Brewing Bad Ch. 93-94

Ch. 93 - The Basics

Lucas spent the next few days learning the ins and outs of his system. Whenever he wasn’t mixing potions and searching through reagents with Heisenburgle, he researched this strange topic. Every afternoon, he would haunt the libraries, looking through books for so much as a mention, and every morning after he finished in the lab, he would lay awake in bed, paging through the interface as he looked for some sort of answer. 

He found a few things. He figured out that almost anything could be zoomed in on, just by focusing on it hard enough. He found a list skill list that seemed to focus almost exclusively on alchemical skills, but there were a few weapon skills in there, too, for no reason in particular. 

No matter how much he learned, though, he couldn’t quite bring himself to spend the points on anything. He knew he should, of course, but it wasn’t like he needed anything just now, and he couldn’t help but feel like he might need them for something later. Hell, for all he knew, some new menu might pop up at random with a list of superpowers for three points. 

One of the main reasons he couldn’t make himself use the things, though, was that he had no idea how to get more.

Well, that wasn't exactly right. If he leveled up, he'd get more, but there wasn't a really easy way to do that, exactly. There was very little information on leveling up so far. He had no idea how to generate experience points, not reliably, anyway. He could make it go up sometimes when he did alchemical stuff, but it was erratic. He needed something that was more of a sure thing, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get that by going out and killing goblins and giant spiders, even if they’d let him out of the compound. 

None of that was the most frustrating part, though. He could accept that it would give him a few experience points for properly pulverizing this herb but not that one and that he’d get a little pop-up letting him know he’d received a bonus for reading this tome, but not that one. What he couldn’t accept was that every time he made Blue or any other off-brand potion of his own design, he received a condescending error message. It just sucked the joy right out of brewing shit now that a second Heisenburgle had set up shop in his head, and the two of them were taking turns telling Lucas just how much he sucked. 

I’m sorry. This isn’t a proper recipe. +10 exp.

You tried hard, but this effort was wasted. +10 exp. 

Maybe you should check your formula again. +10 exp. 

Each time, the potion he made was undoubtedly correct, but each time, his system let him know he was a failure anyway. Oh, if he used one of the recipes in Heisenburgle’s books, it would reward him with a pat on the head and a bump of experience, but if he did something himself, even something that worked out, the system told him what a naughty boy he was. 

“Damnit,” he grumbled under his breath as he made another batch of Blue only to get another too bad, so sad pop-up. “It says mana intoxication right there!”

“Mana intoxication?” Heisenburgle asked. “Where?”

“Oh, um, in the book I was reading earlier,” Lucas lied quickly as he realized he’d gotten aggravated enough to speak in a tone where the gnome could hear him. 

“What is it, anyway,” Lucas asked as the gnome eyed him suspiciously. “Mana intoxication, I mean.”

He held his breath as Heisenburgle regarded him coolly; the gnome could obviously sense that something wasn’t adding up. However, the one thing he couldn’t resist was explaining a concept in his smug and superior way. Suspicion warred with pride for a moment before the gnome finally said. “It's a dangerous condition that mages can suffer from for a variety of reasons. Most often, it happens if they drink too many mana potions or similar elixirs.”

“Oh?” Lucas asked, pretending to be more interested in the wizened gnome caps than he was in the gnome that was standing next to him. “And what’s so dangerous about it? Heartburn? Indigestion? Should they call their doctor if it lasts longer than four hours?”

“What? No!” Heisenburgle scowled. “If you are exposed to too much magic, your essence inverts, and it starts to burn away instead of regenerate.”

“Sounds painful,” Lucas said, wondering how any of that tied in with the high euphoria value of his most popular potion.

“It’s quite the opposite, actually,” Heisenburgle answered smugly. “In the same way that someone dying of hypothermia in a blizzard suddenly feels so hot that they remove their cloak. The mage is burning his soul too hot, and while they kill themselves, I’m told it feels quite pleasant.”

“I mean…” Lucas said. “I guess I’m glad I can’t use any magic.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Heisenburgle answered with a wave of his hand. “Everyone can do magic with some practice. It's not as if It's anywhere near as complex as alchemy, after all. Anyway, a few hours of rest, and they’re just fine. Mana intoxication is a problem, but it’s rarely a life-threatening one.”

Lucas wasn’t sure how he felt about that information. It finally put a missing piece into his puzzle, but that missing piece informed him that Blue was even more evil than he thought it was. Up until now, he’d thought that he was just making some bullshit potion that happened to also get you high. Now he found out he was making something that burned your mana to actually make you high. It was a revelation that somehow made him feel even more slimy. 

As they tried a series of new formulas that ultimately ended in failure, Lucas wished, not for the first time, that he’d never stumbled across the recipe. He didn’t know what he’d be doing with his life, of course, but he doubted it would be worse than what he was doing now. 

Once they were done, just before sunrise, Lucas went back to his room and hit the books once more. This time, he added another term to his list of things to keep an eye out for: mana intoxication. 

A couple of hours later, just before he planned to go to bed, he was scared half out of his skin by a knock on the window. For a moment, he thought it was an assassin or that the Whisperers had tracked him down again. Instead, it was just a little bird. He almost shooed it away until he saw a little message tied to its leg. That's when he realized it was from Danaria. 

He hastily opened the window, and the thing came in. It was a wild songbird, but even so, it acted like a tame bird as it hopped up onto his hand. When he felt how cold the bird was, he felt bad for it, but as he stroked it, he realized how much colder the person sending it here must be, and he looked out the window at the walls and the snowy woods beyond them. Somewhere, she was out there, and she’d been waiting for god knew how long to make sure he got this. It made him feel more than a little bad.  

“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he whispered to the tiny creature before taking the message. “I’d speed it up if I could; maybe we should stop with the notes for a while. With the weather, we—”

The bird squealed angrily at him, but it made no move to fly out the window. That told him that it wasn’t that the little thing had broken free of Danaria’s grip and that, instead, she was making it clear that she had no intentions of abandoning him. That was cute in its own way, and he smiled. 

“Alright. But only once a week then, until it warms up,” he said finally, stroking the bird. “I don’t want you getting sick, alright?”

At this, the bird chirped more sweetly, and it lingered for another minute or two before it flew out the window. It was only when it was gone that Lucas wondered if he should have stroked the bird’s feathers. After all, if Danaira could see through its eyes and hear through its ears, then she could probably feel through its skin, which meant that he’d been stroking her hair and… well, that didn’t bear too much thinking about. He’d try to be more circumspect on her next visit. 

The note was a tiny little ribbon-wrapped cylinder that had been tied to the bird’s leg, and Lucas wondered if that was how he should send messages from now on. He’d tried to make the paper big enough that the thing could grab it in its beak, but maybe that was a wrong move. Danrira’s message was just big enough for one line of text, which was written in a single long sentence in a flowing, feminine hand. 

‘Come home soon, Lucas. Adin is up to something, and Kar’gandin says we’re running low on you-know-what. And I miss you. Danaraia.’

Lucas sighed and rolled his eyes as he read the names she’d listed, but he was smiling, too. If this was a tapped cell line, she would have just gotten all of them thrown away for a long time. That wasn’t really a danger just now, but it was a reminder that she didn’t really have a criminal bone in her body. 

“What in the hell is his problem now,” Lucas grumbled. The last thing he needed was Adin fucking shit up while he was stuck in here. “No, the better question is, how am I going to get out of here on parole to handle it.”

Parole. He lay back in bed and chuckled at that. If Blackgate was a prison, then it was the nicest prison he’d probably ever be in. It was certainly nicer than the Prince’s dungeon and the county lock-up, where he’d spent a few weeks on and off over the years. 

“So it’s not a prison, then,” he told himself. “And if it’s not a prison, then that means I don’t have to stay.”

He wasn’t so sure about that, of course, but the logic certainly followed. The guards wouldn’t let him out with Heisenburgle’s say so, of course, but if that’s all it took, well, then he was sure he could find a way to sweet talk the gnome. After all, he was pretty sure that despite the Alchemist’s trepidation, he would be willing to do anything to make that magical elven potion. It was some sort of holy grail to the man, and Lucas could see the way his eyes sparkled every time he mentioned it.

Ch. 94 - Shrinking the Haystack

In the end, it wasn’t difficult to get the warden to release him; it just took one conversation, but Lucas didn’t expect it to take longer than that. After all, he had a trump card. 

“The Prince will want to know why you’re going,” he said blandly when Lucas brought up the idea of taking some time off. “And you can’t get up to anything dangerous. No gang wars or anything of the sort. You’re too valuable until all this is done. He’ll probably want me to assign you a bodyguard or two and—”

“I have my own guards at the manor. I’ll be perfectly safe there,” Lucas said, not entirely sure that it was true. “As to the Prince, just send him a letter explaining that the Lwynthenll—”

“Shhh! Shhh! Shhhh!” the gnome said, looking around with paranoia, even though it was only the two of them in the laboratory. “That is not the sort of thing that one consigns to a letter! Anyone might read it!”

“Even better,” Lucas answered. “Then you can go there directly and explain why I’m going to take a little time off to take care of business at home.”

“Why should I do that?” Heisenburgle asked, setting down the vial he’d been examining and looking at Lucas, “We’ve tried sixty-four different poisonous reagents this week, and not one of them has come close to the desired effect. How could I possibly justify a little vacation for you when we are making no progress?”

“First of all, I’ve been here for over a month. Half the winter is gone, and I’ve got a lot of things going on,” he saw Heisenburgle open his mouth, but Lucas was sure he was just going to explain that the needs of the kingdom came first, so he kept talking, “And second of all I have an idea, and I can’t exactly do it from here.”

“Oh, an idea?” the gnome asked, perking up. “What does this idea got to do with you, going home? Surely, any proper alchemy can be done here, can’t it?” 

“Well, that’s just it,” Lucas agreed, “This elvish bullshit isn’t proper alchemy by your reckoning—”

“Lwynthenll is without a doubt—” Heisenburgle started, but Lucas cut him off. 

“It's made from ditch weed and other things you just don’t have here,” Lucas said, “But back in my crappy lab, I have a little of everything, so if I go back and poke around, I might find something that’s useful.” 

“You might just happen to have the secret ingredient we’ve been looking for?” the gnome snorted before gesturing broadly around the room. “Look around; we have rare ingredients from all over the world. We’ve got everything from polar blood straight from the Arctic to djinn dust all the way from Zyrathin! What could you have that we don’t already have.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” Lucas answered, trying not to be rude to this guy right now. “You’ve built one hell of a haystack, and we’re looking for a single needle within it. Potentially, we might have to make ten thousand batches of Blue just to rule all of them out.”

“So what if we do,” Heisenburgle responded acidly. 

“So what if there’s a shorter way?” Lucas got up and opened up a book he’d brought with him for just this moment and showed the gnome a map. “All the ingredients in this except for one are native to the forests of the region except the dwarf berries, so I’m thinking, what if that’s the wrong ingredient, and we need something different to catalyze the whole thing. Something local, you know?”

“Maybe…” Heisenburgle answered after a long pause, stroking his wispy white whiskers. “Maybe you’re on to something after all. I can have my assistants begin an audit of reagents and determine which of them might also fit within the area…”

“And I can go home and see if I might have something,” Lucas said quickly. 

What he didn’t mention was the alternative. If neither of them had what he was looking for, then he was fairly sure that they’d have to wait until spring at the earliest, then he’d have to go searching the forests to find some especially rare flower or something. 

Still, that was a later problem because right now, the only problem he had was packing for the carriage ride back to Parin Manor. Once Lucas explained his plan, Heisenburgle easily agreed to let him go home for a week and search for an ingredient that might work. Lucas didn’t bother to tell the gnome that he was really going back to do a bunch of cooking and decide whether or not he needed to beat Adin’s ass, but then, those weren’t his business. 

Neither was how nice it would be to see Danaria. He was genuinely surprised that he was missing her so much, and on the ride back home, it was her presence that he found himself looking forward to most. 

He left the following day, and given the current hours he kept, he surprised everyone with a visit just after breakfast, while Adin was still asleep, and Danaria was in the dining room, alone, except for the servants. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. 

“Lucas… You’re-you’re…” she stammered, “I didn’t expect you for so long, not after your last message, I—”

She rose as he approached her, but when he swept her up into his arms and twirled her around before dipping her and kissing her hard on the mouth, all she could do was melt into his arms. People were watching, and he could feel Gerwin’s frown of disapproval on his back. He’d missed Danaria too much to take no for an answer, and anyone willing to brave regular snowy rides to exchange messages with him obviously missed him too. 

As long as the moment lingered, though, it wasn’t long enough, and as he helped her slide back into her seat before moving into the seat beside her, he told her everything. Well, he told her the part of everything that he thought she could handle, which was only the tip of the iceberg. Really, he just talked until she regained her composure, and then he asked, “So what’s this about your brother?”

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, still looking a bit flustered. “Oh, Adin, well, he’s still sleeping but—”

“No, what’s going on with him,” Lucas asked. “You mentioned him in your message, so I—”

“But I thought you came to see me,” she said, almost whining. 

“I did,” Lucas nodded. “I absolutely did, but I have to head back in a few days, so I thought I’d set the house in order while I’m here.”

That mollified her, and he had one of the footmen bring him some of whatever was still warm. So, he had some bread and oatmeal while they caught up, and he basked in her smile. Then, once that was taken care of, and before Parin woke up, Lucas went out to the cider house to hear the real story. 

He did this, of course, by activating his ring. This made him vanish off the back porch to anyone who might have been watching, but of course, if he had a tail, he couldn’t see he wanted to make their job at least a little harder.  

Lucas made himself visible again as he walked around behind the building, and before he walked through the back door, he checked his mana bar and noted that he’d spent 12% of it on that little walk. That was new information, and he filed it away. He didn’t know what would happen if he reached zero, but it was nice to know that he could check it now. In the cider house, he found Mort, Kar’gandin, and Hura'gh sitting around drinking beer. It was a little early, but they didn’t expect the boss home for weeks or maybe ever, so he supposed he couldn’t fault them for that. 

“I leave for one month and… Look at you, you’ve become a terrible influence on young Mort here!” Lucas said with a smirk that made it obvious he was joking. 

Mort didn’t get the joke and started to stand at attention as he stammered some sort of explanation, but Lucas pushed him back in his seat with a laugh. “At ease, soldier.”

“We’ll look who’s still breathin’,” Kar’gandin said, toasting to Lucas before he took another sip from his wooden tankard. “Me and the boys were just like, strategerizin’, and as soon as we speak yer’ name, ye appear!”

“I’m funny like that,” Lucas agreed, flipping his chair around before sitting so he could rest his chin on his arms, which he crossed across the top of the backrest. “Now tell me all about our favorite Viscount.”

“Oh boy,” Hura’gh laughed, “Here we go.”

Alternating between the dwarf and the half-orc, the story slowly but surely came out in very predictable patterns. Adin was probably skimming from the payments because revenues were down. Adin was almost certainly drinking more blue than before because the vials kept going missing. There were complaints from some of the customers that the purity had gone down, which led Kar’gandin to believe that the man was diluting what he was selling. 

That wasn’t the best part, though. According to Mort, some of the noble customers were unhappy that the price had gone up while the quality had gone down. Everyone but Lucas laughed at that little detail. 

“So you’re saying he’s doing his best to cheat everyone, all the time, no matter what,” Lucas sighed. “That sounds like our Adin.”

“Hey, You’re the one that put him in charge,” Hura’gh answered, roaring with laughter. 

“Well, it wasn’t like I had a choice,” Lucas answered with a shake of his head. “But I’ll fix it. I’ll—”

“So what are ye don’ back anyway?” Kar’gandin interrupted. “Weren’t ye a prisoner of the Prince er some blasted nonsense like that?”

“Prisoner?” Lucas asked, pasting on his best shit-eating grin, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m an honored guest helping him with a very important project. I’d tell you about it, but it's a secret. I’d have to kill you.”

Hura’gh laughed even louder at that, which was enough to make Lucas’s smile just a little more genuine. He missed this. He’d grown so used to dealing with Heisenburgle that he’d forgotten how much hanging with the guys could improve his mood. 

The three of them caught him up on recent events. Hura’gh confirmed that he had personally put the Fallen Orchid to the torch and that whole section of the slums was nothing but a crater. Apparently, it had almost caused a gang war, but a couple judicious payments to the Knights of Brass and the Red Lantern Gang had decided that it might be best to cut their losses. 

All of that good news cheered Lucas up even more. He doubted that truce would hold once those poisonous women found out he was still breathing, of course, but it was a fine start. Still, however much the idea of getting his vengeance cheered him up, it didn’t make him so delirious or overjoyed enough to decide he wasn’t going to kick Adin’s ass. So, after a few minutes of shooting the shit and playing catch up, he got up, and after he told his friends he’d be back to do some cooking later, he made his way back to the main house.

He needed to teach his resident junkie a lesson in what happened to those that fucked with the count.