Steele Alchemist

by Deck Davis

  Cason laughed. “Bloody hell, level two. Pathetic. Anyway… you can only store two recipes in your book when you get it.”

  “Can’t I just write my recipes down?”

  “The book is much better than that, Jake. Once you’ve stored a recipe in your book, the ingredient cost to make it is recued. Keep using it, the less ingredients you’ll need. That’s why I was a little bit pissed off when my jar of edium, which would have lasted me six months, disappeared in one afternoon of you using it.”

  “Well, that does sound pretty useful,” said Jake.

  “Plus, a big part of alchemy is experimenting. Trying stuff out. And when you’re doing that, you won’t always keep track of what you put in a potion. This way, if you ever create anything good, you’ll remember what you put in it.”

  “Okay, I’m sold.”

  “When you get it, think carefully about what recipes you store. Once you commit one to the book, it can’t be swapped. Field alchemists who serve lords armies often fill theirs with various healing potions and crap like that. Just think about it carefully.”

  “Got it. So I really need this book, but I’m guessing it’s difficult to get one.”

  “It’ll be a major pain in the balls, Jake. Usually an apprentice gets one from his master when he’s taken on. But my last apprentice scarpered, which means I don’t have a book to give you. You’re gonna have to go out and find your own. Lucky for you, soppy balls, I know where such a book rests,” said Cason.

  “In a book store, by any chance?”

  “There’s a guy I used to know. An alchemist even older than me. Or he was, until he made the unfortunate mistake of dying. He built a house about ten miles from here. Won’t take you long to get there, but the terrain is infested with banshees and cockimps.”

  “You’re gonna need to give me a bigger blade then,” said Jake. He held up his dagger. “The only thing this thing is good for is shaving.”

  “Ah, puberty. I remember the time I first got hairs on my face and pecker, too. Okay then you cranky little bumhole, I’ll do one better. Faei’s going with you.”

  Faei, who’d sat on a chair throughout their discussion and feigned disinterest, suddenly looked their way.

  “Aww come on,” she said. “I’ve got better stuff to be doing with my time. Like watching grass grow.”

  “Until you turn the manure in your head into an actual brain and make your own antidote, my dear, your time is mine. Now come on, don’t give daddy Cason backchat. Go out with our big-balled wonder and stop a banshee ripping his cock off.”

  As Cason finished his vulgar tirade, Jake saw something dart across the floor out of the corner of his eye. He spun round, only to see that nothing was there.

  “Something wrong, lad?”

  Am I going crazy?

  “I thought I saw something.”

  Cason arched his eyebrows and looked at him suspiciously. “Just me, you and the grouchy girl in here, boy. Come on, get going.”

  “Is there anything you can give me for the journey? Some kind of potion that’ll help?”

  Cason gestured to the vials lined up on the wooden counter. “What’re you thinking?”

  “I dunno, because you don’t label them. Let me see…”

  He looked at the vials. They were filled with all manner of different colored and textured liquids, from gloopy dark blue slop to runny pale yellow. He pointed at one potion that stood out to him. It was light blue colored, and little specks of gold seemed to swim around in it as if they were alive.

  “What’s that one?”

  “That’s a follow potion. The little gold things are follow mites. It won’t do you much good.”

  “Fine,” said Jake. “Just give us a healing potion each.”

  ~

  They found the alchemist’s house two hours away from Cason’s hut. It was in a dark patch of forest that stank of sulphur, as if the air had come from the rear end of the devil himself. Creatures crawled in the shadows around them and growled. Jake held his dagger tight in his hand. Cason had given him a shoddy belt with loops on it that were big enough to hold potions, and Jake had taken some of his own mediocre healing vials with him.

  The dead alchemist’s house was built into the side of a gentle sloping hill. Vines covered the outside walls like thick cobwebs. There were no windows, and nothing to mark the place as a house save for an arched hole in the centre that he supposed served for an entrance. Then he saw something that made his balls retract just an inch.

  It wasn’t darkness of the forest nor the creatures that scuttled within that produced such an effect on his testicles. No. It was what was in front of the house.

  There were four thick wooden poles set ten feet apart. People were fastened to them with nails through their wrists and ankles. It looked like a family; a man, a woman, and two young boys.

  They had been stripped naked, and the front of their bodies had been torn apart. Their chests, thighs and calves had been devoured almost completely. Everything except their faces, which must have been too high up to reach.

  “Holy shit,” said Jake. A chill ran through him.

  Had Cason known this would be here? Surely not; the guy couldn’t have been stupid enough to send a level two alchemist who had less fighting ability than a punch-drunk boxer after twelve rounds with a steroid-pumped angry rhino.

  “Do we go inside?” he asked.

  Faei never showed the slightest hint of nerves. She sometimes scratched the mossy growth on her neck, but Jake guessed that it was because it was itchy. He’d wanted to ask he about it for a while now. He knew it was something to do with the demogoth infection, but he still had questions. Problem was, he knew people could be sensitive about that kind of thing.

  In that moment, he envied her. Her combat skills dwarfed his. She’d brought her bow with her, and when she had that she gave off an aura of invincibility.

  Get your shit together, he told himself.

  “You want your book, don’t you?” said Faei. “Where else are you going to put your recipes for mediocre piss-potions?”

  Yeah, he did want his book. But more than that, he wondered what would happen if he died. Would he respawn?

  “What happens when I die?” he said.

  “I’ll put on my grieving clothes and say a nice eulogy at your grave. I’ll mourn your ugly mug for years and then, finally, I just might pull myself together.”

  “Seriously, Faei.”

  “Depends. Cason seems to think there’s something special about you, besides the fact that you mumble about your mum in your sleep. Said he’s heard about other people who’ve been farted out of portals over the years, and that they couldn’t really die.”

  “Then why didn’t he tell me that? It would have been pretty useful information.”

  “Because he’s not a nice man. Haven’t you realized that? Come on, cockbag,” said Faei.

  His heart might have been hammering, but he wouldn’t show it. He gripped his dagger tight and touched his healing potions to reassure himself that they were still there. Mediocre or not, they could well end up saving his alchemist ass. Maybe he couldn’t die, but until he knew for sure, he’d be careful.

  He gave one last sorry glance toward the family on the poles. It was such a sad end. If he ever found out who had done it…

  Hang on! Did one of them just move?

  He could have sworn that the woman’s fingers had twitched. It was such a quick movement that it was hard to miss, but it sent a chill through him. He held his dagger and watched the corpses for a few seconds, but nothing happened.

  Must be my eyes.

  He strode toward the entrance of the house, pushing his doubts as far back as they would go.

  Inside, the house was pitch black. Faei wanted to light one of the torches she’d brought with her, but Jake told her to wait. He’d done enough urban exploring to know that after a while, your eyes adjusted to the darkness. If someone was here, there was no use giving them advanced warning tha
t they were there.

  They crept through the house as silently as they could. Faei was much quieter than him.

  “My sneak skill,” she told him. “Grow up where I did, and you better learn to move quietly.”

  They explored the living room, the kitchen, and a parlor, but they found nothing except scattered furniture and cooking pots and pans collecting dust. The alchemist had done a respectable job of building the place, but now it was a dump.

  Jake started to wonder if Cason had sent him chasing after his own behind to teach him some kind of lesson. There was nothing here.

  After crossing back into the hallway, he reached out to touch the wall to steady himself in the darkness. He ran his hands along it and then at one point, his hand hit thin air.

  He stopped and listened. There were no sounds. The place was empty.

  “Time to use a torch,” he said.

  The thin air was actually an open doorway cut into the muddy wall. Jake saw steps that led down into darkness that seemed never ending. It reminded him of the building where he’d found his old friend, the blue portal.

  “If I see you again, you blue asshole, I’m gonna mess you up. Or… I might just cross through you and get home. Depends how I’m feeling.”

  “What are you muttering about?”

  “Just talking to myself,” he said.

  “Well don’t. Your big mouth is gonna get us killed.”

  They carefully walked down the rough staircase. This one wasn’t actually never-ending, and in fact they crossed only twenty steps before reaching the bottom.

  The lower level of the house was much different. Here, they saw the faint flicker of a torch from the end of the corridor. Jake listened carefully, and started to hear people making sounds. The more he listened, the more he was sure he knew what it was.

  “Someone’s down here,” he said. “And it sounds like they’re…screwing each other.”

  “Nice place for it,” she said, looking at the dirt walls. “Me, I prefer candles music, maybe a bit of wine.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Faei.”

  She grinned. “No, you’re right. Give me a rough ride in a bundle of hay, and I’m happy.”

  They followed the sounds of screwing. Jake kept his dagger ready and wondered if he’d be able to use it. If they saw two people getting down to it, it wouldn’t seem right to stab them in the back. Then he thought about the people he’d seen outside on the poles. The poor family had died a horrible death. Who were they? Had they been living here? Had the people he could hear killed them?

  The sounds grew louder the closer they got, and Jake realized it wasn’t two people making the noise, but several. And some of the squeals they made were high-pitched and animalistic. These people were really having a ball.

  When they reached the glow of the torch at the end of the corridor, they came to a room. This was brightly lit. It cast an orange glow on a scene that was so damn strange that Jake’s brain almost melted.

  In the room ahead of them, there was a bed. On it was a man, butt-naked and glistening with sweat. With him were four green-skinned, waist-high goblins, all in various stages of undress. The man and the goblins were in the middle of what looked to be an alcohol-fueled orgy, given the various bottles scattered on the floor. Over in the corner were piles of clothes belonging to the man and the goblins, and their weapons were next to them. The room reeked of sweat and sex, and the odour was so thick that Jake almost choked on it.

  He gave Faei a glance, only to see that she was transfixed on the scene in front of them, her mouth wide open.

  Join the club, he thought. He couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. This guy was really going to town on the goblin, and the green-skinned creature was loving it.

  She then returned his glance. Jake nodded at her, and they walked into the room.

  A goblin was the first to see them. It had, until Jake’s rude interruption, been engaged in a particularly enthusiastic spot of oral sex on a fellow goblin, while the man in the middle of the bed enjoyed himself with two more. The goblin screamed out and covered its cock.

  “No need for modesty,” said Jake. “We’re just here for the show.”

  “What the heck?” shouted the man.

  Modesty must not have been in his thoughts much, since he didn’t bother to cover up his nakedness. He was tall and heavily muscled, with scars running down his arms. Judging by his physique and the size of the greatsword over by his clothes, he was a warrior of some sort. Barbarian life must have been really lonely if this was what he’d resorted to.

  One of the goblins, the only one still wearing a loin cloth, ran at them. Faei lifted her bow, drew the string and let rip, and the bolt tore through the creature’s throat. Blood sprayed over the walls, the blood and the floor.

  As he watched her, he saw her disfigured fingers again. The index and middle fingers of her right hand her cut clean below the middle, making them look like little stubs.

  The man moved away from the bed and stood up. As his cock slowly went limp, he edged toward his clothes.

  “Don’t move an inch,” said Jake.

  “Is it gonils you want?” said the man.

  The goblins screeched around him.

  “You can see that she has her bow ready and she’s lethal with it,” said Jake. “So, don’t try anything stupid, you goblin banger.”

  Not much of an insult, he thought to himself. The guy was banging a goblin; he’s obviously quite comfortable with the label ‘goblin banger.’

  “Take what you need and leave me alone,” said the man. “Ain’t no law against what I’m doing.”

  Jake gave Faei a look as if to ask, ‘is there a law against it?’

  Faei shrugged her shoulders. There was a weird expression on her face, like she was doing her best to hold in a fit of laughter.

  “What happened to the family outside?” asked Jake.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Faei aimed her bow in his direction. She held the bow string tight with the ring finger on her right hand.

  “Fine, if you’re going to lose your heads about it” said the man. “They were living in the house when I found it. I politely asked if they would mind vacating, but they didn’t want to negotiate. Nobody can blame me for resorting to something drastic.”

  “You sick bastard.”

  “We didn’t eat them,” said the man.

  “What?” said Jake. “I never said you did. What a weird thing to say. What the hell happened out there?”

  One of the goblins screeched.

  “Shut up, Gebbel. I’ve told you time after hecking time not to interrupt me,” said the man, then glanced at Jake. “I killed the family, alright? Oh, boo hoo. Now, can we shut the heck up about them and work out the terms of this god-damned negotiation?”

  “Why are they tied to posts? And what happened to their bodies? They looked like they’d been torn open.”

  “I tied them up to warn peckers like you away. And as for their bodies…I dunno. Bears, maybe? Who knows, who cares. Now, can we talk gonils?”

  Jake put his hand to his chin. He had to deal with the man and his goblin concubines, but death seemed a little too easy for them after what they’d done.

  “Tie your goblins’ wrists up with their loin cloths,” said Jake, “and listen to what I tell you. Make a sudden move, and Faei’s gonna fire a bolt down the eye of your cock.”

  He found that the threat of harming the man’s treasures made him particularly compliant, and he and his goblin lovers followed Jake’s order to the letter. They were probably so obedient on the hope that he’d spare them, but Jake couldn’t stop thinking about the family outside the house.

  ~

  An hour later, with the man and his goblins dealt with, Jake and Faei searched the house. In the furthest corner of the lower floor they found the alchemist’s old study. When Faei moved around the room with her torch, Jake saw the floor was littered with broken glass vials. The crunched under e
very step Faei took. He shuddered.

  “What’s it look like then, this book?” asked Faei.

  “A square or rectangular shape, with pieces of paper in it that they call ‘pages.’”

  “Bum clown,” she said, with a grin. “Here’s a book.”

  She held it up. The cover was black, and the title was written in red ink. ‘Necromancy and the Blight Curse; A Practitioner’s guide.’

  “Weird,” said Jake. “That’s not it, though.”

  After ten minutes of looking, he found the recipe book hidden under a loose stone in the corner. The cover was made of wood, and the pages were thick like cloth. It was a heavy thing to carry. On a desk near the book he found an array of alchemy tools, including a scalpel-like knife, a burner torch, and a pair of flame-proof pincers.