Excerpt from The Alchemist’s Guide to Unusual Potions
The Half Forest Drake Transformation potion is a Tier 5 potion that uses the following ingredients:
* ½ a cup of Shape Changer blood
* ½ cup of Forest Drake blood
* 5 scales from each of the main body parts of the drake, ideally the same one as the blood (if not, the effect will be lessened)
* 1 teaspoon blur willow sap
* ½ teaspoon Highland Mind Stinger wasp venom
* 1 Flesh Weeper flower (stem removed)
The potion is used for a temporary transformation into a Forest Drake. While the name claims to be ‘half’ it is not wholly accurate. You turn into a full drake but do not retain most of your faculties, becoming along the same baseline as a standard drake. However, the effect is not permanent after the potion expires. It will give the standard Drake abilities and temporarily increase essences relating to that type of drake.
By using parts from the same drake, the potion will be stronger and last for longer.
Be warned: imbibing this potion should only be done if you have a solid grasp of Forest Drake behaviour. It is not uncommon for potion users to attack close allies under the effects of the potion, so precautions should be taken.
If you are confident in using the potion, the method to create the potion is as follows…
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The shades immediately started to bang at the door, so Jake shook off the exhaustion he was feeling and started to check areas of the lab that he hadn’t checked on his first visit.
Within a few minutes, he had an assortment of alchemical goods on the table, but the news wasn’t great. Many of them were out of date or were in damaged containers that meant they were of no use.
“Who was this damn alchemist?” Jake asked Silt. “This place is a mess.”
Silt paused in the cabinet she was inspecting. “I didn’t know him particularly well but he came well recommended and competent.” She crossed over to where Jake had the pile of useless ingredients. “That just doesn’t seem right. Makes me think that someone has tampered with them.”
“Well, none of this is going to help us so far,” Jake said, pushing everything to the back of the table to clear space.
They both went back to the cabinets in the hope that there was something else that could be useful.
“Drak, want to help?” Silt called.
Drak was standing by the door, back to the room. “I’m watching to make sure nothing gets in,” he replied sternly. “I’ll protect you guys while you search.”
Jake resisted the urge to comment that Drak probably didn’t have a clue what half of the stuff was anyway and just continued to search.
Finally, he found something useful. One bottle contained purified blue mountain water, crystal clear water that had just a touch of blue to it. It looked a lot like normal water but was excellent to add to other water essence materials as it was particularly pure. Beside it was an envelope that contained earthen plain rock dust, another useful base for binding ingredients into pills. It had a subtle greyish-green glow it but it was hard to see it in the low light of the lab. He quickly placed both on the table.
In the next cupboard, Jake found a cluster of light blossom petals in a small container that was ideal for use in light potions. These petals were bright yellow in colour and had a curved shape that tapered to a white tip. Night hold shavings were in a vial beside it that was often used for dark essence afflictions. These were simple-looking dark grey shavings.
Across the room, Silt had collected a number of jars, vials and containers and placed them on the table. Jake paused to see what she had found and saw some burn weed, a brown plant that had an almost ember-like glow to it that pulsed to its own rhythm. Jake knew it was great for use in enhancing fire-based potions or anything using heat.
Beside it was Mage’s Confusion, ideal for flipping essences to their opposite for a short time. It was a singular berry, around the size of a blueberry, turquoise in colour with a rainbow iridescence over it that almost seemed to swirl in the container. That ingredient was impressive as it was hard to source and expensive, but then Jake corrected himself - it was hard to get for normal alchemists, not working for someone like Lirien.
There were also some five-leaf clovers, something that alchemists used as a stabilising agent. They were the classic green clover seen in gardens around the world but simply more powerful due to their five leaves.
Jake picked up the Mage’s Confusion berry, studying it intently.
“Why are you…” Silt began to ask.
“Do you know how rare and expensive these are?” Jake interrupted. “I never thought I’d see one!”
“But is it actually going to help us right now?” she asked flatly.
Jake opened his mouth to answer her, closed it again then tried again. “Well, it might be. And this place is on the verge of being destroyed, so it would be a terrible waste to leave it here and see it obliterated.”
Before Silt could reply, there was a thud from across the room. Both turned to see Drak standing facing into the room, almost as if he was trying to stop them from seeing what he was behind him.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Drak? What’s going on?” Jake asked.
Drak waved a hand with a big smile. “Nothing at all!”
Silt leaned forward and frowned. “Is that the damn Myphler again?” she said.
Sure enough, Drak’s pet was on the bench with the rock dust in its paws. It was mid-way through reaching the packet up to tip the content into its wide open mouth while Drak had both hands on its paws to stop it.
“I think I’ll have that,” Silt said crossly, moving over to the Myphler and taking the packet from its paws.
The creature held on for a moment and there was a brief tug of water between the two. Then it seemed to decide that this wasn’t a fight it wanted right now and it let the packet go, giving Silt a long, sad look as she placed it back on the table.
Silt turned back to Jake. “If it can’t help us now, I will pay you to leave it behind.”
Jake winced. “Silt, I don’t think you have enough money. And they are really hard to find!” he replied.
She placed her hands on his shoulders with a sweet smile that was definitely more terrifying than her usual looks. “Jake, you are going to use everything possible to stop us from dying. Sound like a good idea?” she said, menacing.
Jake nodded quickly. “You’re right.”
“So what can you do with it?” Drak asked, still fighting to hold the Myphler in place and stop it from rummaging into any of the other ingredients.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jake admitted crossing the room to the large bookshelf that dominated one wall. “Let me do a quick bit of research.”
“Don’t take too long,” Drak suggested, glancing back to the door where the noise from the creatures outside continued to increase.
Jake flicked through books. “You guys could help. There’s got to be something useful here,” he called out.
Silt and Drak joined him at the bookshelf, the Myphler vanishing into Drak’s backpack once more.
Behind them, an eerie silence fell on the corridor.
After what seemed like ages but was really just a few minutes, Drak perked up. “Jake, come and look at this,” he said, spinning a book so Jake could see it.
Jake crossed to the desk and looked at the page, then looked at Drak in confusion. “Drak, do you need eyeglasses?” he asked. The description on the page referred to a Half Forest Drake Transformation potion. “We don’t even have half of these things and it is way above what I could create?”
“Ah, that’s a shame. I thought we had the forest Drake scales,” he replied.
“No, there’s no forest drake scales in that pile,” Jake replied, frowning. “What made you think we had that?”
“Guess I misheard?” Drak said with a shrug.
Jake returned to the book he was studying.
Silt turned to Drak. “What’s going on with you? There’s almost nothing in this potion that was part of the list of things Jake found?”
“Sorry, I just wasn’t paying attention. You know, all that essence use. I’m a bit tired,” he replied with a wave of the hand.
“You know I can easily tell bullshit when I hear it, right?” Silt replied. “And that’s bullshit if I ever heard it.”
He waved his hand again. “Don’t worry about it! You are looking into it too much.”
Silt gave him a long stare for a few seconds but then decided searching the books was more important and returned to the task.
Silence fell on the lab as they continued to search through the books. It was broken after another few minutes by Jake.
“This might just work!” he declared, putting one of the books on the desk. The page was open for something called a Solar Bomb Drop.
“What does it do?” Silt asked, studying the page.
“Okay, so we know this Shade Catcher seems to be light-adverse and affected by similar essence?” Jake said. “While I can’t say this will be exactly to recipe, we can use Mage’s Confusion to get a similar reaction to the original recipe.”
Silt was frowning. “I’m no alchemist, but that sounds a bit suicidal, just hoping that it will work?”
“It might work, but let’s face it, we don’t have much of a choice. Anything else I could make with this stuff would be somewhere between pointless and useless. If I could avoid using the Mage’s Confusion, I would but there’s nothing else to work with,” Jake admitted.
“How long will it take?” Drak asked. “I find this silence creepier than all the noise. I’d rather not hang around too long,” he added, a little stress edging into his voice.
Jake studied the book again for a moment. “It shouldn’t take too long, maybe 10 minutes, because we have the five-leaf clovers.”
“Okay, and how long normally, just out of interest?” Silt asked.
“Around three hours?” Jake said. “But five-leaf clover is a great stabiliser. Plus, there’s the fact that what I’m making might not even work at all. Assuming what I think will work actually works.”
“That makes no sense,” Silt replied.
“Put it this way: give me ten minutes. Either we’ll have something to help solve the problem or we won’t need to worry about the Shade Catcher any longer?” he summarised.
Silt watched as Jake gathered up equipment and supplies. There was a flurry of activity with vials and containers, a small burner for heat and a variety of stirring utensils brought into play. After five minutes, there seemed to be about ten different things happening. But after ten minutes, Jake carefully placed a container of greyish-brown dense powder on the counter. It looked very different to the sparkling gold powder with flecks of white that was shown as an example in the book.
“Jake, how confident are you in this potion?” she asked, bending slightly to better examine what looked like powdered mud.
“I’m confident enough. Yes, it doesn’t look like the book and you’d be right in thinking it was something different. But I have one more ingredient to add,” he replied. He reached out and picked up the Mage’s Confusion.
He poured the berry into his palm and held his other hand over it. He used a short water cast to remove the liquid from the berry. He let the liquid drop to the floor and placed the dried berry into a mortar and pestle. He ground it for a moment, then poured it carefully into the container. He closed the lid and gave it a little shake. Abruptly, the brown mud was transformed into the golden powder with white speckles that were shown in the book.
“It worked!” Jake announced with a broad grin.
“Congratulations,” Silt said. “Now, what exactly does this thing do?”
“You know what an explosion is? Well, it is like that, only instead of force and heat, it is light essence. Although this isn’t exactly the same and I’m surprised it got this close. But the idea is that it will blast out light and radiance essence. Or at least a blast of light essence,” he added, sounding less confident as he spoke. “Actually, those white flecks look more blue than anything. But it will definitely give us a blast of light. And it is best we have.”
“Will it kill the Shade Catcher?” Drak asked.
Jake frowned. “I’m not sure it will kill it, Flair seemed to think there wasn’t much that could. But it will definitely scare it away and possibly injure it enough so that we can get to that stash of hidden items that will let everyone survive the strike. Or maybe even do some real damage to the creature.”
“Then that’s our best plan?” Drak asked.
“Yes,” Jake replied firmly.
Silt sighed. “I’ve recovered some of my essence, so I guess it is time to go then.”