The Newt and Demon

6.7 - Curious Potions

Getting a handle on this new class of reagents wasn’t easy. Theo had woken the next morning, his mind focused entirely on the topic. He moved like a zombie, heading down to the first floor of his manor to pick at his food. Sarisa forced him to eat like a concerned mother hen. When he finally snapped out of it, realizing that progress wasn’t something he often made at the breakfast table, he finished his meal to satisfy his doting minders. But the truth was he was hungry. And the woman’s food was always delicious, even if it was just sausage and eggs.

Whisper’s secret blend of herbs and spices were a coveted thing within the town. She refused to give them up, often going silent when anyone asked. The tactic worked, and the secret remained with her.

As always, there were no answers to be found at the breakfast table.

“Busy day?” Rowan asked, checking Theo with his shoulder as the alchemist moved to exit the manor.

Theo paused, checking his administration interface. It was a busy day for someone else, but not him. The ward he had placed on the city was holding firm, forestalling any issues that would arise from corrupted cores. That only left the structural integrity of the city left to deal with. While he could help with that, it was more work than moving a few boulders around. Ziz’s team made regular reports, and they had a solution that involved Throk and about half the alliance as a workforce.

“Not that busy,” Theo said. “I need to figure out what’s going on with these plants.”

“Oh, I’m real good with plants,” Rowan said, throwing his arm over Theo’s shoulder. The way only a half-ogre could do. “Tell me your problem and I’ll help ya.”

Sarisa laughed somewhere within the manor as Rowan walked with Theo. They exited the building together, marching down the road at a snail’s pace.

“We never expected wild reagents to be better than cultivated ones,” Theo said. Rowan wasn’t good with plants. Let alone ‘real good.’ But there was no point in not humoring the man. Half-ogres had wisdom that couldn’t be matched. Straight to the point and unabashedly honest, they often found the easiest solution for every problem.

“Doesn’t take a master herbalist to figure that one out, Theo.” Rowan laughed, nearly tipping the pair over onto the cobbled street. “You can’t direct the godly energy in the swamp, can you? So your fancy greenhouses can’t create those fancy plants.”

This wasn’t the problem Theo was trying to solve, but he smiled and nodded. That was true enough, and he appreciated the insight. He changed the topic. “How is your relationship with Baelthar?”

“My what with who? Fine, I guess. He doesn’t care what I do.”

“Have you prayed to him?” Theo asked, gesturing to the temple looming in the distance.

Rowan spat on the ground. “Screw that. Any god I follow needs to be strong enough to stand on their own.”

“Fair enough.”

Theo entered the Newt and Demon. The sign was flipped to ‘open’ and the bell rang when he stepped through the threshold. Salire was already on the third floor, working on some standard potions for the shop. She looked as though she had been working the stills for a few hours already, even if the sun had just risen. They shot ideas back-and-forth but didn’t have an answer for their problem. While she worked, the alchemist left for his Herbalist’s Workshop. One theory remained in his mind.

“Don’t get too close to that,” Theo said. Rowan had drawn too close to the deadly plant in his experimental garden. “You’ll die. Horribly, if the description is anything to go by.”

“Ah. Got it.”

Theo recalled the description he had generated in the Dreamwalk. Something nagged him at the back of his mind, and he realized it might not have been completely accurate. Breaking the rules of the system had become a hobby of the Tara’hek. But something lingered in his thoughts, and he intended to generate a research report right after he planted the reagent. As the alchemist kneeled near the garden plot, a thought came into his mind as a Wisdom of the Soul message appeared.

[Wisdom of the Soul]

You’re fairly certain this won’t work. Putting aside the problem with a powerful wild reagent taking root, there’s a high chance this plant will react with the soil itself. When you planted the spirit fruit within the dream realm, you did so because it would not bind to regular soil.

Only soil enchanted with an absurd amount of holy energy could possibly support this plant. It might also explode, killing you and everyone around. Who knows! Maybe you should try it…

“I get it,” Theo muttered, moving away from the garden plot. He brought the most potent sample they had harvested into the workshop, laying it down for inspection. He recalled the research properties it had given him before and compared them against what was right in front of him. There was only one line that was different.

“Will likely produce unknown potion?” Theo asked, turning to Rowan. “I didn’t see that in my dream.”

“Then keep dreaming, cause I dunno what that means.”

Theo grunted a response. He was certain he had generated an accurate report in the Dreamwalk. But that last line was missing. Wisdom of the Soul jumped in again, giving a rare two-for-nothing deal on the problem. It confirmed that breaking the bounds of the Dreamwalk had unintended consequences. The combined willpower of the Tara’hek was powerful, but the system was almost omnipotent. They had spat in the face of something that was beyond them, and he felt lucky to have gotten bad information rather than something worse.

Theo had enough samples of the powerful Spiny Swamp Thistle Root to produce at least one potion. The urge to rush into the lab and brew it was squashed as the alchemist chose caution over haste. He first entertained the idea of planting these new plants in Tero’gal, deciding against it for now. He would explore his reasons for that later. Instead, he went to the lab and sucked a still into his inventory. Salire didn’t question it, and he brought it to the sparsely wooded area behind the lab. The span between the lab and the harbor was clear enough for him to run his experiment.

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“Where is Sarisa, anyway?” Theo asked, shoving his bodyweight against the still to get it into place. When it didn’t work, Rowan helped. THe Potion of Hauling could have helped with this, but it seemed like a waste.

“Dunno. She asked me to be your babysitter.”

“Don’t you babysit me every day?”

“Yeah, but one of us has to talk to you. And she normally volunteers.”

Theo stopped shoving after the still was level, glaring at his guardian. “I’m not some senile old man.”

Rowan shrugged.

“I’m not!”

“Light the fire, geezer.”

It was harder to do smaller batches with Drogramath’s alchemy. The temperature mattered far more as the mash within could easily be burned to the bottom. Even Throk’s absurdly awesome stills couldn’t do much to help with that. But under an expert’s hand—the foremost expert on Drogramathi Alchemy living today—made it look easy. Within the hour, he had a sample of Refined Healing Essence to examine. It was exactly like the normal version. Even if it felt more potent in his hands.

“Before I was working for you, one of Ziz’s boys dared me to break into your place and drink a whole bottle of that stuff.”

“You would have died,” Theo said casually. He portioned one unit of the liquid into a vial from his inventory. “Maybe. Actually, I don’t know. Wanna try?”

Rowan looked as though he would try for a moment. He reached his hand out reflexively, but pulled it back when Theo offered him a vial. “Nah, I’m good.”

“For science!”

Theo was proud when Rowan refused again. It was easy to get him and his sister riled up with challenges. He was glad to see survival instincts improving across the board with half-ogres.

“This is weird,” Theo said, swirling the essence in a vial. There was something off about it he couldn’t put his finger on. “This feels close to the spirit fruit. Like the potion is going to complain when I brew it.”

“Stop stalling.”

Theo introduced the other ingredients required to create a reaction. As he suspected, there was almost no reaction. The flake of metal fell to the bottom of the vial like a leaf on the wind. Small bubbles formed at the bottom, but didn’t produce the violent reaction it should have.

“Nothing happened,” Rowan said. Theo pulled the vial back when the man tried to flick it.

“It needs time to brew,” Theo said, feeling himself slipping through the cracks of reality. As he did, he watched as the vial remained where it was. Not in his hand, but floating in the air for only a moment. Rowan caught it before it hit the ground and the alchemist canceled his trip to Tero’gal.

“Just dropping stuff!” Rowan said, huffing. “Isn’t this thing valuable?”

Theo took the vial from Rowan and looked at it, brow cocked as his tail flicked through the air. This wasn’t just curious now, it was interesting. He put a stopper on the vial and added it to his inventory. “Let’s try again.”

“Sure.”

Theo let himself slip through the crack again. Half his body had vanished from the mortal realm when he heard a popping sound. The vial had ejected itself from his inventory and Rowan caught it once again. After canceling his trip yet again, the alchemist glared at the vial. “It doesn’t want to go.”

“Pretty sure potions aren’t as willful as you think.” Rowan laughed, holding the vial out for Theo to take. “Are they?”

“I think my exploit has been patched.”

“Your who got what?”

This would be awful if someone had fixed his exploit. Taking spirit fruit and potions to the heavens to allow them to brew had reduced the time for brewing potions significantly. The person who would have done that was Khahar, of course. But it didn’t feel like that. Something was off.

“This has to brew here. On the mortal plane,” Theo said, holding the vial up. “Time to make a few more. I guess.”

Theo finished the other potions and sucked the still back into his inventory. He placed it back in the lab, pulling Salire aside to show her the new potions.

“It feels potent,” she said, hesitating to reach out to it.

“Trust your instincts on that one. I don’t think this is reactive right now. Rowan flicked the vial, but give it a few hours and I think we’ll have a potent potion.”

Even the temperature of the air had changed the rate at which the bubbles were forming at the bottom. Theo felt itchy after watching that. Wisdom of the Soul had no more wisdom to dispense, but his time working with potions had taught him well enough. New things in alchemy meant fresh problems.

“Crank the air conditioner in here, please,” Theo said, taking all but one vial into his inventory. “We need to leave the air off on the second floor and open the windows. Put the first floor at a decent temperature, but not this cold.”

“On it!” Salire shouted, adjusting the knob for the air conditioner in this room.

If Theo was right, this was another realm of potion making he hadn’t expected. Not only could he not use Tero’gal to make these potions develop faster, but he had to babysit them. And he was almost positive this was the answer. Salire dashed off to fix the other floors, leaving the air running at full blast on the third floor. The bubbles slowed at the bottom of the potion, almost stopping completely.

When Salire returned, she had her notebook in her hands. Since Theo had nothing to do unless he wanted to help with Qavell, he helped her rework some sections of their book. They hadn’t found a printing press yet, and he didn’t have the courage to ask Throk to drop other things to make one. It was also unlikely that anyone would read a copy of their book, but that wasn’t the point. Putting this knowledge to the page was more important than finding a base of readers.

Once he had no more excuses, Theo swapped his Zaul core for his sorcerer core and headed out. With potions on every level of his building and one in his inventory, the experiment would run its course. He didn’t want to proceed before he had more information. As he walked through the town, he realized the irony in what he was doing with his alchemy. Zarali and Belgar had been dronon that were single-minded for perfection. When Belgar was alive to perform his alchemy, he accepted nothing but the best. He took his time with each step to ensure it was perfect.

Theo’s way of brewing potions was different. His method was born of a need to help these people. Broken Tusk had more problems that a person could count at the start. Alchemy bridged the gap between what they lacked and what they needed. That meant Theo produced vast quantities of potions to fit that need. Now he thought about the old ways of doing things. As the Champion of Drogramath, he would embody the ideals he resisted. As much as he disliked the slow way, it had to be done. This was the way forward to the true fourth tier of Drogramath’s alchemy.

Ziz and his people had done well on Qavell so far. The work had been constant and more problems arose by the day. Theo worked his way down the beach, walking over the causeway as the waves lapped against his feet. He pulled his coat tight to fight against the sun overhead, feeling the cooling effect of the magical item envelop him. False ground had been seeded near the base of the city. Immeasurable tons of rocks were resting in the waves and a team of people were working with metal cables to stabilize the city.

“How are we doing, Ziz?” Theo asked, clapping a hand over the mason’s shoulder. He jumped slightly, turning to smile at him.

“Poorly!” Ziz spat on the wet ground. “Have you ever tried to wrangle an entire city? Everything I’m trying is failing. See those massive pillars? The ones… you know… the size of a city? My stone welding can’t keep them together. Those cables keep snapping—and if the GODS DAMNED tide comes in one more time, I’m going to kill the sea.”

“So, about what we expected?”

“Yeah.”

Theo took a deep breath. There was little he could do to advance his potion making and his ascension to the Throne of the Dreamwalker. He had time to kill.

“Come on. I have an idea.”

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