Chapter 33: Your Strongest Potion

Albie held up a Potion.

I didn’t know that was what it was, but I knew that’s what it was. You know?

Third Eye’s cash shop really was a blessing. Until it opened, anyway, and destroyed whatever excuse for balance the game had. I’d have to go through it and really study all the things we didn’t have access to yet. Maps? Would those help us find Materials? Grimoires? Those were books of spells in most games; could they change how we used our Reactants?

But that was the point. The cash shop contained a ton of resources we didn’t have access to yet.

I actually swiped to Third Eye real quick and checked. Every option remained grayed out. Potions included.

“Albie,” I said, “I can’t take this.”

She pushed the vial against my palm, close to where I’d cut myself. “You gotta.”

“Whatcha got there, kiddo?” Lena strolled over to join us. She looked at Albie’s hands through her phone, but for some reason she focused on mine instead. “Oh shit, Cam! How’d you hurt your hand?”

Like that was the important thing right now? Important enough to snap Lena out of not swearing in front of Albie, even. “I’m fine. There was a rock or something in with the Glass.”

“You don’t look fine,” Lena said. “Wait here. I’ll check my pack. Maybe I’ve got a bandaid?”

“‘Be prepared,’ huh?” I couldn’t quite stifle my laugh. We both knew she didn’t carry first aid stuff. She sure as hell hadn’t done Scouts as a kid.

She scowled at me, started to speak, flicked a glance at Albie. A huff, silence, fake smile. No fighting in front of the children.

She would probably make me regret that later and I would definitely deserve it. Why couldn’t I have thanked her for trying like a normal-ass person? Even hopeless, it had been a nice thing for her to attempt.

Marroll trundled up beside her. That spared me Lena’s glare, since she turned to scratch behind his ears.

It also distracted Albie. She stepped between Marroll and the sidewalk where my Glass had scattered. “Marroll, stop,” she cried.

He’d already halted to receive Lena’s attention, but he locked himself dutifully in place at his owner’s command.

Albie looked around the grass and nodded to herself. “Sit.”

Marroll sat.

“It’s okay, Albie,” I said. “It’s not real glass, remember. He can’t cut his paws on it.”

She and Lena and Marroll all looked at my bloodied hand.

I chuckled. “Okay, maybe there is something real and sharp. I’ll find it and put it away while I clear the rest of this up.”

“Thanks,” Albie said. She hugged her dog and turned back to me, Potion outstretched again. “It’ll be easy with this.”

So much for hoping she’d forget.

I inspected the vial. Thin, colorless crystal around iridescent liquid. Runes like on our signup bonus amulets marked the rim, so faint I couldn’t have read them even if they’d been a real language and I’d been fluent in it.

I said, “It’s a Potion, right?”

She nodded.

“So cool,” Lena said. “Where’d you get something like that, kiddo?”

“From my big bro,” Albie said.

“And where did he get it?” I asked.

Albie studied the grass at her boots. “He made it.”

Lena and I exchanged a glance.

This was... bizarre. Albie’s skill with Air already made it seem like she’d been playing Third Eye for weeks. Months, even. Now her brother could craft resources the rest of us only knew existed because they appeared in the grayed-out cash shop?

Lena mouthed, “First Circle?”

It took me a second, but I caught her meaning. There was a tier above even the one she’d backed at: Magus of the First Circle. When we got a minute, we’d have to check Kickstarter to see what perks had been promised to those who pumped at least ten thousand Canadian dollars into Third Eye Productions’s warchest.

Earlier access, perhaps? A pre-existing supply of Materials and Reactants?

A rare Potion?

Only four people had backed at that level, though. Did Albie’s brother spend $20,000 to buy himself and his baby sister fully half of those incredible presents, or had he backed at that level, chipped in an extra $30 for Albie on a lark, and given her part of his haul to keep her out of his hair?

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Maybe we were thinking too small.

Albie’s brother was, by her words, “now” too busy to play with her. He must have – must have – spent an inordinate amount on Third Eye. What if the two facts were connected?

Why assume he’d invested at the same time as the rest of us?

Signing your four-year-old sister up to a Kickstarter in the hopes that six years in the future she’d want to play an Augmented Reality, Altered Reality Game? Madness. Way worse than that, Third Eye had, like just about every successful Kickstarter, arrived better late than never. If Albie was four when the campaign launched, she would have been just six when Third Eye Productions originally promised to deliver the game.

On the other hand, telling the developers whose purse strings you held to give your ten-year-old sister first crack at their game? One of the nobler uses I’d heard of for a Silicon Valley fortune.

Was Albie’s brother the mystery techbro Lena and I both believed must have pumped a fortune into Third Eye after the end of its Kickstarter?

Any other time I’d have considered this idle curiosity, but it had suddenly become relevant. Take a big brother’s one-of-kind Kickstarter gift, however crazy it had been to give it in the first place? Count me out. Sponge off somebody’s hoard of Bitcoin billions for a little while? Count me the hell in.

I closed my hand over Albie’s, Potion included. She started to smile because it looked like I intended to take it from her.

I asked, “Can your brother get another Potion, Albie?”

“Sure,” she said. Too quickly.

I narrowed my eyes. “Like this one?”

Her smile turned brittle.

“Then this is too big a gift.” I patted her hands.

She grabbed mine. “Aren’t you trying to help everybody?”

“We are,” Lena said, “but it’s not –”

“That means it’s a gift to everybody.” Albie looked back and forth between us. Her voice trembled. “I’m part of everybody!”

“That’s a lovely thing to say,” I said, “and technically correct.”

Lena was so wrapped up in Albie’s being upset, she almost missed a chance to murmur that this was the best kind of correct.

“But,” I added, “you’re the one of everybody your brother gave this to.”

Albie shook her head. “It’s all my fault. I got selfish and wanted to play and I let Marroll bark and break your Glass and I interrupted you and I threw too hard and now you can’t help everybody and you even cut your hand ‘cause you’re still helping even with no HP...”

Her voice started off as a torrent, but by the end it dissolved into a sniffle.

Marroll rubbed his head against her legs. She pawed at his fur.

Lena reached out and held her hand over Albie’s shoulder. Not touching, just offering, which was probably a distinction I should’ve followed. The little girl gave a big sob and hugged Lena’s arm.

“It’s okay, Albie,” Lena whispered. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Cam loved playing with you.”

“I did.” No lie there.

“We can do the video tomorrow,” Lena said. “It’ll be way cooler because of what he learned with you. We’ll help people a lot more ‘cause you helped us.”

Why did she say learn “with” and not “from,” I wondered. I seriously doubted Albie had picked up anything new from me.

It seemed to be the right thing to say, though, because Albie stopped crying.

Since when was Lena actually good at this?

“And,” she added, “I’ll help Cam pick up his Glass, since he’s being so careless.”

Albie blinked her tears away. She managed to smile up at Lena.

Then, one-handed, she thrust the Potion at me. “Please.”

“Albie, why?” I asked.

“‘Cause I won’t be here tomorrow,” she said, “and I wanna see you make the coolest video ever.”

I glanced at Lena.

She shrugged as best she could with a little girl still wrapped around her arm.

I glanced at Albie.

Her eyes shone as she held the glimmering Potion up.

I glanced at Marroll.

He panted.

Welp. Gingerly, I took the Potion from Albie’s outstretched hand. I popped out its crystalline stopper; Third Eye sound effects included it tinkling when it landed amidst the Glass. “I just drink it?”

Albie started to nod, then paused and spent a moment stroking Marroll’s head. “... think so.”

“You haven’t used one?” Lena asked.

Albie shook her head.

I considered the Potion. “I guess it can’t hurt me, anyway.”

I positioned it in front of my mouth.

“Kanpai!” Lena said. Then: “Don’t miss.”

Until she voiced it, I hadn’t considered the possibility, but now all I could think of was how difficult it would be to drink from an invisible, weightless vial.

More difficult than catching an invisible, weightless ball?

I closed my eyes and thought about hand motions.

I drank.

Third Eye supplied the sound effects of liquid splashing down my throat. I couldn’t taste it, of course, but I pictured it as just tasteless, not fictional. My mouth felt cold and wet.

I imagined myself rejuvenated. More than that. Energized.

Which was absurd on the face of it, and would seem real silly if I looked at my phone and found I’d missed or used it wrong. Or that a Potion didn’t work on someone at 0 HP and I needed an Yggdrasil Leaf or Phoenix Down or something.

Nope.

Among the many reasons I hadn’t wanted Albie to waste her Potion on me, I’d disliked the idea of spending such a valuable item to get back a paltry 10 HP. Based on the people I’d compared myself against, I might have one of the lowest Max HP scores in Third Eye.

When I saw my current totals, I certainly didn’t feel better about the preciousness of the resource I’d consumed.

But on the plus side, I needn’t have worried about wasting its healing ability.

My current HP and MP both appeared in green. I assumed this was the app’s way of communicating that they’d been overhealed, pushed higher than my daily maximums. Courtesy of Third Eye’s disasterpiece of an interface, that meant light green on gray. In the sunlight, I couldn’t even read the numbers.

I could count the digits, though.

Four for each. Lena had 1,000 Max HP. It sickened me to think she’d only ever lost any due to my actions. No one on the wiki team who’d posted their stats had a four-digit number, although most were in the low hundreds. Regardless, Lena only had 100 Max MP. A tenth of the lowest number I might have available now, not that she could use any until we found her a Reactant.

I squinted at the screen and shielded it with my other hand.

Albie’s Potion had not given me a thousand of each resource.

I now had 9,999 HP and 9,999 MP.