Brewing Bad Ch. 114-115

Ch. 114 - The Real Test

As tempted as Lucas was to try to make a batch of Blue with his brand-new catalyst right now. He decided to wait. He was exhausted, and he was going to have to figure out what to tell Heisenburgle if it actually worked. “If I actually succeed, there might be fireworks or holy light descending from above, and I’m not sure if I want to explain any of that to Heisenburgle,” he told himself. 

Lucas considered just making the stuff on his own during the day while his lab partner slash prison warden slept but decided that would certainly trigger the gnome’s paranoia, along with anyone else that might be lurking. Privacy was pretty much impossible here, so, in the end, he decided that all he could do was act like it was just another day at the office, and if shit spun out of control, well, he’d baffle them with some bullshit. 

It’s not like Heisenburgle can make blue without me, he reminded himself. His efforts have been lackluster at best. 

The question of why exactly that was still made Lucas wonder. It seemed like the gnomish alchemist could make anything but the Celestial Solvents on the first try. It wasn’t like Adin, where the man couldn’t follow simple instructions. Heisenburgle had the skills, the experience, and the methodology, but something else seemed to be lacking, and he couldn’t begin to guess what that was. 

“Charming attitude, probably,” Lucas decided eventually. 

Still, despite doing his best to play it off, he spent the whole day on pins and needles. When it finally came time to set up the batch of blue to test his new glowing catalyst on, he was dreading it and dragged his feet at every stage of the preparation.

Heisenburgle, on the other hand, barely noticed. Instead, he was still fuming about Lucas’ success the previous night. Instead of helping, he kept bringing out new books to explain why what Lucas had done shouldn’t have been possible. 

“You didn’t even offer up a prayer to the God of Alchemy or the Goddess of the Moon!” he exploded as Lucas was beginning to boil the goblin bile. 

“Was I supposed to?” Lucas asked, genuinely shocked by the idea that prayers would affect the outcome of any chemistry project. He supposed that he probably shouldn’t be. I am trying to make a potion that allows me to communicate with a Goddess, after all. 

“Of course you’re supposed to!” the gnome yelled. “Next, you’ll tell me you don’t even offer up prayers or sacrifices when you gather… By the great cauldron, you don’t do you?!” 

The gnome seemed genuinely shocked at that one, so Lucas lied and said, “Of course I do. Most of the time, anyway.”

Even that answer infuriated Heisenburgle, and for a moment, Lucas thought he might actually leave the room and let Lucas conduct the experiment alone. That would have been the optimal outcome, of course, but it was not to be. As much as the gnome might hate his amateurish ways, he was simply incapable of watching a new alchemy experiment. 

Rather than depart, he simply stood near Lucas’s left elbow and complained about his lack of piety while he went through every step the same as always. He mixed the reagents, heated them appropriately, and made sure that everything was done exactly as always. It was utterly routine.

The only suspense finally came when he took out the bottle of Concentrated Moonlight. When he popped that, a brief shower of sparkles came out, surprising him. “Man, I was joking about fireworks,” he said to himself as he tilted it up and poured it into the mixture. 

For a moment, nothing happened. It was just a swirl of white that was quickly lost in the midnight blue fluid and quickly disappeared. It took longer than any of the catalysts he’d used so far to see a reaction, but eventually, there were little sparks of lighter, glowing blue. They weren’t floating up to the top, though. They were sinking down to the bottom. 

Over the next few seconds, the potion started to split apart into two completely different layers. One was a viscous black tar, but increasingly, the bottom one was looking more and more like what he would expect from a high-quality batch of Blue. Lucas smiled tentatively at that. He saved his real feelings of triumph for the moment he got the message that told him he’d done it. 

You have created a new potion +104 experience.

You have created a Potion of Greater Communion.

You have created one of the Seven Forbidden Potions. You have unlocked an achievement. 

“Fuck yeah!” Lucas exclaimed without thinking. He quickly realized his mistake and followed that up with, “This is progress. I think we might have actually done it.” Lucas’s enthusiasm waned when he read what the potion actually did. 

Potion of Greater Communion (fatal) (1 dose): Poison 30. This potion will kill the imbiber. He will come back to life only by the grace of the Goddess herself if she judges them worthy.

“It is promising,” Heisenburgle agreed, leaning in to watch the potion as it continued to break down. “I think that once the separation is complete, and we remove the layer of waste, we should proceed to test the remainder on live subjects, assuming it doesn’t break down like last time.”

Lucas nodded, trying to appreciate the colors, but he wasn’t really listening. His mind was a world away. Fatal? He balked silently. Fatal, and she wants me to drink that shit? He supposed that he could simply pass, of course, but that would defeat the entire point of the thing. Somehow he’d finally made the potion that he’d been working on for years, and the product would fucking kill him. 

The top of the Potion of Greater Communion was an inky black that was only getting dark, but beneath it, the blue was more vibrant than ever. It wasn’t just small bits of it that were glowing. The whole thing was a swirling oil sheen, like a lava lamp made of liquified peacock feathers, and it glimmered in its own light whenever he moved or blinked. As magical as the shit he’d made up until now, this was another level. 

After staring at it for too long, while his thoughts raced, he finally separated the mixture by pouring the black residue into a small flask and setting it aside. He’d thought that the Potion of Greater Communion label would follow the blue flask, but instead, it followed the flask of black goo, which made Lucas a little nervous. In its place, a new label appeared to cover

Water of Life (pure) (30 doses): Euphoria 20, poison 1, mana regeneration decreased by 300% for one hour. Increases fertility by 100%. It is not addictive if used less than once a month. 

Holy shit, it really is a fertility party drug, Lucas thought. It’s just like Heisenburgle said. I thought it was making that part up. 

Lucas was silent as he studied the contrast. He’d started with the different herbs that an old alchemist had used to get high. He’d mixed them together to make something that could get you really high, but the whole time, he’d been using the wrong catalyst. Now that he was using the right one, well, it separated the mixture completely into its two purest forms: life and death. The results were staggering, but he couldn’t tell that to Heisenburgle.

Instead, he just poured the liquid death into a vial while he tried to figure out what to do with it, and he poured a few doses of the larger, sparkling blue into a few other vials so that they could use them on their test subjects in the basement. Heisenburgle was as happy as Lucas had ever seen him, but after they got downstairs and none of their pet addicts perished, he was positively jubilant. 

“We must celebrate!” he insisted as they went to breakfast. 

Heisenburgle insisted on flutes of champagne to toast their success. Lucas drank but ate sparingly. Instead, conscious of just how much the next step in his plan would cost and how nauseous the lesser potion had made him, he stuck to dry toast and tea while Heisenburgle lavished rare praise on him.  

“With this breakthrough, we might be able to secure the piece for decades!” the gnome said. “I’ll write to the Prince immediately and let him know what you’ve done.”

“Maybe we should wait a little longer,” Lucas suggested. “You know, to make sure it's repeatable? I’m just concerned that the final product will separate and decay like the last batch, you know? We could send a letter today and go back upstairs tomorrow to find nothing but an oily mess. Who’s going to explain that to him then?”

The gnome gave that some thought before he finally replied. “Very well. That would be prudent, but only a single batch more, then we tell him.”

Lucas realized only belatedly that the schedule he’d proposed would use up the other Concentrated Moonlight he’d made, which annoyed him. He’d meant to give that to Danaria, not using it to make more drugs. The thought made him clench his fists under the table, but he pushed his annoyance down. That’s okay, he told himself. I’ll just make more when the full moon is up. If I’m still breathing.

“Sounds good,” Lucas said, still worrying about everything that was about to happen. 

In theory, if the gnome reported to the Prince he was done, then the Prince would release him from his enforced captivity and let him go home faster than anyone expected. That would, however, mean that he would have no way to fend off Skylara any longer, and he was fairly sure that she would send for him to celebrate the minute he made it known that the good shit was finally done. 

The very thought of spending the weekend with her in some château turned his stomach. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he agreed with whatever Heisenburgle said, and when the man called him out on his listlessness, he just shrugged and said, “Sorry man, I’m tired. That’s all. I just can’t do the night owl thing as well as you.”

“For the first few years, I had difficulty adjusting as well,” the gnome agreed, “But after a few decades, it becomes second nature. It’s so much more productive for alchemy, I find.”

Lucas let him blather on for a while about the dynamic polarities of potions. Then, eventually, he excused himself and went to his room. 

“Am I really doing this?” Lucas asked himself. “It could be suicide. Well it is suicide, but it could be like for real, suicide.”

That Goddess did seem awfully interested in me, though, he reminded himself. She even told me that I could ask her for a boon, so I don’t think she means to kill me permanently, just for a minute or two. Even so, it was a hell of a risk. 

He’d closed and barred the door to his room. He’d considered leaving it unlocked in case he needed help, but that was stupid, though, whatever happened next he was pretty sure that he was going to live or die on his own. So, he’d prefer to do that undisturbed. 

He’d also checked the place for invisible spies and found none. Now, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking at the dark potion in his hand. All he had to do was pop the cork and chug it, but even so, something about the situation made him hesitate. 

It felt like a weighty decision, even more so than last time, which made sense since it said fatal right there in the description. Even without that, the darkness of the liquid seemed to make it very clear this was dangerous. Lucas sat there for more than a minute, considering his options before deciding that he really didn’t have any other choice. 

“Well, you only live once, or I guess, in my case, twice. Let’s see if the third time is the charm.” he said softly, “Bottoms up.” Then, without any more delays, he chugged the bitter fluid.  

Ch. 115 - Second Death

The stuff tasted like liquid tar, and even as Lucas’ stomach gurgled in protest, he tried not to contemplate how much poison was in all the different reagents he’d boiled to make this stuff. It’s probably enough to kill Hura’gh dead, he decided, not that that bit of knowledge would do much good. 

Slowly, that discomfort transformed into muscle spasms and then a general numbness. When he started to have trouble sitting up, he let himself lay down, trying to keep his shit together as the cold fire in his stomach slowly made its way up his spine, turning off various organs as it went. 

He’d expected this to be a gentle or even pleasant death, given the nature of Blue, but that was not at all the case. It hurt more than Lucas thought it would. He’d died before, but that had involved fire and a taser, so of course, it had hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but this wasn’t what he thought it would be. 

Stay calm, he told himself as he started having trouble breathing, or even keeping his eyes open. This is all part of the plan. 

Lucas hoped that was true. Still, he was reassured when, just like he took the Potion of Lesser Communion, something seemed to resolve out of the darkness. This time it was no garden tea party. He was somewhere far stranger. It seemed to be an arboreal city of sorts.

It had that same imprecise, impressionistic feel that it had the last time, but otherwise, everything was different. There were trees as far as he could see, above and around him in every direction. There were elves, too. In fact, there were more elves milling about around him than he’d probably seen altogether in his whole life, slowly fading into view as the darkness retreated and his vision cleared. 

These weren’t the elves he’d seen in Lordanin or in his first master’s apothecary shop, though. Those had been dregs and junkies that weren’t welcome into elven society. These, though, were important people. It was easy to tell both by their robes and the way they carried themselves. They were also dead people, as it turned out, and he continued to see right through them. 

Still, despite their growing anger at his presence, he spun slowly in place, taking it all in. This place, whether it was elvish heaven or not, was the most beautiful place he’d ever been, hands down. The structures seemed to be grown into the trees, and the organic flow of things like stairs and arches matched seamlessly. Even the stones on the plaza he was standing on fit together so tightly they looked as if they’d been grown together. 

Still, none of that compared to the giant structure that could only be a palace. It had been just behind him when he showed up, but now that he’d seen it, and the wide stairs made of pure, pink-veined marble, he couldn’t help but climb them. Some of the elves seemed very irate at this decision, but they were screaming things at him in a tongue that he did not understand. 

“Sorry, no hablo Elf-o,” he said back, the first couple of times, but as the protests grew louder, the amount of fucks he had to give started to wane. 

“Yeah, same to you, buddy,” he called back. Still, he did manage to resist giving them the finger, but only because he was trying to be polite. 

The stairs seemed to be interminably long, but he didn’t get tired. Instead, the farther up he went, the faster he walked. When he approached the palace door, which was a gilded monstrosity at least twenty feet tall, the guards brandished their wide tower shields and fancy spears with strange blades on the end but did not attempt to stop him. 

“Seems like no one is happy to see me,” he said to himself. He recalled the Heisenburgle saying something about that at one point, but now it was lost to him. In fact, now that he noticed, his whole memory was about as fuzzy as the painterly details of this place, but he didn’t stress out about it because there wasn’t shit he could do to change it. 

Lucas walked through the palace like he was a fish on a line. He had no real choice in the direction he was going. Instead, at every turn, he knew with certainty which way he needed to go, and no matter what he might see in other directions, there was no way he could divert and go explore it more. 

When he finally found the throne room of the elven Goddess he’d met before. She was still impossibly beautiful, but the last time he’d seen her, she must have been in her business casual outfit because now, she was every inch a Goddess. Her clothes were made of silver thread, and the crown on her head barely contained any metal at all. Instead, it was a constellation of jewels that orbited just above her head without quite touching it. It was a shocking sight, and it made it almost impossible for him to look around and take in the rest of the throne room in any detail. 

All he could do was stare and approach the throne. There, there were a handful of guards in even shiner armor than the ones outside, and as soon as he got close enough, they thumped the butts of their hafts against the stone floor, sending out a single dull note. The message was clear in any language. Close enough, buddy, stop right there. 

So, Lucas did just that, standing twenty feet from the throne. He gave the Goddess a low bow and said, “Your Majesty, you asked me to come, and here I am.”

“So you are,” she said with a smile. “You may rise, Sir Sharpe, I am most impressed. I cannot remember the last time someone who was not of at least half-elvish descent stood in these hallowed halls. I hope it was worth it. You have made history, as well as many enemies. I hope that it was worth it.”

“Enemies?” Lucas asked. “Certainly, you don’t mean yourself?”

“No, of course not,” the Goddess smiled. “I find you and your ‘real shit’ to be quite charming. I am even prepared to grant you the boon you seek, but my children are a prideful people, and when the high priests learn that a human has trod in their hallowed halls, some may go to great efforts to seek you out.”

“I thank you for that,” Lucas said with a pause, “But I haven’t even asked for anything yet.” 

“Ah, but you will. I heard it in your soul as you entered my palace, and so, since it is not my boon to bestow, I have sent for Thrzaelwick to hear your plea,” she explained. 

“But if you already know what I’m going to say or do, then what’s the point of all this… Your Highness?” he tacked that last bit on at the end more because of the way the guards were looking at him than she was. 

The Goddess herself seemed largely amused by how all of this was playing out. She… it suddenly occurred to Lucas that he didn’t know her name. Had he known it before? Had she told him? He couldn’t say, but he wasn’t about to point that out and decided to just keep winging it for now. 

“What is the point, indeed,” she smiled, offering no answers. “What is the point of drinking a potion that you know will kill you just to go to a place you don’t belong?”

“Because a Goddess dared me to,” Lucas said with a smile. 

“I suppose I did, in a way, didn’t I?” she smiled. “But before we can talk of sending you home, there are a few things we must discuss. The—”

Before she could finish what she was saying, a storm of sparks and smoke began to form not far from where Lucas stood. The guards pointed their weapons at it. He took two steps back, but the goddess on her throne seemed utterly unperturbed by the mysterious development. Lucas quickly figured out why. 

A well-dressed gnome stepped out of the rapidly dissipating smoke, and coughing once, he turned to briefly regard Lucas before he turned to the elven Goddess. “My lady Lwyn, it’s been too long!” he said effusively. “You need no wait for such oddities to invite me to visit. I’ve missed your company.”

“And I yours,” the Goddess said with notably less warmth. “But we are both so busy, and it wasn’t until a human managed to replicate your fine potion that I had cause to seek you out.”

“Any alchemist might make any potion if they are skilled enough,” the gnome answered, reminding Lucas of Heisenburgle in both the tone of his voice and the way he spoke. He supposed that Heisenburgle would find that to be quite a high compliment, so Lucas resolved never to tell him. “Do you know how this man came by Lwynthenll? Was it stolen, perhaps? I find it unlikely one of your high priests would give up such a thing for any reason whatsoever!”

“It was not,” Lwyn answered with a shake of her head. “If you could believe it, he created the recipe through repeated experimentation and an exploitation of first principles. He was trying to make stronger drugs for an old enemy of mine.”

“Impossible,” the gnome hissed, whirling on Lucas as he lowered one of the extra lenses on his spectacles into place. “That’s a five-reagent potion, and some of them aren’t even official reagents! How could you guess what I purposely hid on behalf of my dear, dear Lwyn”

“I, uhm, looked at their properties and just kept mixing it until I got what I wanted, I guess,” Lucas said, reminding himself that this was not Heisenburgle, and he needed to be respectful. “Are you going to tell me that there are only eight ways to make a healing potion next?”

“There are only eight recipes for a healing potion,” the God of Alchemy agreed. “I am considering a ninth, but it’s not quite ready yet. In another few decades perhaps…”

The gnome kept rambling, but once Lucas saw the goddess roll her eyes behind the gnome’s back, it was hard to focus. At least that was the case until Thrzaelwick said, “Now let’s see what’s going on here.”

Lucas turned to face the gnome, but almost as soon as he did so, he ceased to exist. As his consciousness began to dim, he felt himself being split not into shards but into layers. Instead of being a book, he became a number of slim pages that were each about one very specific topic, instantly becoming less than the sum of his parts.

He had a chance to briefly read over the shoulder of the gnomish God, observing all the events he’d recently endured, which were listed out very neatly like a journal. Harvested Moonblossom. Created Potion of Lesser Communion. Resisted the Dragon Skylara’s Ardent Seduction. Considered proposing to Danaria Parin. Distilled Starlight. Created Potion of Greater Communion. Perished. It was a horrifying way to be laid bare, but even as his consciousness faded to nothing, he heard the Goddess cry out, “Gently Thrzaelwick! Mister Sharpe is a supplicant in my domain, and I plan on sending him back to the world of the living when this is done. You may not sunder him!”