The Tie That Binds
Chapter 3

"Stop!" Al raged with all his admittedly negligible strength against the invisible steel grasp that held him back. "Stop it, you're killing him!"

Eyes wide as coins and roving around wildly, Ed could only gag and retch as his mouth was forced wide open by dozens of cords of twisting shadow. Blood bubbled up at the corners of his lips.

At long last, Al wrenched himself free of—or was released from—whatever grip Truth had on him. Still unable to move far at all on his own, he threw himself towards Ed. He came down hard on his palms and elbows barely a foot away, his hands slipping on a floor that was slick with a swelling pool of his brother's blood. Blind panic nearly froze him as his fingers scrabbled for purchase in a sea of red, the startling sensations of hot and wet as good as an electric shock to his newly restored nerves. But he managed to swipe an arm at the tendrils currently choking the life out of his brother, one arm braced against the slippery ground.

To his surprise, it actually worked. The tendrils vanished when he touched them, dissipating into grainy wisps of black dust that wavered and then re-solidified in the air above them. They snaked their way back down, a few of them lacing chillingly through his fingers and wrapping themselves almost lovingly around his wrist, before joining their fellows that were still pinning Ed down fast.

Or, what was left of him. Many of the black hands had affixed themselves, parasite-like, to the bleeding stumps where three limbs had been moments before. Al almost went to tear them away before he realized that they were probably the only thing keeping Ed from bleeding out on the spot.

As soon as Ed's mouth was clear, he sucked in a shuddering gasp that quickly broke into a wet, vicious cough. His eyes screwed shut, and he turned his face to the side and hacked again, a mouthful of blood spilling out over blue-tinged lips and down the side of his face.

Al pushed himself up on his knees and slid a hand carefully behind Ed's neck, the other already splayed across his chest. Ed's head jerked up at his touch, and his eyes snapped open, unfocused and bright with agony.

"Ed," Al said urgently, fearfully. Ed's eyes flicked to his. His face was colorless.

"What's wrong? What'd they do to you?" He thought the more pertinent question was What DIDN'T they do, but Ed was coughing blood, and if something inside of him had been destroyed, or taken…

Ed opened his mouth as if to respond, but succeeded only in making another mouthful of blood dribble sickeningly down his chin. Al could feel him shuddering, hard, beneath his hands. His own head snapped up towards Truth. "What did you do to him?" The question was half snarled, half desperate.

-Equivalency, young alchemist. Truth had Ed's arms crossed across its chest, one thin and atrophied and one still bleeding. –I assume you wish to return from this place intact.

"Intact?" he repeated blankly, even as he helped turn Ed's head to one side so he could spit out more of the bloody froth filling his mouth. It took almost more strength than he possessed to even lift his head—and he fought a fresh surge of dread at the realization that if they were expected to cross the threshold between this place and their world under their own power, he wouldn't make it very far on his own, let alone with Ed in tow. As it stood now, even with the countless hands pressed to the wounds, Ed had minutes at the most before he bled out completely.

-Yes, intact, Truth continued, quite conversationally. –There is a unity between the body, mind, and soul, a unity that is not usually broken except in death. It paused. You, of course, are an exception.

Ed's eyes rolled back, and his head went limp in Al's grip, slumping against the ground.

"Brother!"

Truth continued talking. –But this unity is costly. Once broken, it's not easily regained.

"But I'm back together again," Al said, shakily, after he'd pressed an ear to Ed's chest and stuck a hand under his mouth and nose to confirm that he hadn't slipped away—and after, of course, he'd remembered that he was once again capable of utilizing his senses to confirm life at all. "The three parts are designed to fit together, and they're drawn to one another, so how—"

-That is true. Truth had sat down again, arms wrapped easily around one flesh knee drawn up against its empty chest. -But affixing a soul to a foreign object for an extended period of time? That complicates matters. That complicates matters a great deal. After all, the soul is quite mutable. There was a touch of what almost sounded like academic interest in its voice. Al watched it, incredulous, while fruitlessly attempting to swipe some of the blood off Ed's cheek with his thumb.

-Obviously, the tie between the three elements has re-established itself within you, it said, but such a unity is tenuous at best when the very fabric and composition of the soul has been so drastically altered.

Altered?

Al must've looked startled at that, because for the umpteenth time, Truth grinned broadly. –A hasty transmutation of a spiritual substance into a crude physical anchor and then back again has its consequences. If the bond between a soul and its corresponding mind and body isn't re-established, with time that soul is likely to slip away, because it is no longer made of quite the same stuff it once was. It won't, shall we stay, stick. It gestured at Ed with a sweep of a hand. Fortunately for you, though—it began, before its voice morphed and changed mid-sentence. No longer booming or hauntingly multi-tonal, but young and male.

-Your brother's just solved that predicament.

The voice was Ed's.

Al was sure his heart just about stopped at the sound. His breath caught, and whatever-the-hell Truth was saying about something being wrong with his soul suddenly didn't matter anymore as he grabbed for Ed's chin with one hand and forced his mouth open with two fingers of another.

"What did you take?" he demanded, while his fingers performed a hasty sweep of the inside of Ed's mouth. It was difficult, very difficult, with next to no dexterity in fingers that were no longer huge or gloved, and that were now tipped with jagged, overly long nails that he accidentally scraped across Ed's tongue a few times. Of course, he was relieved that Ed's tongue was still there at all, because that had been his first fear. But aside from a great deal of blood mixed with spittle that he managed to get all over his hands, his search turned up nothing. The source of the blood was obviously not the mouth itself, which must mean—

-I believe that you would refer to them as vocal cords, it answered. –Hardly necessary for human survival.

Vocal cords.

Oh, God…

And it was enough to make him physically ill, hearing this thing answer him some warped, impossibly detached version of his brother's voice.

Blood began to leak out of the corner of Ed's upturned mouth once more. He was still out cold, hardly breathing. And, despite the dark hands having merged into three pulsing, miasmic masses that still clung fast to the stumps and caused the bleeding to become sluggish, Ed was still deathly pale, Al's shaking hands coated in his blood.

"Let us go," Al's voice was low, vicious.

Truth cocked its head to one side.

"We've paid, now let us leave." He gently turned Ed's face towards the ground again to keep him from choking, icy fear gripping his chest. "You know we can't get out of here on our own, so help us. I know you can."

-Clearly presumption runs in the family. Its—Ed's—voice was cold. When Al said nothing, Truth inclined its head, in a humoring gesture. –Very well, it said.

And then Al was being yanked backwards.

TBC.