It had been a few days ago that Tulos had walked in on him and Sancta with a crate of ‘love potions’ and a wicked grin on his face.
“What in the world are those?” Sancta had asked.
“Oh, that’s no fun, why not guess?”
“I would, but judging by the look on your face, brother, they’re nothing good.”
“Well you’ll be figuring out what these actually are in a moment, won’t you?”
Sancta rolled her eyes, “As if I have much time for things like that.”
“Oh, I think you will. After all, if these potions are what the vendor said they are, they could be pretty useful for the war game you just joined.”
Sancta raised an eyebrow, arms crossed. Dreiki had already picked one of them out of the crates, “These look like they’re meant to be love potions.” He said.
“Ding! Ding! Ding! That’s Noxa boy two points, Sancta a big fat zero.”
“Two points?” Sancta fumed.
“Oh, I heard about your little disagreement with him. He’s smarter than he looks, eh? Found one of good stock it seems.”
Dreiki disliked the way they talked about him as if he was not in the same room. He learned to view it as banter, though. There was no malice in their words, even if they were instead filled with ignorance.
“Yes, he is rather well read, though I suppose being born weaker leaves you to invest in other endeavors. Even one such as myself would not be threatened by him in a fight.” Sancta said proudly.
“Ahhhh So he is smarter than you,” Tulos jabbed.
“He is not!”
“You wouldn’t be bringing up your strength as a fighter if he wasn’t” Tulos mused.
“Do you want my help or not?”
Tulos snickered, “Relax, relax, just a bit of banter is all. You always get so worked up!” A sharp grin peeled over his face, “Figure out how these work and if they work at all. These things are weapons more than anything else and they deserve to be used as much. Fill me in on the details, and we’ll all brainstorm on how to make the best use of them. Deal?”
Sancta sighed, “I suppose that’s agreeable. It gives me something to do which isn’t healing some idiot’s wounds for the millionth time.”
As it turns out, those potions had been the genuine article, but according to Tulos they had been falsely advertised. Love potions were psychedelics for the soul and poison for the body. There was no romantic infatuation or sexual attraction which came from a love potion.
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As Dreiki recalled, they could charm someone into being more agreeable to others. They had no target because everyone they saw was a target. Anyone could tell them to do something, and they would do it without question as if their lover told them to do it. They could still say no to things, but the potions had an effect which made it hurt to disobey a command from someone. Not in a physical way, but in a way that disappointing someone might. After the potion took effect it became humiliating to disobey someone else’s command.
The reason it was called a love potion was likely because of how bad actors enjoyed using the potion. If it was humiliating to say no, then it was a lot easier to get them to agree to something they might not want. It was used to manipulate people until they developed something adjacent to love.
But they had other uses, such as incapacitating a combatant. It calmed people, relaxed their muscles, and made it very difficult to fight. If they could find a way to coat their weapons with it, or put it in food they could say something along the lines of ‘Let me cut your horns’ and that would be all they needed.
Of course, the potions effects could be resisted by people who possessed anti-poison magic. Blood boil in Dreiki’s case. Water magic users were also capable of slowing poison until their livers filtered it out properly. Life users were pretty much immune to most poison, and wind users could resist airborne poisons, but they could not resist anything ingested.
Other than that, every other elemental type had no answer to poison as far as Dreiki could theorize. It just so happened those elements were also the ones weilded by the majority of the biggest threats in Deka’s army. On the first night, Dreiki and Sancta had tried to figure out ideas of how to use the potions.
Sancta had come up with a way of turning them into vapor, which was useful for quick application. It might have reduced the potency of the concoction, but they did not need them to last very long. It also would give wind users a chance to resist it, but there was a possibility they could apply the potion to them in a different way. Since the potions were not water-based, it was possible to turn them into some sort of oil which could be applied to blades and other weapons. But there was one thing that came to Dreiki’s mind, “Could you perhaps replicate the potion with your magic?” He had asked Sancta one night.
“I anticipate there’s a possibility that I might be able to, but replicating potions is difficult even for me. It requires a deep an complex understanding of the mixtures in order to summon them, and it takes a lot of magical power away to do.”
“Then what if you found a method of storing potions? Snakes have hollow teeth, so perhaps if you made a branch or bone to act like a snake tooth?”
Sancta grimaced. It was the same face she always made when he had a good idea, “Such a vulgar tactic to reduce my magic to the savage nature of a snake bite. But I suppose it is as effective as it is brutal. I’ll consider it.”
Once they had made their potions, all that was left was a plan on how to use them. They decided to contribute the potions to help in shattering the morale of the other team. The ‘love bombs’ could sow more than enough chaos in their ranks if not complete incapacitate large portions of able-bodied fighters at a time. If they could put their leaders under the effects of the love potions for even a minute, they could easily sever their horns.
However, Dreiki doubted they would be effective. There was a chance Ux could overpower the effects of the potion. Of course, there was danger in bringing that up with nobility in the room. He might as well pull up his sleeve and show his Venator mark to them.
Dreiki had a contingency just in case the love bombs were ineffective for that reason, though.
Rixam and Gornax had progressed rather quickly in the small amount of time they had with Tadios. They had also been working non-stop to gather useful intel which they shared with Dreiki.
Tulos had come up with a few trinkets for utilizing the potions as well. Needle traps, hollowed knives, tripwires, snares, ball bearings, caltrops, and instant cages. All items which would be incredibly useful for tonight. There were only six days before the ceremony, and tonight was the night they claimed the giant’s legs. Tomorrow morning would be its eyes and ears. The afternoon were the arms, the evening its tongue and teeth, and by midnight, Dreiki vowed to be gripping its still beating heart.