A/N: I'm sorry this chapter is short. :)
Chapter 11: Three Transmutations
A loud whirring sound startled Mustang from the terror of seeing the dead youth at his knees. Several alchemic boulders flew over their heads and past the battlefield and into the town, setting buildings on fire.
"Ed! Move! Now!" He lunged at Edward before the boy could get the buckle off Al's body. The two flew backward from Mustang's propulsion just in time as an explosive charge hit where they had just knelt.
"Al!" Edward wailed and struggled against Roy's arms trying to get back to the body.
"Fullmetal!" The Colonel struggled to keep the boy from dashing INTO the flames to get the buckle.
"God damned Bastard Colonel! Let me go!" Edward twisted his small frame, escaping his superior officer's grasp and he leaped into the fire.
Once inside the ring of flames, he saw the body, now charred. The silver buckle glowed red, but the blood seal was still intact. He clasped his hands together and then on his body, he transformed the material of his red coat into water molecules and he was instantly drenched. He could have transmuted smoke particles in the air around the body into water, but he feared it would wash away the seal. Wetting his clothing would give him a few seconds in the inferno. He grabbed the glowing hot buckle with his right hand knowing the pain it would bring. And pain it did bring. The searing hot metal burned and melted the fine wires on his palm that connected to his nerves. The sensation was as if his skin bubbled and melted. He howled in pain, but kept firm grasp on the buckle as he ran out of the flames and landed with a thud at Mustang's feet.
"Edward!" Roy scrambled to his subordinate. The alchemist pulled his battered and burnt body up and looked toward Ratzul.
"Are you going to sit there or help me!" He glared at Mustang who couldn't believe Ed was still going at all.
"Show me where you need to go and I'll make sure you get there!" Mustang stood and glared at the water tower knowing that Riza was watching their every move. He nodded and she understood, she'd cover the both of them.
Edward shot from the battlefield and ran straight-legged due to his fused knee. Even so, Mustang had a hard time keeping up with him as they ran toward the town.
Winry Rockbell sat on the hotel bed since the brother's left to fight. That had been hours and hours ago. Since being sealed into her room, she had no way of knowing how the battle was going. The one window in her room did not have a view of the field and the bathroom window was too high up. She sat and picked at the white eyelet fabric of the dress she was given to wear. She then fiddled with the elastic fabric of her tube top, which she had tied around her right thigh to hold the dagger securely and secretly in place. She worried and fidgeted. She smelled smoke and noticed that a pale gray haze hung throughout her room. The Inn was on fire! She leaped up and scoured the room for something heavy only finding the ornate chairs. She groaned as she lugged the chair and flung it at the wall at the location of the alchemically fused door. The plaster splintered showing the boards beneath but it became clear it was not going to be easy.
"Winry." Ila's voice echoed in her head. No, she really did hear her.
"Where are you?" Winry didn't know whether to be more afraid of the fire burning down the inn or the child Edward warned her about this morning.
"Stand back, away from the far wall!"
The mechanic leaped back toward her bed and the wall just melted away and as it did, Ila's childlike form stood before her.
"Come! Hurry!" Ila held out her hand and Winry took it, running with her out of the room into the smoke-filled hallway. Although the child seemed unaffected by the smoke, the teenager started to succumb to it, coughing terribly. "Quickly, this way!" She tugged Winry down the stairway and into the lobby, the ceiling was on fire. A beam fell in front of them, Ila leaped and pulled the mechanic out of harm's way until the front entrance was in view. They made it through the turn style door just as the rest of the ceiling collapsed. Both girls fell flat on the ground outside.
"We barely made it!" Winry gasped in between coughing. She turned to the girl. "I know why you came to get me, you know." She sat up.
"Really….do tell."
"You need a new body." She stood defiantly as the Inn blazed behind her, the updrafts from the flames causing her hair to billow into her face. "Just so you know, I'm not going to let that happen." Her blue eyes became cold as steel.
"Fine." The little girl crossed her arms and closed her eyes. "If you want to find Edward, he's down there." She pointed toward the field.
Winry stared at Ila suspiciously but decided not to ask any more questions, she ran toward the battlefield. She couldn't believe it would be that easy, but figured the little girl by herself couldn't take her. She forgot about the transmutation circle on her chest. She felt a slight tingle over her heart. This tingle quickly turned into searing electricity, blue sparks leapt through and burned the white fabric of her dress. She screamed in agony and fell to the ground. She was paralyzed and not able to will her limbs to move an inch. Her eyes were open and despite her vision fading, the last thing she saw was the smiling white child slowly walking toward her.
"The circle is almost complete, Keren." Ila lovingly placed her small hand on the forehead of a body draped in cloth on the table. It was obvious that this person was dead. "I'll have a stone and will bring you back." She walked away slowly and toward the unconscious blond laying in the center of an ornate transmutation circle, a circle carved into the stone floor. "Wake up, Winry!" She bent over her. Winry's dress was hiked up on her right side revealing the tip of the dagger lashed to her thigh. Ila bent down and slowly drug the white fabric up to see the whole weapon. "Well, this saves me some time." She removed the blade from its makeshift sheath and held it up as she stood. "Ironic, it seems it was crafted by Ed's alchemy. Tacky, but it will work." She fingered the ornate skull encrusted handle. She noticed the girl below her move her head. "You need to be awake!" Ila gave her a swift kick to the side.
"Hey!" Winry grimaced at the blow but opened her eyes and glared at the white child with anger. "What the hell! Let me up you little witch!" She could not move her body. Although her limbs were not bound to the ground, she was not able to move, something tingly and definitely alchemic was gluing her to the floor, a floor she noticed was etched with runes and circles….a transmutation circle that she was smack dab in the middle. "What are you doing?" She yelled.
"I've blocked the nerves from your limbs to your spine. It's a little alkahestry I learned in Xing. Nothing permanent." She stood over Winry and her cold gray eyes narrowed. "It is really to your benefit, you won't feel a thing."
"Are you going to kill me?" She was no longer afraid. The hours of unknowing and alone in the Inn she had spent contemplating many scenarios, her death was one. She was more afraid she was going to learn about Edward or Al's deaths.
"No." Ila turned her head and smiled wistfully at the body on the table. "But in order for this to work, you must be very near death. And, I need a lot of your blood for the transmutation.. I hope you've recovered enough from the loss of your hand."
"Spare me the fake concern! What kind of transmutation?" Winry's only hope, her only plan was to keep talking, keep delaying Ila. She didn't know who or what would save her, but it was the only thing she could do.
"Two, actually. Well, truthfully, three. But, you're a mechanic, not an alchemist-I don't think you would understand."
"You'd be surprised. Who, who is that on the table?"
"That is my sister, Keren." Her face frowned with the painful memory. "She died forty years ago, in the early days, when the strife in Ishval began."
"I'm sorry." She was truthful. "My parent's were killed in Ishval too." She hoped to appeal to any part of the girl's good nature, if she had any. "They were doctors, they treated Ishvalans."
"A lot of good people died there. Keren was an amazing alchemist and alkahestrist. She taught many people in secret. Ishvalla forbade the art."
"I know you loved her. But, you do know how Ed and Al lost their bodies, right?"
"They tried to bring someone back." She uttered with no emotion.
"Yes they did. They tried to bring their dead mother back. Ila, it doesn't work. Ed's told me, and yes, I don't understand all of it, but he's a genius and he's TOLD me!"
"Told you what?" Her anger wafted with her small voice.
"You can create the body with alchemy, but you cannot create the SOUL!" Winry shouted, hoping to reach the girl. "You cannot recreate HER soul. Please. Ila, don't do this!"
"I cannot stop what I've started. I'm really sorry it has to be you." She moved one leg over Winry's torso so that she stood straddling her. "When this is over, the dead on the battlefield will have created my philosopher's stone. Your blood will start the transmutation, the stone will finish it."
"Finish what?"
"Bringing Keren back to life. I will use the stone to restore your body and I will claim it for my own soul! I will open that god damned Gate of Truth and bring my sister's soul back!"
"No." Winry all but whispered.
"It won't be so bad, you'll still be in there, buried beneath my soul. I've figured out that there is no way around the body degrading when placing foreign souls in a dead shell. However, it occurred to me that in order to keep the body healthy and whole, its original soul must be present. I figured a way to subdue the original soul and implant another, a parasite to take control." She giggled. "That parasite will be me. I'll use this dead girl's shell as material to recreate Keren's body as well.
"I will fight you." She shouted. "I won't let you take control of ME!"
"You know something?" she lowered the dagger. "You'd probably not know it now, but I started my life as a boy. I grew into a strong young man. I courted a beautiful girl. She was Amestrian and had lovely golden hair. It was very similar to the color of Edward's hair."
Winry gasped.
"I lost her, she was shot by a sniper and soon afterwards, I was mortally wounded- my legs were destroyed by an explosion. There was not enough of me left for Keren to heal. All she could do was heal my lover's body and bind my soul to it before I left this world." Her hands gripped the dagger harshly making her knuckles white. "Do you know how wretched it was? To wake up in the morning and see your lover's face in the mirror and YOUR soul was inside her body! To WATCH that body slowly decay? Keren was a genius like Edward but even she couldn't stop the reaction. The body was rejecting my foreign soul."
"Ila, I'm so sorry for you. I know that pain, the pain of loss!"
"Do you? Do you know how it feels to watch your older sister age, get sick and DIE while you float from body to body? Keren taught me EVERYTHING she knew. I had to absorb it all and keep the process going if I was to live. But, she, she grew old on me!" She grit her teeth. "I suppose that was a small price to pay for my immortality. "
"I still will overcome your soul if you try to take my body over!" Winry spat. "I will fight you! Edward will fight you!"
"I'm sure you both will try. Speaking of Edward- you know, when I first met him, I dismissed his body as an option for my soul. He is a cripple after all."
"He is not! He's got my automail!"
"Yes. He does. But now I see how he cares for you. I'm sure he'll care for me too, in fact, I'm sure he'll LOVE me when I'm inside you…." She raised he dagger high over her head.
"No!" She squeezed her eyes shut.
"I've always been partial to blonds!" She screamed as she brought the dagger down on Winry, the steel blade piercing her side, penetrating her body and even the floor below. Slowly, a dark pool of blood seeped onto the ground and an ominous red stain grew on her white dress, the fabric wicking it up away from the wound. "Open your eyes, Winry." Ila left the blade in place and she stepped over the girl's body.
"What?" Winry opened her eyes. Ila's words were true, she did not feel any pain.
"I told you it wouldn't hurt." She watched as Winry's blood trickled into the hollows of the carvings in the floor. Gravity pulled the red liquid slowly into the fine lines in the stone.
She felt the cool dampness on her skin, a sensation that left her suddenly nauseous. In the next instant, her own mortality came rushing at her, starting a reaction deep within. Winry screamed.
"EDWARD!"
As he stood outside the inferno that once was the Ratzul Inn, he heard her scream his name. He may have lost his brother and now Winry. Edward couldn't bear it. His amber eyes dashed from right to left, trying to locate the source of her scream: the church of Lito.