruction. When the glow simmered, the many state alchemists of the time searched the city but found no survivors. However, they did find a familiar face standing in the center of the city. They arrested her and took her back to Central without any investigation of the incident. The Fuhrer wrote off the destruction, and made it a need-to-know file. Anyone who wasn't personally affected by the incident never knew it even happened. No specific paper trail was left.

Mary was stripped of her State Alchemist title, and was renamed the Blood Alchemist for the only written files in the history books stating her to be the first female alchemist, and how maybe the state wasn't ready for female State Alchemists yet.

Later that same day, Hoenheim went to the city and saw in the center, not one, but 3 little red gooey blobs. Each was the size of his thumb. He picked up the stones and took them home with him, making sure to hide them from Dante. A letter from Mary came in the mail the next day telling her mother to burn all her research. Hoenheim never gave the letter to his wife. He read all of Mary's research, finding that the stone could cure disease and prevent death. His son, now in the grave for 7 years, was his first attempted use of her stones. He failed miserably, destroying one of the stones in the process.

He couldn't understand. He grew angry and threw all the research against the wall. The paper floated around him, one showing a diagram of a being without a soul, which she called a homunculus. Beside the diagram was a large circle with intricate designs and shapes. He turned the page over and on the backside of the page was a formula. It was scribbled in quick, messy writing. He made out that it was a formula to take a soul and transfer it to another body. There was no more information or a circle beside the quick scribbled formula. It looked to be only a hypothesis or after-thought that had been quickly taken out of her head and written down so she wouldn't forget. It only took him a minute to decide that he would make one last attempt to resurrect his son.

If only he had not thrown the papers against the wall he would have found a page beneath that one saying how dangerous, and even deadly that branch of alchemy was. The formula she had written on the back of the page was a single thought that came to her so quickly that she had to get onto the page before she forgot it. It wasn't until she had read what she wrote that she realized what a horrible idea had come out of her head. She had refused to do more work on the idea and left it as a little scribble on the back.

Dante was about to pass away as well from a hideous disease, and Hoenheim decided to put his daughter's research to work again. He wanted to show that her life's work meant something. He couldn't ask his daughter this time as she had been sentenced to death in three day's time. The alchemy went horribly wrong. Dante's soul was transferred, but not perfectly, and his son became a homunculi just like the page said he would, but he was monstrous when Hoenheim looked upon him. He looked at himself and realized that the body he was currently in was decaying. Immediately he transferred his soul to the servant that came in the room, leaving the servant's soul to die.

Upon realizing that the servant's body was not a suitable host for his spirit, he sacrificed the flesh of the servant's body to bring back his own once again. He wouldn't learn for nearly 100 years that he would have to continuously sacrifice someone else's flesh to fix his own. Unfortunately, he also had to do the same for his wife.

Hoenheim was pleased to see the two remaining stones glowing brightly with alchemy alongside the circle. He shook his head, shocked by the power of the two remaining stones and he threw them into in the middle drawer of a nearby desk and ran out of the house.

What Hoenheim didn't know was that Mary had gotten out of the prison and was told to do war with the military again. She had first gone home to realize that no one was there. She looked through all her parents' things and stole their valuables. When she found her two red stones she smiled. She had heard that her father had done work with them from a rumour in town and was worried that all three had disappeared.

Another thing Hoenheim and Dante didn't know was that they had become grandparents while Mary was in prison. Her daughter was currently staying in town with Mary's boyfriend. Her boyfriend was a shoemaker and she had an idea.

Mary never showed up at the rendezvous point with the rest of the military. She was never seen and all that was left of her was a pair of tall black-heeled boots with gold alchemy circles, her boyfriends' trademark –a white star- on each knee, and heels with red sparkles.