Brewing Bad Ch. 85-86

We're still technically 12 chapters ahead of the public, but I'm tired of posting 1 chapter a week. So, Brewing Bad is now twice a week from now on. Enjoy!

Ch. 85 - Worlds in Collision

Lucas spent the next few days immersed in mind-numbing books. Porentheo’s Guide to Elemental Alignment was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to reading. He’d also tried The Nature of Light, Balance in all things, and most recently, he was attempting to suffer through Lessons in What not to Do by Mortemel Baraba. Lucas had yet to make it halfway through any of them. 

Not only did he disagree with them on the most basic levels, but sometimes they seemed flat-out wrong. Several times he had to remind himself of that damn experiment that the gnome had done, though, and force himself back to the table. 

“Magic doesn’t have to make sense, Lucas,” he reminded himself. “That’s why it’s magic.” 

Lucas never fancied himself as a scientist. He knew that if you added A to B and kept it at the right temperature, you’d get C. He also knew that if you used some ghetto shit, you’d get some pretty crappy C, and if you let the temperature get too high, the whole thing would burst into flames. It all made sense. Garbage in, garbage out. Actions leading to consequence. 

None of that was affected by whether he made his drugs in a cave or up a tower, yet here he was, reading one of the defining texts of modern alchemists. It was about a gnome, Mortemel, who spent his whole life expanding the nature of alchemy one botched experiment at a time. The failures made for interesting reading, at least. 

He was happy to have the blooper reel as the gnome discovered which ingredients could not be mixed together because they resulted in poison, acid, or sometimes even explosions. Those parts made the author seem like a real person, and Lucas could certainly sympathize with some of the mistakes. Those parts are what kept him reading. 

It was only as the book went further along and devolved into the man’s epiphanies he made in his hermitage by the sea that Lucas began to lose his patience. Not only did he not believe that the sea would contribute nothing but relative humidity to the whole arrangement, but reading about a grown man naval gazing was positively insufferable. 

To hear Heisenburgle talk this gnome was like Issac Newton of Alchemy, but Lucas didn’t see it. Especially not after reading page after page of Mortemel wondering if his own thoughts at the moment of catalyzation or the clothes he was wearing that day might also have an effect on the nature of alchemical transformation.

So, Lucas was more than relieved when the next night, Heisenburgle declared that they had all the reagents to make blue and they were ready to cook. Lucas could have had them sent overnight from his own supplies, of course, but he had no intention of tipping his hand anymore than he had to. 

Besides, as long as they weren’t making Blue, he was learning other shit. So far, at least, between the weird achievement he’d unlocked and the interesting questions that the gnome had unlocked between insults, that was a hundred times more interesting.

Now was the time to put the gnome in his place, though, and Lucas relished that as much as he had anything in days. Well, anything besides sending notes home, of course. He’d been leaving folded-up pieces of paper shaped like little cranes on his window sill every other night, wedged in a crack in the wood where they wouldn’t blow away. 

He had yet to see one of Danaria’s birds take them away; he was certain that was what was happening. They were always gone in the morning. The notes were intentionally vague. They were just letting everyone know that he was okay. 

‘I honestly had no idea this many reagents existed in the whole world. Might stay here a while.’

‘Don’t worry about me. Making new friends.’

‘Learned a new trick today. Tell you about it when I come home.’

The messages were basic, but he knew that the situation at Parin Manor was fragile. It had to be. Power vacuums in drug organizations got messy pretty fast, and regular reassurances that he was fine and he’d be home soon were at the top of his to-do list most days. Of course, the fact that I’m starting to miss Danaria has nothing to do with that, he thought to himself with a smirk. 

“Alright, Mister H, you ready to cook?” Lucas said when the gnome arrived at the appointed hour, sometime after dinner. 

“Heisenburgle,” the gnome grumbled, “and we are here to perform alchemy, not any common cookery. We…”

Lucas rolled his eyes but said nothing. He’d set the poor guy off on purpose that time, and he knew it. It was hard to take an egomaniac very seriously when you knew exactly what to do to spin him up.

“Well, you’ve shown me your high-brow alchemy already,” Lucas said with a smile once the gnome stopped rambling almost halfway up the stairs, “now it’s time to show you my low-brow cooking.”

“Hurumph,” Heisenburgle snorted. “You said it, not me.”

“I did,” Lucas agreed. “As much as I love this shit, not all of us have dragon scales to play with, you know? Some of us have to play with the hands we’re dealt.”

“Hence, the reason why alchemy is so expensive, Mister Blue,” Heisenburgle answered dismissively. “It would be a poor alchemist that could not turn a dragon's worth of reagents into ten dragons worth of potions.”

Lucas thought about explaining that most people would never have ten dragons to buy those potions but decided against it. Instead, he continued up the stairs in silence, waiting for his chance to start giving the orders. 

Once they were in the laboratory, Lucas started setting up everything he would need to work his own magic under Heisenburgle’s watchful eye. First, he gathered 4 different flasks, almost with his five different ingredients. Then, he processed the witch grass blossoms in a mortar and pestle before adding them to a flask with a solid dose of alcohol. 

“What are you doing?” the gnome asked testily. “You didn’t specify alcohol at any point in your recipe. You said five ingredients, not six!”

“Well, I kinda thought it was standard practice to purify the ingredients before you used them, you know?” Lucas answered with a shrug as he started to do the same thing with his wizened gnome caps. “So, it’s not really an ingredient to Blue, it’s more like a… catalyst, you know?”

“What?! Don’t you know that alcohol destroys most of the more delicate reagents?! ” the gnome asked, bordered on apoplexy. “Eastern mungwort root, Gnoll Marrow, Trent Sap… I could list a hundred ingredients that would be destroyed by such an addition!”

“You mean the lesser properties?” Lucas answered, only half paying attention as he focused on doing his job right before he switched to his blue esper willow vine sap. “You have to; there’s no other way to get the poison out.”

“Poison, what poison?” the gnome demanded. “We are making alchemical potions, not poisons!”

“Look, all I’m saying is that alchemical ingredients can be some pretty toxic shit, and if you don’t take care of that… well, you’re going to get someone killed, you know?” Lucas answered, playing it off as he realized he’d almost said too much. 

“Some potions can be hard on the digestive systems of those who are not prepared for them, it’s true,” Heisenburgle agreed with obvious hesitation. “But that is all the more reason for us to strictly follow tried and true recipes. Not mixing together random scraps that might be found in a woodland ditch. Is that understood?”

Lucas ignored the gnome and focused on making sure his flask of bubbling sap was at just the right temperature before he added alcohol and moved on to the bile. It was clear that he had no idea what Lucas was talking about. He might be hot to trot on elements, but on poison or any of the other stats that Lucas saw so clearly, he was completely in the dark. Lucas would wonder about that later. For now, he was busy.

“Listen, we’re going to try it your way once this is done,” Lucas said with a barely suppressed sigh. “I’m sure of it. But you wanted to see me do it my way - this is my way. So get me some cheesecloth and watch.”

Lucas waited until the goblin bile was boiling away because the viscous fluid had to be stirred so frequently before he started filtering out the rest. When Lucas got to that step, though, and finally started tossing the reagents and instead kept the colored alcohol, the gnome really lost his shit.

“Wha-what you are doing… why it flies in the face of every right-thinking alchemist. Not even a rogue school could dream of such a thing!” Heisenburgle declared. 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Lucas said with a shrug, “But if it looks stupid, and it works, then it ain’t stupid.”

The gnome didn’t say anything after that. He just stared on, waiting for Lucas to fail as he mixed one flask together with the next and the next. After they were mixed and the midnight blue fluid was boiling together in a largish flask so it could get thoroughly mixed, he started crushing the dwarf berries. 

When that was done, but before he added them, Lucas said, “Alright, now pay attention because this is the cool part.”

Only then did he drizzle the final ingredient in. He didn’t stir it immediately. Instead, he let the reaction take place as slowly and as visually as possible. He let the gnome watch as a tendril of glowing aqua swirled ever lower in the flask, making the whole thing glow for a moment with blue light. 

Heisenburgle was slack jawed. “What is that,” the gnome asked finally as Lucas dismissed the little pop-up he always got from this step. 

Catalyzed: Poison -> Euphoria. 

Brew of Mana Intoxication (pure) (48 doses): Euphoria 9, poison 2, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 180% for 1 hour. 

“It’s just how the reaction works,” Lucas said, deciding not to mention the catalyst. “You’re the famous alchemist. You tell me.”

Lucas noted that the mixture was a little stronger than he usually made it, even though he hadn’t started boiling it down to get a condensed reaction. He wondered if that was because he was 50 feet in the air, then decided it was probably the same mysterious message he’d gotten the other night about his increasing skill. For now, he filed that thought away under no freaking clue and focused on his baffled partner. 

“I’ve never seen such a reaction. Not without much more expensive ingredients anyway…” the gnome said, adjusting his spectacles and peering more closely at the liquid that had now lost its glow and taken on a royal blue color. “It certainly looks like the real thing, at any rate.”

“What else would it be?” Lucas asked with a laugh before he realized the gnome’s paranoia was actually serious. 

“Well, we won’t know that until we have someone take a taste, now will we?” the gnome said, looking at him. 

For the briefest of moments, Lucas thought the runt was going to make him try his own potion, but instead, he poured some into a smaller vial, then corked it, turned off the burners with a muttered word, and started downstairs. “Come along. There’s nothing left to be done up here for now.”

When Lucas realized he was going to feed the potion to some prisoner, his heart sank. Saddling someone with a terrible addiction just to make sure the product was pure was a pretty shitty thing to do. Still, he made no move to stop the gnome. He just picked another book he hadn’t started yet and made his way down the tower with Heisenburgle.

Ch. 86 - The Big Secret

Lucas’s consciousness was salved when he found out the prisoners that Heisenburgle kept were all junkies of a sort already. Not that anyone deserved to have a euphoria monkey on their back, of course, but at least he wasn’t going to try it out on the servants at random or anything. 

“Criminals and junkies of the worst sort,” the gnome cursed as the guard unlocked the door that led them into a basement dungeon in an entirely different part of the compound. “This a kinder fate than any of them deserve. If I didn’t need them for my experiments, I’d gladly watch them dangle.”

Lucas said nothing. He just watched as Heisenburgle dosed all three of them and then checked to make sure they were still breathing after each of them passed out into a fog of irresistible bliss. Lucas was sure it was a good time, but he was equally sure it was a bad trade, and it would get worse as they made the drug stronger. 

“Well, it would seem you put on more than a show,” Heisenburgle said, “I would have bet dragons to kings you’d made the whole thing up, but well…”

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about then, huh?” Lucas asked, gesturing to the junkies on the ground. “They might be able to take a dose that’s thirty or even fifty percent as strong as that one, but double? You’ll kill ‘em.”

“And more besides them if we have to. Many more, if necessary, our project is…” Heisenburgle’s voice traveled off as he looked around the room furtively. “Not here, though. Too many eyes. Too many ears…”

Lucas suppressed a smile as the gnome’s paranoia emerged, and he went back up the human-sized stairs as fast as his little legs could carry him. Once they were back in the opulent, sprawling complex, he led Lucas to somewhere he’d never led him before: his office. 

Whether that was a mark of new esteem or simply one of paranoia, Lucas couldn’t say. On the way there, he spoke at length about the way the soundproofed room was warded against scrying and other pesky magics, and once they were inside the place and the door was barred, he threw around sparkling dust everywhere to check for his ‘minders’ as he called them.

“The Prince is certainly not above using such stealthy agents,” the gnome said, waggling a finger. “I tell you, I’ve seen their footprints before. I’ve noted their presence in the way it has affected sensitive experiments even!”

Lucas let the man rant. Being watched by invisible people was pure craziness, of course. Well, it would be if not for the ring I’m wearing… he thought to himself. Certainly, he hadn’t considered the fact that he might be watched to that degree. It was unlikely, but it wasn’t impossible. Locking a pet alchemist or two in a cage was monitoring enough as far as Lucas was concerned, but what did he know. 

When that was done, and the cloak-and-dagger bullshit was at an end, Heisenburgle poured himself a snifter of fine brandy and then sat in a worn, padded, easy chair that was easily older than Lucas. “Who gives a fig if a junkie dies in the pursuit of this project?” the gnome asked rhetorically. “Can’t you see how much bigger than that this is?”

“I mean, maybe I would if you and everyone else weren’t treating me like a mushroom,” Lucas said, eyeing the crystal decanter. 

“A mushroom?” Heisenburgle asked. “I don’t—”

“Feeding me shit and leaving me in the dark,” Lucas said, blurting out the punchline. He expected the gnome to scowl at him in annoyance. Instead, after a quizzical look, he did just the opposite. 

“Feeding shit? In the dark…” The gnome pursed his lips, and then, once everything clicked, he proceeded to laugh long and loud. He just kept going, and by the end of it, there were tears in his eyes. 

When the moment passed, and he finally stopped to catch his breath, he said, “That’s very good, I’ll have to remember that one. Now, where were we?”

“You were about to tell me what you’ve been hinting around at for days,” Lucas answered with only mild annoyance as he finally sat down in the only human-sized chair in the room. “That’s what all the cloak and dagger shit is for, right? The big secret?”

“Ah, quite,” Heisenburgle nodded, “And it is a big secret, too. A pity you still haven’t made a single good guess.”

“By big, I assume you mean castle,” Lucas said with a sigh. “Or maybe Lordanin as a whole. You might—”

“Do you know what’s bigger than a King, Lucas? Ten times bigger, in fact?” the gnome asked.

“I don’t know, a gang of Kings?” he answered, wishing that the gnome would just get to the point. “An emperor.”

“Cold. Cold. Cold!” the gnome said, “Cold as the winter snows! This is the problem with humans, besides their excessive size and strange body odors. They have no sense of cleverness about them.”

As he proceeded to insult Lucas in the most random of ways, he drew a silver coin from his purse and flipped it across the room to Lucas. “Does this clarify my last question, just a touch?”

“Oh, a silver king…” he answered, getting tired of this game as he looked at the coin. “If that’s what you meant, then the solution is…”

As Lucas’s mind finally grasped the thread the gnome had finally been starting to string him along with, he balked at the thought. A Fucking Dragon? He practically shouted as he tried hard to keep his poker face in place. He hoped that this was a joke about the almighty dollar, or in this case, gold piece, and how all they were ever doing was trying to make the Prince more money. However, something about the way the gnome looked at him said that simply wasn’t the case. Heisenburgle’s sneaky smile implied a terrible shared secret.

“You’re saying that we’re making drugs for a dragon,” Lucas said finally. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”

“Now that is the first good question you’ve asked in days,” Heisenburgle paused to sip his drink before he continued. “The answer to that one is tragically simple - because it’s the first thing she’s shown even the vaguest interest in besides gold in all the time that the royal family had been paying her tribute.”

“Tribute?” Lucas asked. “Are you saying the dragon is running an extortion racket?”

“In a way, I suppose,” the gnome agreed, “though I don’t think she’s ever actually threatened to burn down the city. It’s more like she’s a patron saint of Lorderan for a price.”

“What does a city need a dragon on retainer for?” Lucas said, forgetting the Blue for a moment as he delved more deeply into this mystery. It was simply too surreal not to. He’d long known that the Prince was the real power and that the king only clung to life from his illness. Everyone knew that. 

Additionally, he suspected the Prince was hopped up on a different sort of drug that the gnome was making for him that turned the man into some kind of Machiavellian genius type. Lucas hadn’t even suspected that there was a power behind him, though, or that the Prince wanted to get the hardest, purest drugs that could be had for his gigantic, draconic boss. 

“Oh, that’s right,” Heisenburgle said, a moment before he snapped at Lucas instead. “You aren’t from around here. You don’t know the troubled history that this region has had. Pirates. Orcish invasions. Regional wars. Civil wars… If you want all the details, I could recommend VonDarken’s Histories. It’s only twelve volumes, but it sums up the—”

“The short version is just fine,” Lucas snapped, trying to get back to the dragon. 

“Yes, well, sufficed to say, when the current King’s father struck that deal with Skylara, things improved markedly, but in recent decades, the terms for peace have been getting rather onerous, and well… that’s where you come in,” Heisenburgle said, gesturing to Lucas. 

Lucas was sure he’d heard that name before, but it slipped from his mind almost immediately as he moved on to other topics. “So you want to pay her with 10 gold worth of potions instead of 10 gold worth of ingredients, right?”

“So you do actually listen to the things I say,” Heisenburgle chortled. “Yes, that’s it exactly. This particular dragon has a taste for something very like your Blue. She describes it as ‘a weaker vintage of an old elven favorite.’ Apparently, the forest folk make something quite like it.”

“And if we can boost the potency, she’ll take that instead of gold?” Lucas asked as more pieces started to fall together for him. 

“Well, not instead of, at least I don’t think so,” Heisenburgle answered with a shake of his head. “but if we could pay even a portion of her tithe with kegs of your ditch herbs… well, thirty, twenty, or even ten percent less would allow the Prince to drastically lower the tax burden of the city and stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone.”

“I see,” Lucas said as he realized he did. He’d heard all about the ever-increasing taxes thanks to Kar’gandin. The dwarf would talk your ear off about import tariffs if you let him. It made sense, of course, since that was the reason he was nearly hanged. What hadn’t made sense, especially after he’d met the Prince, was why the man was hoovering up money like it was going out of style. It was obviously short-sighted, and now, he knew why. Because the first person who got paid every month was the loanshark. 

“Well, then, I suppose we can safely test a new, improved Blue on her, no matter how strong it gets. So if we—” Lucas started as he put his mind into gear. Until now, he’d had a lot of reservations about this, but with this new information, well, he didn’t see too much of a downside unless the dragon was unhappy with the product, of course. 

“Before we get back to alchemy, or its lack thereof in your product, we have other things we have to discuss,” Heisenburgle said, cutting Lucas off. “You must understand that this is a very serious secret. There are few that are likely to get you killed as quickly if you were to repeat them. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Lucas said, “I—”

“Even this facility… Blackgate Manor…” the gnome said, “It might be a place dedicated solely to creating certain contingencies for Skylara, but it does not exist, not officially anyway.”

Lucas suppressed a smirk. It was a delicious irony that Heisenburgle was lecturing him about secrets when the gnome was the one that was constantly letting them slip. If not for his smugness of lording secrets over the heads of others, Lucas doubted very much that Heisenburgle would be able to keep one to save his life. 

“Sure, dragon contingencies, I get it,” Lucas said. “What the hell is a dragon contingency?”

“Well, you know,” Heisenburgle said with a bit of trepidation. “Your drug was not foreseen in the Prince’s calculations, but he definitely foresaw a day when Lordanin would no longer be able to pay her high price, so we had to be ready for that, should the worst happen.”

“The worst?” Lucas asked, shifting in his seat.

“In case we should have to kill her,” the gnome said curtly. It was the first time the gnome had fear in his eyes that Lucas had seen, and it showed very clearly that he did not like that proposition at all.