Steele Alchemist

by Deck Davis

  “I certainly have,” said Solly.

  Jake clicked his fingers and then pointed them like guns. “Okay then. Let’s brew thi-”

  Faei grabbed and egg and threw it across the room. In a piece of perfect aim, it splattered down his cheek.

  “Don’t ever say the brew thing again,” she told him.

  They spent all the rest of the day preparing, with the idea of setting out to Singe Skin in the morning. Faei gathered more wood so that she could make bolts, while Jake busied himself making potions. The first one of mental fortitude, since he needed to keep his end of the deal with Solly.

  It didn’t take long. With the demogoth potion, he was working blind. He had nothing to go off but Faei’s description of the taste, since it was harmful to him. Mental fortitude potions were easier. Solly gave him a vial that had a few spoonful’s of the potion still in it, and Jake used his gauge skills to pick apart the ingredients. With delicate tastes and sniffs, he worked out which ingredients to use.

  Before long, not only had he successfully brewed a mental fortitude potion, but he’d also gotten a most welcome boost to his core alchemy stats.

  Do you with to add [Potion of Mental Fortitude] to recipe book? Y/N

  What the hell, there was no harm in it. He was level six, almost level seven, and he only had four recipes stored. That gave him two spaces free, with a third on the way. Sure, there might have been other potions out there more suitable, but he couldn’t help himself. Adding to his recipe book gave him a glowing feeling, like a collector adding another piece to his prized collection.

  Brewing skill increased to level 7!

  - Brewing speed inc to 10/50 [Re-generative potion brewing speed reduced by 50%]

  - Potion quality inc to 13/50

  Preparation Skill increased to level 5!

  - Cut accuracy inc to 8/50

  - Steady hands inc to 8/50

  - Butchery inc to 4/50

  Gauge Skill increased to level 6!

  - Property identify inc to 7/50

  - Herb lore inc to 7/50

  With the mental fortitude potion created, he went outside to see Solly. He found the mage fifty yards away from the shack, where he’d propped one of Faei’s archery targets up against a boulder. Judging by the shine on his head, Solly had shaved his hair and eyebrows again. He had two little cuts on the back of his head, where it must have been difficult to shave on his own.

  “Ah, pot-stirrer. You’ve been busy today, haven’t you? Hardly seen you.”

  Jake handed him the potion. “A deal’s a deal, even if I didn’t get the demogoth potion right.”

  Solly beamed. “Just in time.” He uncorked it, and drank it all back in three gulps. “It’ll take a few minutes to work,” he said.

  “We’ll I’ll go brew some more. Looks like you’ll be needing them.”

  “Not so fast. Don’t you want to see me try a spell?”

  “Do you want me to watch?”

  “It’s just nice to have a little company,” said Solly. “The last time I was around people for more than a day was at mage college, and that is a rather cold place, let me tell you. Before that, it would have been when I was with my parents.”

  “What happened? I mean, how did you end up at mage college?”

  “When I was five, my big brother once punched me in the gut and then stole an apple from out of my hands. I looked to my father for help and he just shrugged and said, ‘That’s the way the world works, lad.’ I got so angry that I just stared at the apple until my face went red and I could hear my pulse pounding in my head. Suddenly, the apple exploded and the pulp went everywhere. After that, they had a pretty good idea that I had magical tendencies. The mage college came calling, and everyone knows you don’t refuse them. That was that.”

  “And that happens to every kid who can use magic?”

  “Some people try and hide it, but never for long. Anyhow, I think the potion has worked. Let’s give it a try, shall we?”

  With that done, he rubbed his hands together, and focused on the archery target directly ahead of him.

  Jake couldn’t help feeling a little tense. There was just no telling what was going to fly out of the mage’s hands. A fireball, a swarm of bees, it could be anything. He took a few steps away from him.

  “Okay,” said Solly. “Let’s see…”

  He raised his hands. He squinted in concentration. He took a breath and held it in.

  “Boltum!” he shouted, and then cast his hands forward.

  Rather than a flash of lightening, something entirely different left the mage’s hands. Jake watched in utter surprise as a giant tentacle uncurled from the mage’s palms. It was thicker than a tree trunk, dripping with slime and lined with thorns. It unravelled thirty feet and lashed against Faei’s archery target, smashing it to pieces.

  For a few seconds, neither of them said anything. Finally, Jake found his voice.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Faei is gonna be mad with you.”

  Solly help his hands up. From sudden onset of paleness in his face, it seemed even he was surprised. He cleared his throat.

  “Why do I even bother? I’m never going to do it. I might as well give up magic for good.”

  Jake grabbed his shoulders and shook him, perhaps a little too hard. He eased off. “Hey,” he said. “That’s not the attitude! You’re a goddamn wild mage, and you’re not going to give up. Say it.”

  “I’m a….”

  “You’re a goddamn wild mage.”

  “I’m a goddamn wild mage!” repeated Solly.

  After that, Jake had another potion left to brew for their journey into Singe Skin. He looked in the herb lore book for a particular couple of herbs that he needed, and then he checked for someone nearby that would have them. Luckily, he didn’t have far to walk. Thirty minutes later he arrived back in the shack with the right ones.

  One was an herb called Calsum, which looked remarkably like the brittle bone herb, except this one granted resistance against things. It seemed like this and brittle bone were just one the opposite ends of the same spectrum; where one strengthened, the other weakened.

  He combined Calsum with an herb named inferlo, which was the deep color of rust and rubbery to the touch. Inferlo, when boiled for four minutes, gave fire properties to something. He put these in a vial, mixed them with potion powder, then closed his eyes and prayed.

  Potion of Fire Resist [Poor] x1 created!

  Would you like to add potion of fire resist to recipe book? Y/N

  He felt like pumping his fist or jumping in the air, but since Faei and Solly were watching, he settled for muttering a celebratory ‘yes!’ under his breath. He did, after all, have a cool and mysterious reputation to protect. He added the fire potion to his recipe book, then spent the next five hours practicing brewing them until his potion quality reached average. It was only when the sun had completely set that he paused to check his stat alerts.

  He was quickly learning that the more familiar you were with a potion, the better-quality potions you could brew. In that way, even an alchemist with a potion quality score of two out of fifty could brew master healing potions if he practiced brewing them twenty hours a day. In the future, maybe it’d pay off a little to focus his practice down one line of potion. For now, he had to brew whatever the situation demanded.

  With the fire resist potions prepared, he was ready. In the morning, they’d set out to a place where fire always burned.

  No need to take my coat, he thought.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As they approached Singe Skin, Jake smelled the embers in the air, their ashen stench getting stronger with each step. The sky had blackened as though ashes mixed with it and formed a dreary atmospheric coating. Despite the absence of sun, the air grew warmer. Soon, he smelled a sour odour that he was sure came from his armpits.

  When they arrived at their destination, Solly was at pains to explain that this had once been a thriving, even picturesque, trader town, with a
specialization in horse-rearing. Now, any sign of habitation was gone, with wooden houses long since burned down to ash molecules scattered around Reaching Crest by its swirling winds. Some of the stone buildings still stood, but the flames danced around and inside them with no sign of stopping, and no one would ever live in them again.

  “How are we supposed to walk through?” asked Jake. “I mean, I brought fire resist potions just in case, but I don’t wanna gamble on them by walking through a blaze.”

  Solly pointed. “The fire doesn’t burn everywhere. See? There’s a pathway through that is untouched by it. We can avoid it if we walk carefully.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this place,” said Faei, with a hint of suspicion.

  “The town was made this way by a wild mage centuries ago. I read about him. He tried to cast a small spell to ignite a camp fire, and instead produced a flame that has lasted for centuries. The people caught up in it died, the river dried up, and the area has long since been left to the fire.”

  It struck Jake that as much as the map in Cason’s shack showed that Reaching Crest was populated, he had seen no evidence of it so far. The place seemed to have been ravaged by catastrophe after catastrophe; first Faei’s village was scoured by the demogoth infection, there was the village that had been hit by the crater-forming bomb, and then here, a place lashed by orange flames for century upon century. Was there anywhere normal on the island?

  They crossed into the center of the area. The fire formed barriers to their left and right. Far enough away to allow passage, but close enough that his cheeks warmed. He unbuttoned his shirt and rolled up his sleeves, and with each step, a new bead of sweat seemed to form and then rippled down his face.

  Faei nudged him and then gestured with her head to their left. When Jake looked, he lost his breath. There were people stood in the flames, watching them.

  No. Not people. Their skin was too hard, looking every inch like the cousins of the unfortunate people of Pompeii, who had been locked in time by hot lava that turned them into statues. Except here, it was different. The people in the flames, though their skin was dark brown and looked like stone, were alive. Some of them shifted position as they watched Solly, Faei and Jake cross their domain. Jake began to feel their eyes on him. Their glares tip-tapped down his spine, taking him in, stalking his every movement.

  “Fire goyles,” said Solly. “They’re harmless…to a point. They won’t attack unless provoked.”

  “Are they the people who used to live here?”

  “They’re demons infused by fire, but lacking physical form until they interact with memories of the dead. They used the corpses of the fallen as their entry into the world. ”

  “Let’s just get the herbs and get the hell out of here,” said Jake, feeling a shiver run up his spine despite the heat.

  They were looking for the aspest herb, which was a flower that grew in the most extreme heat. Here, they must have grown close enough to the ever-burning flames to absorb some of the sulphur smell. It was just a question of finding them.

  They spread out a little and stared at the ground as they walked, scanning for the herbs. As Jake did so, the feeling of being watched grew. It wasn’t just the fire goyles, because he knew about them. It was something else. Something dark that cast a weight on him with its mere stare. He didn’t like it. It made him want to walk closer to the others.

  He shrugged the feeling aside and carried on walking, sweeping his gaze along the ground for signs of the elusive herb. With each step, the sensation of being watched grew. If he were walking toward something – a trap, a person, a beast - he couldn’t see any sign of it. The only living beings for miles around were their silent watchers to their left and right, the fire beings with their sorrowful eyes and graceful poses, lips pursed and making no sound.

  He felt it again. Less a growing feeling of being stalked, and more like a sudden onset of it. His hairs stood up, gooseflesh covered his skin.

  He turned to see figures behind him.

  He yelled something. It didn’t come out as a word but more a general sound to alert the others. His dagger offered no resistance when he pulled it from his belt. He reached into his left coat pocket and touched the cold glass of his brittle bone potions

  Faei and Solly turned around in unison. Their expressions showed just as much shock.

  Stood across from the, in this oval-shaped arena-like patch of grass surrounded by flame and the watchers within it, were figures. Four of them, two on the left side, two on the right, must have been the timberkin creatures he had heard about. They were ten feet tall and had vaguely-humanoid bodies covered in bark-like skin and capped with branches reaching out from the tops of their heads.

  Crawling next to them were three creatures that could only be described as a deranged cross between spider and human. Freaks; a corruption of the building blocks of nature that was so vile it was hard to look at them without feeling revulsion. They had human faces with spider eyes; round, tumor-like eyes covered in dots and seeming to have hair sprouting all around the outsides. They had curvy figures with bulbous sacks on their rears, yet they had two arms and two legs and walked upright. Or, as upright as their spines would allow.

  The most disturbing sight was the figure stood in the centre. This was just a man. Normal arms, legs, face. Just a regular person. Except that it was Thotl.

  What was Cason’s friend doing here?

  Thotl nodded toward his timberkin colleague.

  “Get the boy,” he said.

  Oh. That’s what he was doing here.

  “Why does everyone insist on calling me a boy when they try and kidnap me?” said Jake.

  Faei nocked a bolt and raised her bow. “You said you were Cason’s friend,” she said.

  Thotl smiled. As much as it was now obvious that he was their enemy, his friendly manner still lingered. He still had a smile that encouraged trust.

  “I used to be his friend,” said Thotl. “I still could be, if he comes to his senses. I’m sure Isaac will break him in time.”

  Hang on; Jake had heard the name Isaac before, but where? Something to do with Cason’s past. What was it? Nope, it wasn’t coming to him.

  “What’s going on?” asked Jake.

  Thotl rolled up his sleeve. From his wrist to near his elbow, his skin was brown and cracked.

  “The blackbark potion was for me. I’ve been training up the timberkin to fight, and sometimes they lose their heads. I needed Cason to brew something up, but I couldn’t let him know what I was doing. The old fool would have found his morals.”

  “And you’re training them up because…?”

  “You’ll find out why soon. No point trying to resist.” Then, he looked at Faei. “You, my dear, will soon become a sapling in The Watcher’s army. Don’t worry, doll; I know from experience that you become accustomed to the pain of it.”

  So Thotl was working with Isaac, whoever this was. Not only that, but he needed to kidnap Jake for some reason. He could only think of one reason why. The only thing that was special about Jake in this new world; that he was from Earth.

  Jake looked at Faei. “Seven against three,” he said.

  “Seven against two. Solly won’t cast a spell in case he summons a murderous troll or an angry clan of cock imps. Right, mage?”

  Solly looked at the ground. “It isn’t always harmful stuff,” he mumbled.

  “They’re going to kidnap me and give you two blackbark and turn you into whatever the hell those tree things are. We have to fight,” said Jake.

  “I’m already up to my cheeks in demogoth. Nothing else can infect me,” said Faei.

  “That doesn’t help me!” said Solly.

  Thotl reached over his shoulder and drew out a weapon. It was a wooden club with jagged pieces of metal wedged in it. The wood was stained red with blood, and some of the jagged metal pieces had chunks of flesh stuck to them.

  “Time for some clubbin’,” said Thotl.

  “Night clubs aren�
��t my thing” said Jake. “I’ve never been much of a dancer.”

  He took a vial of brittle bone out of his pocket and flung it at Thotl. The large man had already stepped out of the way as it smashed on the ground, and managed to avoid the liquid that splashed out. One timberkin wasn’t so lucky, and neither were two of the spider creatures.

  Thotl ducked his head and charged forward. Faei fired a bolt, but Thotl’s reactions were so insanely fast that he was able to swing his club and smash the bolt out of the air.

  “That was actually amazing,” said Jake.

  Thotl’s army charged forward now. The spider-people dropped to all fours and crawled with alarming speed, while the timberkin lumbered across the ground, their branches shaking with each step. Jake waited and waited, but the timberkin hit by brittle bone potion showed no signs of slowing.