The fight was long and hard, but ultimately — we failed.

The remnants of our courageous struggle had by now melted, mixing together into a sugary cocktail of cream, cookies, and syrups. The battlefield was littered with wadded up paper napkins and utensils, and we were both suffering from serious casualties.

Anna scrunched up her face in pain from her lingering brain freeze, and I took careful, steady breaths while trying my best not to vomit.

The ice cream really was as great as William had claimed — but our hubris was even greater.

“How much do I owe you?”

The villainous alchemist himself had just returned from the back rooms, and I figured it was better to pay now while I was still partially functional.

“Two seventy.”

I frowned — and with a great degree of effort — lifted my head up from my hands. “I thought you said it was seven cents per scoop. Seven times twenty five is…”

“One seventy five.” Yeah. That. “Then twenty cents worth of toppings,” he continued while setting two small glass vials of vibrant red liquid on the counter — “and seventy five cents for the antidote.”

I stared at the medicine with narrowed eyes. “You really are a fiend.”

He shrugged. “Business is business. As you pointed out earlier, I have to make a profit somehow.”

“…right.” Picking up the closer vial, I held it up to my eye before flicking my gaze back to William. “So this will make me feel better?”

He froze for a moment, before tilting his head with a frown and rocking his hand back and forth in a so-so gesture — which didn’t exactly inspire me with much confidence. “Most people prefer it to the alternative.”

I pursed my lips. “I see.”

What the hell. Glancing back to Anna, I saw that she had picked up hers as well. “Cheers,” she managed, raising her own vial while flicking off the cap.

“Cheers,” I replied, and then down it went.

I had intentionally tilted my head back and tipped the whole vial as quickly and as far back as I could so that there was no backing out. That immediately turned out to be a mistake, as my entire body instantly and violently decided that we were most definitely going to back out, whether I wanted to or not.

Long story short, I choked.

Fortunately, it didn’t last long, and the medicine — if you could call it that, for it was the foulest substance I had ever encountered, within or without of my studies in alchemy — well, it managed to make it down my throat anyway

I knew exactly when it hit my stomach, in the same way you would know if you were lying on your back and someone dropped an anvil on you.

Any lingering lethargy I was still feeling from chronic sugar overdose was wiped away as it began entering my bloodstream. How I could feel that, I hadn’t the faintest idea. Point is, I was now fully alert. William handed me a damp towel, and I took it gratefully. “By god, what was in that?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”

I paused. “Maybe not.” I shook my head, and spared a glance over at my comrade in battle.

On her part, Anna seemed to have recovered decently enough. Stretching, she ran a hand through her hair before resting her elbows on the counter.

Sighing, I fished out a five credit bill and slipped it across the counter to the devilish old shopkeeper. Nodding silently, he took it down to the register, which he opened without even using a key.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“So,” I began as the clicks and chimes of the device rang out through the mostly empty shop, “what do you do? Aside from commandeering other people’s desserts?”

“She’s a healer.” William answered for her from all the way down the counter before she had a chance to speak for herself. “A pretty decent one, I have to admit.”

The young woman herself shook her head and blushed. “William loves to oversell my capabilities while somehow still managing to make it sound like an insult.”

He scoffed as he returned from the register to hand me my change. “I only tell the truth. And also you deserve it.”

Rolling her eyes, she ignored the alchemist to focus on me. “I like to say that I got a royal education in everything but name.” She paused. “My grandfather was a tenured professor, but he was retired by the time I was of age. He didn’t want to, actually… which is why he ended up becoming my private tutor.”

I nodded slowly. “Sounds like you made the best of a great opportunity.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Drumming her fingers on the countertop, she tilted her head. “And what do you do, other than collect historic military equipment?”

Before I could think of a good answer, the door burst open and two young girls scrambled through. Running towards us, they stopped just a few paces away, huddling together, before the older one spoke.

“Victoria got a nasty splinter.”

“Sophia found her crying out on the dock,” the younger of the pair added, while indicating her companion.

“Maria said we should get you,” Sophia finished.

Anna stood up with a frown. “Is anyone with her?”

The two kids shared a guilty glance, before speaking in unison. “No…”

“Right then, lead the way,” the healer continued as she pushed past them, “but next time, only one of you should come and the other needs to stay with whoever’s injured.”

“Yes ma’am,” they chimed together as they followed her back down the aisle towards the door.

Once the door swung shut behind them, William turned to me and gave a little shake of his head. “Those three are nothing but trouble.”

Turning my back to the door in order to face him properly, I shrugged. “Eh, what’s a little splinter? I sure got into worse scrapes when I was that age…” I trailed off as the old alchemist’s face took on a pallid, haunted expression.

“A splinter is nothing. You… you wouldn’t want to know what they did with the frogs they found out in the swamp last summer.”

“…I see.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t. And it’s best to keep it that way.”

Right.

I sat in silence for a minute or two while the shopkeeper went back to cleaning up. He wasn’t particularly fast — honestly, he was rather slow — but he was both thorough and efficient.

“So why did you choose Phantasmagoria Falls, of all places?”

At first, I didn’t think he was even going to acknowledge my question, until he finally set down his now-dirty rag and wiped his brow. “The mines.”

“The mines?”

Instead of answering, he walked over to the back wall and unpinned a colorful, worn paper map from where it was tacked on next to a framed newspaper clipping and a poster advertising a popular new cola. Setting it down on the counter, he flattened it out before me.

“Right here.” His calloused index finger was planted on a spot on the edge of the lake. The station — and most of the town — was at the very bottom, from my perspective, and the spot he indicated was about a third of the way around counterclockwise from there.

“The Falls used to be a mining town. Lots of different rare minerals. High quantity and high concentration. Mana rich, too.” He paused, lifting his finger from the map. “I was the only alchemist in the region who was both qualified for the position, and interested in working full time.”

“But the recession hit the town hard,” he continued. “They eventually had to shut the whole operation down, and no one’s been interested in opening it back up — especially now that the railways have made long distance bulk transport so cheap.”

“You can still visit parts of them, if you’d like — but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a long way around —” he indicated a route moving clockwise up into the mountains and back down — “you’d have to stay at the lodge up at Lark’s Peak, and they aren’t very well stocked or staffed outside of the winter months. And then it’s a long day down and around — though the trails are pretty enough, I suppose.” He straightened up. “And then you have to do the whole thing over on the way back.”

I frowned. “Why not go the other way? That path is way shorter.”

“You mean through the Fairy Swamp.”

I nodded. “Is it too unpleasant?”

“Actually, on the contrary,” he said while taking the map back to the wall, “it’s rather enchanting. Up until recently, we even hosted weddings there, believe it or not.” After tacking the map back in place, he took a seat in a small stool behind the counter that I had somehow failed to notice.

I heard a ‘but’ coming. “But…”

“But it’s closed right now. Has been for the last half a year. No one’s allowed in.”

I frowned. “Why?”

He shrugged. “All they’ll say is maintenance — though I haven’t the slightest idea what the upkeep is like on a swamp.”

Interesting.

There was undoubtedly a depressingly mundane explanation that also included the reason for the secrecy. These things were never as exciting as one hoped. But that didn’t really matter, did it? The truth is something I could take or leave.

No, something here smelled foul — and it wasn’t just the natural odor of a swamp.