Effervesce - 1.4

The graverat’s longhouse had a cloying stench of rat droppings, urine, and fetid air. It crawled up my nose, turned my stomach, and told me that I could be living in places far worse than my home.

Was it some kind of sign that the pub on the edge of Stoneheart, a hub of human activity, smelled nearly the same? Well, it had the addition of burnt meats and rancid alcohol to its aroma.

I struggled to breathe as I made my way in wary of anyone larger than me, which was to say literally anybody.

Much to my surprise, the place was decently populated, and two girls in poor worker dresses flitted between stone tables carrying mugs or plates of food. Patrons enjoyed their meals, had conversation with anyone and anything, depending on how deep they were into their cups.

As I continued to edge myself inside, I didn’t see the head of dirty-blonde hair that belonged to Beatrice. Darn, that meant I either had to wait for her to show up on the floor, or go bother one of the girls to fetch her.

Stone cracked against stone to my left, sharp enough to make me flinch, as a drunkard slammed his mug down onto the table. Just standing in the opening was nearly too much for me, I had no idea how Beatrice all but lived here.

For the money?

I crept to the nearest empty table, flinching at every loud laugh or belch, before climbing onto a bench. Some of the patrons gave me a curious glance, but me and my clothes were clean, at least by Stonegut standards, so they weren’t full of anger or disgust.

Mostly it was idle curiosity or annoyance, specifically the latter when one of the serving girls made her way over to me. She had sharp cheekbones, full lips that were twisted in annoyance, and couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old.

“The hell you want, brat? I don’t see a single coin on you,” she said with a haughty sniff.

I wilted a bit under her glare. Even a girl like her was more than twice my height and no doubt had a way to end me with any number of skills. Not if she managed to work here.

“Um, is Bea around?” I asked.

Instantly, her attitude shifted to the defensive. “Who’s asking? Did that rotten whore pay you to lure out Bea? Using kids, un-fucking-believable.”

Who? “No, no, I’m her sister.”

She scoffed. “Try another one, Bea ain’t got sisters.”

Ouch, that sort of hurt. “Can… could you please just tell her Eva and Jorge—”

“If Jorge was here, he’d just come in himself,” she interrupted.

“—are here to see her?”

The serving girl squinted at me for a moment. “Sure, I need a break anyway.”

After she walked off to the back of the pub, I let my insides unclench. Why didn’t I just wait with the pouch of rats and let Jorge handle this? It sounded like he visited Bea often enough the other girls knew him, which made sense.

A couple minutes later I saw Beatrice come out from the back with a similar expression as to the serving girl earlier, but at least this time I knew who it was. “What do you want, runt?”

At seventeen, with dirty-blonde hair that was cut and brushed in a way that had it fall over her shoulders like a waterfall and matched with her full lips and large eyes, Beatrice was no doubt pretty. With a hand on her hip and a familiar frown, I felt a sliver of comfort creeping back into me.

Still, I gave a shy handwave. “Hey, Beatrice.”

“Evadne,” she said cooly while looking around. “You look… cleaner. Jorge outside? What does he want?”

Obviously asking for some money was going to be a sore spot for her, since she was the one working for it and all. I didn’t have a sense of guilt over that, no, family obviously helped out each other. The problem was I didn’t know how much money I needed.

“Don’t get mad, okay?”

“Already mad I have to cover Gert’s next hour because of you,” she said. “What is it?”

“I need some coins for dried plants,” I said.

She stared blankly at me. “You? Not Jorge? Maric?”

I… could lie, but we were family. “I don’t know how much anything costs though.”

Beatrice looked like she was on the verge of saying no, but bit her lip. “You’ll owe me.”

I nodded, not wanting to say anything to mess this up. She, unlike me or any of the younger kids, had actual clothes that had pockets. With a hesitant hand she placed three carved brown stone coins on the table.

“For some flowers that should be enough, but don’t come crying to me if it isn’t,” said Beatrice.

I nodded again. “Um, okay.”

“Now, get lost,” she said with a flick of her hand.

I scooped up the coins and hurriedly made my way back out of the pub and across the street to Jorge. He was leaning against the wall, pouch of dead rats in hand, and watching for me. Jorge gave me a wave with his free hand.

“You find Bea?” he asked.

“Ugh, I have no idea how she manages to work there,” I complained. “She gave me three of these.”

I showed him the brown stone coins, and he nodded. “Three pennies? That should be enough.”

“She said to not come crying if it wasn’t.”

Jorge chuckled as he took lead and we started making our way toward a shop a bit deeper in Stoneheart. “If you did, I bet she’d give you more. Bea’s too nice for her own good.”

“Maybe if you asked her,” I said. “I don’t think she likes me.”

Jorge laughed at that. “Nonsense, she loves us.”

Beatrice never showed much love for us younger kids, only ever the older ones. Once she left to try and live on her own, I saw how she looked at us. Even now she visits rarely, only ever to see Maric.

“Maybe,” I said to avoid the topic.

As we traveled deeper into Stoneheart, everything slowly changed. I had never been this close to Stoneheart, let alone leaving Stonegut. It was completely alien, and I couldn’t help but stare.

The ceiling, the constant dark stone above me filled with pipes, holes and ventilation shafts, rose away from the constant twenty-ish feet tall. Buildings that were always one or two stories tall became three or even four stories in some spots as the ceiling became a large dome, and the streets steadily gained people.

Shops, actual shops with signs and sometimes glass windows, stood in clean condition as the citizens of Stoneheart, with clean and styled clothes went about their business. I squinted as we kept walking, my eyes starting to burn a bit as the air itself started to appear brighter.

It was when the ceiling finally appeared to give way at an odd angle that I hissed in pain as my eyes burned. I stumbled and fell to my knees, only catching myself with my hands out of reflex.

Jorge winced as he looked at me. “Oh right! Damn, sorry, Eva. I forgot.”

I hissed as I got on my knees and held my hands to my eyes to wait for the burning to stop, but even as it dimmed, I had holes in my vision. Colors I’d never seen outside of my dreams stayed as indistinct blobs in my vision, even when I held my eyes shut.

“Don’t look up, keep your eyes down or straight ahead,” said Jorge in a calm tone as he helped me back to my feet.

“What is that?” I hissed as I gestured to the blinding white hole in the ceiling. As I blinked away the burning pain with tears, I dared not look at the bright void above.

“The way out of Stoneheart.” There was a sad finality to his tone that made me want to flinch. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not for us.”

He took my hand in his and started guiding me along as I struggled to see with the spots blocking my sight. “Way out? We can leave?”

I wasn’t that stupid, but if I hadn’t seen the strange world of my dreams, of wondrous sights beyond my imagination, I wouldn’t have imagined there was a world beyond Stonegut. It was just… I could leave?

Jorge was quiet for a moment before whispering, “Eva… it’s not for us.”

Aware that there were people around us in the streets, I whispered back, “Is it money? What would we need?”

“Yes, money is needed, but I mean…” Jorge struggled with something internally as he searched for the right words. “We were born in Stonegut.”

“So?” I asked. Obviously we were poor orphans, I wasn’t ignorant to that even though I was a kid. I held no illusions that my parents hadn’t been poor people somewhere in Stonegut.

“People born here in Stonegut and Stoneheart aren’t like those above,” said Jorge as if that explained everything. Which, well, it didn’t explain anything at all. People were different, but weren’t we all humans? At least, looking around the busy streets of Stoneheart, I saw nothing but humans, although some had darker skin than me and Jorge.

Jorge clearly saw I didn’t get it. “Do your eyes still hurt?”

I rubbed at my left eye, the one that had the worst of the colorful spots. “Sort of, but it’s going away.”

He nodded as if that was obvious. “That. We can’t even look at the exit, Eva.”

My eyebrows scrunched up as I looked at him.

“The entire world up there is like that,” he said.

“But…” I struggled to speak. “How do you know?”

“Bea. She always wanted to escape, and still hasn’t given up hope she can get a skill for it,” said Jorge. “Which isn’t impossible, but if you use your class just to be able to see up there, how would you survive?”

The dots finally lined up in my brain. Pieces from my dreams of the other world, what Jorge was telling me, and that I lived underground somewhere. That I had never struggled to see anything despite not having light or a fire.

If it was the same as my dreams, that light up there was sunlight, and my eyes couldn’t survive its rays.

“Frick,” I cursed. There was no doubt a skill that would let us adapt, but it was like Jorge said. If you used your class to adapt just to existing in sunlight, how would you survive?

Jorge gripped my hand tighter and gave me a warm smile. “Don’t worry about it, okay? We’re not here for that anyway, but some dried plants, right?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Right, I was here to get plants to try and find a way to get a potion making class. Miracle drinks that could do anything, maybe… maybe even a way to let me see in sunlight. Okay, that just made it doubly important.

“We’re almost there anyway, look,” said Jorge as he pointed toward a two-story white-grey stone store that could actually afford glass windows and a wooden door. Even here, deep in Stoneheart, only one in three shops had wooden doors, a sign that their business did well.

For a plant shop to afford that, I had my worries. “Will we have enough?”

Jorge didn’t seem that worried, but now that we were here in Stoneheart, we both looked incredibly out of place. I grabbed his shirt and used [Repair Trash] again to clear it of dirt and blood as well as making it appear well kept.

“Thanks,” he said. “We might not get a lot but dried plants aren’t that expensive. At least, not unless you want the ones for eating.”

Well, I would’ve preferred plants that I could eat, but I would take what we could get.

As we got right up to the door, my legs turned leaden and I kept glancing around to see if anybody was staring. Jorge, however, merely opened the door and guided me inside. A small bell rang from above me causing me to squeeze Jorge’s hand tightly.

Who wasted copper on a doorbell of all things?

A burly man, half fat and half muscle with more height than me or Jorge combined leaned on a counter staring at us. He said nothing, but his eyes were clearly judging whether or not we should be here.

Jorge released my hand and flashed one of the pennies that Beatrice gave us, and the burly man snorted, but nothing else happened.

“Alright, Eva, go find what you need. I’ll be here,” said Jorge as he gently pushed me forward. “The prices are engraved on the tablets.”

Since Jorge had taught me my letters and I knew numbers from both him and my dreams, I regarded one of the stone tablets near a pile of pretty yellow flowers in a stone bin.

The noise I made was a bit undignified as I saw that it was a penny for a few measly yellow flowers! Now, I might not know how much a single penny was worth, but flowers grew by themselves for free everywhere up above in sunlight, right?

I slowly made my way down the tables full of stone bins while reading the prices and examining the various dried herbs and flowers. As Jorge had said, anything useful in cooking was way out of my price range, with a single stalk of sweet cane being four pennies!

Some tablets had names while others were blank, which I assumed the seller simply didn’t know what it was called. These were also the cheapest for a bunch, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to be picky.

Decisions were being made, and I had to gamble with what otherworldly knowledge I had learned to keep my risks low. In the end, I chose three nameless ones that I could get nearly enough to fill my copper pot.

A large amount of reed-like grass, a chunk of stalks with big, sharp green leaves, and several old, faded white flowers. Everything was dried, of course, but each one was a single penny according to the tablets.

It was a lot, yet also so little that I could carry it with both hands up to the counter.

“Three pennies,” grunted the burly man as he no doubt tracked my progress through his store, and Jorge set them down on the counter. “Thanks ya kindly.”

“Let’s go,” said Jorge. I meekly followed him out of the store, my eyes meeting the store owners as I looked back just before exiting. Judgemental, yes, but the burly man’s gaze wasn’t as if he was looking at garbage like so many others.

That, at least, made me want to come back if I could.

“I don’t have anything to carry those in,” said Jorge a bit regretfully. “My pockets?”

I eyed those pockets warily. “I’ll carry them home.”

“Let me know if you need help,” said Jorge.

Overall, we had been out for a couple hours, and my legs were getting tired. Dried plants weren’t exactly heavy, but as we made the trek back home, we did have to take a couple small rest breaks. Still, these were my hopes for a better class, so I carried them all the way back.

My mind was busy trying to recall what I would need to do as I climbed up our hidden chute, greeted all my siblings while avoiding their grabby hands to scurry upstairs and set everything on my table. A quick trip downstairs then back up had me with two cups of water and a few firecoals.

“Here, Eva,” said Jorge as he set the pouch of two dead graverats on my table. “Make sure to clean up when you're done, okay? They can smell pretty bad after a while.”

I wrinkled my nose at that truth; we didn’t need our home smelling any worse.

“Wait, can I have one of your stone shivs?” I asked before Jorge left.

He palmed one out of his pockets and set it down, and I could tell he was a bit hesitant to trust me, a ten year old, with a sharp object just like he was back at the longhouse. “Be careful with it, and tell someone if you cut yourself.”

“Thanks, Jorge,” I said. “For everything.”

He blinked, then smiled. “We’re family.”

Jorge waved goodbye as he had other things to do, and so it was me and my ingredients.

Taking stock was easy. Water, two dead rats, three types of plants, some cups of water, empty bowls, and firecoals. I tried to remember what was needed for potions, but the details escaped me.

Instead, since I was pretty exhausted from all the walking around I did, I went to my raggedy pile of blankets on the stone couch and laid down.

“[Repair Trash].” The rough fabric blanket cleaned and mended itself making itself slightly more comfortable.

[Trash Diver 4 / 5][

[Please select skill.]

[Fortify Rubbish - A touch of toughening up trash.]

[Polish Junk - A little spit and shine improvement.]

[Destroy Refuse - To get rid of the unsalvageable.]

I snuggled into my blanket as I considered the choices. All three were decent, but none were really better than one another. If I was selling stuff I’d actually trash dived for, I would pick [Polish Junk], and [Destroy Refuse] would be convenient as well.

[Skill gained.]

[Fortify Rubbish - A touch of toughening up trash.]

I cast it unspoken on my dress, just to get a feel for what it did. Like [Repair Trash] was initially, this was a half-hour cooldown, but instead of a permanent effect it was a timed enhancement.

My dress felt tougher, and a quick attempt to twist and rip at a fragile end that would at least have had the fabric stretching with some threads snapping, it was solid and sturdy.

If it did rip, though, I had [Repair Trash] to fall back on, so no worries!

I wasn’t exactly strong given, well, that I was a tiny, malnourished girl of ten who was nine parts bone and one parts skin, but I had managed to rip the thin, fragile fabric of my shirt before on accident.

Quickly, I rolled out of my blankets and grabbed the stone shiv off of the table. My skill lasted maybe two minutes, which seemed pretty good for a half-hour cooldown.

I grabbed the hem of my dress with one hand, pulled it somewhat taught, and then stabbed the stone shiv at it. Now, these makeshift shivs weren’t anywhere near as sharp as that butcher’s copper knife or Helen’s carving blade, but they were good enough to impale a graverat at a distance.

Even despite my lack of strength, the fact that it didn’t cut through my dress was enough to impress me. When I sawed the jagged shiv across the fabric, though, it did cut a few threads. That’s when I stopped my testing and set the blade down.

“Pretty good.” I trudged back over to my sleeping pile and nestled myself back into a comfortable position.

What would I use it for? I had no idea, but it did make me feel safer anyway.

It didn’t take much time for me to drift off to sleep.

No matter how or when I sleep, ever since these dreams of this girl in another world started, I have had them without fail. It took some time to get used to them, and then even more time to learn to use them. I think some of my siblings, older or younger, would use them as an escape.

The idea that just by sleeping, they could leave their poor, miserable reality and go to another world? They would find a class to let them sleep, and then never wake up willingly.

While I was thankful that my dreams of this girl and her world, of the weird way time was longer while I slept, to let me grow and learn… it wasn’t my world.

The girl wasn’t me.

I was not the girl.

The dream this time was a day she was in school learning history, a boring subject that neither she nor I paid attention to. That thirty and more children all sat in a room to listen to an adult teach them was always exciting, but some subjects were more useful than others.

While I was dreaming, I usually saw the world through the eyes of the girl. Not always, which could be strange and confusing, but even though I saw what she did, her thoughts were silent to me.

It was only after a couple years that I learned I could focus on a particular memory, a scene I had already dreamt, and revisit it. Pull it back from a memory within a memory to experience it once more.

This time I focused on a time she was playing a particular video game, and also one of the few times she was a magic user who made potions. I had forgotten the word for it until now, but witnessing the menus on the computer screen reminded me of my goal.

Alchemy.

Ignoring the girl complaining about balance, reagents, and stocking up for a group event called a raid, I focused on what the formulas of potions typically used. I know they were often similar across all of her games, but this would be the first one I attempted.

Hmm, this one was a [Potion of Speed] that involved oil of a weirdly named grass, chicken feet, and a bottle of water. She made the oil by boiling the grass, which given it was a game it was simply a weird little bar going up until she had the oil, and then boiling the chicken feet and oil inside a water bottle.

That… didn’t seem too hard, right?

I ended my dream of the girl and her world, and woke up groggily. Ending them early always left me feeling awful, but I wanted to start while the information was still fresh in my mind.

Helen was still missing so I was all alone except for Maric, who was still in his room.

I climbed up on my stone stool and sat there, my ingredients unmoving.

“Hmm.” I stared at them. “I guess I start by boiling water?”

I had two cups of water, and if I needed more I had permission to get it, so I poured the water into my copper pot. Now, how did I boil the water? I picked up the firecoals and stared at my stone bowl. Helen usually used a thicker bin, but a bowl should be fine, right?

I struck two firecoals together several times, feeling them heat up in my hands, and dropped them into the bowl before adding the third. The weird rocks would grow hot and stay that way for a long while, enough that Helen usually finished cooking by then.

Placing the copper pot into the bowl gently, it sat on top of the firecoals awkwardly and required me to hold the handle to keep it from rolling off balance. Literally watching water boil somehow had me giddy.

I could feel the heat from the firecoals, and after several minutes the water was hot and had tiny bubbles in it.

“Do I just throw in some grass?” I wondered as I grabbed a handful of the stalks with big, sharp leaves and threw them in the water. They floated there, half in the water and half out, before I grabbed the stone shiv and used it to stir them into the water.

For several minutes only the sound of bubbling water, the occasional clink of my stone shiv touching the copper pot, and my breathing was heard. Worries went through my head a mile a minute.

Was this how it was done? Did I mess up already? How do I know when the plants are done? Do I even use the plants? How was oil in the plants different from plant water? All this and I hadn’t even started with the rats!

I sat there stirring occasionally, simply watching hot water and leaves, until the firecoals went cold. All I was left with was a copper pot full of heavily boiled leaves and its water. Even after I took out the leaves and put them in an empty bowl, I had plant water.

Sure, some of it looked slightly different, maybe on the surface of the water, but I wasn’t sure what the difference was. I rushed downstairs to grab a stone spoon, came back upstairs without heeding my sibling’s various cries, and spooned the surface plant water into one cup while pouring half the plant water into another.

So I have a ‘bottle of water’, ‘plant oil’, although I didn’t think it was oil at all, now I needed an animal part.

“Ew,” I mumbled as I opened the bloody pouch with my two dead graverats. I wasn’t exactly shy when it came to filth, but there was something about dead critters that didn’t sit well.

“Eyes were good, right?” I wondered. I’d seen several potion recipes in my dreams that used eyes, but those murky orbs staring off into nothing made me queasy at the thought of drinking them.

Claws it is, then.

Using the stone shiv, I cut out the front paw’s claws, put them in a bowl, and picked up my rough stone I had found just for this purpose. It had a wide, roundish tip, so I used it to grind the claws down.

Obviously this was another one of my dream’s wisdoms, because I don’t think eating rat claws would be comfortable. Instead, for tough things like this, you ground it into powder.

Although, with my strength, even after minutes of grinding away at the claws, I mostly had half-powder, half-chipped-flakes left.

I winced because my arm felt sore already, and I decided to take a food break.

Cold meat soup was always good, and reminded me it wasn’t the only thing I’d be eating today.

Ugh, with that thought I finished up my soup, returned back to my table, and went grinding the claws down again. It took a long time, and I’ll admit I used my new skill, [Fortify Rubbish], on my makeshift pestle in order to make it tougher.

The claws were now a decent powder, sort of. They had bits of rat fur in it, as well as blood, but I didn’t see any big, pointy pieces!

“So, I now have my basic ingredients.” Oil, powder, and water. Or, at least, the really awful versions I had made. “How do I mix them together?”

I put the thicker plant water, the part I was deeming ‘oil’, into the rat claw powder and then ground it together to make a pretty nasty mush. Nevermind the smell, the color and texture of it made me a bit unsettled.

“Okay, maybe if I…”

I started up the firecoals again and brought the leftover plant water in the copper pot back up to a low boil, and then put just a bit into a cup. Maybe as much as the rat claw mush? Half and half seemed like a good measurement.

After that, I scooped the mush into the cup, then stirred it with my stone shiv.

“Honestly, that’s pretty vile,” I said as I stared down into the cup. I sniffed it and thought it smelled… not that bad? Maybe not that vile.

I picked up the cup, eyed the ‘potion’ I had made, and grimaced. I knew it wasn’t a real potion, it had no skills enhancing it. Thing was, I wasn’t sure what I needed to do in order to gain a class that could make potions.

My hand was a bit shaky as I brought the cup to my lips, and my will wavered just a teeny, tiny bit. Surely it wouldn’t be that bad, I mean, it was just claws, leaves, and water.

Before I thought about it too hard, I tipped the cup and drank it in one go.