The first thing Lucas did was borrow Hardcore’s iron cap. As it turned out, the cheap helmet hid a nasty head wound, but Lucas just wiped the inside clean with his shirt, and then he added the mushrooms and the brandy. He’d taken to carry them as his own private cyanide capsule after the last time someone had tried to force his secret recipe out of him, so they were clearly toxic. If he wanted this orc to stay breathing for even a few minutes, he was going to have to leach some of that poison out. “Oh, sir dwarf, might I borrow your fire starter and a pinch of pipeweed?” Lucas asked next. If he was going to leach the poison from the main ingredient, he might as well do so from the second most toxic ingredient as well.
“Only if ye’ be tellin’ me why ye’ need me stash,” the dwarf answered with exactly the sort of stinginess that so typified his kind.
“Okay,” Lucas said, clearing his throat. “The short short version goes like this. Every herb and mineral in this big magic world of yours has properties. They all do something. If you prepare them right, they do that something better, and if you combine them right, they can do some crazy shit. Pipeweed dulls the intellect and has some strength, but mostly, it just makes you feel real good. I need every last thing that can give our boy here a little boost, you know what I’m saying?”
Grudgingly, the dwarf handed over the things Lucas needed. He got to work, crushing and mixing the pipeweed and redcaps in the bowl with a stick until it was a mix of red and brown. After that, he handed it to the orc and said, “Hold this for a minute while I build a fire.”
“Why can’t I just drink it now?” Hura'gh asked.
“Because it’s not at full potency, you big lug, and it’s still got all sorts of toxins in it,” Lucas sighed. “Like… just let me do my job, please. I promise I won’t tell you how to bend bars when it’s your turn…”
Alchemical Mixture (8 doses): Poison 13, strength 5, euphoria 4, intelligence -3, dexterity -1. Those who devour or imbibe redcaps have a 30% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.
Honestly, they were going to need every advantage they could get. He was going to let that brandy sit for at least half an hour before he dumped it out. He needed to because right now, they weren’t creating a strength potion. They were creating a murder potion.
The only question was whether it would kill the person foolish enough to drink it before they killed everyone in sight, and Lucas wasn’t having that. It wasn’t just that he was more professional than that, either. He was trapped in a cage with the guy who was going to be drinking this, and he didn’t really want to get ripped to bloody shreds.
While his goo marinated, he collected enough dry straw and scraps of wood for the next portion and built what would become a tiny campfire just outside their cramped cell. Then, after half an hour of waiting and telling everyone to chill the hell out, he dumped the poisonous fluid out and ground up the widower’s root inside his mixture, turning it from a smooth maroon to a chunky brown that was pretty much the opposite of appetizing.
Alchemical Mixture (5 doses): Poison 8, strength 7, euphoria, 2, endurance, 1 intelligence -2. Those who devour or imbibe redcaps have a 15% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.
Still, it did improve the stats. They were definitely going in the right direction. That was good because they were only going to have one shot at this.
Lucas spent the next half hour roasting his helmet full of gunk over a very low flame. Everyone, including him, complained about the smell, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was just part of alchemy.
The heating step was the most important part of most potions. With some mixtures, it was transformative, but with others, like this, it was merely an amplifier. The longer he heated it, the more of the lesser properties were burned away, and the stronger the main properties got.
He watched as the intelligence component blinked out of existence, followed by the endurance one as well. It was only when euphoria started to decline that he pulled it off the heat and let the bubbling mixture cool.
Doing this shit with one hand was hard, but doing it with lousy ingredients was even harder. Lucas’s only consolation was that he wasn’t the one who was going to have to drink it.
Toxic potion of Strength (3 doses): Poison 10, strength 10. Those who imbibe this potion have a 10% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.
“Alright. Now that this is done, I say we—” Lucas started to tell everyone the plan, and the door at the top of the stairs began to creak open.
His blood froze solid in his veins as he realized that a guard was coming. “Act natural,” he hissed as he looked for the right spot to hide the helmet. Honestly, hiding it was the worst idea because if they searched the cells, then the guards would know it was important.
So, acting on instinct, he wedged Hardcore’s helmet between the unconscious man’s hands so it looked like he’d thrown up more than anything. Lucas wasn’t entirely sure that the metal had cooled enough not to burn the man, but then he wasn’t entirely sure that he was alive either, so it balanced out.
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In the end, his cautiousness had been for nothing anyway. The squinty-eyed guard stayed only long enough to deliver a few moldy loaves and replace the torch before he walked back up the stairs.
“Wait, it’s not true, is it?” Lucas called, pretending to panic. “You’re not really going to execute us tomorrow, are you? I’ll talk! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
The guard’s only response was to laugh as he closed and barred the door at the top of the tiny dungeon, but that was okay because that’s exactly what the prisoners were doing. The guard could only hear the faux panic in Lucas’s voice, but his fellow prisoners could see the ridiculously exaggerated expressions he was making as he mocked the man.
After that, they all ate their meager portion, and Lucas gave their orc-blooded friend Hardcore’s share while he discussed the plan again. They were going to wait for the bell to ring midnight, then they were going to break out and make for the gate. If it was shut, then they’d go over the wall, but Lucas felt pretty good about their odds. It was better than a coin flip. They’d get free, so long as their muscle didn’t keel over in the first five minutes from the poison that Lucas was going to feed him.
It was only then after Lord Parin was at least a little convinced that this plan had the possibility of succeeding, that he finally shared his story with them. Well, they all reclined in their hole, waiting for the bell to ring the appointed hour. He told them all the sordid tale of how he’d cock blocked the Prince.
“If the man had set his eyes on one of my servants, or perhaps even a cousin, I could have looked the other way,” the noble explained. “But my sister? What was I supposed to do? Such a liaison would be out of the question. After all, her virtue, her prospects…”
“That’s fucked up,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “The man sounds like a little bitch to me. If I were you I’d beat his ass.”
“Well, that would certainly be one way to end up in the dungeon, which I did my very best to avoid. Instead, what I did was—” the viscount started to say, but Lucas interrupted him.
“See - you shoulda fucked him up!” he said with a laugh. “The result was the same, but it would have been worth it!”
“Perhaps, but it only took him a few weeks to decide that we were defrauding the crown by using grazing lands that belong to him without paying,” Lord Parin sighed. “Even now, he’d almost certainly let me out if I agreed, but… I just can’t. Not with such an entitled reprobate hiding behind his father’s good name. I wrote a letter to the magistrate, but it probably never reached him.”
“Dude sounds like a little bitch to me,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “You want to square up, and I got your back once my hand heals, of course.” It was an easy thing to say because the young noble was soft as cheese and had obviously never been in a fight in his life, which wasn’t a lot less than Lucas had been in.
He was still annoyed when their muscle laughed at that, though. “Have you ever been in a fight, Lucas?” the half-orc laughed.
“Man, how do you think I get a face like this without taking a couple beat downs,” Lucas asked, pointing. People laughed at that too, but this time it was funny, and not because he looked like a weakling.
He knew that this body wasn’t much. It was even weaker than his real body had been, and he hadn’t won any Mister Universe awards then either, but he was scrappy, and he’d give as good as he got unless the guys doing the giving happened to be guards wearing chain mail just waiting to kick his face in. Then he’d curl up in a ball after they cornered him in an alley and hope that they didn’t break anything important.
“Did you win your last fight, at least?” Hura'gh asked as he chuckled.
“Fuck no!” Lucas yelled, “If I did, why would I be in here with you. The one before that was pretty tight, though. No one called the guards, so…”
His words trailed off as he heard the distant bell tower of the city’s church begin to ring in the distance. “...but that’s a story for after we’re out of here. I’ll tell you all over drinks down at my second favorite rathole.”
Lucas reached over, picked up the now cooled gray slime, and noticed that the two layers had mostly settled out. This hole was hardly a real lab, but as he very gently poured out the clear layer into the flask before emptying the sludge layer back on the ground, he was satisfied. No one could have done better with the tools on hand. He was just glad that few people had the identify skill to see this, or his well-muscled friend would have definitely balked at what came next.
Toxic potion of Strength (2 doses): Poison 7, strength 9. Those who imbibe this potion have a 5% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.
With a smile, he slapped the helmet back on the Hardcore and passed the flask to Hura'gh. “Alright, man, drink up!”
“You sure this is safe?” The half-orc asked hesitantly. “It smells like vomit.”
“The worse a medicine tastes, the more effective it is. That’s what my mama taught me, and that’s just the way it is,” Lucas said, sidestepping the question. “I’d drink it to prove the point, but given how weak I am compared to you, it would kinda defeat the purpose, you know?”
Hura'gh gave him a hard look and then downed the flask in a single go. Drinking both doses was probably a little overkill, but it was what it was. Better him than me, Lucas thought as their muscle dropped the flask and staggered a bit as he rose to his feet.
“I feel… I feel…” the half-orc said as he flexed his hands and gave Lucas just enough time to worry about that the berserk effect had triggered. “Strong.”
“Like I said, man,” Lucas sighed. “No trust these days. Jeeezz. Now bust us out of here before the shit wears off!”
Hura'gh leered at him with a crazed look in his eyes and then turned toward the door and smiled.