Even before Mistress Kalina finished speaking, Tercius noticed movement on the old woman's leg. By his count, eight seconds had gone by since the potion was ingested. It had barely settled inside the stomach and already it was doing its work.
He turned to Mistress Kalina and he saw her observe the event with a gaping mouth. When she conjured the chairs from her amulet she had not expected this, he was sure of that now.
Tercius crouched over the knee of the old woman and immediately noticed that the rapid movement was just under the skin itself. Under his firmly open eyes, dozens of tiny worms moved in ways that were uncomfortable to observe. The swelling around the knee deflated visibly as the angry colors mellowed out. The sound of grinding bones lower down the leg called for his attention, but by the time he arrived to observe the ankle, it had already been repaired to a pristine condition.
The smell that was wafting off the woman was off-putting, but Tercius ignored it as he took a look at the old lady's face. Her cheekbones were the thing that captured most of his attention. High set and sharp, they seemed ready to pierce the skin that covered them. The muscles of the mouth were sunk in, a common enough sight where people usually lose their teeth by their forties. This woman looked considerably older to his eyes, maybe even older than his grandfather, but it was difficult to say for sure. The age spots on her face were many, but even as he observed, some of them receded and faded into obscurity. Tercius glanced at her hands. Dirty and gripped like claws, her fingers twitched slightly. Almost all of her nails were broken, with jaggedly sharp ends. The cracked nails moved, as new growth pushed them outward. She would need to trim them off properly. Tercius turned his attention to her feet. When Mistress Kalina adjusted the ankle, he saw that they were bare and dirty and her heels cracked, swollen, and thickened to a leather-like appearance. The dirty and bare part was the only statement that was still true.
The woman had an old worn-out shirt on her upper body, with more holes than the ramshackle ruin where they were currently. The head shawl, a common head protection for women in Sogea, was so old and thin that Tercius doubted it offered much in the way of protection from the sun. Her skirt was the only decent item of clothing on her, and even it had tears along its length.
It didn’t take a lot of observation to know that this woman had been left alone and uncared for. He knew that things like these happened all the time, but knowing that something was done and seeing it in person were two different things.
“That’s incredible… Tercius, use your mana and Energy sensing skills. Observe,” Mistress Kalina said.
Under Mana Sight there was a kaleidoscope of colors everywhere inside the body, from her feet to the top of her head. The colors flowed along the limbs and torso, as well as her head. With Energy Sight he saw a white silhouette, a body filled with moving Energy. It was dimming, Tercius noticed after a moment. Every moment that went by, a little bit of that whiteness was going dark. After a brief check, he affirmed that the mana colors were also losing their brightness.
Every once in a while, Tercius glanced at the woman noting the changes on her. The sunspots on her arms and face vanished entirely. The skin around the mouth, eyes, and the forehead tightened somewhat.
“Wonderful,” Mistress Kalina exclaimed. “This potency… I’d say that around sixty percent of the potion was spent in the first minute,”
“And that’s… unusual?” Tercius asked.
Mistress Kalina looked at him as if he had grown a second head, but then her eyes narrowed in realization. “Unusual barely begins to cover it, Tercius. The speed with which this potion works is closer to Basic Healing Potions,” She shook her head in disbelief. “If the potion is expended within the next four minutes, the resistance to this potion can be nulled with a day or two rest…”
As Mistress Kalina fell silent, Tercius kept his eyes on her. The elder mage was looking at the final test subject with a heavy frown on her face. What was going on in her head, Tercius wondered. He turned back to observe the potion at work. It went on for around seven minutes, and it was only then that no more white light nor colors of the rainbow were present inside the old lady.
The potion was spent.
“I think that that’s it for this potion,” Mistress Kalina said, and Tercius heard her sniffing the air. “I can’t believe this… Almost all of the potion was used… Eight minutes in total… That’s about… ten days of resistance to this potion, give or take a few days…” she said, clearly still reeling from what she just saw.
The only other time he saw a potion of regeneration at work, back in Tripatis when it had completely regrown Seliana’s lung, the potion seemed to work even faster. If I were to give an injection of this neutral Energy before the potion is consumed, then it would probably increase the speed with which this potion works… and if I understood correctly, increasing the speed means decreasing resistance… if the potion works fast enough, in theory, I could drink it instead of water and it would work every single time… That's…
“Tercius…” Mistress Kalina stood up and started pacing, her magic moving away the debris and the rubbish to make room for her to move.
As he watched the elder mage mutter and pace, Tercius took a deep breath and sharpened his mind. He let go of all the things that he had thought about and focused on this moment, right here and right now. “Mistress… is something wrong? The potion seems to work…” Tercius said and pointed at the sleeping woman. Contrary to when they found her, she seemed serene as she rested. “She looks a decade younger, under all that dirt,”
Her hair was still gray and brown, but most of that was ash, dust, and dirt. The potion did its due and more.
“She was not old in the first place, Tercius. She’s younger than Seliana, I would say. Her skin was probably worn out due to extreme sun exposure, a common enough problem to Sogea, particularly among the farmers. The potion fixed that,” Mistress Kalina explained in a low voice, her eyes never leaving the woman. “She had two or three cycles removed… I will venture a guess and say that if she had been in proper health, then that decade you mentioned was probably within the capabilities of this potion…”
“That’s… good,” Tercius said. He was glad that it worked so well, for many reasons. Ciron would probably regain his hearing and his back wouldn’t trouble him anymore. His mother would be returned to the peak of health. He even wanted Seliana to have one of these potions. Would there be some reaction from her skill? Would the skill and the potion work in sync?
On the other hand, he saw the dark side to this potion. If a single word of it got out, then the Emperor himself might come after him. Tercius stopped there. The Emperor, a titular leader of millions— maybe even a billion citizens— was not the biggest shadow. Mages were. Once more, Tercius took a deep breath and banished all of the rising emotions aside. He had let himself go too far before. Focus. Ask. Don’t presume.
“How well will this potion work on mages, Mistress?” Tercius asked.
Still in thought, Mistress Kalina answered with some slowness to her words. "The average drop in efficiency for a new mage is about twenty-five percent overall. For someone like Helfira, it's somewhere above half. For me… over ninety percent. But this is only because even the fastest potion takes time… This potion was completely spent in eight minutes, while an average potion takes around an hour," Mistress Kalina shook her head, the tied orange curls swishing to the sides. Her eyes were wide but unfocused, looking at something only she saw. "I think that this potion would even work on me… If I were to use better ingredients—" she glanced at him and he felt a shiver run down his back. The eyes looking at him were not the same as the ones that were looking at him this morning. "—And more of your Energy… I could create a potion that would work even on mages like me— on mages like us— with no waste at all and no resistance created… Do you know what that means, neophyte?"
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Tercius looked at her with wide eyes and Kalina saw his arms move awkwardly, seemingly trying to find some position where they could comfortably rest. Briefly, he crossed his arms across his chest, only to lower them a moment later and then hold his hands to the front, his fingers entwined.
Kalina took a deep breath. This had not happened in a long while.
The possibilities of this discovery had overwhelmed her. For a moment she had imagined that she had created a potion that would make sure that mages would no longer die in the pursuit of Energy! Kalina Zorya, a mage with almost two centuries behind her, would solve what millennia-old mages couldn't!
The excitement that surged through her had made her magic dance around the space under the dome she created. But as soon as she saw the boy shiver as her magic touched his being, Kalina acted. With a brief flash of her skill, she recalled all of her Mana and Energy back into her body only to suddenly realize something.
Kalina was not the one who had done anything noteworthy.
She was an easily replaceable part of this equation. Any Energy wielding Alchemist could do what she did. Not that there were many of those running around— Kalina knew only one personally, but she had heard of three more from Mistress Prime— but her prowess was replicable by others.
Right now, the boy was the only indispensable part for the potion.
“I’m sorry Tercius,” she said. “My control slipped,”
The boy nodded as his glowing eyes closed for a brief moment.
Mana was palpable, to some, even before a skill and it was considered the easiest sensory skill to acquire so Kalina found it strange that the boy was sensitive to mana’s touch, to an almost eerie degree, and yet he had an ocular sensory skill.
Probably an older skill exerting its influence… Kalina mused. Old skills were known to hold influence over the ones that come later, creating a small but very important link between skills. It was this link that was critical for overcoming barriers before active Energy use was available. But even for active Energy users, this strange link was important— if not even more than before.
The most common mana sensory skill was the tactile Mana Touch, which three out of five mages develop by the age of twenty. Mana Hearing was second on that list, followed by Mana Smell. And then came Mana Sight, which was second only to Mana Taste. There were a few more skill varieties written about, but those anomalies were few and far between. Centuries could go by without even one of those showing up.
Kalina’s first skill was Keen Nose, acquired at age four. It was a skill taught to her by her father— a cook by trade— who swore on his nose and skill. She had practiced the skill since she could remember, in the hopes of one day being the best cook there was. Mana Smell came a decade into her training and finally Energy Smell. It was only later, when she had to refine her skills, that she had learned that this was a common way with skills.
Suddenly, she chuckled. Even now, close to two centuries later, she could remember those flour-covered days spent with her father in their kitchen vividly. Her mother was shouting at them to stop spilling so much… Her dream back then had been to have people come from far and wide just to sample food created by her hands.
Kalina closed her eyes as a few tears welled up. Her parents were gone. It had been old age, for both of them. Her Mentor, gone. Sudden heart failure at three hundred and sixty-eight cycles of age. Her sole Disciple, gone. Killed.
She was never a very social person, preferring the company of her craft, but nonetheless, it was a difficult realization that she could count the still-living people who were important to her on one hand, and she needed only three fingers for it.
Her Grand-Mentor, Mistress Prime. Without her, Kalina would not be where she was. Her Grand-Disciple, little Helfira. They had drifted apart in the last two decades, but Kalina was of the intention to correct that now. And finally Ebain. The last Alchemist she had personally trained while holding her position in the Guild of Alchemists. His was the last name she had written on a graduation certificate before her late Mentor advised her to leave the Guild and join the Archivists. They had remained in occasional contact for over a century, exchanging notes on alchemical experiments.
Three.
That was her number, currently, and for some time now she had had a fear of the day when that number would be just one.
She didn’t worry for the soon-to-be Grand-Mistress Prime’era, in that regard. The fact that the elder Mistress managed to go that far, proved her capability. If anything it was Mistress Prime that worried for Kalina in the same way that Kalina had worried for her Disciple and lately little Helfira. That was why Kalina was glad that she found out that Mistress Prime had Master Perdin’nar, a mage that was close to her on both a personal and skill level.
Looking back at it, she realized that her fear had marred her interactions with Helfira to the point where they had met only thrice during two decades. Helfira was on an Expedition for a decade of that time, but that was no excuse for someone on Kalina’s level of skill. She could argue that between her duties as an Enforcer and a Head Archivist, the time spent in the pleasure of making new potions and refining old ones, the time spent furthering her magecraft and harvesting Energy from the Spring, time was sparse. And that was true. But it had been easy to just not do something that she didn’t want, and before she knew it Kalina realized just how much time had slipped by her. If Helfira hadn’t reached out to her regarding that matter of traffickers, where she also met the boy for the first time, Kalina was ashamed that she would have let the things between them just be. It was easier.
Kalina’s eyes focused on the boy. “I now have a good idea of how to dose the potion properly for your family,”
"That's… thank you, Mistress. For doing this and… thank you," Tercius answered, his eyes darting to the sides.
The boy was a puzzle. At times he appeared and acted his age, like now, and then there were times when Kalina had a strange idea that she was talking to someone far older. She shared that strange sensation with Master Perdin’nar, and he advised that she shouldn’t underestimate the boy.
Her eyes fell to the sleeping woman, as memories of the previous day came to her.
—
“Tercius understands his position far better than you or my cousin think,” Master Perdin’nar shared, as they observed the sun go down over the western mountains. “That is most likely why his magic was acting up… the situation with you and that woman was merely the last grain of sand dropped on a very large and unstable pile,”
“Master? A child with that kind of—” Kalina said.
"I'll stop you right there because that's where you are wrong. Don't think of him as a child. I have known him since he was four cycles old and I know how conscious and conscientious he is. Tercius is an adult in everything but his body. He most certainly knows what this Energy means for him in our society. It's why I didn't even bother to share with him that he should keep the matter of the Energy a secret. He knew even then and I was sure that he would keep the matter quiet. That you were able to find him… speaks of your skill. But now that he saw the broader scope of things… I think that it's weighing heavily on him. And as his Mentor, it's your duty to ease his mind," Master Perdin'nar spoke to her in a mild tone, even as his piercingly cold eyes stared down his imperial nose. "Don't make me regret sending him to you."
“Master…” Kalina hesitated. “I’m not his Mentor… not yet that is…”
When Master Perdin'nar's eyes narrowed, Kalina smelled his magic surge. His voice was calm. Too calm, for the turmoil that Kalina had smelled. "He's still not your Disciple? Kalina…"
Kalina stood rigid, her body mimicking the stone she sat on. The power that she felt for a brief flicker of a moment had been like a hot spell blade driven between her ribs. At times like these, she regretted focusing on her sensory skill so much. "There was an issue. That night when we met, Master, the boy had noticed the shade you attached to him. How… I have no idea. But when I approached him, he had his guard raised against me… and when I asked, he responded that he needed time to think about it and… to get to know me. I took a whole month off my duties to do this…" she explained.
Master Perdin'nar's hand rose to his chin. "Hmm… A month, you say? No… it won't work. He… he will be content to dance around you for as long as he can. You will see. But I have a way for you to succeed instantly if you wish to know…"
“I would like your advice on the matter, Master,”
“If you want him to be your Disciple, all you need to do is tell him the reason why we need him to become your Disciple…”
Kalina hesitated to respond to that. “But Master… if I tell him… he will just do the opposite, won’t he?”
Master Perdin'nar shrugged at her words and Kalina smelled the magic in his body lighten. “Do as you like… just be sure to remember my advice. You will need it.”
—
Kalina had slept on the advice that the elder Master gave her and even under the light of a new day she still couldn’t come to employ it. She just couldn’t risk it, if Master Perdin’nar turned out to be wrong.
“Let’s wake her up and take her to that inn to bathe. I would like to observe her for a few days,” Kalina nodded towards the woman and Tercius nodded in return. “And then we should hurry to your home to administer the potion. Its potency is seeping away even as we speak. Oh! And let’s bring the rats as well. After I finish examining them thoroughly, your cats can have them. Remember, mages always tie up all loose ends.”