The first sign that anything was happening wasn’t a vision from the heavens or a bolt from the blue. Instead, it was a loud gurgle in Lucas’ stomach accompanied by a sudden jolt of queasiness. That wasn’t so unusual in his experience. Lots of drugs were accompanied by nausea, and he wasn’t the least bit surprised that the foul, oily brew he’d just had inspired a similar effect.
The dread that overcame him in the moments that followed was less expected. It started as a feeling that wasn’t so different, but as he sat there, he felt a crushing weight upon him. It was like he’d caught the gaze of something huge and terrible, and as his heart raced, his fear only grew. It wasn’t like he could run from it, though. His muscles were starting to stiffen, and he could feel his hands distantly clenching into fists as his eyelids drifted shut. With effort, Lucas forced them open again, trying to resist the effects of what he’d just taken, even though he knew that was useless.
You buy the ticket, you ride the ride, he told himself, noticing the tracers caused by moving his head ever so slightly.
His eyes tried to close again, even as his pupils started to dilate, and the room grew brighter. He resisted, though, and instead of being consumed by darkness, the world slowly dissolved into light. Lucas would have fought that if he could, but instead, he sort of fell into it as his brain slowly turned to mush in his skull.
Even then, he didn’t feel afraid. Whatever this trip was, he’d had worse. He believed that even as he slowly came to in a vivid hallucination. He’d left behind the real world, But that wasn’t where he found himself when his brain started to work fitfully once more. Now, he was sitting in the impressionistic watercolor version of a world. Stranger still, he was sitting at a small table with a pot of tea and two cups. There was no one in the seat across from him, though.
There was someone walking toward him, he realized belatedly. It was a tall, slender woman, but at first, he had trouble picking her out of the forest background behind her. That is a background, isn’t it? He wondered as he squinted.
In the end, by the time she reached the table, he couldn’t decide. Part of him was sure it was just a forest with some kind of heat shimmer effect, and other times, the whole thing seemed attached to her like the tail of a particularly outlandish peacock. It was hard to say. It might have been both or neither, and as she stood there smiling at him, he staggered to his feet.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” she said cooly. “The first human to reach out to me in a thousand years, and he doesn’t even have basic manners.”
It took Lucas’s addled brain only a few moments to realize she was expecting him to pull her chair out for her. For anyone else, he would have told them to do it themselves, but the effects on the vial had said Goddess, with a capital G, so he was even less inclined to test her than he was to test Skylara.
He hurriedly moved to her side of the table and pulled it out. Then, when she sat, he helped her push it back in. He was halfway back to his own chair before he realized he probably should have poured them both tea first.
“It is alright,” she said. “You aren’t really from around here, are you? I shall be lenient with you on account of our differences.”
“How do you know that?” Lucas blurted out.
That made the woman laugh. “I am a Goddess, Lucas. I see through you the way you might browse through a book, and if I might say so, so far, you make for a thrilling adventure, I wonder how the ending will turn out.”
“So then you know that I’ve been trying to make—” he asked, feeling a rising dread.
“An elixir of power meant only for my own high priests, and that you use a bastardized form of it to make money?” she asked. “Or that you are doing so in ever stronger varieties so that you can appease a particularly mean-spirited dragoness?”
“Both,” he admitted lamely, wondering if she was about to smite him for his insolence.
“Did you know that the reason she seeks the sacred spirit of Lwynthenll is so that she can challenge me to single combat and become a Goddess herself as she devours my still beating heart?” The Goddess answered entirely too cheerfully. “She’s been at it for, well, centuries so far, and you are by far the closest she’s come in a long time?”
“I’m sorry?” he said, not sure what else to say as he shook his head to try to clear it of the fog it was encased in.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, picking up the teapot and pouring both of them a glass of tea. “She’s only ever had the fake stuff anyway, so if you just keep making what you're making, that should satisfy her for a long, long time to come.”
“Fake stuff?” he asked, “If the elves know how to make the real shit, then why would they ever make something like Blue.”
“Real shit,” she smirked. “I love that. I think I will keep it. It is real shit.”
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“None of that is important,” she answered. “I do not think you have put your soul at risk to have a conversation about elven mating customs and mortal weaknesses.”
“My soul?” he asked dumbly.
“Yes, I could snuff it out, even by accident. Mortal souls are fragile things, and a human soul is far weaker than an elven one,” she said with a shrug. “But I will try to behave. Now, drink your tea before you get cold.”
Before you get cold, not before the tea gets cold? He wondered, but he said nothing. He’d already resolved to ask no more stupid questions. The problem was he hadn’t come here with any good questions in mind. He hadn’t even believed that it would work, and how he was here looking like an asshole.
He gazed around the area, observing the indistinct and ever-shifting natural forms that surrounded them, and finally, he asked as he reached for his teacup, “What about the system… the pop-up windows I keep getting. Can you explain to me why alchemy is so broken?”
“System? Windows?” she asked, “Ah, your talent. I see. Elves handle this somewhat differently than humans, but to me, it is clear that you handle it even more differently than most of them.”
“Yes…” she said to herself as she looked at him with unfocused eyes. “This is all very clumsy. I can see why you have had such hardship.”
“What do you mean?” Lucas asked.
“I mean, your soul is connected improperly with your body and, therefore, your mind,” she answered. “They are compatible, but only barely. As to the alchemy, well, I am not the Goddess of alchemists.”
“Well, elves use alchemy, right? Can you tell me—” he started to ask.
“This is what a talent might look like to another human. Here is the interface for your friend, the tailor,” She handed him a scroll, which struck Lucas as odd, but when he unrolled it, he found much the same information as his windows generally showed. Attributes. Abilities. Skills. It was all the same thing, his just had more illumination.
It also has a lot more killing, he thought, as he noticed the man had a long list of violent achievements. As soon as Lucas realized his tailor was basically a retired assassin, he rolled the scroll back up and decided he didn’t want to see anymore. Getting on the wrong side of a level nine murderer was clearly a bad idea.
“Okay, so he sees the same things I do, but when he kills people or whatever, his experience goes up, right?” Lucas asked.
“It does,” she agreed. “But when he makes you a shirt, he gets nothing for that because he is not a tailor. In the same way, you get nothing for killing someone, only for making potions and learning about alchemy.”
“But only those that are on the approved list,” he agreed sullenly, putting the pieces together.
“Exactly,” she agreed. “I can see the problem. It's because of this fallacious concept that you have in your mind that you call chemistry.”
“There’s nothing wrong with chemistry,” he shot back, feeling that little jolt of anger as it brought him back to life even more than the tea he was sipping.
“Dare you to tell a Goddess she is incorrect?” There was still a smile on the elf woman’s lips, but it was an icy one. She definitely did not enjoy that.
“Chemistry was good enough to get me here, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Magic is all fun and games, but science is what let me get here with some trial and error.”
“It has, I suppose,” she sighed, relaxing a hair. “It is something that has never been accomplished before. I will grant you that. Perhaps it is a technique of some use, but what does your chemistry have to do with alchemy?”
“Well, according to my, uhmmm… talent, it says that only certain recipes work and the rest of them are all junk, even if they work,” he said, trying not to step on her toes again.
“There are exactly 8,002 recognized listed alchemy recipes that a mortal such as yourself might craft,” she agreed, “From a lowly healing potion all the way to Lwynthenll and the Transcendental Elixir of Immortality.”
“So there’s only one way to make a healing potion?” he asked, noting that his cup was starting to reach the bottom. Though he wasn’t sure quite why, that instilled a sense of urgency in him. He was sure that it was a signal his time was running out.
“There are eight recipes to make a healing potion,” she corrected him.
“Well, I’ve made like thirty already, and I’ve only been at this for a couple of years. They’ve all worked. They’ve all healed people,” he declared, with a little more defiance than was probably healthy. “So that’s pretty much bullshit if you ask me.”
“Real shit, bull shit… it’s all shit to you, isn’t it, Mister Human,” she smiled as she set her cup down. “Still, I have heard your plea, and though it is inappropriate, I think it would be fun to see what you can come up with. Sadly, the potion you have made is not strong enough for me to grant you a boon. Our connection is incomplete.”
“I’m sorry, what boon?” he asked, trying to resist the rising feeling of dizziness that was making it hard to focus on her.
“Your strange chemistry,” she said, acting like she was repeating herself to a child. “A Potion of Lesser Communion is simply for advice. An elder may craft one once and come to me with a question. To drink it a second time would be a deadly poison, so those elves that do often meditate for years or decades before they come to me.”
“That would have been helpful to know,” Lucas grumbled.
“But to actually do something? To touch you without snuffing you out and fix the thing inside you that’s broken?” She hadn’t moved or changed expressions, but even so, Lucas found it difficult to follow what she was saying. “To do that, you will require a Potion of Greater Communion…”
“Yeahhh, but how do I do thattt?” he asked, slurring his words.
“You’re so close,” she answered with another laugh,l pulling a strand of hair out of her face as she slowly dissolved into a watercolor mess. “One ingredient is just a bit off and… well, you’ll probably figure it out on your own. No hints! For a human, you are very clever…”
Lucas didn’t have time to consider her words. Instead, as he fell from that strange dream sequence, he plunged back into the greasy, sickened body; all he could do was stagger onto the floor and crawl to the chamber pot before he wretched his guts out.