Four Horsemen: Chapter 7 Part 1 of 2

Chapter 7:

Desari checked her guild request against the mortar and pestle sign swinging in the early morning wind.

Small warped glass windows showed the inside of the store, different liquids of every color caught in potion bottles. Carl’s Apothecary had been written on the sign, weather beaten and worn.

Desari opened the door the bell attached to the door ringing.

A man at the counter looked up from cradling his tea cup with bleary eyes. He blinked twice, wetting his eyes and yawning.

“Morning, ah sorry about that.”  He stretched his shoulders, blinking back the yawn tears. “Something that I can help you with?”  He wore an apron over his simple clothes, black hair poking out in every direction as he scratched at his five o’clock shadow, taking a sip from his tea.

The small room was filled with locked cabinets, showing potions and alchemical ingredients and gear behind glass and steel bars. There was a roped off long corridor down the right side of the counter,

“I was told to come here to assist with potion making?” She pulled out the writ, placing it on the counter.

Behind a display to his side a beaker bubbled slowly over a flame, the alchemist’s tea.

He blew on his tea with one hand holding the writ, he took another sip.

“They say you’re skilled in alchemy?”

“I am a little rusty, might take me some time to get used to it again.”

He folded the writ back up and handed it over to her, sipping from his tea.

“Do you have your own alchemy tools?”

“Yes.”

He tapped his fingers on the cover of a bookmarked book, one of several on the counter.

“Kat!”

Desari braced herself at the volume.

There was a rustling noise and thump. “Ow.”

The man winced as a girl rubbing her head moved through the shelves behind the counter.

“Master Carl I nearly dropped the Kradi root! You know they get worse when bruised!” She pouted.

“Ah sorry Kat, I wasn’t sure where you were.” Carl coughed meekly.

Kat stopped rubbing her head, looking at Desari and back to Carl.

“Though Kradi root, you need to get that prepared right?” He popped back up with a smile, nodding to himself.

“Yes?” Kat ventured.

“Good, good! That will be perfect. Get the other ingredients.”

“You mean the-“

“Nope, pshfsh,” Carl made a grabbing motion in alarm. Kat closed her mouth, confused. He turned back to Desari with a grin. “You’ll get three ingredients, you’ll need to identify them and prepare them.”

“A test?” Desari raised an eyebrow.

“A way to verify your skills and ability. Kat we’ll start with the ingredients for potion C.”

“Yes Master Carl.”

She hurried back into the shelves, muttering to herself.  Opening a drawer and measuring out ingredients.

“Once you have the ingredients refined bring them back up here, I’ll grade them and we’ll see what you can work on next.” Carl smiled.

She’d worked with some of the finest alchemists in Ilus. It had been a long time since she’d taken such a test. Her interest was piqued and there was a slight eagerness to test out her skills.

Kat walked back towards them with a box of ingredients.

“Good luck.” He said cheerfully and poured some more tea into his cup. He opened a book on the counter, cradling his tea, sipping as he read.

“This way,” Kat opened a door to the side of the counter, revealing a corridor the length of the building with a door at the end and five doors on the left.

“Third door on the left.” Kat held out the box. “Here you are. Door locks from the inside, once you’re done go back up to the counter. Carl or I will be there. If you need the bathroom there is one two more doors down, it even has running water.” She smiled proudly.

“How?”

“The water melt from Jorai mountain feeds into the city then through water tunnels it passes through the city, collects waste, then the farmers use that on their fields.” Her excitement dimmed. “Well they did at least. I hope you are actually an alchemist, we need a lot of potions and remedies to help the sick and wounded. My master hasn’t slept since the attacks yesterday, making ointments and potions to save people.”

“I will do my best,” Desari promised.

Kat gave her an awkward smile and ducked her head in an awkward half-bow.

Desari tilted her head and headed down the corridor, Kat closing the door to the corridor and walking back behind the counter.

Desari sensed it all through the wind and the ground.

She was so limited. Her spells of wind told her only what was happening within a few meters.

Creating a few potions will increase my essence nicely. People of this world might think a Red core as a thing of strength. Such a thing was a shackle barely able to cast her normal spells.

Even as she stood at the vaunted height of Red Mixed with Orange. She barely paid it heed.

Why would she when Rare and Epic grade potions had poured forth from her alchemical tools before.

She had done it before when there was nothing before to rely on but her wit, her quick senses and blade. Now she had knowledge, the most powerful and deadly weapon of them all. She would ascend again, not to merely touch upon the Mythical but step into it.

It will take more to kill my brother if he moves to finish his task.

Desari pushed open the third door on the left, finding a basic workshop. Stone counters lined three sides with a fire-stained section cut out of one. A place for someone to put their cauldron to boil and simmer, it had been roughly cleaned with tinder laid out beside it.

Cut logs lay under one of the counters.

Rudimentary, but that was all Desari needed, she turned back to Kat.

Desari put the box on the counter, opening it, three ingredients lay inside.

“Kradi root.” She pulled out the ingredient, three bulbs with roots dangling underneath, picking up the next, a squishy twig with a bark on it. “Polydraxin and…” The last looked like dried cranberries, but with green lines. “dried Jessel berries.”

She put the root back into the box and checked her storage device.

She flipped through a library’s worth of texts on alchemy, elemental magics, enchantments, bindings, cultivation primers, advanced strategies and more. More immediately useful potions, lined up in order and ready for use. Magical items as well as her alchemical tools and random items such as papers, inks of normal or magical nature. Food, barrels of water, sleeping gear. All were contained within. She withdrew a hairpin lost amongst her black hair. Disguises, poisons, weapons used in stealth, different armors and gear for every possible scenario.

Missing my main set of armor from that night. Thankfully it would have destructed upon her brain’s function ceasing. Hope Vessali enjoyed that last present.

She released her fist and pulled out alchemical tools with a practised hand, setting up a workspace.

Desari crushed the bulbs of the Kradi root under the flat side of a blade, and put them into a press, levering the press to squeeze out all the liquid into a glass container.

She wafted the air. “Citrus and sweet, needs a couple pipettes of distilled water.”

Using a pipette she added water till the liquid turned from blue to purple.

She wafted the water again, stringent with an almost pine needle after taste. “Perfect.”

She poured it all into a glass container off to the side. “Now for the Polydraxin.”

Desari lit the fire in the pit and placed her cauldron on the grill above. “Shouldn’t be long to get that up to temperature.” She adjusted a gauge on the side of the cauldron and drew out a preparation knife.

Hooking the edge of the curved blade under the bark she ran it down its length in one quick motion. Using her thumbs she lifted up the bark and peeled it away from the white softer flesh underneath.

Her cauldron started hissing as the temperature reached high enough.

“That worked out well,” Desari took the top off and laid the barkless Polydraxin across a grate within the cauldron.

“Now the berries.” She threw them into the mortar and pestle and ground them up into a fine powder and stored it away.

“Think that’s it?” She checked the containers and the cauldron, the Polydraxin still steaming away. She took out a chair and sat on it, watching the cauldron and the door.

She let out a breath, turning shaky at the end.

Vessali stood in the midst of the destruction, runes placed upon him, his eyes burning bright with the power of the pantheon, for their will was not to be denied.

The teleportation spell was twisting, shifting.

Desari called upon her elements and rushed to meet Vessali, her cursed brother. His face twisted in shock, that sweet realization.

“I could have killed you at any moment,” Her words a razor against his wounds as he cried out, drawing in the pantheon’s power, diverting it from Ilus.

His every strike empowered with the god’s. Power he had never worked for, power he never learned, power he was given simply because the gods deemed it so.

He wielded it like a child with a hammer. Her spells mired the ground, stone and wind attacked him. Flames blinded and burned.

Lightning was at her call. The elements responded to her, not through binding, not through force, they were united with her. Guided by her knowledge, hard earned and won.

A lifetime of learning, a childhood of fighting, an adulthood of laying in the shadows, a cold blade and a quiet ear.

Desari touched her stomach where the blade had entered, Vessali screaming wordlessly into her face, a petulant boy that hurt others because there was something twisted and broken within him. Something that yearned to feel something.

The god’s eyes were upon them, rage, endless and baleful.