Standing at about 6’1” with bronze skin and green-brown eyes, I think to myself that I’m not too bad on the eye. I’m not sure how long I’ve been checking myself out in the river but it’s probably been for too long. I start to finish up my run, crossing the bridge and coming up to my house. Well, my family’s house. I tug open the door and let the smell of breakfast fill my nose and increase my appetite. “Smells like heaven,” I say as I take a seat. “Of course it does. I’m going to head out and start up the furnace. We have an order of nails so we should be busy for a while,” I hear from the kitchen. I grunt in confirmation as I dig into the meal, the stew was very good, we were using the extra meat from the party 2 days ago. My mind starts to wonder and I’m eating. Damn, I hate making nails. They aren’t hard to make but just annoying and repetitive. Making arrowheads is better because at least I can use them for myself. As I’m finishing up my meal I hear someone coming down the stairs. It’s my brother dressed in light brown gambeson and tight dark green cloth pants with some nice leather boots. Of course his long bow is strewn across his shoulders with his quiver by his side. “I take it is your day to patrol,” I remark as I take another bite of the delicious stew. “Yeah, I’m glad. Did you hear about the nail order.” He asks as he is checking himself with the mirror in the living room. I sigh and reply a bit bitterly, “Yeah, dad just told me. I can’t believe your luck, this is the third time you’ve had patrol duty when a nail order comes in.” He chuckles, “I guess I have the gods on my side, well I hope you have fun.” With that he heads out of the house. I mutter some unpleasant things and finish up my stew. I guess it’s time to head to work.

I let my feet dangle in the river and take a deep breath. I’ve been working for around 6 hours just making nails and wishing that whoever thought them up would’ve died before he had done so. At least now I’m done for today though we haven’t even finished a fifth of the order. But luckily I had my apprenticeship with my uncle so I’m able to sneak off with a reason this time. As I finish washing up my dad yells over, “Hurry up over to your uncles before he gets impatient.” That is something you never want to see. He isn’t violent or even aggressive but when you piss him off he gets very creative with his revenge. One time I just didn’t show up because I got distracted, for the next 3 weeks I was remembering formulas to recipes we will never make and until I got it perfect I wasn’t to move on. At least now I know how to make Lions heart, Lizards skin and alchemical gold. They all sounded so cool at the time but the amount of ingredients and steps you have to take to make them are innumerable and half the ingredients aren’t even available to purchase here. But as much as he is petty he is also one of the kindest people I know. When he teaches even if I get things wrong he doesn’t get mad, as long as I give it my all. Finishing this thought I see I’ve walked all the way over. I open the front entrance and the ring of the bell greets me. Next I hear, “I’m in the back working right now, clean up the front and take care of the plants then join me.” I take the broom from the cupboard and do a light sweep, the floor was spotless when I came in but I’ll still pretend to sweep at least. After finishing that I get the watering can and head the plants. Most of which are just for the aesthetic for when the traders come to purchase but it is still nice to not have to go to the garden to get every plant. Finally as I finish up tending to the last plant I head to the back. As I look to see what my uncle is doing I see that he is making a weak cleansing potion. Watching him put in the cilantro I know he is almost finished. Without looking back he asks, “How long do I stir and then let sit before I add blue head?” I immediately reply, “Stir for 1 minute then let sit for 6, you cut and grind the blue head during the sitting period.” He then turns around and hands me the stirring rod and says, “Very good, I’ll let you finish up here and get more ingredients. We have a big order for healing salves.” I nod my head as I take the rod and start stirring. After a minute is up I take the rod out and put it by the side. I take a quick look at the parchment that he records every experiment on and check the needed amount of blue head. 500 grams I work out before looking to make sure I’m right, and indeed I am. I take the blue head and cut it to about the right size, I then put it on the scale, 506 it reads. I cut again and this time it reads 500. I finish grinding it up as I take a look at the pot. Even though there are exact times, nothing in alchemy is completely exact. It sounds weird but no two plants are the same and the time it takes for a reaction to occur is sometimes faster and sometimes slower. Looking over the pot it seems that this reaction is on the slower side. So I wait a bit longer until I think it is time. I chuck the ground up mushroom into the pot and stir at a fast speed for 30 seconds. Then I put the lid on and move the pot off the fire, we have to wait 2-3 hours before we can put it in a flask. As I started to clean up the space my uncle came back with a bag full of plants. “We’re going to make a half a barrel of healing salve,” he says as he puts the heavy bag on the counter. “Damn, first a ton of nails and now this much healing salve, I guess I won’t be getting a break for a couple of days.” My uncle just chuckles at my misery as he pulls out the ingredients. And that was how I spent the rest of the day, chopping up plants.

Waking up early before the sun has risen, I walk out of the house. I start my jog taking in the chilly morning air. About half an hour later and quite far away I finally make it to my work out spot. It is a clearing in the forest with some targets set up and a small shack off to the side. I can’t take full credit for the shack as I built it with my brother but it was only the two of us who made this place. As my body has warmed up I enter the shack and take out my bow and quiver. Though before I draw my bow I set it down on a long and take a couple of minutes to stretch out my body. Finally I’m all loose to start my practice, I pick up my bow and draw back the string with an arrow I focus, I look at the target, feel the wind and take a deep breath, finally letting loose. The arrow soars through the air, stable, striking the inner circle of our poorly painted target. Seeing that I in fact hit the inner circle I start emptying my quiver into the target. After emptying a sheaf, I go and collect the arrows, refilling my quiver. I then back up to about 50 meters and continue my archery. Every time I empty my sheaf I walk about another 50 meters back, and completely unrelated my arrows are moving further away from the inner circle. I get to 200 meters and now my arrow grouping is the size of the target itself but I have yet to miss, and with that thought I miss the last arrow. I sigh and just accept that I jinxed my almost perfect practice, but as I finish collecting my arrow I put my bow and quiver back in the shack and start to exercise in the best way. Picking up large rocks and moving them. I spend the rest of my time in my little sanctuary moving very heavy rocks. I start jogging back when I can see the sun, not forgetting to wash up in the river before crossing the bridge back to the village. 

I enter my house and smell more stew, “Anyone here,” I call as I sit down to consume my breakfast. No reply I think to myself as I savory the stew. Then my thoughts change to think that having an uncle who grows herbs really improves the food you have access too. Finishing up I start to head to the forge, but when I arrive I only see my brother getting the forge up to temperature. “Emerick, where’s dad?” I ask as I get the iron out of the storage. “He’s with the chief and some others to discuss what I found yesterday,” he remarks and for some reason doesn’t elaborate. “Well, what did you find?” “I’m not too sure but from what I described dad said it could be a curupted bear,” he replies a little too nonchalantly. I try not to let my eyes bug out as I get the last ingot from storage. “ That would really suck if there is a curupted bear,“ I weakly say but that ended the conversation and we get to work on the nails. Damn I really hate making nails.

After cleaning up the forge with Emerick we head our separate ways. I take in the calm day, with a nice breeze battling the heat of the sun. As cool as bigger towns have been, the few that I’ve been too have never been as nice as ours. Maybe I just don’t like people, but the real reason may be because of how smelly they are. The first big town I entered caused me to gag once we crossed an invisible wall that let the smell into my nostrils. It only took a little bit of time before I stopped noticing it, but even then the air seemed a little stale. I walk into my uncle's shop and spot a note on the counter. ‘Headed off to find some more ingredients, finish up 5 flasks of healing salve.’ Well it looks like I will be repeating this as well as the nails. But as today is the start of a new week I get to use a couple ingredients for myself. Since two years ago my uncle has allowed me to experiment with a certain amount of resources every week. My newest line of research is turning the very expensive lizard skin into a new potion named bark skin, and you’ll never guess what it does. It turns your skin into bark! Well not really, it’s more of a growth above your skin that would have defensive capabilities. But currently the bark doesn’t grow in an even manner and most of it is too thin to be used as anything else other than camo, which is really bad when you realize that you can’t wear any clothes if you want to apply it in a fast manner. If you didn’t know how lizard skin works you have to pour it on your skin before it can grow and if you are wearing any clothes they will absorb it and make it not work that well, or at all. But I’m still happy with the progress I have made, but today I will be testing with a more expensive ingredient, well more rare the expensive but it was a bitch to find as they don’t grow well for whatever reason. I get out the Bronze Vine and start chopping it up into different amounts. Even if you know what all the plants do and how they react you have to run multiple tests to find the best ratios, and for every step or plant you add it gets exponentially bigger, no matter how good of an alchemist you are. I learned this the hard way when I started this project, for the first 6 months I literally had no work to show besides numerous failed experiments. But when my uncle looked over my notes he said I was doing a good job and told me to keep trying. Apparently this was a right of passage every alchemist had to go through. But enough getting distracted and I finished chopping up the other plants and getting three pots to temperature. As I had a little amount of the Bronze Vine I would only be running 3 pots instead of 5 to make it last longer and give me more time to look over the results and try to guess the best ratios.  I stay extremely focused during this experiment and I even use the sand timers we have to keep an exact count of how long every step takes for my notes. By the end of about an hour and a half, or one hour twenty-seven minutes and forty-three seconds if you're keeping track, I bring the potions to cool and let them rest for the rest of the day as I make the healing salve my uncle asked of me. By the time I am done it’s about 5 o’clock and I’m very excited to test out my potions. Though the way I test out my potions is kinda painful, how did you think I found out they only had a camo function and didn’t serve as armor, of course I had someone hit me. Of course because I’m the smartest alchemist in history I told my brother to punch me as hard as he could when I first tested it out. That was not the best three days of my life, but I learned a very important lesson that day. I quickly cleaned up the shop and put away the healing salves I made and jotted the amount on my uncle’s accounting book. I basically run out of the door when I finish. The reason I’m so excited is the Bronze Vine should stabilize the growth factor and make sure it is even and thick. I open up the door and shout “Emerick you here.” A couple of seconds pass before I hear “Yeah” a shout from the second floor and then hear him descend our squeaky stairs. “You need something?” He asks, looking very tired. “Yeah, I just finished my new potion and need you to test it.” He sighs and follows me outside. We both warm up exercises before we start. After we tested my potions we’d spar, I don’t know how it happened but we started doing it 2 years ago and it just became something we always do now. Now sufficiently warmed up I take off my shirt and apply the potion with the least amount of Bronze Vine and a hardened layer of skin grows over my own subpar regular skin. I start moving around making sure it has bonded to my skin without me losing too much mobility. And a minute of testing it out I sign, this part has sucked since the beginning. “I’m ready,” and wave my brother forward to test it out. He lets loose a soft jab and I get pushed back but I don’t feel anything? Wait, did it work! “I guess it worked by the smile on your face.” I hear my brother say. I didn’t even know I was smiling but now I feel the biggest grin on my face. “I will need to do more tests but I didn’t feel that punch.” We continue with the testing and the first potion is looking promising, though we found the limit after I made Emerick punch me as hard as he could. It feels like I’m going to have a small bruise, but usually I would be on my ass so it definitely worked. Next is the more dangerous test, I only know how well it stops blunt attacks so now I gotta test how well it stops sharp ones. Emerick goes to the house to get healing salve and bandages. This is the worse part of the test and I hold a knife above my arm, deep breath I remind myself. I apply slight pressure and nothing happens, I then drag with the slight pressure and it starts biting into the bark, but just barely. I then repeat this until I feel cold iron on my skin and immediately pull the knife back. Definitely not as good against sharp objects but I knew that, I’m actually surprised that it stopped that much force. I look down at the cut and notice that it’s closing? “What the hell?” “What happened are you ok?” Emerick rushes over probably thinking I injured myself. “Look at the bark it’s closing.” He takes a look and then nods, “That’s new, what did you add to make it do that?” All I can say is, “I have no idea.” And start contemplating it, I guess I’m just going to have to do more tests. I decide to test only the one potion today to see if anything else is different about it. By the time seven thirty rolls around we are both soaking in sweat. Having an extra layer of bark skin is nice and all but it doesn’t breathe that well. I didn’t keep exact time but it lasted for a little over an hour before the bark started to fall off, I also have a theory that the more damage it repairs the less amount of time it will last. Emerick and I head over to the river to wash off. “That’s amazing,” he comments as we are cleaning ourselves off, “I can’t believe you got it to work, let alone that well. I don’t mean to belittle you it just sounded so hard I thought it would take you longer.” “Yeah, to be honest I thought it was going to be at least another six months before I got it too work but I have spent over a year on this.” I reply, reaching for the soap. Although the bark fell off some of it was still stuck to my skin. With that we both lapse into silence before Emerick pipes up. “Dad came back from the meeting and they all believe it is a werebear.” That causes me to almost drop the soap. “Shit,” I say as a reaction to both the news and the almost dropping of soap. Then I start putting stuff together, why dad and my uncle have been gone. Dads probably planning the hunt with the other people and my uncle is looking for ingredients to make potions for the fight. The more offensive potions require plants that are hard to grow, and usually have to be found naturally. “I’m going to join the hunting party,” Emerick says as he finished wiping himself off with a towel. “I’ll join too,” I reply finishing up as well. He just nods and we sent off back to our house in silence. Dad returned while we were out and just finished dinner when we got back. “Has Emerick told you the news?” He asks as he brings the last bowl to the table. “Yeah, and I’ll be joining you guys,” I say a little too defensively. He just signs and nods, “You’re old enough to make these decisions, but as this is both of your guys first time please just make sure to listen to the more experienced men.” We both nod and I’m relieved that he didn’t try to persuade me not to go. With that out of the way we talk about what we did today, and I let him know the success of my potion, all of us forgetting about the werebear for the night. 

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

While the village will send out a hunting party it doesn’t form immediately, any corrupted creatures are hard to kill, but bears are especially so. When a creature gets corrupted they grow bigger and stronger, and if given enough time they manifest affinities. Depending on how they are corrupted they manifest differently. There’s folktales of a giant flaming wolf and the knights quest to slay it, but everyone dies in the end in a firey death. That’s why you want to hunt them early before they manifest any affinities. But going back to bears, the already big and strong animal becomes bigger and stronger. Though the bears don’t grow too much bigger, I think they’d be crushed under their own weight but I don’t know the real reason. After thinking about it for a while I arrived at my exercise area and start exercising. After finishing that up I make sure to take my bow and quiver with me. It makes it a little awkward to run with arrows bouncing but I have a cap for my quiver so it isn’t too bad.

Arriving back at the village I stop by my house and drop off my bow and quiver. I then head to the forge ready to start working on more nails. As I arrive at the forge I see a couple of people around, they all have some sort of weapon with them, axes, swords, spears, there are about 15 people. Dad is there too, he is talking with them and making some jokes as he sharpens a man’s sword, he spots me and waves me over and say, “Alrick, Emerick and I have the forging covered, you need to go to your uncles to help him prepare the potions.” I nod and reply, “Alright, then I’ll see you at dinner,” and with that I head off to my uncle’s.

When I arrive I can smell the fragrances of many plants. I head to the back without picking up the broom to clean the front. ”Ah, you're here. We have a lot of different potions to make today, this will give you good experience.” My uncle says while focusing on a very small pot in front of him. “What I’m working on right now is alchemist fire, because it has a very volatile process I’ll be doing this, but you should watch.” “Alright.” With that I watched him make alchemist fire. Half way through I thought it was going to explode but apparently as the pot started to shake and the liquid started to bubble that’s just part of the process. After that I made 5 different potions and 2 of those I’ve never made before, the two new ones were mild acid and weak bomb. Just before I left, my uncle told me to come outside with him. When I joined him I saw that he had dragged a hay target out. “Because you're going to be joining the fight, you have to know how your potions will work. You are first going to throw the acid then the bomb.” Nodding, I start heading inside when my uncle clears his throat. “Also, I had this made, didn’t know when to give it to you, but this seems like the right moment.” I look back and see an alchemist's bag. This one is rather plain but looks to be made of quality material. I walk over and take it in my hand. It has a belt strap and a shoulder strap, which has loops for potions for fast access. I lift the lid on the bag and see it has 4 rows for potions, so I can fit about 16 vials in it, depending on their size. After looking it over I go to put it on. The weight of the bag on my right hip feels a little weird, but I don’t mind it. I face my uncle but I don’t know what to say. “Thank you, this is an amazing gift…” I mange to find the words. My uncle just laughs, “You were eventually going to need one, every alchemist does.” For the first time he referred to me as an alchemist and not one in training, he continues, “The leather is from a corrupted wolf, it didn’t fully transform but the leather should last you a long while. Your dad told me you finished your tree bark potion so that means you're ready to practice our craft without a supervisor. You don’t have to leave after the hunt, but know that everything you do now is up to you.” 

My mind starts to feel immense pressure because my path is now up to me, but before I start to overthink he pipes up again, “Before anything though go ahead and test those potions, it should help relieve stress for now.” I calm done and start to look for the potions, I pull one out of my fast access, it’s the acid. I then look at the target it’s about 7 meters away so I take a second to plant my stance and then chuck the potion at the target. I hear the breaking of glass then sizzling even from about 7 meters away, quite quickly I see the liquid go through the target and after a couple more seconds it hits the ground. That was pretty calming I gotta admit, but I’m not done, I look through the fast access and take out the weak bomb. I take another second to aim, as for this time I don’t aim for the top but the center. The 2 seconds it takes to travel seem to last longer, then I hear the detonation of the mix and watch as the target is decimated and the remains burn. I start to feel giddy, but I quickly stop as I start to think what this could do to a person. And once again I start to feel the weight of making potions. But a deep breath clears that thought away.

I feel relaxed again and for the rest of the day instead of potion theory my uncle talks about combat theory for alchemists, though this isn’t the first time he goes more in depth on small unit tactics, which I can’t help but compare to the hunting party. I eventually find my way home and while I’m at the dinner table my dad informs me that tomorrow is the day of the hunt. I clench my cutlery. Thinking back to combat theory for alchemists, ‘always have a clear head as your potions can do as much damage to your allies as they can to your enemies.’ That quote was from the first royal alchemist. After a deep breath, I relax the grip and continue eating. “I better get a good night's rest then.” I finish up and head to bed, tomorrows going to be a big day.