The next morning has him standing in one of the larger classrooms that had been restructured into a dueling circle. The desks and chairs have been cleared out, and four magic totems trace out a large square that is barriered off from the rest of the room. Signora lectures at the front while other teachers that he doesn’t recognize shuffle around the room giving out sets of vials to the students.
‘Welcome to your first day of controlled dueling. I am Signora, your grade level coordinator and teacher for this class. Those of you who have decided to mark dueling as one of your fields of interest, I hope to see you succeed here and eventually join the second years in free dueling.’
‘As for the rest of you, I encourage you to think of the reason behind why this class is mandatory for first years, instead of treating it as an ordeal that needs to be cleared.’
Signora’s lecturing voice is sharp, cutting through the class in a way similar to how the guards back at home talked during yard drills. It makes his classmates stand a little bit straighter. As much as he tries to tune her out, her voice has a way of piercing its way into his head.
‘Alchemy is typically thought of by the masses as a precision-based line of study. 3 mgs of Rebincant with Bindleshroom creates a warming potion. Double the Rebincant to create veinfire poison. This sentiment is true enough if you plan to live out your days in mediocrity, selling brews in some backend alchemist shack in the middle of nowhere. For the rest of you who would seek to push the frontier of the art as revolutionaries of your field, I highly recommend that you take this belief to be false.’
‘A true mastery of alchemy does not come from memorizing formulae. Rather, it comes from understanding the raw ingredients themselves. Rebincant is a battery of fire essence magic. Fire can warm, but burns in excess. Such knowledge is what allows the formulae you follow to be invented.’
‘However, on an even higher level, true alchemy comes from free thinking and creativity. The ability to decide on the optimal ingredient to use out of thousands. The ability to see use in ingredients others claim to be useless. That is the lesson we hope to begin teaching you through controlled dueling.’
‘Each of you has been handed a set of 3 pre-determined standardized potions. Very few of them are actually designed to be useful in a fight. Your goal is to use these to help you secure victory against the opponent, be it by making your opponent forfeit or getting into a position advantageous enough that I deem the match to be over.’
Gibet grabs the bag handed to him and heads off to the corner. He can feel Signora’s eyes on him as he opens the pack to examine his vials, and her voice pitches up slightly in annoyance as he blatantly ignores the rest of her speech. It makes him a bit happier.
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This was absolutely rigged in some way. Signora must have somehow been pulling strings behind his back to set him up for failure, because that was the only way he could have ended up with a set of potions with such poor synergy.
‘Wow… That’s… Wow…’
Lily’s head bobbed slightly from above as she stared down at Gibet, body leaning halfway out of the wall she was currently fused with. She looked vaguely like a bobblehead toy, her head currently too heavy for the rest of her body. Pinelings had to sculpt their physical bodies, and Lily’s was essentially a blank wooden mannequin. They had decided to give her a mask so that there was at least eye holes to stare at during conversations with her. She had initially found the extra weight awkward to move in, but ended up taking a liking to it, even deciding to plant flowers all over the mask.
‘You have some really horrible luck, you know that?’
His satchel held a smellsight potion, a thundercloud body potion, and a sylvian wind potion. The latter two would both convert his body into a substance (clouds or wind) similar to the tree bark potion he had drank when he caught Sieva eating his lunch. Such potions generally required training in order to get used to the feeling of the new body, and he had never drank either so he essentially got to choose between being a stationary blob of clouds or a puff of air no stronger than your average spring breeze. The smellsight potion would give him a sense of smell akin to that of a hound, but it wouldn’t necessarily help him if he couldn’t control his own body.
A small bud of anxiety blooms at the bottom of his stomach as he tries to think of a way to salvage what he’s been given. He attempts to squash it by following the advice of the guardsmen who he used to follow around as a child while they patrolled the property. He had been fascinated by the golden emblems on their armor that were so similar to those worn by the heroes from his childhood storybooks, and at this point could repeat some of the lines that the captain of the guard would spout off to him per verbatim.
‘Analyze the problem, tackle it in components. Figure out which aspects can be ignored and which ones can’t. Stay calm, and an opportunity will eventually make itself known to you.’
Only, this wasn’t a problem that had a solution. He had been given three conflicting potions; one that was barely helpful and two he didn’t know how to use. Signora, who was his only hope to an apprenticeship, was going to finish the day satisfied with her decision of denying him. Eventually word of his failure would spread back to his family and Lily was calling out to one side ‘Gibet?’ but Lily was a pineling and not from a dynasty family with expectations heavier than the stones making up his manors and probably spent her free time frolicking out in the forests without having to worry about the judgemental eyes of the matriarch or the jealousy of his siblings or not doing well enough and getting cast out by his mother or doing too well and having her turn him into a-
‘Gibet! Hey!’
His forehead stings.
‘Did you just… throw an acorn at me?’
‘Yeah. Are you alright? You’re sweating a lot and you were just looking at the wall not saying anything…’
Lily had moved down the wall, and was now standing directly in front of him (or is it beneath him? She’s so short her head barely reaches his waist). There’s a particularly long Orchid growing out of her mask that is brushing against his nose. It has a sweet smell that reminds him of the gardens he would play in when he was young rather than the more pungent smells of the poisons that fill his room nowadays.
He almost slaps the flower away out of instinct, but stops himself and turns around instead.
‘Yeah, just thinking about how to use these potions.’
That’s a lie. He has no idea what to do, but thinking of that smell does calm him down enough that he has the beginnings of a plan by the time he gets down to the dueling circle.
He’s a bit frustrated that Lily of all people is the one to pull him out of his panic, because now he needs to find some way to pay her back (no, he isn’t thanking her).
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His confidence recovers a bit more when he realizes who he’s facing. Nawy Colios, the girl he had gotten into a pissing match with during the school tour on the first day. She had been talking with someone, a boy from the Tor, and he had injected himself into the conversation asking for a fight. He made it sound like he was defending the honor of the Tor child, but anyone listening in on the conversation before he came would have been able to tell that it was just friendly banter. In reality, he had picked the fight because looking at Nawy gave rise to a deep, guttural anger that he had been unprepared to control at that time.
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Nawy was, like him, an heir to an Elder Family. He had seen her accompanying their family representative to social gatherings, and she had instantly revealed herself to be more of a bumbling tomboyish idiot than a dignified heir to a noble house. Watching her stumble through greetings forgetting names and fumbling handshakes had made him feel a sort of camaraderie with her as companions in misery.
When he saw her idling, smiling, truly enjoying herself like some kind of carefree child, he had gotten inexplicably angry, unable to comprehend or accept how she was able to do so. The emotions she was feeling in that moment were things he hadn’t felt himself for years, and accepting that would also mean accepting that despite their hardships, she was able to move on and find joy in life while he couldn’t.
Had Gibet been older or wiser, maybe he would have recognized this feeling as jealousy. In that moment, he instead viewed it as a betrayal of the highest order. Nawy, who had once been his silent companion, had unknowingly betrayed him, and the fact that she didn’t even know who he was only made him all the more pissed off.
Nawy is a social butterfly. Her name is announced to cheers and shouts of encouragement from friends and classmates in the crowd. She is not used to people showing such open hostility or contempt. It throws her off when she sees it so nakedly on his face, but she is also surrounded by friends so she chooses to respond to their cheers while ignoring his anger, settling into a ready stance while looking generally at his face but never his eyes.
She does not understand his anger, but he would make her in this match.
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Gibet sees the ceiling. He is stunned, in pain, humiliated, and also quite frankly pissed off.
Did Nawy just fucking lariat him?
Yes. Yes she did. In a sacred alchemist duel meant to showcase one’s proficiency and creativity in the art of brewing, she had abandoned all semblance of honor, resorting to striking him like some kind of stupid, savage barbarian. Given the opportunity to test her understanding of the arcane, she forgoes it and resorts to the style of a common street thug trying to-
Shit, he should probably dodge that foot that was coming down towards his face before it crushed his nose into his mouth.
He breaks out of his little mental triad quickly enough to just barely roll over. A foot craters the ground where his head just was. He’s pretty sure some of his hair just got ripped off, trapped under the force of that stomp. He instinctively reaches for the blasting potion he keeps tucked in one pocket, only to realize at the last moment that he only had the three he was given for the duel currently on him. The other arm is currently supporting his crouched body and won’t make it in time to guard his face, so he braces himself for Nawy’s follow up.
Only, the follow up never comes. Instead, Nawy’s breath quickens when he goes for his pockets, and she immediately retreats backwards, arms out in a defensive stance. The two of them face off, with him still partially crouched on the floor.
With the kneejerk outrage from earlier complete, the logical part of his brain takes over and makes him feel like an idiot.
He was wearing Tudor robes.
That was basically like screaming out to the world that you specialized in alchemy. The best way to defeat an alchemist was to physically suppress them. What was Nawy going to do, sit there and take on someone who had trained their whole lives as an alchemist in a potion flinging match?
Yeah, no shit she would try to blitz him at the start.
The big jump backwards and the now cautious standoff also tells him something.
Nawy didn’t know what potions he had, and more importantly, she was afraid of said potions.
Fear.
That was something he could work with. As long as he didn’t reveal just how useless his collection was, he would have the upper hand in the mental games. If he could just scare her into using her potions before he did, he might actually be able to pull a win out of his ass. In fact, right now he might even be able to blitz her right back and win before he has to start pulling gambits to win with his potions.
He whips his hand out of his pocket, moving the sylvian wind potion in an arc as if he was going to chuck it. Nawy dives out of the way, bringing out a potion of her own. She’s expecting some kind of explosion, so her body is braced to prepare for it. At the same time, she tries to uncap and drink one of her potions.
Gibet uncaps the Sylvian Wind and supercharges it with his mana, agitating the mixture as hard as he can. The wind elemental magic dissolved in the liquid separates out like gas in a soft drink and blasts outwards, knocking Nawy on her ass and spilling her potion all over the floor. It’s a pale blue liquid that glows.
He makes sure to splash the puddles on the floor with the remaining liquid in his own bottle, mixing them into a useless, rancid smelling sludge so that she can’t try to lick the remnants of her potion off the floor. A few splotches remain, but they’re all too small to drink and gain any effects from.
At the same time, he runs up to Nawy, decking her head with the now empty glass bottle. It shatters over her head, and for a brief second he actually believes that he has won, but then a fist catches him right in the left eye. He vaguely feels a palm on the back of his hand and something hitting his ankles before the world starts spinning sideways.
In the brief moment, he realizes something and figuratively (definitely not literally) shits his pants.
That day when he had picked a fight with Nawy, she had been joking around with a Tor boy.
The Tors were a military family, and Nawy being friends with one of them means she probably has access to some of the best combat instructors on the Kepian continent.
A lariat was not an easy technique to use.
Smoke suddenly spews out from his clothing. Nawy jerks back mid-throw to avoid it and he falls roughly to the floor instead of getting slammed into it.
The thundercloud potion worked the same way as the Sylvian Wind. He had agitated it just to the point where a few more rough jostles would cause the water vapor inside to start spewing out. He also left the cap lid loose, and that flip he just got put through had been the final trigger. Now he was sitting in a water cloud and what remained in the bottle was some sort of sparking liquid which he assumed to be a bootlegged electric shock potion. Not something he expected, but a very welcome new offensive option.
The thick cloud rapidly envelops the arena, and he uses it as a chance to catch his breath and plan his next move.
Nawy has two potions left and thinks that he only has one. The cloud wasn’t going to dissipate anytime soon due to the barrier totems making up the arena, so there’s a pretty good chance she’ll pop a potion if it could help in some way. Nothing has happened, so he assumes that she doesn't have a way to deal with the smoke.
He pops the smellsight potion as quietly as he can, and the headache it gives him as the scents suddenly hit him almost makes him fall over. The foul gunk he made from mixing his potion with Nawy’s earlier takes up most of what he can smell, but he can also just barely make out some sort of flowery perfume. It's somewhere to his left.
He also smells something like tar coming from the ground around him. Nawy’s second potion was probably some sort of sticky potion meant to entrap him. However, they’re both blind and not moving, so both of them now had a chance to be caught in it. He needs to find out if she actually knows where the tar she placed down is.
He sniffs around, trying not to gag from everything smelling so much more. The smell of tar is significantly stronger directly behind him, so he lobs his now empty bottle in that direction. It hits the floor in a wet splat, and he’s barely able to blink before he feels a rush of wind followed by a loud boom and shattered floor shrapnel coming behind him.
Fuck.
Nawy had drunk her third potion, and it was something that enhanced her body. Maybe a strength or berserker potion, which was absolute bullshit considering what Signora said about very few of their potions being actually intended for combat.
Everything just smells like dust, and he can’t tell where anything is anymore. There’s a few more breaths of silence before the booms resume, this time echoing all around him. He’s initially confused, before a stray limb hits his chest and knocks the wind out of him.
Nawy thought he was out of potions, so she had decided to start rampaging blindly around the dueling arena with her enhanced strength until she hit something. The tar wouldn’t slow her down, but it definitely would impede him, so she would eventually win, especially considering how small the arena was. When he tries to stand up, he also realizes that he can’t because his back is now stuck in a splotch of the tar on the floor.
This stalemate lasts for some time before Nawy gets on a lucky trajectory. He hears her coming and throws the shock potion at her. It lands, electrocuting her, but her momentum carries her directly into him, shocking him too.
At some point, he passes out.
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When Gibet wakes up, Lily is sitting by his bedside with a swarm of questions regarding what happened after the smoke cloud went off. Some prodding reveals that the match had been a tie, though Lily seemed very impressed at the strategies he had thought of for the two body change potions.
‘You’re actually a lot smarter than I thought! I was pretty sure you’d end up getting smacked around the entire match after she decked you that first time, but it turns out all that time you spend hermiting indoors does give you a pretty good knowledge base for this kind of stuff after all!
‘...I don’t know if I should be pissed at you for calling me a hermit or complimented at the praise…’
‘It’s true though! All the other matches that came afterwards were boring, they just threw the potions or drank them as is. Nothing like that crazy separating technique you did!’
‘I just agitated the mixture a bit to get the magic to separate from the ingredients. It’s something you’ll eventually learn later on. Nothing that special…’
‘Well you know it now, don’t you? Just because they’ll teach us later doesn’t make it less impressive now. I didn’t even know you could do something like that!’
‘...Do you want me to teach you?’
‘Huh?’
‘I-I mean if you want to learn it. If you don’t then-’
‘Really?! When? Can we start now? Why did smoke come out of the thundercloud potion instead of just raw water magic? How did-’
He gets bombed by a hundred different questions. While they talk, he notices the flower on her head from earlier has bloomed. It’s a bit confusing given that the flower is attached to the mask, not Lily, but maybe she can assimilate plant matter into her body? Either way, the smellsight potion hasn’t entirely faded yet, so now the entire room smells like flowers.
He doesn’t mind it.