by Alan Bayman
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Miasma start to drift away from him, and his eyes shown with confusion as the euphoria of healing began to settle in his body.
“Let’s take a look at that,” I said, grabbing a scalpel and cutting away the bandage. I choose the sharpest scalpel and made sure to cut with a quick smoothness to demonstrate how skilled I was with the knife. He remained as still as a trapped hare.
There was a chunk missing from his forearm. I pretended to chuckle.
“I was hungry, wasn’t I?”
The man began to tremble violently.
“Don’t worry,” I smiled. “I’m not hungry now.”
With my back turned to him, I opened my bag. From it, I rummaged around until I took out a healing elixir and a syringe. I used some of the elixir and filled the syringe, making sure he didn’t see anything I was doing.
I then put everything else away and faced him, holding the syringe.
“Now,” I said. “This might feel strange. But if you hold still enough, you will live.”
The man was still as a rock as I carefully injected the healing elixir into the wound. Healing elixirs are cure-alls: drink one or apply it to a wound and it will mend any damage to the body. I wanted to heal his wound, but just the one wound, and I didn’t want it to heal completely.
The muscle, tendon, and finally skin slowly grew back, almost completely healed. I then pushed some Miasma into the wound, and finished healing it so that it would scar, and that some of the nerves there would remain dead and there would hopefully be an occasional twinge of pain.
“I have halted the disease within you,” I lied. I had killed it.
“Of course, diseases have a way of coming back, especially when necromancy is involved.”
The man was no longer feverish, though he was all the more terrified.
“I think you will be just fine, though. Free to live a long and healthy life, instead of, say, a short and reanimated eternity.” I put the syringe back in my bag.
“I must recommend that to maintain this pristine health and fitness, it is absolutely crucial that you remember and tell your friends that Cronwins inheritor died in the shop fire.” I stared at him intently. “Can you remember that?”
“Cronwins inheritor died in the shop fire.” He nodded and then slowly got off the operating table. He backed away, never turning his back to me, until he reached the door, then he bolted through it as though all the devils in Hell were after him.
I sighed. Hopefully, that took care of things. I didn’t want to flee the country. I was comfortable here in my little room behind the healer and apothecary. I was learning a great deal and leaving would mean so many risks and unknown dangers that it really must be a last resort.
I kept the bag on but cleaned the table to make it ready for the next patient. Before I was done, another injured person was already staggering through the door.
9.
The next few weeks were slow and uneventful, but not at all dull. Adan began to drink less and teach more.
He introduced me to different ways of stitching up a patient. Some stitches, like on the skin, could be removed later. Stitches inside the body, however, would cause internal scarring unless the thread was made of something the body could absorb. Rodent gut worked best for absorbable stitches but was pricey. The only reliable way of purchasing it was through the Dwarven markets, who raised “some kind of rat-thing” as livestock.
External stitches could be made of anything, as long as it was clean, but silk worked best. The strong narrow strands could run through flesh with a minimal of tearing. But pricing was also a problem, and patients who had enough money for silk sutures usually had enough money to afford magical healing.
At night I sought to use the cadavers from dead patients to find a suitable substitute for rodent gut. I found that through the careful use of a sharp blade combined with using Miasma to rot away the surrounding tissue I could harvest long strands of ligament. These weren’t nearly as long as rodent gut, but they were free, and seemed to work well for small injuries.
Adan provided me with gossip from his trips to the nearby taverns and brothels. He still drank, but only ale now, and ate meals regularly. He told me that Cronwins Goods had burned to the ground, that its inheritors were all considered dead, and that Ubenfold Trust and Banking had claimed all remaining assets “to cover damages incurred from the fire.” I doubted the damages were more than a third of what Cronwin had in the bank, unless they were planning to rebuild the shop and warehouse, and even then, they would make it all back and then some in reselling the place or renting it out.
But I didn’t mind. I had gotten away with a magical bag full of wealth, and the rest was a small price to pay for being able to stay in the city.
On that note, I went through the bag to take a closer look at what I had grabbed.
The spectacles turned out to be the second most valuable item I had acquired, after the bag. When I put them on, I felt them touch my mind. Like the lotus, the shadowy silhouette of a woman appeared, comely in stature though her features were blurred. She would whisper to me things about any object I looked at while wearing the spectacles; what it was called, whether it was trapped, if it was enchanted, what those enchantments did, and the object’s purpose. The first thing it told me was about the bag. It was called the Travelers’ Handbag and it was enchanted to hold up to 77 items while ignoring their space and weight.
The black crystal vial was called Neros Bottle, and if you filled it with fresh blood, overnight it would turn the blood into a lethal poison. It was the same poison covering the darts on the two hand crossbows I collected.
The hunters bow was made of wolf bone. It was called Eo’wan an Elven word that means “lone wolf.” It was enchanted to enhance the holder of the bow the ability to run, smell and hear like a wolf could.
The bundle of six books had all rare and valuable tomes. Abner’s Book on Alchemy, is a cornerstone book on the profession. Atlas of the Endless Sea, a rare compilation of maps on the far South. Ship’s captains have killed for this book. The Epic Tale of Xoroku, a rare and controversial story about an Orc uprising, pre-Cataclysm. Celestial Revelations, a very, very old book describing the movements of the stars and celestial bodies. To a collector or certain wizards, it would be priceless. A Time to Die, a book describing the effects of Miasma on the aging process, this book I found most interesting.
The last book was called The Names of Things. It is a compilation of names for creatures whose mere utterance could drive one to madness, or worse, summon such a creature. I tried to burn the book, but it would not burn. The pages would not tear, and blades turned away from the flesh like material the book is made from. I returned the book to the Travelers Handbag, intending to only take it out again if I had found a way to destroy it.
The spectacles gave me a rough estimate of the value of the jewels I had. I was now a very wealthy man, though finding a way to spend the wealth would be problematic. The healing elixirs and potions were useless to me, though I could use them to save people on the operating table. I decided I was going to use them on children that came in, at no charge, or to adults that gave me the impression that they were good people. Or I could save someone’s life who would be useful in owing me a favor.
In the back room, I started setting up the alchemy equipment I collected. Adan came in, took one look at all the equipment, and added his own from his room.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said excitedly. “But I couldn’t afford it. My inheritance gave me this house but a lot of debt.”
“How much debt,” I asked. He shrugged.
“About a thousand gold. Over the years I’ve whittled it down, but with the interest I’ve never been able to bring it below five hundred.”
I was setting up a rack of vials when he spoke. After he finished, I reached into my bag and pulled out a smaller bag. From within the smaller bag I pulled out two gold necklaces studded with gems. I set the necklace
s on the shelf between us and put everything else away.
Adan’s eyes where wide as he stared at the necklaces.
“Take those and sell them. Pay off your debt. Use the rest to buy us more alchemy equipment.”
Adan frowned, thinking, until his face melted into its usual scowl.
“No, and no. I won’t be indebted to you. You may have done some good things for me and this place, but I won’t be servant to no moneylender.” He slid the necklaces across the counter in front of me.
“You misunderstand,” I said, moving the necklaces back between us. “I am not buying your debt, I am investing in your business. I do not like being beholden to others as much as you do. So, what do you say? Partners?”
Adan stared at me for a long moment, his eyes flickering like they did when he was deep in thought. Suddenly, his scowl broke into a grin and he snatched the jewels off the shelf.
“Partners!”
Adan left the next morning to go see some jewelers, leaving me to tend the shop. The day was slow, with one patient who had survived a knife fight from the night before.
The man was a fisherman and had extensive scarring on his hands and arms. As I stitched up his shoulder, he talked about using fishing line to sew up injuries while out at sea. I gave him some pointers on stitching and he showed me the best fishing line to use for sewing wounds. I gave him a discount for the information.
It was late afternoon when Adan came back with three men hauling a cart full of goods between them. The men unloaded the cart in the back, then left to go get more. After two more trips it was almost nightfall the men finally left for good.
Adan had acquired enough money from selling the first necklace to pay off his debt completely. With the sale of the second necklace he spent the rest of the day at the auction house looking for alchemist equipment. He managed to find an estate for sale that had an extensive laboratory. He then found a noble bidding on the estate and offered to combine his funds with the lords in return for “three cartloads of anything he could grab” from the laboratory.
I was impressed. While we still didn’t have much in the way of ingredients, we had all the equipment we needed. He even managed to disassemble a second, more robust distillery than the one we had. I wanted to use it right away, to see what effect it would have on liquid Miasma.
10.
Four months went by. Adan sold a bracelet from my bag to get us some key ingredients for our new alchemy lab. I spent my nights trying to distill liquid Miasma, then repairing the new distillery from my failures.
I did not go out much. With my new partnership with Adan I did not see any need to, and I thought it would be good for the city to forget me for a while.
My understanding of necromancy grew. I had learned to manipulate Miasma, both liquid and vapor, and could even cast a few minor spells with them. It was with these manipulations that I was eventually able to distill Miasma.
Typically, when distilling any liquid, one went slowly. This is because the act of distillation is to separate components within the liquid. For example, if I took a vial of salt water, and began to distill it, I would be separating water from the salt. In one container I would have salt water that would become increasingly saltier until only salt remained, and in another I would acquire pure water.
When I first evaporated liquid Miasma, the vapors would simply pass through the glass. I was reducing Miasma to its component self. It brought up a lot of questions. What made liquid Miasma a liquid? In returning it to vapor, where did whatever made the Miasma liquid go? Was a liquid with a higher concentration of Miasma even possible, or was it like trying to distill water to get, water? I felt there was something missing and that a concentration was possible, but the solution eluded me. That is until I was able to manipulate Miasma with my mind directly.
I tried bringing some liquid Miasma to a slow boil while holding it still in the boiler. After an entire night of trying I realized something was happening but holding all the Miasma that had gone to vapor in the boiler was too exhausting.
So, the next night I cranked the boiler up as high as it could go and tried to hold the Miasma in it for as long as possible. The boiler almost exploded but I managed to turn it down in time.
I could sense something happening in the boiler. I crept the temperature up slowly, until the boiler was just on the verge of becoming unstable. Slowly, a green glowing liquid began to trickle into the adjacent vial.
It took four hours. An entire vial of liquid Miasma had only made a few drops of this new substance. The boiler contained no residue, and after some tests I surmised that the distillation process of liquid Miasma condensed it in its entirety into some new liquid. This hypothesis was reinforced with the lack of weight differential: the few drops of the new liquid in a vial weighed about the same as the full vial of liquid Miasma I had used.
I got a set of scales and distilled another batch to be sure, weighing the vial of liquid miasma and the product. My scale was of poor quality, but as far as it was concerned they weighed the same.
For the next month my nights were spent refining the distillation process. It turned out that roughly one entire human cadaver equaled 10 vials of liquid Miasma, which in turn made one fourth a vial distilled Miasma. Distillation time remained the same, but I could work in larger batches, to the point that I could make an entire distilled vial in a single process.
It was near midwinter, so I had plenty of cadavers to work with, and had nine and a half vials of distilled Miasma. With some captured rats and a few spare cadavers, I began experimenting.
The stuff was lethal when injected into rats, even in the smallest amounts. They were resistant to eating it, except when it was mixed with meat. At first, I thought feeding it to them got no reaction, until I fed it to a rat that looked sickly. Shortly after eating, I noticed the sickly rat absorbing all the ambient Miasma around it. A day later its condition was considerably improved.
Killing the rats that ingested the substance resulted in no unusual reaction, although their dead bodies were more receptive to Miasma. From my readings I surmised that they would be easier to reanimate.
Dead body parts exposed to the substance simply dissolved. I was a little apprehensive to this reaction. I used regular liquid Miasma as a healing elixir and was hoping to use the distilled version as a powerful supplement in case of an emergency. But there was a chance it could burn a hole in me instead. I had no undead flesh to work with other than my own. So, with caution I began.
I put a heavy drop of the liquid in the palm of my hand and cupped it there. It did not burn or sizzle, nor did it absorb into my body. After a few hours of letting it set there I tasted it. It gave a pleasant burning sensation on my tongue and woke the hunger within me. By ingesting doses that were successively greater I found that it just like regular Miasma, only it took a long time to digest.
I imagined it would be useful if I went out expecting to get injured. I could be already regenerating as the injury occurred.
I wondered what injecting it would do. It did kill the rats, but I was already dead. I decided to try injuring myself and injecting the distilled Miasma into the wound to see if it quickened the healing process.
I cut a long gash from my left elbow to my thumb and had the syringe of distilled Miasma in my right hand to inject it. I made a mistake by filling an entire vials worth into the syringe. When I pricked the needle into the flesh of the wound, I planned on only injecting for a moment with a steady stream to observe its effect. However, as soon as the substance entered me, my whole body spasmed uncontrollably. My right hand squeezed, releasing the entire vials worth into my arm.
A hot, burning sensation raced up my arm and shoulder. When it reached my heart, the embers within my mind exploded.
My whole body tingled and burned at the same time, as though it was burning from within as rapidly as it was healing. My chest and guts screamed in agony. A wrenching sensation seared through my chest, then stopped, then began again, over and o
ver. Dimly I was aware that it was my heart, and that it had started beating again.
As the fire within my body consumed and sustained me, so too did the embers in within my mind. My thoughts where a riot of emotion, joy, rage, sorrow, until it was all one, so intermingled that they somehow cancelled one another out, and I was adrift, the eye in the storm, in a whirling sea of fire.
Until the memories came.
She was standing on an old pier, the girl from my first memory. She wore a red dress, that matched her hair, that fluttered and danced in the wind as she held it down against her, her smile so touching it almost brought me to my knees. She was smiling. She was smiling at me. At me and no one else.
I fell to my knees in front of her, the box of sweet meats in my hand forgotten. Her smile widened, hair whipping around her face, framing her dark eyes with a softness and warmth that at once destroyed me and sent me soaring…
I plunged into another memory. She was kissing my neck, her fingernails raked across my back. We were standing in a half open doorway tearing one another’s clothes off. One hand of mine clutched a handful of her hair. The other tore her bodice open, knocking an unlit lamp that went crashing to the floor. We both froze, startled, then started laughing.
“So violent,” she breathed, resting a hand on my naked chest. She gazed up at me hungerly.
“How violent can you be?”
As I hauled her into the room to throw her onto the bed I fell into another memory.
The roar of a tavern. Hazy smoke and bright lanterns. A mandolin playing as some bard hidden from view belted out raunchy song.
She is there again, sitting on my lap, one arm thrown around me, her head thrown back as she laughs at the lyrics.
I am nervous. I do not like taverns. I am but a humble scribe for the White Council. But she asked, and for her I’d do anything.
In this memory I remembered who she was. She was Shailyn. She was the former mistress of some young noble’s son, denounced as a whore, and forced into prostitution. Until I found her. Until we found each other.