Bragden gave a low whistle. “Now that be something worth a king’s ransom. It doesn’t even have a race restriction on the slagging thing.”
Kedryn fought down the urge to call dibs. To say that he wanted the potion was like saying fire burned. But he couldn’t just blurt out that he wanted it like some over stimulated college student calling shotgun. This potion was something that people would literally kill for. Not only would it make him look selfish and childish, but Bragden had promised to open his Astral mana channels while on this trip. It would be selfish to ask for something that would open another of his mana channels.
“I think Kedryn should have it,” Glade suggested, interrupting the silence and surprising everyone in the process.
“I… might be willing to listen to yer reasoning,” Bragden said warily, causing Kedryn’s breath to catch as the normally stoic dwarf gave Glade and the others a sidelong look. “Though, I might have thoughts of me own on the matter.”
Hold on a moment. Bragden was agreeing with Glade? Well, agreeing might not be entirely accurate, but it was as close as they were likely going to get with the unnaturally difficult dwarf.
Still, Kedryn couldn’t help but think they were going about this all wrong. Of course, he wanted the potion. In fact, he wanted it more than any of the other loot. Unlocking all of his magical powers was one of his personal objectives. But if he were being honest, Riya could likely use the magic more than he could. All she had was that sling of hers as a weapon. If she were to be given the potion along with the Air Gust spell book they had found earlier, she could likely take her ranged rock slinging skills to new heights. Who knew how terrifying she could become with that particular combination of skills and magic?
Besides, he had his fire magic and the Cinderwood Heartstaff Gird had made him. He could handle himself in a fight, no problem. Though, he had to admit, it made him feel good that both Glade and Bragden had thought of him when they had considered who would get to use the potion.
“It’s a pretty simple choice once you take the time to think about it,” Glade said with a nonchalant shrug. “As long as we are away from Storms’ Rest, Kedryn needs a way to defend himself without using fire magic. If we get into a life or death situation he’s going to use his magic. Right now, that’s burning things alive.”
“Which means bounty hunters,” Bragden grumbled, nodding along with Glade’s reasoning.
Kedryn nearly face palmed. He had forgotten about how the rest of the world felt about fire magic users. Maybe it was best to take the potion.
“I agree that Kedryn should use the potion,” Riya chimed in. “Out of the rest of us, he has the least experience in martial skills and is ideally suited for a support role.”
“Now wait just a moment,” Kedryn spluttered. Did Riya just call him out as a back row man? Sure, it was kind of true, but you just didn’t say that sort of thing out loud and in front of others!
“Furthermore, out of all of us, he is likely to make the most out of the air magic skill,” she continued as if he hadn’t even spoken, but at least this time she highlighted his exceptional talent with magic. “With the exception of Scholar Bragden of course, but I’m assuming you are not interested in beginning the journey of mastery in another sphere of magic?”
“By the Mother, no,” Bragden choked out, shaking his head violently. “I be trying to level me enchanting and astral skill levels. Adding another branch o’ magic at this stage o’ me life would likely out right kill me.”
“That takes care of one of the doses,” Glade said as if the decision had been made. “Should we sell the other dose?”
“Now wait just a minute,” Kedryn protested, drawing everybody’s attention to him as if they had just noticed he was there. Though, now that he had protested the decision, he couldn’t help but feel his reasoning for speaking up would come across as childish, especially since he was still lying in his stupid coffin bed built into the side of the ship wall.
“I can use my bow,” he finished rather lamely, his well-reasoned thoughts from before all but forgotten.
“Can you?” Glade asked with genuine curiosity. “Have you practiced with it yet?”
Kedryn opened his mouth to brush away such an absurd question. Of course he could use a bow. He was an elf! With awesome dexterity! And… and… and he really was acting like a child.
Besides, didn’t he want the potion? It would help him get stronger.
But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself, the part of him that wanted to prove he was more than just his magic pushed back.
“Do ye not want to cast air magic?” Bragden asked with a genuine look of surprise.
“It’s not that,” he said, fighting for the words that had been clear in his mind before. Why was this so hard for him now? All he had to do was agree and the potion would be his. Instead, his mind threw together all of his ideas all at once. “I was just thinking how incredible it would be if Riya could use it. She’s already amazing with her sling. If she could combine that ranged attack with an air gust she could double or even triple her range and damage. And… and I can do more than just burn things up. I know I can…”
Great, his mind was mixing his arguments. He could already see the confusion on both Riya and Bragden’s faces as they were trying to follow his logic. Glade, on the other hand, was giving him an appreciative look.
“Ye would waste the potion on a tree…” Bragden began, but snapped his mouth shut as he caught Glade’s intense glare boring into him.
Riya finished the thought for him.
“You shouldn’t waste such a treasure on someone like me,” she said, with a shake of her head. “I appreciate the thought, I really do. But resources like this…”
“Should go to those we think could benefit from them the most, right?” Kedryn finished. “And I think we would benefit most if you took the potion.”
He was about to argue the point again, but Glade raised his hand to stop the discussion.
“I’d agree with you if we had more than two doses,” Glade sighed, looking at each of them in turn. “But the fact is, we don’t. Riya would have to use both doses. One to create mana channels themselves and the second to open them up. We have few resources and, to be frank, Corporal, you’re a wild card right now. Bringing you with us is our greatest risk. I’ll train you on basic martial skills but learning how to fight with any type of competency in a few short days is next to impossible.”
Kedryn’s crestfallen look must have shown because Glade continued in a softer tone of voice.
“However, you have already proven you can learn how to weaponize magic in just a few short days. You’re the obvious choice for this.”
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“There are two doses,” Kedryn scrambled. “Surely, we can have someone else take the other dose.”
“We only have one air spell book,” Bragden pointed out. “Only one o’ us is goin to learn that there spell. We can try and buy another in the Free Cities, but I wouldn’t hold yer breath. Best to sell the potion and use the gold to buy supplies and other resources we can use.”
“Besides, we can use the settlement core to create another potion later,” Glade said with a shrug.
“So long as we have the ingredients on hand,” Bragden reminded him. “Which, to be honest, will be slagging impossible to figure out without a recipe or research notes. Especially since this here potion was created by a bloody grandmaster!”
“What if there was another option?” Riya asked hesitantly.
The others motioned for her to continue.
“We might have someone in my tribe who could,” Riya paused, her voice a bare whisper as she looked meaningfully at them, “figure out the recipe.”
There was a brief pause before they realized what Riya had just said.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Kedryn asked, his mind racing with the possibilities.
Bragden’s reaction was even less reserved. His eyes practically bugged out of his head before he began choking out something that resembled a question, but he couldn’t be sure.
“So… you have an alchemist?” Glade asked, giving them his typical blank stare.
“Not just an alchemist!” Kedryn said excitedly, “I think she’s saying her people have a grand…mmpphh!”
Riya covered his mouth and shushed him.
“All I’m saying is that Elder Tynen can probably help us identify the ingredients. I didn’t say anything about her skill level.”
“Got it,” he said, but it came out muffled as Riya still had her hand clamped over his mouth.
“If we can get a list o’ those ingredients, then it would be worth it to keep the single dose instead o’ selling it.” Bragden said, staring at Riya with open eyed disbelief. Not the kind of disbelief that said he didn’t believe her, but the disbelief that something he thought was likely not possible might indeed be real.
Kedryn believed he knew what their surly friend was feeling. From his lengthy conversations with both Riya and his dwarven friends, of all the crafter professions, alchemists were the rarest of the lot. In a large city, you might find one, maybe two journeymen if you were lucky. An alchemy school might have an expert level alchemist in charge, but it wasn’t a given. Master level alchemists were practically locked away by emperors and kings. A grandmaster? Those only existed in fairy tales.
“Thank you,” Riya said, taking her hand away from Kedryn’s mouth. “We don’t talk about Elder Tynen much to the outside world. If others knew, there would be… complications.”
Kedryn could only imagine. Between the slavers, rogue noble houses running things throughout the free cities, not to mention foreign powers looking to gain power by any means necessary, any of them wouldn’t hesitate to subjugate, exploit or destroy Riya’s people to gain access to such a powerful resource.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Glade said, holding the opened potion bottle out to Kedryn. “Bottoms up.”
Kedryn sighed, grabbing the potion from his commanding officer, and tipping it up to take a swallow. He didn’t know how much he needed, but it was best to be conservative in his opinion. Though, it was a bit awkward seeing as he was still stuck lying in his coffin like bunk.
The taste going down reminded him of thunderstorms in spring.
“STOP!!” Bragden cried, shoving Glade out of the way as he snatched the vial from Kedryn’s hand. “Tell me ye didn’t drink any of it yet!”
The last bit was said with wide eyed panic.
“What’s wrong this time?” Kedryn sighed, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. They were all used to the dwarf’s doomsday speeches and rather bleak outlook on everything in general.
“Ye dim witted, goblin brained, bloody gnome halfwit!!” Bragden snarled. He didn’t know if the insult was directed at Glade or him but decided it didn’t matter seeing as the dwarf had grabbed him by the front of his shirt and was in the process of dragging him out of his bunk. “Ye weren’t supposed to take the ruddy potion now!!”
“What are you doing!?” Kedryn cried, an unsettling feeling growing in his stomach as the dwarf physical dragged him from their cabin and into the hallway.
“Clear a spot on the front o’ the bloody ship and get me some slagging rope!” Bragden snarled at Gent, who took one look at his friend and turned and ran to do what he had been asked.
Glade stepped forward to intervene, but Riya held him back, her face as white as a ghost. Kedryn thought he heard her tell him not to interfere and that Bragden knew what he was doing, but that could have just been his imagination.
Before they exited onto the deck, Bragden stopped, pulling him so close that he could feel the dwarf’s loose beard hair poke his face.
“I’m going to give ye the rapid-fire version o’ this lesson seein as we don’t have time to do it right and proper like,” Bragden breathed, his voice not carrying beyond a foot or two but somehow still felt as if he was shouting with a voice of thunder. A quiet corner of his mind noted this was likely to keep any of the crew from knowing what was happening. “Anytime ye open a mana channel yourself ye need three things in place. Ye need someone who knows what the bloody hell they’re doin to help guide the mana inside of you to the right place. Ye need to be in the right environment with plenty o’ access to your bloody element. And lastly, ye need a whole boatload of the right kind o’ mana so’s your body can pull it and yer element into ye while yer doing this. And before you ask, doesn’t matter if’n it be a potion made by the Adjudicator’s themselves, ye still need help! If not, the mana will run rampant through yer system and it’ll be like pushing steel ingots through yer pisser!”
Kedryn stared at Bragden in horror, his mind already churning up horrifying images based on the dwarf’s very descriptive image.
“Now take this and hide in under yer ruddy shirt!” Bragden snarled, shoving a small box into Kedryn’s hands. He vaguely recognized it as the box that contained the air drake mana stone they had found in the vault.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening this way. In every book he read, you took a potion and everything just happened. Easy peasy. Besides, Glade didn’t go through this when his fire mana channel was opened!
“But Glade opened his fire mana channels…”
“Quiet!” Bragden hissed. “Don’t he mention that out loud so’s others can hear! And no, Glade was not the one who done opened that channel up, was he? It was that thrice cursed egg he carries around! I won’t get into this argument with ye as we don’t have the time, but powerful cored beasts can open mana channels, but that be as likely to happen as the Overseer himself coming down from the heavens to have afternoon tea with ye!”
Kedryn wanted to laugh. It looked like Glade being branded had once again bent fate to make the impossible possible.
The unsettling warmth in his stomach shifted. He felt the gentle stirrings of a storm spreading throughout his gut.
“Now, if’n you and yer slagging branded friend would have waited for a minute, I was going to suggest we wait until we get to the Free Cities so we can hire a slagging air mage to help ye. It’d have been expensive, but worth it. Now that ye’ve gone and taken the dose, yer going to have to weather the pain and try directing the power o’ the slagging potion through yer own air channels. I ain’t going to lie and tell ye this is going to be all sunshine and ale fests. It’s going to hurt.”
“How bad?” Kedryn asked, but from the growing storm inside him he could already guess.
“Ye know how ye felt after these last two days o’ training?” Bragden asked.
Kedryn nodded.
“Worse.”
“What happens if this doesn’t work?” he asked. He thought his voice should be trembling at this point. Afterall, Bragden wasn’t painting a very bright picture. But it wasn’t. His question had come out steady. A little on the quiet side, but steady.
“Oh, it most likely isn’t going to work,” Bragden said, his face softening. “We’ve likely done wasted one o’ the doses. But we’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Worst case, it may damage yer air channels a bit, but that’s unlikely seein they’re closed. Best case, ye somehow open yer air channels, though I wouldn’t hold yer breath. More than likely, yer just gonna feel a whole lot o pain for the next three or four days.”
“Three or four days!?” Kedryn gasped.
Bragden didn’t take his eyes off of him, letting the reality of the situation settle in.
Fear began creeping into his mind, but Kedryn crushed it immediately. If he had learned anything from Glade’s training the previous two days, it was that fear didn’t help anything. All it did was distract you from your goal and tire you out faster.
“Any last words of advice?” he forced out.
Bragden hesitated before answering.
“We’ll be by yer side the whole time, trying our best to help. Pull the power into yer mana pool. From there, yer going to have to figure out which of the closed channels is for air. The power ye’ve ingested and yer closed channel should have a resonance. Once ye do, blast it till it opens with whatever the power the potion draws into ye and then fill it with the right kind o’ mana.”
Kedryn memorized every word.
“Ye ready?” Bagden asked.
“No,” he said honestly. But instead of waiting, he extracted himself from Bragden’s vice like grip and strode out onto the deck toward where Gent was waiting. Running was pointless. Besides, he was looking forward to proving Bragden wrong.