People make mistakes when there are many things on their mind. Amir was experiencing that quite acutely. The sudden chance at finally advancing his spell would have been a great distraction by itself. His shoulders were further burdened by the discovery of Rose’s hidden bias and the unscratched itch of a secret beyond reach. It was almost inevitable that he would miss a detail somewhere along the way.

Therefore, Amir found himself bowing in chastisement at the lobby of the Lohart workshop. Smartspeak was standing on her chair, staring down at Amir over the desk. He struggled to keep his eyes on her without actually straightening his back. Her high ground made that particularly difficult - though him visibly struggling might have been for the best.

“What do you have to say for yourself, young man?” she frowned mightily. Not quite as much as Gobsmack could though, Amir thought.

“That I need to thank you for catching me before I could commit a worse mistake,” Amir said. “And naturally, that I apologize for the one I have already committed. With that in mind, I would now like to ask under what circumstances it would be possible for me to use these rats.”

“You are unbelievable,” she shook her head, though a slight grin slipped onto her lips. “Fine. You know the old shed?”

“The storage space that sometimes comes up?” Amir had indeed heard of it from some of the workers that had been around for longer. It was not part of the building but supposedly not so far away.

“The workshops there are still probably good enough to use for experiments if you clear out the random junk,” she spoke, sitting down - which looked somewhat awkward given she had been standing on top of a chair that was taller than her. “Keep the rats there, you can just walk over after you finish with the scroll work. When you experiment, use our safe procedures for biological materials - especially put up a proper sign at the door. You are responsible that nothing rots and run a full sanitation routine when you are done.”

“Thank you, I am truly grateful,” Amir said, finally daring to straighten his back.

“You better be,” she scoffed with an exaggerated huff. “Now scurry on.”

“I will, uhm… need directions,” Amir said and shuffled his legs to approach.

“Stop! Wait for me outside! I don’t want the rodent possibly having an accident any closer to my desk.”

----------------------------------------

It took Amir a full two days to reinvent his spell into a wheel - changing moon symbology into sun sounded simple at a glance but it still gave him a headache. He also still required sustenance and sleep which further slowed down his progress. After some consideration he ended up producing two scrolls with slight variations he could not decide between before going out to test them.

While the ‘old shed’ - as the workshop turned storage space was called - remained full of dusty old tools and unperishable cheap materials, he had managed to dig out a workable room. It had probably been a forge of some kind, except the kiln and anvil had been moved out, leaving gaping holes in the room’s arrangement. What remained was a sturdy work bench and a blast shield. Amir would need that - he could not bring the exceptionally expensive alchemical glass out with him from the main workshop.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The rats were already visibly starved and dehydrated by then. Which, in a way, was a good thing. The room smelled very vaguely of urine unlike when he left but at least he could not smell the feces. Double checking his specimens, he had to do a double take: Of the ten he had brought two had already died and been literally nibbled down to a skeleton, leaving behind a bloody stain.

Reconsidering taking one in hand, he went back, rummaging around the old workshop and eventually found a thick leather glove that would fit him. Then he had third thoughts and went to look around the street, returning some 15 minutes later with a second, smaller cage. The logistics hopefully done with, he moved the large cage to the corner of the room, put on the leather glove, and then moved one rat into the smaller cage on the main bench - he picked one that still looked reasonably energetic despite its ragged appearance. Finally, he marked it with a bit of red powder he had prepared - it would help tremendously with actually targeting the rodent.

Using the scroll would be a bit tricky overall - he couldn’t do it straight through the blast shield since that would interfere with it. Still, he needed to jump right behind it in case his prior accidents were not caused by bread and therefore were not unusual results - being covered by blood would be quite awkward to deal with. With everything ready though, he finally chanted:

“The ravage of time

of things beyond prime

for moments few

emerge untrue.”

The rodent perked up, looking around its new cage in confusion. Over a few seconds, its body regained some heft, making it look no longer so skeletal. Its fur, even beneath all the filth, seemed a bit fuller, more colourful. Healthier. Amir could not help but smile as his spell finally worked.

Then it rolled over, started squeaking, writhed for a few moments… and presumably died. A complete lack of motion did tend to indicate that.

Not too surprised nor discouraged, Amir took note of what he could improve in his method. Firstly, he went out again to get a bucket of water. The next rat he briefly washed, then made a very improvised drier for it - just transferring a bit of air pressure from one side of the cage to the other, creating a bit of wind. It looked sickly grey, fur visibly paled, frame thin. He replaced the deceased one with it.

Cleaning the specimen made the effect much more tangible. The bleached gray became darker, the frame fuller. It became more energetic, running around its cage as if surprised. Nonetheless, the rat still died in a very similar fashion in the end.

Amir still decided that the second spell was on a better track as the death occurred after approximately twice as long. Nodding to himself, he took notes. Besides the data itself and possible fault points still existent within the spell, he also wrote down to get an hourglass - proper watch was probably a bit too expensive for his needs - as well as a few other observations.

Then he looked back down at the remaining rats. He had no real idea how to care for them and the 6 remaining would likely not survive until his next batch. After some thought, he took them to an alley next to the old workshop and just let them free, disposing of the two skeletons in the meantime. After that he returned, realized he still had two dead rats, and went back to throw them out in the same alley.

Satisfied with the results, Amir planned. Things were, however, looking up for him.