I woke up late the following morning, worn out by the escapade the night before, let my dad and Ed know I was going to visit Kene. After escaping a round of teasing, I was free to go.

The flight to Kene's village was simple, and Dusk had never gone on a flight this long before. She was endlessly amused by flying, and constantly nagged me to go faster.

I was happy to oblige, which was… probably not the best idea, but it was fun.

I arrived around dinner time and barged into Kene's shop.

"Is it an emergency?" came Kene's voice from upstairs. "I'm about to start cooking dinner."

Dusk burbled like a brook, telling me that she wanted dinner too. I nodded before responding to Kene.

"Nope, it's your serial breaking-and-entering-er. I've come to steal your cauldron."

There was silence for a moment before I heard footsteps and Kene emerged from the back room.

"Malachi!" they said, a grin on their face. "It's been a while. I was starting to think that you found me boring."

"Definitely not," I said as I raked my gaze over them.

They were a juxtaposition. On one hand, their physical shape had improved slightly, and their tank top and low riding shorts gave me a view of their biceps and their torso that I tried not to stare at.

On the other hand, their condition had progressed. The shadowy ink that had once coated their fingers was now over most of their hand, and their tattoos had shifted, becoming more ritualistic. Their green eyes had become ringed in black, and it created a spooky, but kind of neat effect.

"No suit today," they said. "And who's the little one?"

Dusk waved and introduced herself with the rustling of leaves.

"I'm Kene," he said, stepping over and proffering their finger for a handshake. They shook, and Dusk let out a cheerful chirp.

"It's a bit late for a forest adventure," Kene said. "I can make us dinner, though, and we can head out in the morning."

"Sure," I said, nodding. "Is there anything we can do to help with dinner? Even if it's just a few silver to help with costs."

"Just do the dishes and help with prepwork," they said with a smile.

We headed upstairs, where Kene had a variety of veggies already laid out, some of which were already chopped – namely, some mustard greens and a bell pepper.

While I set to work chopping two yellow onions and a turnip, Kene started frying some mustard, cumin, chili, turmeric, garlic, and ginger in the pan.

The turnip, bell pepper, and onions went into the pan with a splash of white wine and some salt. Once they were decently cooked, Kene added in some fish from the fridge, and a cup of chicken stock. I sliced some crusty bread for us, and popped it into the oven to toast.

While we cooked, Dusk moved through the kitchen, looking for something. As we plated our food, she asked Kene where the small folk were.

"True," I said. "You seem like the kind of person who'd have them around."

"I used to," they said. "My… condition. Small folk can sense it, and they tend to stay away."

I just nodded, not wanting to push. I had some suspicions about what Kene's condition was, and if I cast my Vampiric Senses, I'd probably be able to confirm it, but I didn't. I wanted to respect their privacy.

"I've been thinking about learning more alchemy," I said. "It's a useful skill, and according to my mentor, it can help me transition."

Kene froze, their fork halfway to their mouth.

"It… can," they said carefully. "But a novice alchemist attempting to alter their hormones without a doctor can be dangerous. Especially using potions that are nonstandard and hommade."

"Oh!" I said, realizing where I'd failed to explain properly. "No, no, no. I'm using a full gate spell to do the actual transitioning, but the one I'm using alters life flows. Flooding them with additional power should help the spell work faster."

Kene relaxed and let out a slow breath, nodding.

"Okay. That makes a lot more sense. As long as your potions are made right, it shouldn't have any negative side effects. Other than mana toxicity."

They glared at me.

"You had better not overload your body with foreign mana, okay? I get it, but that can cause issues."

"I won't, I won't," I said, putting my hands up in a gesture of surrender.

"Why the interest?" Kene asked.

"Well, you showed me some," I said. "That was fun. The transitioning helped, and my mentor, Meadow, seems to want me to do some."

"Meadow? I thought your mentor was a guy named Orykson."

"Well, he was…"

I gave a quick run down of everything that had happened since Kene and I last met, including my new appointment with a mentalist, the whole fiasco with Mallory, and my decision to work with Meadow over Orykson.

"Wow," Kene said, grinning at me. "And here I was thinking I had a busy life as a village doctor."

"On the plus side, I think we can go way deeper into Delford, if you want."

"Yes please," Kene said. "I'm running low on my second and third gate components for alchemy."

"You use third gate components?" I asked. "Did you break through."

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"No," they said, shaking their head. "I'm working on a full gate solar spell, and that's taking a while, but it should hopefully help my condition some. My life mana's gotten some good use, but I'm nowhere near ready or able to ascend."

"Why not rush it," I said. "Your tattoos… I'm guessing they keep your condition under control. You could rush opening your third gate, and then bind something."

Kene shook their head.

"The tattoos are a seal, yeah, but rushing it is a bad idea for me. My condition is strong, and unlike me, it's mana-garden is nearly perfect. If I rushed to third gate, then my tattoo's seal may actually break under the pressure before I could spellbind them."

"I see…" I said, trailing off. To my surprise, Dusk piped up, her voice whistling as she hopped off my shoulder and ran to throw her arms around Kene. He smiled and patted the tiny spirit's head.

We finished our meal shortly after, and as I prepared to leave to the inn, Kene caught me.

"Do you wanna sleep on the couch? No pressure, it's probably not as comfortable as an inn, but it's free."

I thought about it for a second before agreeing. I really needed to save the money anyways.

"Cool," they said with a grin. "Hey, since you're here, want to make your first potion of first gate levels of power?"

"Definitely!" I agreed.

We headed downstairs and into his alchemy lab, and then he opened the back door to his garden.

"I'm not gonna start you with a healing potion," Kene said. "Those are… Complex. At least by comparison to other first gate potions. But we can do something adjacent. There's a rare plant called a Feasting Tree, and its fruit is a natural mana source that can serve as your food and water for an entire day. This potion mimics that fruit's effects."

"Not going to lie, this feels like one of those health food shams," I said, then affected a fake marketing voice. "With our meal replacement shakes, you won't go hungry, and you'll lose ten pounds a week! Only ten silver a month, send us a mirror message now!"

Kene laughed, and Dusk let out a giggle that resembled the whistling of the wind.

"It does kind of sound like it," Kene acknowledged. "But no. This potion should actually work."

He then guided me through the garden, and we grabbed spinach, blueberries, and a handful of penny bun mushrooms.

"Okay, now I am sure that we're just making a shake. A gross one, too."

"No, I promise, we aren't."

The last thing we picked from the garden was an incredibly bland looking plant.

Bland, at least, to my normal senses. To my mana senses, it was ripe with temporal and life mana. It was odd, though. It wasn't free to tap into for power, instead being all knotted up.

"This is Slowleaf," Kene said. "It's a reaction inhibitor, and is important in basically any potion without an instant effect. It's stern stuff. We'll start with one leaf, and we can get more if you mess up."

We headed inside and Kene grabbed the last components, a bag of coffee, and a gallon of water.

"Okay, the coffee isn't standard," he admitted. "But I find that having the constant stream of just a bit of caffeine helps keep me focused."

"I feel you," I said, nodding. "I do the same."

Under Kene's instructions, I measured out thirty grams of coffee beans, then weighed the other components and did a bit of math until I got a rough idea of how many times I’d need to double the mana flowing through the component’s various structures.

Draining the extraneous and beefing up the necessary life flows from the spinach and blueberries wasn’t hard, but it was time consuming, since each leaf or berry was its own separate structure, and thus had to be worked with independently.

“There’s a third gate spell, Mass Enhance Plant Life and Mass Harvest Plant Life,” Kene said. “They’re going to be the first spells I learn when I’m strong enough. If nothing else, they can help with the tedium of some parts of alchemy.”

Draining from the penny bun mushrooms was so fast and so efficient that I almost over-drained them. Even Kene’s eyebrows shot up when they noticed.

“I think it’s my Fungal Lock spell,” I said as I began to power the flows I wanted in the potion. “It enhances draining and harvesting type spells, and… It is a fungal spell.”

“Makes sense,” Kene agreed. “Well, plenty of alchemical components come from mushrooms, so that’s useful.”

Thankfully, I didn’t need to alter the flows of the coffee beans at all, since I wasn’t relying on the energy, vitamins, and minerals inside of them for the sustaining potion. They’d add a bit, but the main thing I was after was simple – caffeine. And with the beans being enough to be equal to three cups of coffee, I didn’t need to change them.

With those done, I turned to the slowleaf and carefully drained away the extra bits and pieces, like the energy flows needed to convert sunlight, and then focused on its reaction slowing properties.

I slowly fed mana into the plant, but it was a glutton for adding more power in, so I increased the amount per second.

The leaf burst apart.

“I should have warned you,” Kene said. “Slowleaf needs a lot of energy, but it’s only able to accept a little bit at a time.”

They vanished and reappeared a moment later with another leaf.

This time, I trickle fed it until I thought that the energy would take roughly a day to dissipate, and handed it to Kene to look at.

“Good work,” they said, nodding. “You’re gonna have to drain some of the power out, though. You want it to last about twelve hours – otherwise you’ll be getting nutrients and water throughout the night as well. Not the worst, but you’ll definitely be waking up to use the bathroom a lot.”

I slowly drained the power from the leaf, and though it smoked a little bit, I didn’t cause it to break apart.

“Perfect!” Kene said, grinning. “Now, for the next part. We could add this all into the cauldron, slowly mixing to ensure the connections all formed, and be done with it. But… That would leave us with a little bit more than a gallon of potion, and that’s just going to kill your liver, unless you spread it out all day, and if you do that… Then what’s the point of the slowleaf? No, we need to reduce the amount of water. That’s where this comes in.”

They tapped the cauldron with their nail, letting out a soft ringing sound.

“Have you used a cauldron before?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“Well, they serve a similar purpose to your harvesting and enhancing spell,” Kene said. “About seventy percent of alchemy is plants, or plant adjacent things like fungi. But the other thirty percent? That’s what the cauldron is for. Pour the water in, then inject your mana into the cauldron.”

I did as he said, and as my mana slowly swirled into the iron pot, I felt it connecting to the contents of the water. To my surprise, the cauldron didn’t have any mana of its own, but instead allowed my own life mana to interact with the energies within the water.

“Now, this is no substitute for having lunar mana to alter the water’s magic with,” Kene said. “In fact, it’s a lot worse. There’s a reason that it’s recommended that no more than twenty percent of a potion’s mana be altered via cauldron, and not by the mage. But when you or I have to work with water, stones, metals, or other substances that aren’t herbal, the cauldron allows us to remove the parts of the energies that we don’t want, leaving the ones we do. In the case of water, that means that we have to boil it down.”

They flicked their fingers, and a flame lit under the small cauldron.

“We’re keeping the hydration aspects of water,” Kene said. “Try to guide your mana through the cauldron and keep those aspects there, while letting the others boil away.”

The first two times, I simply let everything boil away, while the third time, I kept too much, leaving the water filled with all sorts of unnecessary lunar energies. It even glowed a little bit blue, it was so concentrated.

“That’s mana water,” Kene said. “You can do something similar by injecting your mana into water and then reducing it to link with the water’s natural arrays. It’s decent at helping you recover mana a bit faster. No substitute for a potion or energy drink, but it’s got very low mana toxicity.”

Kene then had me inject my temporal mana into the water, which caused it to glow green, and we bottled that.

I wound up accidentally making two more instances of mana water, which I injected with spatial and death mana, before I finally got it right, and was left with a few ounces of a shimmering, transparent liquid.

“Perfect!” Kene said, grinning. “Now for the other components.”

I slowly added them in, and was left with a soupy mess. I used a wooden ladle to break up the leaves and mushrooms, until finally, I felt all of the natural arrays begin to align, assisted by the power of the cauldron, which amplified each connection. The power rapidly built inside the pot, and sludge began to rise to the top.

“Skim off the sludge,” Kene said as they handed me a sieve, and I did, leaving a slightly shimmering brown liquid that almost – but not quite – resembled coffee.

Dusk let out a triumphant cheer at that, and Kene clapped lazily.

“Congratulations,” he said, “On your successful first gate potion.”

“Thanks!” I said as I bottled it up and set it next to the mana water. “What now?”

Kene glanced at the clock. It was a quarter ‘til midnight.

Where had the time gone?

“Sleep,” they rumbled, and I agreed.