I considered for a very long moment, before a thought popped into my brain. Offering to link Dusk and Kene wasn’t just giving us a way to share plants and to more easily visit one another.
No, it was a pretty serious, permanent commitment, and was almost akin to asking him to move in with me.
I liked Kene. I liked them a lot. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to take that step yet – I was only eighteen. Well, eighteen and a half. But making a big deal over half a year always made me feel more immature than if I’d just accepted the younger age in the first place.
I put the knot in my mouth and let it dissolve on my tongue, slurping up into my spirit and reinforcing the connection. The change wasn’t absurd, no lightning shot through me. But the connection I had to Dusk did grow a bit stronger, and it felt easier to pass things in and out of her realm without expending a lot of effort.
The mushrooms… Those could wait, at least until I was back home. I trusted mushroom people to know what mushrooms I could or couldn’t eat, but I didn’t trust them to not have any side effects at all. I wanted water and the bathroom both to be on hand for when I took them.
After Kene and I spent a bit more time resting, we headed back to where Meadow was waiting, perched on a fallen log. She waved to us as we approached.
“Welcome back dears. How did your exploration go?”
“Well enough, all things considered,” Kene said. “I had to heal a concussion, but the damage wasn’t too bad.”
“Thank you for taking care of my student,” Meadow beamed. “And Malachi, did you get a good look at the Shambler’s armor spell?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again.
“No,” I finally admitted. “I didn’t even think to look, to be honest. It seems obvious now that you say it, but I guess I was just thinking that it was a third gate spell, and thus beyond what I could manage, so I didn’t bother.”
“Preparing for the future is rarely bad,” Meadow said. “But all in all, I’m satisfied with how things seem to have gone. You two drove off a creature with significantly more power, and befriended some of the locals.”
With that said, she hopped off the log and yawned.
“But it is late.”
“Three forty nine in the morning,” I said as I stopped refueling the void for a moment to send a brief pulse into Internal Pocketwatch.
“Primes, already?” Kene asked. “Wow.”
Meadow tossed Kene and I our brooms, then drank a potion of her own, and we lifted off back to the village. This time, since Meadow was with me, I stayed at the Heart Lizard Inn, rather than at Kene’s. It was a touch disappointing, but also nice to have a little bit of distance.
The following morning, I was completely worn out, and I struggled to understand why for a moment. I’d expected my mana to be worn out, but I hadn’t expected the sheer physical exhaustion. But it did make some sense – it was early in the month, I’d been in a fairly intense fight, and I’d also used Burn Future to draw on my physical body for the first time. My debt wasn’t just in mana, but also in my body.
After taking care of my morning ablutions, I met Meadow outside of her room, since I expected her to fly back home with me, but instead she just quirked an eyebrow.
“I was certainly planning to, but don’t you need to learn to make a healing potion?”
“Oh!” I said, nodding. “Yeah, I do! Thanks.”
“Also, you should eat first,” Meadow said.
“I don’t have a kitchen,” I said. “And I don’t want to pay for it.”
A small frown came over Meadow’s face, and she shook her head.
“I’m not going to force you to do anything, but I do think you should eat.”
In an attempt to clear the air of the ‘not mad, just disappointed’ energy that Meadow was giving off, I stopped by the singular coffeehouse in the village and grabbed an omelet. It was rubbery, but it was something, at the very least.
Kene had gotten up bright and early, and was probably running on more stamina potions than was properly healthy, judging by the tired look in his eyes.
“Morning,” they said, their voice rough.
“Go get sleep,” I said, frowning at them. “You look like you were hit by a carriage.”
“I’ll be fine,” Kene protested, waving his hand. “I’ve taken way too much time off from work recently anyways. I’ve got to stay open for…”
They paused to yawn, then continued.
“For the sake of the village.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Go sleep. I’ll man the shop for a few hours. If anything truly strange comes in, then I’ll wake you up. But for now, go sleep.”
They grumbled a bit, but eventually acquiesced.
Honestly, minding the shop wasn’t too bad, though Dusk wound up getting bored halfway through and left to go play with the faeries, leaving me to work alone.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Still, nine tenths of any service job was just managing customers, so most of my skills from working in the bakery carried over just fine. Most of the people who came in knew what they needed – pain relievers, mineral salt baths to help muscle soreness, heat patches, fever reducers, that sort of thing. Kene kept a good stock of all of them.
One kid who was around my age bought a container of Verdant Pasture Powder, and I contemplated getting some myself. I still hadn’t gotten around to raising the walls of my first gate to increase my mana, after all, and with most of my power still draining into the void inside me, I was starting to see how that was a problem after all.
I debated back and forth for a long time. It was expensive. I had enough savings that I could purchase two doses, but then I’d be completely wiped out of everything in my account. Plus, Dott’s Draught was super pricey. If I wanted to save up for a dose of it, then I couldn’t spend money on other supplements.
After about three hours, Kene staggered back downstairs, looking significantly less like they’d been hit by a bus, and more like a person.
“Thanks,” they rumbled, running their sharp tipped fingers through their bright yellow hair. “I think I really needed the sleep.”
“No problem,” I said. “I think you’re going to need more mineral bathing salt though, you’re almost out.”
In response, they just nodded, then glanced around the store.
“Thanks for minding the shop.”
“No problem. Seriously, it was fine,” I said, smiling at them. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much,” they said, nodding. “Thank you again.”
After they checked through the store, taking their own mental inventory, they glanced over at me.
“So, are you ready for potion creation?”
“Totally,” I said, grinning.
“Now, the base of this is going to be fairly similar to the potions you’ve made before, but as you go on, it’s going to get more complex,” Kene warned. I waved my hand and opened a portal to Dusk’s realm, right into the cottage’s alchemy room.
The portal snapped open smoother and quicker than it ever had before. It wasn’t some dramatic reforging – I couldn’t suddenly open a portal the size of a city – but it was nice.
We entered, and Kene grabbed one of the green bottles of mana water.
“Perfect, you’ve still got some. This will be the base, instead of water. It conducts the life energy better. Now, do you have henbane, sir john’s wort, echinacea, and rosemary?”
“Rosemary for sure,” I said. “I don’t think that I’ve got any of the others.”
“Hmm, well, my greenhouse is hardly as complex as having a realm divided in the four seasons, but I keep all of those growing there. You can take a cutting of them.”
We left Dusk’s realm and headed into his greenhouse, then headed back into Dusk’s realm to plant the cuttings in the summer section, next to the sunset marigolds, breath-aster, dewdrop feverfew, and draw-roses. Dusk noticed us digging in the dirt and flew over to investigate.
Flew, that was, because she managed to convince one of the crow’s shades that was perched in the boughs of the red star tree to pick her up and fly her over to us. She used a bit of magic to help us grow the plants, then she and Kene combined their mana together in the use of Enhance Plant Growth on the new plants, to grow them into full plants of their own.
While they did that, I wandered over to my plants and drew mana from them. They’d recharged a fair bit over the course of the night and the time I’d spent working, so I was able to use them to repay the void of Burn Future and recharge to about half my usual power. There was still a small ball of void in me, drawing from my body, but that seemed to be paying itself off, and it was shrinking, not growing, so I let it be.
Once they finished, I gathered up a handful of the mundane plants, a single leaf from Healer’s Heart, the cap of a Soultoad’s Seat, two Sunset Marrigolds, a Dewdrop Feverfew, a handful of Mana-Grass, and three Breath-Aster flowers.
“So, you’re actually going to run into an interesting problem here,” Kene commented as they watched me. “You’re second gate, and all of the magical plants that you’ve gathered up are too. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a first gate healing potion – far from it, actually. Grandmother can make a first gate healing potion out of three leaves from her plants, since they’re all fifth gate, or if she uses the ratio we are now, she can make an entire bucket of first gate healing potion.”
“And for my purposes?” I asked curiously.
“Well, you can either make a single dose of second gate healing potion, or multiple doses of a first gate healing potion,” Kene said. “Technically, you should be able to get four, but even my grandmother can’t perfectly convert it. Since you’re new to breaking potions down into weaker variations, you’ll likely only be able to get one and a half.”
“How much is a healing potion on average?”
“Oh, it depends heavily on the gate. Ungated ones, like fever reducers or antibiotics are usually cheap, bu–”
“Lemme clarify,” I said, grinning. “I meant how much liquid.”
“Oh. Four ounces is the standard dose.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. “Let’s get started.”
The procedure began with life mana-water, which cast the pot in a light green hue, and from there I began to drain the arrays in the rosemary. I used the cauldron to attach a bit of the Mana-Grass, and then had to let it simmer for ten minutes, skimming off the sludge that rose to the top.
Sir john’s wort and echinacea came next, and they were easier than I expected – both of them seemed to have an overabundance of arrays related to healing, followed by more Mana-Grass. Much less of their internal arrays were junk, and so I had less sludge to remove.
The magical feverfew, aster, and marigolds all went in together then, and I had to stir vigorously in order to help stop the arrays from reconnecting and forming a weaker regeneration spell. By forcing them to break and reconnect in new ways, I actually turned up the potency – it reminded me a bit of tempering chocolate. If you just put chocolate on things, it could turn out okay. But if you mixed it, melted it, and let it form a temper, you could get a much better product overall.
The mushroom came next, and I drained the arrays as thoroughly as I could, then had Kene inspect it.
“Not bad, but…” their fingers flickered over the mushroom cap, and the arrays that created the poison diminished even further. They didn’t just drain them entirely, though, but actually drained specific spots more than others, forcibly breaking off the most poisonous parts of the array.
They tossed it in, and immediately the poison sludge rose to the top to be skimmed off. I may have skimmed off some of the potion as well, but I’d rather lose a few drops of potion than wind up poisoning myself.
“Maybe don’t use the Soultoad’s Seat when you make it at home,” Kene warned me. “But otherwise, you’re doing well, and the Seat’s a dangerous ingredient anyways.”
We had to let it simmer for half an hour after that, in order to allow the complex components of the mushroom to fully connect, but after it was done, I tossed in the Healer’s Heart leaf.
Since it had mana of its own, not just the standard energy that underlay everything, there was no draining to be done.
When the leaf hit the liquid, there was a burst of reddish black smoke as some of my mana was tugged out of me and into the mixture, and then the entire thing smoothed into a vibrant red color that almost reminded me of a candied apple.
“Congratulations!” Kene said, handing me a vial. “Are you going to convert it down?”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I poured it into the vial. “I don’t have the full-gate spells ingrained yet, so I don’t get any extra benefits from letting the power run through me. So for now, I’m just gonna keep it as an emergency measure.”
“Well, why not stock up on several?” Kene asked. “You have the plants, and a healing potion’s shelf stable for a few months.”
“Huh,” was my only response.