by Adam Horne
“No, I’m working on something new,” said Kelath.
Reek clapped his hands together. “Very good! Discovery is one of the most interesting parts of alchemy. It’s time consuming and there are setbacks, but the thrill you feel the first time you create a new recipe is the most exciting feeling in the world. Use whatever ingredients you find necessary.”
“Thank you. We’ll try to stay out of your way.”
Reek smiled and turned his attention back to his work. Kelath retrieved the envelope from his bag and shook the catnip onto the table. The easiest recipes he knew involved combining an ingredient with conjured water, so he created a flask and pulled the cork out. He dropped one of the leaves into the water and waited to see if it would react. Bubbles formed around the edges of the catnip, which began to fizz. After three seconds, the liquid inside turned a bright green.
You have learned the Frenzy Potion recipe. This is an exclusive discoverable recipe for which you own a patent for the next 30 days.
Kelath lifted the bottle and took a small sip. Other than having a minty flavor, it didn’t appear to do anything. He held the flask up to the light and examined it.
Frenzy Potion: Causes an animal to enter a frenzied state for one minute. When the frenzy ends, the animal will be exhausted for as long as it remained frenzied.
“Did it work?” asked Througar.
“I discovered something, not what I was hoping for, but you might be interested in what this can do.”
Kelath handed the potion to Througar, who examined it, his eyes growing wide. “No way! We have to try this out.”
Before Kelath could interject, Througar lifted Bandit’s head and poured the potion into his mouth. The wolf swallowed the liquid then shook his head and the hackles on his neck rose. He growled menacingly and slowly advanced towards Reek, who seemed oblivious to what was happening.
“Call him off!” yelled Kelath.
“Bandit, come!” Througar grabbed the wolf’s collar. “Stay! Sit! Play dead!”
Bandit ignored every command and continued forward, his legs tensing as he prepared to pounce. Reek finally noticed something was wrong. He grabbed a flask of liquid from a shelf next to him and threw it on the ground, splashing all of them with its contents. It had no effect on the people in the room, but Bandit’s demeanor instantly changed. His muscles grew slack, and he panted heavily as if he was overheated. He limped his way to the corner of the room behind Througar then stretched out on his side and wheezed. It took almost ten seconds for him to recover, the same length of time he’d been under the effects of the potion.
“You could’ve warned me,” said Reek, although he didn’t appear to be angry. “Creating new potions is one thing. Testing them out is something else entirely. Precautions are necessary.”
“It’s a good thing you had that bomb ready,” said Througar.
Reek conjured a flask of water and cast a spell on it. The water churned in a vortex before settling and taking on a milky white color. He replaced the cork and put the new bomb in place of the one he’d used on Bandit.
“I’ll be more careful next time,” said Kelath.
“No harm done.” Reek returned to what he’d been doing.
Kelath attempted a few other ways of processing the catnip. He used alcohol to leech some of the essence out of the leaves and distilled it. He tried mixing it with tar to make a poison. He even tried chewing on one of the leaves to see how it would affect him. With each attempt, he came up empty-handed. In the end, he used the last two leaves to make Frenzy Potions and gave them to Througar.
“Well that was a bust,” said Kelath.
Reek drew his eyebrows together. “You made a new recipe on your first try. How is that a bust?”
“I didn’t get the potion I was hoping for.”
“I wish I discovered something new each time I experimented,” said Reek with a chuckle. “I sometimes go days or weeks without getting any closer to a breakthrough. What is it you hoped to discover, anyway?”
“I’m looking for a way to see people who are invisible.”
“That’s impossible. The whole point of being invisible is so you won’t be seen. You might as well try to touch the intangible or smell the unscented.”
Reek’s last comment reminded Kelath of something that had bothered him when they were ambushed at the dungeon entrance. At the time, Througar had remarked Bandit was acting oddly by not eating the treats he’d dropped on the ground. The wolf had sniffed at the air instead, which Kelath had taken to mean he was still looking for the tracks they were following. If that were the case though, he would have descended the stairway that led under the temple because surely that’s where the dungeon entrance was located. It struck him now that it was possible Bandit had noticed the scent of the invisible players sneaking up on them.
“We can’t see them!” said Kelath as he had his epiphany.
“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time,” said Reek.
“What I mean is, we don’t need to see them. We can use our other senses to locate them.”
Througar slapped him on the back. “That’s genius!”
“Sure, give him all the credit,” Reek mumbled.
Througar looked abashed. “Sorry, you were a big help. So where would we find something that will enhance our other senses?”
“Ask the genius,” said Reek, pointing a finger at Kelath.
“I may know a place.” Kelath ushered Througar and Bandit out the door. “Thanks, Richard! I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“That’s for sure,” he said before the door closed and cut off anything else he was going to say.
Kelath bolted up the stairs and yelled, “Follow me.”
* * *
Kelath took them up into the hills to the northwest of Stockton, occasionally checking his map to be sure he was following a trail he’d taken earlier that week. They climbed the back side of one of the mountains that ringed the beginners’ area, and after nearly an hour, he spotted an opening in the granite cliff face and skirted along a ledge to reach it. He breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped into the cave and could get some distance from the sharp drop behind them. Througar and Bandit followed close behind.
“So why did we risk a fall to our deaths to come here?” asked Througar. He peered over the ledge and shivered.
“There are creatures inside this cave that might have what I need to make the potion. They avoid the light, so we’ll need to go deeper inside to find them.”
Kelath pulled an elixir from his bag and poured it over his gloves, which immediately began to glow with a light as bright as a torch. The elixir skill allowed him to make items that gave him various buffs, and the first thing he’d done upon gaining it was have Galahad teach him how to make lights for himself. It made adventuring in dark caves a whole lot easier because he didn’t have to carry a torch.
They were in a moderate sized cave with an exit leading farther underground on the far side. He walked into a tunnel that sloped gradually downward into the mountain. The path eventually leveled and widened into a chamber that was nearly sixty feet across. He couldn’t see the opposite side from the small area illuminated by his light spell. They didn’t encounter any monsters on the floor of the cavern, but the sound of chittering came from above them.
Througar glanced up and squinted at the ceiling. “I can see something moving up there.”
“Yes, bats. They’re what we came to find.”
Understanding dawned slowly in Througar’s eyes. “You magnificent bastard! Bats can see in the dark.”
“They sure can, and I’m hoping the game is realistic enough to let me use some part of them to make a potion.”
Througar pulled out his bow and aimed at the ceiling. His first shot struck the rock and shattered, sending a flock of bats into the air. They flew erratically, buzzing the characters’ heads. Bandit leapt into the air and snapped at them but missed every time. After fifteen seconds, they all flew off deeper
into the cavern. Kelath walked forward a few yards until they could see more bats clinging to the ceiling. The creatures made clicking noises at Bandit but didn’t move from their perches.
“Let me try.” Kelath pulled out a fire bomb and hurled it at the ceiling.
Fire spread from the point of impact and washed over a number of the bats. They cried out in pain. The small animals weren’t considered regular mobs, so they only had a token amount of hit points. Four of them dropped to the floor in front of Kelath, and the rest zipped out of the cave, leaving behind the smell of singed fur.
Througar bent down and picked up one of the bodies. “That worked.”
“Let’s see what we can do with them.”
Kelath examined one of the bats. Because they weren’t monsters, they couldn’t drop treasure. He’d never tried making a potion from anything other than herbs or spells, so he was at a loss on how to proceed. He knew conjured water would be necessary, so he created several bottles. He pulled the cork from one and poured some of the contents out before squeezing the entire body of a bat inside. The water fizzed for a second, but in the end, all he did was make the bat wet.
“Well that didn’t work,” he said as he emptied the contents of the bottle on the cave floor.
“Maybe you’re only supposed to use part of it,” said Througar. “Witches in stories are always using bat wings to make potions. Try that.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
Kelath unsheathed his dagger and cut through the small bones at the base of the creature’s wings, severing them from the body. He opened another flask of water, folded the wings around each other, and dropped them inside. Again nothing happened. Througar snorted in frustration.
“That was a long shot anyway,” said Kelath. “Their wings don’t have anything to do with how they sense the world around them.”
Kelath looked over the body of the bat, trying to remember how echolocation worked. He knew it was a form of sonar made possible by high-pitched noises that bounced off objects and returned so the bat could tell how far away an object was. He examined the animal’s ears and saw they were ridiculously oversized for a body so small. He smiled with certainty and cut away both ears. When he dropped them into another bottle of conjured water, it started to fizz loudly, similar to the other potions he made. After a few seconds, the color turned a murky dark grey that shifted as if there was something inside it, just out of view.
You have learned the Blindsight Potion recipe. This is an exclusive discoverable recipe for which you own a patent for the next 30 days.
Kelath cheered when he saw the notification.
“What is it?” asked Througar. He grabbed the bottle out of Kelath’s hands and examined it. “It worked! We have to test this out.”
“I have the stealth skill,” said Kelath. “I’ll activate it, and you tell me when you can’t see me anymore.”
Kelath began to sneak and moved slowly away from where he’d been standing. He had gone about ten feet when Througar told him to stop.
“Here goes nothing.” Througar upended the flask and drank the liquid inside. “Woah, this is kind of trippy.”
“What does it look like?”
“I can still see like normal, but there’s a pulsing sound every second or so. A wave of transparent blue energy goes out and flashes brighter when it hits something.”
“Can you see where I am?”
“I can’t see your character in much detail, but I can tell there is something there because the pulse hits it. Try moving around.”
Kelath crept around in the darkness of the cave, the light from the elixir he’d poured on his gloves muted so it was just enough for him to see where he was going while he was in stealth. Througar turned along with him and raised an arm to point directly at his body. He slid behind a rock in the middle of the cave, and Througar lost track of him. When he walked out on the other side, Througar immediately spotted him and pointed again.
“The potion is wearing off,” said Througar. “I can’t tell where you are now.”
Kelath stopped sneaking and returned to where he’d been standing. “I wasn’t timing it, but that seemed like it lasted for about a minute.”
“Yeah, it’s not a real long time, but it should be enough if we drink it when we’re expecting an ambush.”
“Let’s gather up more dead bats. I don’t know how many potions we’ll need, so we’ll collect all we can.”
They proceeded through several large caves, Kelath throwing fire bombs at the ceiling and Througar retrieving the bats as they fell. They had thirty before most of the bats disappeared into fissures in the ceiling too high for bombs to reach. Kelath decided that should be enough. They retraced their steps to the cave entrance and traversed the narrow trail down the side of the mountain. It took an hour for them to get back to the city, and Kelath’s alarm had gone off, meaning he should take a break. As much as he wanted to continue, the dungeon would require a full party, and he would need extra people to fight against the guards Itrix left at the entrance. He entered the guild office as soon as they got back and sent messages to Througar, Galahad, Elora, and every rogue that was a member of the guild before logging out.
Chapter 23
Kelath appeared in the guild office when he logged into the game again six hours later. He had wanted to eat a quick lunch then hop back on, but he knew the others would need time to see his message and make preparations. He’d told them to gather in the guild hall at 7 o’clock and be prepared for what could be a long session. He didn’t know how long it would take to work through the dungeon, and he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted.
A large group of players sat at one of the tables in the main room. Througar, Galahad, and Elora had all shown up, so he had a full party to run the dungeon if they could make it inside. Zafira and five other rogues were also present, and Yorrick was chatting with them. They grew quiet when Kelath walked to the head of the table.
“Hello everyone,” said Kelath. “Thanks for coming.”
Zafira was the first to speak. “Your message said we needed to have an emergency meeting, but there were no details. Is this about the magic lamp?”
Murmurs ran through the group, and Kelath raised his hand for quiet. “Yes, Zafira, I want to find the dungeon and reach the lamp before Itrix. Througar, so everyone knows what’s already happened, would you tell us what you overheard?”
Througar related the story of eavesdropping on Itrix and his men at the Noblesse Oblige headquarters and learning about the dungeon with the magic lamp inside. He also told them how they’d followed the trail to the dungeon entrance and been ambushed by the group of players guarding it. He finished the story and looked at Kelath to continue.
“Itrix will likely have more people outside the dungeon to ambush us next time,” said Kelath. “My guess is he’ll choose mostly rogues and wizards since they can go unseen. What Itrix doesn’t know is Througar and I found a way to get around their stealth abilities. I can make potions that will let us spot his sentries even if they’re hidden.”
“Why do you think there will be more guards at the dungeon if you go back?” asked Yorrick.
“He only had enough people before to stop a random person from stumbling across their find. He’d be stupid to assume we were there randomly, since he went into the dungeon only a few minutes before we showed up. He has to know we’ve figured out he’s hiding something there. If I were in his shoes, I’d prepare for a full party to come back and investigate. I’d place more guards to stop them.”
“So how are we going to get around their stealth abilities?” asked Zafira.
“With this.” Kelath pulled a blindsight potion from his bag. “When you drink it, you’ll be able to see hidden characters in a short distance around you for a minute.”
“Can I try it?”
“Sure.”
Kelath handed the potion to Zafira. She told the other rogues to activate stealth and move around the room. Once they were all
hidden, she drank the potion, a look of wonder on her face.
“This is awesome!” She picked up a spoon from the table and threw it, hitting one of the rogues and causing him to become visible. “I’m sure I’ll hate this potion the first time someone uses it to spot me, but for now I love it.”
She walked around the room, punching each of the hidden characters on the shoulder until they were all visible. They returned to the table, took their seats again, and waited for Kelath to continue.
“I have enough potions for everyone. Some of you will have extras because we won’t know exactly where the ambushers will be hidden, and you’ll need to get in position before anyone approaches the dungeon entrance. Here’s what I have in mind…”
Kelath laid out his plan of attack and set the blindsight potions on the table for the others to take, keeping two in reserve for himself. Their preparations made, they exited the guild hall and proceeded to the rendezvous point he’d chosen at the graveyard near the dungeon entrance in groups of two or three. They each took roundabout ways to get there, some leaving by the northern and southern gates and heading away from the city before crossing the river. He was sure Itrix had posted lookouts to watch for his people when they left the city, and he didn’t want it known how many of them were headed towards the dungeon.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, they met at the graveyard. Kelath led them into the forest and approached as close to the dungeon as he felt was safe without risking being seen. He called a halt, and they waited while Zafira scouted ahead. After five minutes, she returned to fill them in on the situation.
“You were right about the reinforcements. I made a circuit around the perimeter and spotted three wizards who were invisible among the rubble of the temple. There were also three rogues prowling around the outside and a cleric waiting out of sight on the stairwell, where he could run out to heal them if a fight started.”
“So they have at least seven people, and we have eleven. What levels were they?”
“The wizards and rogues were all between ten and twelve. The cleric was fourteen.”