"Aunt Fanella?" Thea asked as she followed her aunt off in the direction of the woods surrounding the Presten ranch. Thea's parents followed closely behind them, watching the sky and looking all around them. Thea assumed they were keeping watch to protect her, and it made her very nervous. That rogue Chimaera had put everyone on edge.

Fanella turned to look back at her niece.

"What Chimaera am I going to make?" Thea asked, unable to go a moment longer without knowing.

"My dear niece, you are going to make a noctos," she said with a gentle smile.

"What's a noctos?" Thea asked. Overcome with excitement, she followed close behind as they entered the shadows of the trees. Up ahead, a chipmunk scurried around a tall maple tree and disappeared.

"A winged horse," Thea's father said as he and Thea's mother trailed along behind them with Cecelia in tow. "Picture Pegasus. He was a very famous noctos."

Thea smiled as she imagined her horse Cecelia with wings.

Twitchet flew after Aunt Fanella and landed on her shoulder. They walked a path through the woods. Thea's parents continued to watch the sky and surrounding forest for any dangers.

Aunt Fanella found a fallen log covered in moss, and she sat down. She asked Thea to lie down, and she took out a wooden pendulum from one of her pockets. After Thea sprawled out in the cool grass, Aunt Fanella cupped the pendulum in her hands and held it up to her forehead with her eyes closed. Everyone watched silently.

"What is she doing?" Thea asked finally, unable to watch silently any longer.

"I am clearing my mind and opening my heart to my Higher Self and my Spirit Guide," Aunt Fanella said. "And I shall have to start again now, so shush please."

Thea's parents both gave her reassuring smiles.

Thea automatically wanted to ask what a Higher Self is, and she desperately wanted to know more about a Spirit Guide, but she bit her lower lip to keep from asking any more curious questions.

Aunt Fanella opened her eyes and extended her hands, one over the other. She let out the chain of her pendulum. Thea watched the droplet of wood swing slowly right above her.

"Close your eyes now, Thea, and begin Pranayama," Thea's mother said in a soft voice. "Breathe deeply and calmly."

Ever since Thea could remember, at the end of the day, her mother would ask her to sit with her, contemplate the day, and practice meditation. Thea closed her eyes and immediately began to take slow breaths. She was used to sitting in Arda Padmasana or Sukhasana for this, instead of lying in Shavasana, but she did the best she could to focus on her breath and to reflect on the overall feeling of the day.

Try as she might, Thea could not calm herself, and a tingling excitement began to take hold deep inside her, which made it very hard to clear her mind or focus on her breath. The world had more people like her parents, and she would go to school with them. She would make a Chimaera and make new friends and learn to be an Alchemist. Thea's birthday had turned out better than she'd ever hoped it could be.

"Okay, Allie, you can open your eyes now," her father said after some time had passed.

Thea immediately noticed a distinct hint of apprehension in his voice. She opened her eyes to see a very peculiar look on her mother's face.

"Perhaps it's your pendulum, Fanella," she said with an urgent fervor that shocked Thea. "My results are much different with my crystal pendulum."

Aunt Fanella shook her head. "Stone pendulums allow too much of your own Spiritual Energy through. You were probably reading your own Chakra Energies." She sounded sad when she said it, but she spoke with a firm conviction.

A deep silence passed over them.

"What happened?" Thea asked, her voice just above a whisper.

The adults all exchanged glances. Finally Thea's father leaned forward. "Your Chakras are all but closed."

Thea stared at him, uncomprehending. She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest.

"Perhaps you should explain it to her, Owen," Aunt Fanella said as Twitchet scampered down her arm and sat on the log beside her.

Thea's father cleared his throat. "Everyone has Seven main Chakras. Each one corresponds with a Fragment of Alchemy. Recreants can sometimes learn to open their Chakras, which they call unlocking, but only Alchemists can tap into the Spiritual Power of the Chakras. We call this Spiritual Power Kundalini, and it resides in the Root Chakra."

"And my Chakras are ..." Thea said slowly.

"Nearly closed," Aunt Fanella said.

"Meaning?" Thea looked back at her dad.

"Our Chakras take in Energy from our surroundings," he said. "Chakras can have too little Energy or too much. We must always work to keep our Spiritual Energies in balance. In your case, all your Chakras are almost closed."

A shocked silence fell over them. After all the excitement, this terrible news left Thea numb. Not only was she different from every other Alchemist, but there was something wrong with her.

Thea reached out and grabbed Twitchet, pulled her close, and hugged her gently. "What's wrong with me?" she asked. Twitchet's stubby tail twitched, and she purred softly.

"There's nothing wrong with you," Aunt Fanella assured her. "You've had no formal training. Perhaps your Root Chakra is weak because you have lived away from home your whole life. An imbalance in your Root Chakra can easily spread to your other Chakras-"

Thea's anger suddenly flared up. "The ranch is my home!" she insisted. "I've lived here my entire life."

"Allie," her father said. "You were born in Norway. That's where you're really from."

"Okay, I guess." Thea mumbled. "You never told me, so I always thought..." She dropped Twitchet and crossed her arms. Twitchet came back to Thea's side and touched her hand with her soft wet nose. Thea tried to ignore her, but the tiny Chimaera put her paw on Thea's arm, and she couldn't help but take the winged cat back into her embrace. She hugged Twitchet to her face and blinked at her, while Twitchet's whiskers tickled her nose; the Chimaera started to purr again, and Thea couldn't help but smile.

"In any case, the good news is that all but one of your Chakras are open," Aunt Fanella said. "Balancing an open Chakra is much more manageable than opening a closed Chakra." Aunt Fanella softly pressed her hand to the very top of Thea's head. "It's very troubling for your Chakras to have so little Energy, but it hardly means there's anything really wrong with you. After all, we have already seen what you're capable of without any training whatsoever."

Thea breathed a sigh of relief at the news that she could balance her Chakras. "How do I fix my Chakras?"

"The best way is with a Guru," Aunt Fanella answered. "And sadly, I am no Guru."

"What's a Guru?" Thea asked.

"Someone who trains Alchemists to tap into their Spiritual Essence."

"Well, when can I see a Guru?" Thea asked.

"Maybe as soon as a day or so. Once we leave for Blackthorn and Burtree."

"We're leaving that soon?" Thea's body went cold.

"Calm down, Althy," Aunt Fanella said. "If you get riled up, it'll only make it worse. Right now you just need to focus on staying calm. We have already seen you do some amazing things with your Spiritual Essence. There's absolutely no reason to worry."

"Then I can still make my Chimaera?" Thea asked.

"Of course," Aunt Fanella said.

Thea nodded with a sigh of relief.

Aunt Fanella pulled a knife out of one of her many pockets and meticulously carved a Symbol into the log upon which she sat. Then she fumbled through all her pockets until she found what she was looking for-a feather. She held the feather beside the carved Symbol on the log and shouted, "Belua!" and the Symbol turned blue.

At first nothing happened, and Thea wondered if Aunt Fanella had made a mistake. Maybe she was still really tired from all the Conversions she'd performed. But then Thea heard the softest of sounds, and she whirled around just in time to see a Great Gray Owl glide through the air. The owl landed right on the Symbol carved into the log, just as calmly as a domesticated pigeon.

"Wow," Thea muttered under her breath.

"You have to be the one to do the Conversion, or the Chimaera won't bond to you," Aunt Fanella said.

"What do I need to do?" Thea cautiously approached, worried that she might scare the owl away, but the giant bird paid no attention to her. The animal was engrossed with the Symbol carved in the wood, which looked like a sideways triangle inside an elaborate sphere.

"You need to draw an Amalgamation Conversion Circle with your own blood."

"I need to what?" Thea looked at her aunt with wide eyes.

"Give me your hand." Aunt Fanella reached out. Hesitantly, Thea let her take her hand, and she pulled her down to the ground and made her draw a symbol in the soft dirt.

First, they traced an outer circle. Inside this, they drew three more circles that overlapped in the center, with yet another ring encircling the overlapping section of the circles. Inside the very center, they drew an elaborate Symbol.

When they were finished, the entire Circle covered about four square feet. "Now you need to fill the lines in the earth with your own blood." Aunt Fanella pulled a new knife from another one of her pockets and held it out for Thea.

"Alchemy has blood magic?" Thea whispered.

"There is a big difference between Alchemy that sacrifices the living, that which we call the Forbidden Occult, and using your own blood to perform a Conversion," Aunt Fanella explained. "This Conversion is not forbidden, nor is it innately evil."

Thea swallowed hard and took the knife. She had no idea how she could possibly bleed enough to fill all the lines she had just drawn in the dirt. The thought made her heart pound.

"You can do it, Thea," her mother said.

Thea inhaled, set her jaw, and pressed the knife against the palm of her hand. Before she could change her mind, she sliced her hand open and cringed at the pain. The blood pooled into her palm.

Before she wasted an ounce of blood, she clenched her fist and held it over the symbol drawn in the earth. The blood dripped down, slowly coloring the lines crimson. Her arm began to shake as she reached out to fill all the lines of the Insignia with her blood. When the symbol was finally complete, she felt so light-headed she started to fall forward onto the Script she had created.

Aunt Fanella caught Thea and immediately drew the healing symbol on her wrist and spoke the Word to close the wound on her hand. For a moment, she stared in amazement at her smooth palm which had been sliced open and bleeding freely only a second ago.

"Now what?" Thea huffed.

"We put the animals in position, and you speak the Word, and just like that, you've got yourself a Chimaera," Aunt Fanella said.

"I don't know," Thea's mother said. "Should this really be Thea's first Conversion? There is a fairly high failure rate."

"What happens if it fails?" Thea asked.

"Sometimes nothing, but sometimes the animals fuse incorrectly," her mother said. "There's nothing worse than being bound to a malformed Chimaera. You'd have to destroy it, and Ceil would be gone."

Thank you for reading my book and coming on this journey with me. Please remember to vote and leave me a comment if you would like. I love to hear from my readers. What do you think of the Amalgamation Conversion?

~A.C.