Hint

Hint was growing nicely, and becoming more than she was before made her feel good. Growing into the side of a great and feared mountain was precisely as it should be. Whichever inter-cosmic entity chose this as her home clearly had her best interests in mind.

Mathew was eating away at the stone that encased her like a prison. The irony wasn't lost on her, but she kept the laughter to herself. Harper became vexed at Hint's constant babble. Regardless, Hint followed behind her co-owner, expanding her presence into the void he opened. The rules that Leternum used to constrain her existence were reasonably intuitive. Enclosed spaces connected to the central room. The expansion cost some of her stored energy but that was little compared to her overflowing coffers.

While becoming grander and more defended appeased some instinct within Hint, she had a passion for something more. That itch was being scratched by the rest of the inmate's activities. Harper working on growing reagents while practicing her apothecary skill. Amber tuning her bow and practicing against a simple wooden target. Ben studying any extra books he could. Not one of them committed a crime!

Hint would be the best prison for adventurers! It was almost a shame that no one had committed a crime yet. She wanted very much to show off how good a prison she was.

Often Hint would experience something close to boredom. As always, she turned to her tasks.

[Accounting ~ daily

Storage 247/250

Overflow 624 used

  -450 basement

  -76 water heater experiment

  -76 other experiments

  -10 water generation

  -10 waste disposal

  -2 Gracie]

While Hint was happy with her progress, she continued to make plans for more. All the focus of the inmates on combat was, well, a shift in thought. It made sense. Violent adventurers would need a release for their aggression. So her initial intentions of becoming a premiere resort prison had to be adjusted. Still, the lack of inmate on inmate violence, barring clear mutual training, gave her hope of success.

Having completed her circuit of things to do Hint shifted her awareness to spend time with Gracie. A simple thing Gracie would never become more than a simple animal. All the same, she was an excellent pet and had the protective mothering instincts of a sow. Hint spent time just petting the stubby mane of the pig and contemplating her future greatness.

Wistfully Hint drew away, duty calls.

Spending so much time watching the inmates working at their chosen hobby made Hint wonder if she could have one. Not a hobby but a Leternum recognized skill. For that was the level of achievement all the inmates put on their hobbies.

What type of skill would she like?

The ability to build as her first owner does was built into her existence. She was limited by the power available and imagination rather than lacking skill.

Art, Hint had inherited a love for art from her creator. Images coming to life in color and shape, memories that weren't truly hers, showed her what could be. With this in mind, Hint added an art room to her list of experiments.

Lowering her mind into the basement, Hint observed one of her experiments. The mouse-like creature sported three tails, each barbed with a stinger.

It had snuck into her domain in the dark of night, through the cracks that marred her front wall. Horror of varmints infesting her prison swelled through her and she actually dipped into the storage to trap the creature.

Dipping into storage was against Hint's own standing policy. Being ever ready for her co-owners was something she felt a compulsion to achieve.

After capturing its feet in stone and lowering that slab of stone into the basement, Hint began to harvest all the worth she could from the pest.

Each stinger was molded into a series of narrow stone tubing. Each led to a stone bottle Hint had expanded like blowing a bubble. Without air within, they drew a vacuum against the stinger and withdrew poison with the aid of gravity.

The experiment would expire without proper care. Tapping into her hibernation allowed Hint to extend the experiment. No wasted energy on being awake and scared anymore. Content with her uncaring efficiency, Hint moved along.

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

Harper

Grinding away at the yellow moss within the mortar, Harper felt changes on a different layer. The layer was symbolic for lack of a better word, a sense she received from her skill. The parts of the moss that attracted insects to the tree faded while the bonding aspect was enhanced.

Adding nectar from a vase-shaped flower, Harper hoped to enhance the symbiotic nature each part possessed.

The mixture began to thicken. As a thick gel, the yellow and amber, turned orange.

Scan.

[Proto-vital Gel

Alchemical component. Proto-vital gel is a precursor to vital aligned constructs. This gel is best utilized as a glue agent or allowed to condense into a blood draw gem. This gel can perform as any other proto-vital source with 76% efficiency.]

Writing notes into the tablet of the process, Harper straightened her back. Sore muscles protested, so she walked them out. Days of banging her head against the wall of making a cure of Grant with nothing to show for it.

She was too hard on herself. Expecting herself to whip out a solution to his sickness against the curtain of ignorance without tools and training was unrealistic. Still, Harper felt terrible as her contribution always seemed to lag behind. Plus, anyone being unwell pulled on her heartstrings.

No, the task of learning alchemy and apothecary wasn't something she could be expected to perform well. As Harper understood it her newest skill alchemy, was about extracting the concept from an ingredient and turning the product into something entirely different from what it was before.

Usually, she'd develop an alchemy product when converting something into a solid. Though she'd also made an awful quality medical pill of mating by concentrating a reagent over a fire. That was governed by apothecary, which was a lot more like traditional chemistry and medicine. Though maybe simplistic by comparison. Clearly, the skills worked together because some things you refined with alchemy would be ingredients to a potion. While some chemicals that gave her a level up in apothecary would be used as an alchemical component.

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Writing everything down gave her a map of tests and results to work with. Looking it over as she had time, Harper began to find patterns. The combination of grounded science with intuition and art reminded Harper of her job.

After the incident, she couldn't work reliably. Being around people reliably and staying functional just wasn't in the cards. So instead, she turned to digital art to pay the bills. The interaction of math with feeling to make good art fascinated her. From the golden ratio to more obscure geometry tools, there was a pattern to follow for really hitting the mark. This work had the same feel.

Turning back to the gel, it had condensed into a dodecahedron. A crystal bleeding red light into the mortar.

Scan.

[Meager Blood Draw Gem

A gem that overrides health effects against blood loss within an area. Area of effect: 3 inches]

Picking up the gem, she wanted to do a blood draw on Grant right away. Should I ask Ben first? He really isn't a relative to Grant. And Grant was entrusted into our care.

Harper held the gem and grabbed a glass knife Amber had made for her. It was wrapped in the hide of a bright tail deer and chipped into an edge that cut cleanly.

Entering the main area, Harper realized she had planned on cutting someone. Even with her magic depleted, a mild panic set in. Less than she'd had in the past but far worse than any time since cleaning the boar in the transition. Healing and improving hadn't cured her yet. Clenching her fists, Harper used the sensation to ground her in the here and now. Smooth leather with ridges as the wrappings overlaped. A few deep breaths later and she was back to herself.

Looking around, Amber was fletching some more arrows and Ben and Mathew were outside. No one noticed her. The relief fell away as soon as she realized she'd have to ask for help, and that would lead to explaining why.

"Hey Amber?" Harper started softly.

"Yeah hun?" Amber looked up with her piercing blue eyes.

"Can you help me with a blood draw?" Harper raised the glass knife and grimaced. "You know dark ages style."

Amber set down her work on the crude stone table Mathew put together.

"Okay, what'cha need?" Amber asked.

"I've crafted this new stone that will allow us to draw blood despite health. I just need help with actually drawing the blood." Harper took a deep breath. "Remember how I said I have panic attacks? This is too close to those memories for me." Please don't hate me for asking this.

"Let's get to it then. Unless you need me to do it without you?" Amber replied.

"No, I can be with you." It'd suck, but there was no way she wouldn't be here to provide support. Handing over the knife and gem over took the remainder of her panic with them. "Thank you."

"So what we putting it into?" Amber looked around.

"Ah, here." Harper walked to a wall and built a stone tank as a tiny adjacent room. It was a slim built-in liquid storage tank with the inside dimensions of a vial. Supported by the thinnest stem of stone she could craft, a slight twist was all she needed to have it freed.

Handing the vial over, Harper waited.

Amber raised the hide up the older man's arm. His veins stood out against his wiry muscles, speaking of a life of work. Picking a spot on the meaty backside of his forearm Amber made a single quick cut. Skin parted but nothing else happened.

Raising the blood draw gem to the wound caused red and white blood to flow down his arm.

"That don't look right." Amber's face scrunched up with disgust.

Dripping down his middle finger into the vial, blood and something offensive collected until it was almost full. Amber took the stone away, cutting off the flow of blood.

Harper had worried that it would be a constant dripping wound after being affected by the stone.

Taking the vial, Harper tried scan.

[Tainted Blood

Increase skill to learn more]

Well, it had been worth the try. Harper jammed a wood plug into the mouth of the vial.

"Thank you." Harper cringe-smiled at Amber.

"Hey, ya know you can open up if you want to?" Amber compassion was firm rather than simply kind. An oddity that Harper wasn't opposed to.

"Yeah, thank you." Harper nodded.

Taking the vial of blood back to her room, Harper started making plans to test the blood in as many different ways as possible.

After boiling dry and before mixing with the mild acid she'd made, Harper thought about separating the components.

Hint how did Amber manage the wheels things on her bow?

They are called cams Warden. I'm not sure I understand your question.

They spin. How did she manage to design that?

Hint sent her a mental picture of the process. It was just a misshapen disk on a spindle and nothing to give them the ability to rotate the speeds Harper wanted.

Thank you Hint.

A centrifuge had to rotate quickly to cause the heaver things to settle to the bottom. Harper had only used one a few times in a chemistry class. But the safety lecture made it clear that they spun at ridiculous speeds for a decent amount of time. Labs had seemed so dull at the time. Now a man's life was on the line. Huh, that's probably how life was before the red wave and she was just never a part of it.

Growling in frustration, Harper checked her notes. Again she came across the solution she'd rejected time and time again. Nothing about how to make lab equipment, go figure. If she lived the 237 years to get abducted again, she'd remember to bring along a library including how everything works.

After boiling blood down to a scabby mess that didn't respond to her scan skill, Harper stepped away. Getting a drink of water and taking a break, she needed a reset.

"Hey, nice to see you, stranger," Amber grinned. "Find anything?"

"Nothing yet. I've mixed everything I've already made into the sample with no noteworthy reactions." Harper sighed. "I wish I had a centrifuge. The idea keeps eating at me and I can't let it go. It makes me think it's my skill kicking in."

"We might be able to make up one for you." Amber started gesturing animatedly. "When we, that's me and my folks, were on a mission trip, there was this doctor. No power, not even running water and he had to check blood for parasites. Used this disk on a pair of strings to spin a tiny sample. I don't know if it'll separate what you are looking for but we can try."

Just like that, her hopeless frustration gave way to having an option. I really need to spend more time with people. Her panic events had only been a problem a few times since the red wave hit. She should face her fears and try to engage with people.

How did I ever think I'd be some quest giving Hubmaster.

Working with Harper, they put together a design for a primitive centrifuge. The webbing would be the string pair. And they just had to modify a disk that didn't make the cut for the compound bow. It'd have been much easier with Mathew to remove material but Amber's tools covered the gap.

Slots for the vials, they had to use a second one to balance the weight. Two leather straps held them to the disk. Some pull handles later and they were looking at a device.

Maybe it'd do the job, maybe it wouldn't. It'd be hard to call it a centrifuge if it didn't actually do the job. Slotting the blood and a vial of water into place and tying the leather they got to work.

The basic problem was that this was designed to work with a paper wheel and tiny samples. Much lighter than their prototype. To compensate for that, they'd made it bigger.

Jamming one pull handle into a hook on the wall, they started taking turns powering the device. It was a full-body workout. Leaning against the cord as hard as they could when the strings unwound and letting up pressure when it started to rewind.

After maybe ten minutes, Harper was sweating and puffing. Amber took over and kept at it for another twenty or so.

Was half an hour long enough to separate the mixture?

With trepidation, Harper spoke up. "Okay, let's try it."

Taking the vial back to her room Harper undid the stopper. Pure white had risen to the top. With a calming breath, she tipped it into a bowl. All the while spamming willpower into her scan skill.

[Visracks poison

This natural potion-grade substance causes vivid mental illusions. Limited self-replication using hosts willpower. The illusion power it generates is used by symbiont monsters to track down affected prey.

Increase skill to learn more.]

Ha! Now they knew what they were dealing with. Finally, Harper would be able to contribute something of worth. Tears dripped down her face. Relief from the tension that found its way out.

[New skill awarded Apothecary 5. Apothecary 5 overrides apothecary 4.]

That was a perk level.

[Apothecary ~ perk tier one

Quantity - Generate 5% more output for the same input ingredients

Quality - All results have a 5% increase in effectiveness

Variety - Greater ease in sensing and drawing out secondary attributes]

Selecting variety Harper threw herself into her notes and reagents. She wasn't done with this work yet. This time the confidence her magic lent her felt earned. It was a more solid confidence. It was hers by right, not just by circumstance. With fire lit in her room and in her heart Harper returned to work fatigue forgotten.