The ‘tree’ let out a low hiss as it rolled over, regarding Alex with a single reptilian eye.
Knowing how well Kybas fed Harmless, Alex wasn’t surprised at how much the croc had grown since he’d last seen him, which—if he was remembering correctly—was around the time of the Games of Roal. Kybas and his familiar had been going to Thameland, harvesting dungeon cores with Grimloch and their other friends, but Alex rarely saw him or the little crocodile…actually, little was the wrong word.
The crocodile could be called many things: terrifying, sleek, powerful, monstrous, large…but little wasn’t one of them. Harmless was now the size of a young oak tree, his scales were so thick, they could easily be mistaken for armour plating.
His fangs were the size of daggers, his webbed feet were bigger than Alex's hands and his tail looked like it could break a full grown man in half with a single swing. Gone was the little croc that Kybas had shown Alex in first year alchemy, now replaced by a monster with teeth almost bigger than his whole body had been back then.
“What the…” Alex murmured. “What…what happened?”
“My winnings! And what I get for harvesting dungeon cores!” Kybas hopped up and down in excitement. “All that coin makes it so I can feed Harmless much higher quality potions and lots of them too! I've been making new ones that I custom blended just for him. It's making him grow faster than ever, and he’s so strong now! Just the other day, I let him go swimming in the Prinean sea, and he caught a full-grown lion shark! It was amazing!”
“Don't those get to be like fifteen feet long?” Alex asked.
Kybas grinned, nodding vigorously. “And he's been taking down bone chargers lately! It's been great!”
“Yeah, great…” Professor Salinger looked at Kybas from the corner of his eye, his expression filled with trepidation. “You're a little reckless, you know?”
Alex burst out laughing. The familiarity of the conversation was too much for him.
“So how have you been, aside from Harmless growing into a dragon?” Alex asked.
“Good, good!” Kybas grinned. “Third year is going well: I'm learning a lot about alchemy, magical botany, and magical beast husbandry. I’m starting blood magic too! I'm going to make monsters when I graduate!” He patted Harmless’ enormous head. “I’ll make Harmless even bigger and stronger too!”
Salinger gave him a wan smile. “You know…I'd be happy if what I taught you was used a bit more constructively. You know you could be growing all kinds of magical gardens…”
“It is constructive!” Kybas grinned, oddly resembling Harmless. “The magical gardens will feed my monsters, including Harmless! And that’ll help me make monsters! It's all great!”
“Ugggggh,” Salinger groaned. “If you weren't such a good assistant…nevermind, I’m going to work on the aeld tree again before I have a heart attack.” He nodded. “Good to have you back, Alex.”
The professor walked away, leaving the goblin, the crocodile and the archwizard together.
“So how have you been?” Kybas asked. “It's been a bit! I heard you had lots of exciting adventures!”
“Yeah that’s one way to put it,” Alex said. “They were adventures that were—in fact—exciting, but I nearly died a lot.”
The goblin wizard shrugged. “We'll do that, eventually. And you didn't die, so that's what's important!”
Alex laughed. “You're always so sure of yourself, Kybas.”
“Why worry?” Kybas said. “We have to live, and life is going to do things, and we're going to do things back. That's the way the Chulu live: We do things to our enemy, and our enemies do things to us. We just have to make sure that what we do to them, they can't get back up from! Simple as that.”
The archwizard shook his head. “I'm almost jealous.”
“Don't be!” Kybas said. “The Chulu live a hard life, and I'm going to make sure that my tribe gets plenty of help from me, once I learn how to teleport. Then I can go home whenever I want, and give them monsters that they can use to defend our home!”
Alex thought about that for a long moment.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s what he could do with his life.
Build things that would help defend Thameland from any other enemies that came to the island. He frowned. Maybe not. Or maybe so? That’s something he’d like to do, but didn't think he'd want to do it for the rest of his life.
Why did figuring this stuff out have to be so difficult?
“You okay?” Kybas asked.
“I am,” Alex said. “There's just a lot on my mind, a lot to think about, and a lot to consider and do.”
“Well, I'm sure you'll get it right!” Kybas cried, clapping Alex on the forearm. “You're smart, and you’ve figured out a lot of other things. I'm sure you'll figure out whatever this is too. Anyway, I should get back to helping with the aeld tree, and I'm sure you wanna get to the lab. Oh! Before you go, you should say hi to the tree, it missed you.”
“Yeah,” Alex looked up at the aeld. “I'll do just that. Thanks, Kybas. We'll have to catch up later.”
“Plenty of time to catch up once the war is done!” Kybas said. “Or maybe before, who knows?”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Who knows, I guess. Well, I'll let you get back to work. We'll get together for a drink later.”
“Yes, later!” The goblin gave him a thumbs up. “You can join me and Grimloch! He said he had the tastiest meal recently, but he wouldn’t tell me what he had or share any so I could give some to Harmless!”
“Uh…” Alex thought back to the drool and stomach-juice-covered antler on the floor of Uldar’s viewing room. Something Grimloch had claimed as a trophy. “You probably can't get anything like it anymore.”
“Why do you say that? That’d be a pity,” Kybas said.
“Just a guess.” Alex told him.
Harmless let out a little hiss, sounding disappointed. As the goblin returned to work beside the magical botany professor, Alex went closer to the tree, his eyes on the warm bark. He reached out, touching the trunk, surprised at how warm it felt as he smiled up at it.
His aeld gave off feelings of joy, which the tree mirrored. Their emotions filled the air, intertwining so closely that Alex could not tell where the staff began and the tree ended.
Not for the first time, he wondered if they shared one mind, or if they were separate.
He supposed he’d never know.
Tucked between its branches were a hornet hive and a beehive. Alex had put them there last summer. Over the warmer months, the insects had flourished, bonding with the aeld, and while the females were still dormant, he knew they would awaken as the weather warmed.
“It's good to see you again,” Alex said. “I don't know if you can sense what's happening with the staff, but if you can't—just know that I'm treating it well.”
The mysterious tree emanated feelings of warmth and gratitude toward Alex, mixed with slight irritation, like it was sulking.
“I get it,” Alex said. “I know I haven't been to visit you for a while, and I'm sorry about that. There’s been a lot going on lately, but I promise I'll spend more time with you later.”
He touched the ring that Elder Blodduewedd had given him, carved from the wood of the dead aeld tree in Crymlyn Village. It had been enchanted to protect him, just as the other rings—given to the other Heroes and Theresa—had been.
They would all need that protection.
“Listen,” he said. “I know you bring good fortune to those around you, or at least that's how the legend goes. If that's true, then please grant us your blessing. We're going to need it for what comes next.”
The tree emanated a wave of curiosity and a flurry of warm emotions.
It seemed content.
Alex patted it. “Hopefully, we’ll be as content as you are when this is all done. I've got to go for now, but I'll be back. I'll definitely visit more often.”
----------------------------------------
“Good to see you back so soon, Mr. Roth,” Professor Jules said as Alex walked into the secure section of the laboratory. “I take it your conversation with Professor Val’Rok went well?”
“It did,” Alex said. “That just leaves Professor Hak to okay challenging the Exam for Credit for blood magic, since Baelin isn’t around to give me permission to do it for the higher level courses in the Art of the Wizard in Combat.”
Professor Jules rolled her eyes so vigorously that the beak bobbed on her mask. “Of course he isn’t, why would the old goat be around when we need him?”
“Don't say that, he's helped us a lot,” Alex said. “I'm sure that whatever he's doing with his cabal is keeping him tied up…wherever he is.”
“At this rate, it will keep him so busy that the war will be done by the time we see him again!” Professor Jules scoffed.
“Well, then we'll just have to show him our victory when he gets back,” Alex said. “That's the way I look at it at least.” He looked around. “Where’s Isolde?”
“She went to Uldar’s Rise with Watcher Hill and her two companions, Svenia and Hogarth,” Professor Jules said, “She’ll be collecting every sample of ichor she can find since we’ll need as much as we can get if we’re going to purify enough poison to use on the Ravener. And while she's away, my plan is to run a few tests to determine how the poison would react to the addition of dungeon core essence.”
“Oh?” Alex asked.
“Chaos essence would likely make the poison even more volatile,” Professor Jules said. “But the addition of dungeon core essence might increase that volatility even more. And I believe it's worth a try, so I'll be running tests with dungeon core essence and a bit of the toxic substance. Now that you’re here, what will you be looking at?”
“I'm going to see if I can translate more of Uldar’s notes.” Alex explained the potential solutions he’d thought of when he was with Professor Val’Rok.
She nodded, carefully adjusting her mask. “Val’Rok does have a way of leading people to interesting solutions. I quite like the redundancy of the plan. Having more than one way to ensure that the Ravener stays dead can only be of benefit.”
“True,” Alex said. “And while you're working on the poison, I can be working on the other two methods: learning how its reconstitution protocol works, and understanding how it turns fear into power.”
“Excellent,” she said, turning back to her workstation. “I’ll leave you to it then. Good luck, Mr. Roth. Resolving these issues will likely take a while, but let's hope we can make some good progress today.”
“Let’s hope,” Alex said. “And if you wouldn’t mind, I might need to ask you for some help. But, if you need anything, just shout.”
“Perfect,” she said. “Let's begin.”
The two alchemists parted and Alex went to the copies of Uldar’s notes, picking up a few of the sheets of parchment.
“Alright. Let's see if I can't figure you out.”
He called on the Mark of the General, painstakingly examining the notes, soon pausing. “Professor, do we have any advanced books on divinity here?”
She pointed to a nearby bookshelf. “We brought several here, when we first began studying those notes.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, conjuring a set of Wizard’s Hands. He was about to send them to gather the books up, when he realised that he didn't know which ones to collect. “I need a favour, professor, would you mind grabbing those books, if you have a moment? You’d know which ones would be relevant, better than I would.”
“Absolutely,” she said, going to the bookcase.
The young archwizard returned to Uldar’s notes, scanning the god’s written records. The pages were full of magical and alchemical notations, many Alex didn't recognise, but Isolde and Professor Jules had done an excellent job translating a lot of the god’s unique symbology into modern alchemical terminology.
His eyes traced the mana pathways running through the Ravener’s schematics. There was a labyrinth of power going through the construct, and following each pathway was difficult because they were so complex.
‘Do some of these pathways also channel fear, or are they all just for mana?’ Alex wondered. ‘I don't know anything about how constructs are built with divinity, or how that even works? Would such constructs need pathways to channel fear?’
The General of Thameland heard his professor gathering the volumes on divinity.
Behind them, the door clicked and—with a hiss of escaping air—opened.
“Ah, there you are, Isolde,” Professor Jules said as she headed toward Alex, cradling the books in her arms. “You can put the samples over there…”
The young noblewoman stepped into the room, glass bottles containing Uldar’s ichor softly clinking.
Alex’s concentration was fixed on the notes as he muttered.
‘Damn, what I know about divinity could fill a whole thimble,’ he thought sarcastically. “Professor, could you hand me one of those books?” he asked. “If there's one about divinity and constructs, that’d be perfect…or wait, maybe how divinity enchants different items?”
“Of course,” Baelin said. A book was placed beside the notes.
“Thanks,” the young archwizard muttered, taking the book and opening it. “Actually, if you have one on divinity that exists without deities, that’d be pretty helpful too.”
“This one should do nicely: a fine volume,” Baelin said, handing Alex the book.
“Thanks, Bael–” the young archwizard froze.
He looked up from Uldar’s notes.
“Wait, Baelin?”
He spun around.
There stood the Chancellor of the University of Generasi, smiling. “Did you happen to miss me, my young friend?”