by Pirateaba
“Is that—? Um, yes! I know someone who could help. She’s a friend of mine. This way!”
She leads me down a street, and then another, until we come to a smaller side-street off the main path. I don’t know Celum that well at all; just the way to Magnolia’s house and a few inns and the Runner’s Guild. But Garia was a Street Runner here before she became a City Runner.
The shop she brings me to has a small position next to two other shops. It has a nice façade, belongs to a decently-wealthy district…and it has boarded up windows and plywood in the display area instead of glass.
I look up at the sign over the shop.
Stitchworks. Potions, tonics, herbs.
Well, we’re in the right place. Garia seems nervous, though. She takes a deep breath, and pushes open the door.
“Octavia? Um, are you in?”
It takes my eyes a second to adjust to the darker room from the snowy bright city outside. The room I’m in—
Is definitely an [Alchemist]’s workshop. Definitely.
Let’s see. Herbs hanging from beams? Check. Potions on one wall? Check. Parchment, quills, some kind of desk for mixing potions? Check. Glass blown into squiggly shapes? Check.
A single lamp provides light for the room. It’s not your average lamp either; this one I recognize. It’s a safety lamp, the kind used in coal mines or in places where fire is a danger, like here. Glass walls contained a bright flame as the lamp illuminated the shop, the shimmering potions—
And the young woman carefully studying the glowing blue potion at one of the tables. She looks up as Garia and I enter, and smiles at us.
“Garia! And you’ve brought a friend? Welcome! Come in and get out of the cold!”
The [Alchemist] beckons us into the shop, putting the potion carefully on one the shelves. And she’s a surprise to me as well, although she shouldn’t be.
She has dark skin—darker than any I’ve seen this far. Her black hair is braided and pulled into a ponytail. She looks like a young woman that I’d see down any street in America – or at least any street not in a white suburb, but here—
Most people I’ve seen around here had light skin. This place is probably close to Europe, which might be why. Geographically, it made sense. The sun isn’t too harsh here, so probably only the two continents of Baleros and Chandrar would have people with darker skins.
Plus, globalization is not a thing in this world, especially if it’s so damn big.
The important question was: did it matter? In this world, humans weren’t alone. So how did that shift attitudes about race?
I look sideways at Garia and realize she’s looking at me to see if I react to her friend’s appearance. Well, fuck. Whoever said humanity would band together if ever confronted by a new species was clearly mistaken.
Garia clears her throat as Octavia comes out from behind her counter to greet me. The [Alchemist] certainly doesn’t look like the person I imagined her to be.
Not her skin. I mean her age, and her physique. She’s no bodybuilder, but she’s got clearly-defined muscles and she dresses in comfortable, sleeveless shirts and long, loose pants. Something’s up with one of her arms. She has…stitches going all down her right arm, and the threads coming loose.
Garia clears her throat and smiles at the dark-skinned woman.
“Hello, Octavia. This is Ryoka Griffin. She’s a friend, a City Runner like me. She needs an [Alchemist], and I thought…”
“Ryoka Griffin? I’m Octavia. It’s great to meet you; I can see we’re going to be very useful to one another!”
She takes my hand and gives me a solid handshake. I blink. This Octavia is all-go from the start, which I don’t necessarily hate. Fine, time to do the same.
“Nice to meet you. You’re an [Alchemist]?”
“The youngest in the city, but one of the best! You want cheap potions made with quality ingredients, come here and nowhere else. Everyone else will rip you Runners off, but I’ll give you the best deals so you keep coming back!”
…Yep. She’s a business person, alright. It feels like I’m being attacked by the salesperson of the year at a shop.
“Here. Take a look at this.”
The shopkeeper swings back behind her counter and brings out the blue potion she was studying earlier. Before I can so much as speak, she presses it into my hands.
“This is a stamina potion I’ve been working on. It’s a newer product than the old recipes you see on the market.”
I stare down at it. It’s deep blue, the color of azure and flecked with hints of yellow within.
“It’s blue.”
Octavia flicks her fingers impatiently.
“Potions can be any color, as I’m sure you know. I’m trying to standardize the colors so adventurers don’t have to worry about using a mana potion instead of a healing one but color is irrelevant here. I can always dye the potion later, but take a sip!”
I’m not sure I want to, but Octavia is staring at me. I shoot a look at Garia and she looks uncertain.
But hell, I’m pretty sure this Octavia’s not going to poison me, so I take a sip. The potion tastes—
Well it tastes like someone scraped regurgitated corn mash onto my tongue and flavored it with prunes. Rotten prunes. I nearly gag, but swallow the terrible stuff.
And it’s like I swallowed Red Bull if Red Bull were ten times stronger and contained actual magic rather than caffeine and sugar. My tired body, sore from running for so long in the cold, heats up, and I feel every fiber in me surging with energy.
Holy crap. I feel like I could run another forty miles with this stuff! Octavia grins and takes the bottle from me.
“Good, isn’t it? I’ve added to the formula, replacing larvae extract with—well, it doesn’t matter. The point is that these new potions are only slightly more expensive, but they’ve got a bigger kick to them!”
“It’s certainly effective.”
And useful! That’s a potion I’d buy, and Octavia seems determined to make the sale right here and now.
“Alright then, I’ll put you down for a batch of stamina potions. You can leave me a down payment now and pay the rest on completion.”
She whips out a piece of paper and finds an inkpot and starts dipping the quill impatiently.
“These new potions are twice as effective as the ones on the market. For you, I wouldn’t charge much. Let’s say a gold piece and eight silver pieces for each one? That comes to…sixteen gold and sixteen silver for a batch of twelve, but I’ll give you a discount and make it an even fourteen. How does that sound?”
Octavia glances at me as she scribbles on the piece of paper. I try not to smile.She’s pushy. Garia looks like she’s swallowed her tongue as she glances at me. Did she get suckered into buying a bunch of pricy potions? Of course she did.
Fortunately, I know how to deal with pushy people. Hell, the people my dad worked for are all like the worst kind of used-car salesmen. You have to know how to deal with people like that. With care, tact, diplomacy…
“No.”
Octavia blinks, but I don’t. The best way to deal with someone like this is to shut them down hard. She turns to me, holding out the paper with figures scribbled down on it.
“It won’t be any trouble. I’ll just write your name down here. Ryoka Griffin, was it? How about you get back to me on—”
“I said, no.”
“Oh come now. You’ve tasted my potion. I can make it more palatable if that’s what you’re worried about. This is an investment! You can’t just turn your back on this. Stick with me and I’ll offer you a discount on future potions.”
“I said—”
Octavia pushes the paper in my face and I lose my patience. I push her arm up. Not too hard, but enough to make her realize I can keep going until she dislocates something. She blinks—
Her arm falls off.
It just…unravels. The black stitches I saw along her armpit come loose, and her arm drops from Octavia’s body onto the gr
ound. I’m stunned for a second, but Octavia moves faster.
“Oh, darn it. I should have double-knotted the stitches. Hold this for a second, will you?”
She shoves the paper and quill into my hands as she bends down to pick up the severed arm. I stared at her, open-mouthed.
“It’s okay, Ryoka, really!”
“What the hell—?”
Garia comes over to me, sidling around the messy tables as Octavia picks up her arm. She points at Octavia and the thing which is not truly an arm in her hands.
“She’s one of the String People.”
Octavia looks up, concerned.
“Oh, you haven’t met one of us before? I’m sorry, it must come as a surprise. But don’t worry—as you can see, I’m made of fabric. Losing my arm didn’t hurt a bit!”
She holds out the arm towards me.
I can’t help it. I jerk back reflexively, but the arm touches my fingers before I can pull away. The sensation is—
Odd. The arm is odd. It’s just…cotton. I can feel the cotton skin below my fingertips, just like normal fabric. And inside is…more cotton. It’s so clearly cotton.
But the detail! Someone has taken the time to create the inside of the human body in fabric form, albeit with a few liberties. Not every muscle is in the arm, but there are red sinews that look like pieces of colored yarn, yellow bone in the form of delicately woven stuffed cotton, and even red stitched into the interior of the arm to make it look like there’s blood inside.
I stare at the arm, and touch it gingerly. It’s just cotton. Plain cotton. Octavia grins.
“You see? Nothing special. But give me two seconds and…!”
She pushes the arm against her shoulder. It’s amazing, but for a second I can see into her body from the missing socket. There’s bone and flesh woven into Octavia’s frame. Garia shudders and looks away until Octavia begins threading that black stitching back together, literally sewing her arm into place.
“Hold on. It’s always hard to get the back stitches in right.”
And then the arm is suddenly flesh again, or close enough. It turns from mere fabric into what looks like skin, so seamlessly that only the black stitching around her shoulder stands out.
Octavia claps her hands together, a fleshy sound so real that I nearly jump. She grins at me and flexes her arm. The muscles ripple under the skin exactly like normal flesh.
“Good as new, you see? It’s inconvenient when the stitching gets loose, but I don’t have to worry about that most of the time. Plus, being fabric means I can adjust my body however I like. For instance, I bulked myself up a bit. Added a few more muscles so I could lift everything properly. It slows me down, but—hey!”
She takes the parchment and quill back from me. I’d completely forgotten I was holding it.
“I can see you’re a discerning customer. Okay, we’ll hold off on the stamina potions order until we’ve gotten to know each other better. But if you need a healing potion, mana potion, tonic for an ailment or anything else, come to me! Building connections is a basic skill for Runners, and as I level I’ll be sure to make you a priority customer. How about that?”
She just doesn’t quit. I blink at her, and shake my head.
“I’m not looking for a potion at the moment. If I am—I’m here to get an appraisal.”
Octavia instantly brightens.
“Well why didn’t you say so? I can identify almost any potion by sight alone. Give me just a few moments and I’ll have the location, brewer, and efficacy of your potion locked down. I can even—dead gods, what is that?”
Octavia breaks off, speechless for once, as she catches sight of the potion I’ve tucked into my belt. She’s past Garia and has the potion out in her hands before I can blink.
“Hey!”
She ignores me as she holds the shimmering orange and pink potion up to the light.
“Where did you get this?”
She ignores me as she paces around, and then swiftly moves to one of the tables full of alchemy equipment. She places the potion over an odd stone set in a box—and taps the thing. The stone sparks, and suddenly a blue flames bursts into life under the potion.
Is she trying to heat the potion? What will that do?
“Don’t do that—”
Octavia peers into the potion as, suddenly, the pink streamers of color thicken and darken to red and the orange fluid begins to glow even brighter. Garia gasps as the light from the potion begins to illuminate the shop. Octavia doesn’t even look back at us as she murmurs out loud.
“It’s beautiful. Whoever blended this used the highest-quality ingredients and heated the mixture perfectly. I can’t think of an [Alchemist] around here who could do that. Did it come from up north?”
“No. It’s a potion I received. I wanted to know exactly what it does. It’s supposed to make me faster—”
“It’s a potion of haste, or perhaps even a higher-level version.”
Octavia pulls the potion off the stand and the colors begin shifting back to normal. She gestures at it, so excited that I begin to get a sense for how much Teriarch paid me for that delivery.
“This potion—I haven’t seen anything so potent in my life! You could sell it for—I’ve got to study it! Who made it? Was it found in some ruins? How much do you want for it?”
“It’s not for sale. I just wanted to see how much it was worth and what it would do—I wanted to talk to an [Alchemist] about potions, not—”
Octavia isn’t listening. She’s already looking around, muttering about empty flasks and equipment. I reach for the potion and she turns back to me, a broad smile on her face.
“Okay, you give me a sample of that potion and I’ll answer any question you want. I’ll even throw in a potion or two of my own, free of charge!”
“No, I don’t want that.”
I reach for the potion, but Octavia takes a step back. She’s holding the potion like it’s the elixir of life.
“I could get you an excellent price for this on the market. Give me a bit to show around and I’ll have a figure for you by the end of the day. You’re looking at a hundred—no, at least two hundred gold coins at least.”
“No. I want my potion back.”
She doesn’t want to give it to me. Garia opens her mouth, and Octavia’s instantly next to her, slinging an arm around her shoulders.
“Your friend Garia bought some wonderful healing potions off me just last month! Tell you what, I’ll give you a 20—no, a 40% discount on potions at my shop and I’ll throw in a batch of samples as well for a bit of your potion.”
“Give me the potion.”
“How about twenty gold? I’ll give you that and the stamina potion for a sample. I’ll even toss in a few tonics I’ve made – highly saleable! Just give me five minutes an tiny bit of it to copy and—”
“Give me the potion or I’ll hurt you.”
2.10
When Erin woke up, it was so cold that it hurt.
She was inside her inn when she opened her eyes and nearly screamed from the sudden pain of the cold. Not buried under snow, although that was her first thought. No; she and Pisces had been rescued and the snow melted yesterday. But she was still cold. What had happened? She’d gone to sleep in her kitchen after the Frost Fairies and Pisces had left and—
Erin was freezing. She looked around stiffly, and realized the cold wasn’t coming from an evil Frost Faerie or anything like that. It was just cold. Really, really cold outside.
Normally, on a cold day when Erin didn’t have anything to do, she would just curl up inside her blankets or shuffle over to the thermostat to crank up the temperature until her parents yelled at her for wasting gas.
But that was a normal day back at home, in a modern house with solid walls and heating. She was in a different world here, with an inn whose walls were damaged from undead attacks and where the only source of heat was an unlit fireplace.
And however cold Michigan could get, however terrible the snowf
all could sometimes be, it really had nothing on the winter the Frost Faeries had brought. Erin couldn’t ever remembering being so cold, and she could hear blowing winds shrieking through holes in the inn’s walls, bringing freezing temperatures in from the cold night outside.
Possibly only the five blankets Erin had bought from Krshia had saved her from freezing as she slept. As it was, she woke up before dawn, shaking so badly she could barely move.
Erin wanted nothing more than to stay wrapped up forever, but parts of her brain told her that if she didn’t move about, she would be staying here forever.
So that was how Erin found herself crawling across the floor, swathed in countless blankets, fumbling around with flint and tinder and pieces of wood in the kitchen’s fireplace until something lit.