“That last batch will give us a total of a hundred and twelve potions in bottles and another twenty in the cauldrons,” I announced with a sigh of satisfaction.
“That’s quite a haul,” Terra purred at me. I gave her a rub and sat for a bit on a stool where I could watch the cauldrons. When they were done simmering, I’d add the Freshen potions to them. It would be enough to refill Chester’s supply if I didn’t get back right away. All he or Lily would have to do is scoop them into potion bottles. I could only do that with the health potions. The mana potions required an element after I capped them. The Keep Fresh and Baking Soda potions didn’t require a post-bottling element, but I doubted that Chester would want to sell them in the shop. I’d made a small batch of each anyway.
They stacked by twenties in my inventory. I had forty-six health potions, forty-nine mana potions, ten each of Baking Soda and Keep Fresh, a dozen of the Molotov Cocktails and five Mild Poison. The health and mana potions had had a small fail rate, creating just enough spoiled potions for me to test out the Mild Poison. I had forty of each of the health and mana potions stacked into the crates for Chester, but the rest were tucked into my inventory.
“I’m proud of our morning’s accomplishments,” I admitted. I cast my final Spark at the cauldron and then picked up the first crate. Maybe I’d get a strength stat bump if I carried it by hand. It wasn’t just the potions we’d made that I was proud of. My mind was clear, and Terra and I had been talking most of the morning. Her little kitty-mind was a fascinating combination of wisdom and animal blinders all wrapped up in a bundle of affection toward me.
The crate I’d just hefted thunked back onto the table as my mind caught up with what I’d shoved toward the back. I’d had just enough ingredients to finish my potions. I’d had just enough potions to fill Chester’s order. I now had just enough money to take the coaches. It was fishy. My first day in this world had been a scrabbling mess, but even then, I’d had just the right skill to get room and board at the tavern. Now I had a perfect little dreamy cottage straight out of some fairy tale, complete with a new job where, once again, everything lined up just enough.
“Something’s not right about all this,” I told Terra, my mind trying to justify our current fortune. People, in my opinion, tended to ignore the discrepancies when things were going right. I wasn’t people like that.
“Mom!” Kat bounced into the doorway of the cottage. “I got level three! I could get my own Nemesis Quest now! We could get Daddy and Cliff!”
“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t take any more,” I huffed out, hating the imperious tone coming out of my mouth.
“We have to take another one anyway,” she reasoned with me, her determination set in the narrowing of her eyes. That was the stubborn streak she’d gotten from my husband. People often thought I was stubborn, but I wasn’t. Really.
I stood there gaping at her, my mind again pulled away from deeper thoughts. Indecision was not my friend. Seeing the other crate, Kat picked it up and headed for the door as if she’d only declared that breakfast had been good. This had shaved a little off of the sanity I’d gotten back by making potions. I hadn’t wanted to do any of these quests. I didn’t want to trap another person here. It was messing with my sanity every day.
“Shouldn’t we wait until we defeat mine?” I called out to her.
“Mine would only be three days away,” she stopped at the doorway and turned around. “Yours is more like nine. Let’s get Daddy here faster and pull Cliff in with yours.”
“Did you get a compass?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“Yeah,” she admitted, and my suspicions were confirmed. She’d already gotten the quest.
Inside I was fuming. I was angry that she’d done it. I was ashamed that we were the villains, but honestly, I was more ashamed that I agreed with her reasoning. If we did this right, it could all be over in a couple of days. Then we could settle into that nice little cottage and live happily ever after. And all of that just smacked of being easy. Why had everything suddenly gotten easy?
I looked at the potions that had been too easy and the cottage that had been perfect. “Aren’t you worried about how easy it all seems to be getting?”
“Yep,” she looked down at her crate of potions. I wasn’t ashamed of her or her decision. I was more ashamed of myself for how I doubted her.
“It’s all perfectly easy as long as we’re headed toward another Nemesis Quest,” I waved my hand around the cottage. “Of course, it was easy to give us a cottage with all the trimmings. We have to leave it to go on the quest anyway.”
“I don’t mind things being easy for a bit,” Kat leaned against the doorway and sighed. “We could use a little easy.”
“What direction did your compass point to?” I asked, expecting to hear that we had to go another direction entirely.
“Same as yours,” she admitted, pushing off the wall and walking out the door.
“And that’s too easy!” I exclaimed, picking my crate back up and following Kat out the door.
“I say we stay in the easy groove until it runs out,” she shocked me, flitting down the stone path with a nimbleness that she hadn’t had a few hours ago. I hated the glibness, but I could admire her ability to adapt. “I couldn’t believe our luck either. We can pick mine off with a flick and be on our way to yours the next morning.”
“Groovy,” I muttered, following her more carefully. I needed to know I was right before I tried to steer her away from what felt like foolish behavior. Who was I to judge her decisions? I wasn’t that kind of mother. I could guide, but she had to choose her own morality. “There’s a catch to all this and I’m not sure we can live with ourselves if we just take the easy way.”
“Have you thought of how bad it could get if we don’t follow the path?” she asked me, turning, and skipping backwards toward the well. “We can talk more in the coaches. I’m sure we’ll have time.”
“I can’t wait,” I was sincere. I could almost feel the ambient mana pushing us. It was in the very air we breathed. If I looked close enough, it was the difference between walking a path in the forest and forging through a hip-deep swamp. Everything in me wanted to dart off this path. It felt like we were being nailed into another box.
“We should figure out how to practice skills in the coaches. It’ll be a good place for you to teach me some spells and me to teach you some knife-play,” Kat declared glibly.
“But we’ll also talk, right?” I pressed her. I watched her eyes.
Kat hadn’t been a fragile kid. She’d been private but fierce. When she got hurt, she would hide it from me. She’d always said she didn’t want to worry me. Kat had been seventeen when all this happened. She hadn’t had a chance to fully develop her sense of morality yet. It was still forming. She’d lost more than she was going to admit today. In our old world, she’d been a quiet prodigy heading into med school. I couldn’t add to her stress. I needed to give her some space to come to terms with everything.
“You remember when we didn’t dare talk in lab classes because they’d use anything against us?” she thought she was explaining to me. I knew to stay silent, but now that I could feel it closing in on me, I wasn’t content to let myself be guided. Her tone might have been flippant, but I knew her. She was on edge too. “There’s a time to play by the rules and a time to go our own way. You taught me that.”
I shuddered, bombarded by the way it all rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t that I didn’t want an easy life, but nothing felt real. I didn’t know how to get to real from here. Where were we going to get a chance to talk if mana had ears?
“Let’s just see where it goes until the family is all together,” she turned back around to skirt the well, and gave an extra twirl for good measure. Her tone was just a tiny bit manic as she continued. “Besides, I love churning up stats! It’s so invigorating! I can see the progress. It’s tangible and definitive and just so cool!”
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“They’ll only bounce around like this for the first few days,” I put in, following with less pizzazz. This was all my fault. What had I gotten us into?
“Yeah, but I’ll always be able to pull up a character sheet and see the tangible results of effort,” she enthused, lifting my precious crate of rattling potions over her head. I couldn’t find words, so she talked. “And that’s a strength bump. It’s just that in our old world, nothing worked like this. I was always so unsure of what I was doing. It was infuriating. Was I doing something that was going to help me or hurt me? This though! It’s amazing. I know I’m headed in the right direction. It’s all in black and white tables of stats and skills. I’ve never felt so…”
I cocked my head to the side, letting her find her words.
“Free!” she shrugged her shoulders, bouncing the crate a little too much for my taste.
Free wouldn’t have been the word I’d have used. Terra bounded ahead of us down the trail to Chester’s back door. She batted at the bottom of the door until it swung open just a little and slipped in the crack before we got there. I didn’t feel like I could say anything.
“It’s like I can make mistakes and know right away they were mistakes because they just don’t go anywhere. They don’t create anything. They don’t accomplish anything! But when I find something new that does get somewhere, I know. I really know I’m progressing!”
I nodded, but she knew it wasn’t necessarily in agreement. I was thinking. This reward system was satisfying but was it really taking us in healthy directions? I’d been so wrapped up in my own panic. Had I been selfish? Had I done the wrong thing in bringing her here? What decided something should be rewarded? Did it have an agenda? It would be so easy to get lost in the progression, but this Nemesis Quest wasn’t a good and moral direction. And what would happen when we finally defied it? Because I knew us. We would defy the trend. It was in my nature.
“Don’t worry so much, Mom,” Kat admonished me, shouldering open the back door of Chester’s shop. I took a breath and tried to be inspired by Kat’s attitude. Would my mind ever stop overthinking all these decisions?
“Delivery!” Kat called out to Chester, mimicking his earlier mannerism.
I gave a wry chuckle that was more forced than real. She gave me a smile tinged with worry. I straightened my shoulders, gave her a nod, and followed her inside. We were on the same page, even if she was saying the words the system wanted to hear while I was thinking nothing of the kind. We’d had a deal for the last year of pre-med. We put our heads down and pretended to be normal. We didn’t ask for special treatment and didn’t complain when they didn’t comply with what accommodations we were supposed to get. We’d figured it was easier than filing complaints to deaf departments.
“Hey Kat, Karma,” Chester called out. I put my happy mask on. People always said they’d be helpful in the beginning, but we were used to them backpedaling when we didn’t conform.
“Mom finished the potions,” Kat called back to him.
“Mom?” Chester asked, taking the crate from Kat.
“Um,” Kat stalled, casting eyes to me. With Kat’s return, I’d forgotten that I appeared the same age as her to these people. We’d fallen into old habits, but I certainly didn’t look old enough to be her mother. My mind was distracted with this silly stuff that I couldn’t do anything about. We were going to make some stupid mistakes.
“It’s a nickname,” I made up quickly, trying to mask our oddities. “I’m the older of us and my parents weren’t really there all that often, so she calls me Mom.”
“Always worrying about me like a mom,” Kat agreed, trying to hide a smile. It was the truth and that’s what made her laugh. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a lot of experience trying to mask.
Chester accepted the explanation with a nod and a smile. I didn’t like even the implication of the lie, but I wasn’t smart enough to think of a better explanation. What would I have done if either Chester or Lily remembered that I’d been fighting for my daughter? This reinforced my thoughts about how this world rewarded and sometimes pushed people into situations that didn’t align with the morals that I’d choose for me or my family. I didn’t want to lie to Chester, but what would happen if we told the truth?
I’m not a prude, and I have some moral beliefs that would challenge most of our previous societal norms, but truth was one of my cornerstones. This world was full of lies. I opened my mouth to tell Chester the truth, but he got words out first.
“You finished all these so fast?” He checked the contents of each crate, marking down numbers on a list from his pocket. I let myself settle into what felt like another scene from drama class. “You’ll have twenty gold waiting for you when you return, I’m sure. They’re a good quality.”
“I have another cauldron of health potions if you wash out some bottles and refill them,” I told him. The mask I needed to wear left a bad taste in my mouth, but I felt trapped. “That might give you another twenty of them if you’re careful.”
“I don’t suppose you’d front us a few silver for a couple of those backpacks,” Kat wheedled. I saw her eyes unfocus and knew she was reading a notification.
“How many?” Chester gave her a stern look.
“Four?” Kat asked.
“Four silver or four backpacks?” Chester shot back.
“Backpacks,” Kat gave him her most charming look. It wasn’t the best I’d seen, but I was sure her charm was higher than it had been on our world. “If we die on this mission, you’ll have all those gold to yourself anyway.”
“Die? Mission?” Chester’s shrewd look turned to concern. He really was a nice man at heart, even if he didn’t remember being a knight in shining armor. Had that really been just the previous night?
“We have a quest,” I filled in, watching Kat try to backpedal the situation.
“I thought you were unguilded,” Chester scratched his mustache whiskers.
“We can still get quests,” I asserted, making the system tell the truth instead of making up something myself. Would it adapt if I forced a few little things?
“Interesting,” Chester nodded to himself. I didn’t know how he justified the obvious discrepancy from what he thought he knew of the world, but he had noticed it and accepted whatever it was.
“I’ve got a few other potions you might like,” I pulled out a sample of everything but the poison. I was saving those for Kat. “I got the recipes from a previous quest.”
Chester pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and gave the potions a look while I talked.
“The Baking Soda one is something I can combine with a recipe for Cookies that Lily might like. It’s more of a kitchen ingredient than a potion really,” I shrugged. While the Baking Soda was my favorite of the potions, I doubted it had much worth to anyone else. I moved on to the Molotov Cocktail. “This one is handy for adventurers though. If you shake it, light it, and throw it, it will explode.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Chester placed the potion bottle onto a shelf very carefully. “I could probably sell a few but it would take some time for adventurers to trust the concoction. Who knows? Maybe if they’ve heard of it.”
“This one is just something that’ll preserve something,” I figured it was the most worthless to adventurers and me alike.
“Keep Fresh?” Chester’s brows raised. “This one I can sell easily, though not for as much as health or mana potions. They use it on their rations. A single spoonful will keep a loaf of bread fresh for a month. They love this stuff. I’ll take all the Keep Fresh, two Molotov Cocktails, and one of those Baking Sodas for a gold and all the backpacks I have in stock. I can pay off the merchant’s guild as I sell the potions.”
“All six of the backpacks?” Kat grabbed at the backpacks greedily and I smiled. If she and I were a little sharp around the edges, no one else needed to know it.
“Sure,” he told her. “Grab a few of those sacks over there too if you want. I’ll take the total out of the potion profits.”
“Thanks,” her eyes gleamed like a kid in a candy store.
“Are you sure?” I asked Chester, not wanting to get him in any trouble. It was a small store in a remote place.
“It’s fine,” Chester winked at me. “I’ve run a tab for Mabel before and it was fine. The market goes up and down, but it evens out in the end. I’d give you more coins to hold you over, but I’m getting low myself until we make some sales.”
“You might want to wait to get to town, Kat,” I warned her as her eyes scanned other goods in the store. I didn’t want to deplete his supply. He’d need it to recoup what he was giving us in coin.
“It’s all good,” he reached out to pat my hand. In that moment, I mourned the previous Chester, my tank and friend. It made me a little misty. Whoever he thought he knew wasn’t the me that was real.
I picked up a pencil and a pad of paper. Between that and the pile of sacks that Kat plopped on the counter, we put a gold’s worth of a dent in our future profits. I was pretty sure Chester had put a discount on our purchase. He also shoved a few extra pads of paper, some pencils, and a week’s worth of rations into the pile. Was that a waterskin? Oh, he was right. That would be handy.
“You should get your coach tickets from Mabel before it gets here,” Chester broke into my melancholy. “You’ve got about three hours before it comes through. It’ll stop to let folks eat and then travel through the night to Siff.”
“Thanks, Chester,” I told him, suddenly feeling the fear of leaving the only place I knew in this world. What good did a cottage in the back do me when it might not even be there if I made it back?
“It’ll be there,” Terra assured me. “Sammi made a deal. They can’t take it back.”
I was a little shaken. How did she know?
“Kat wasn’t the only one to get a tutorial, remember?” Terra soothed me, but I just felt so manipulated. They’d gotten some mystical tutorial. Why hadn’t I gotten one? “I’ll share anything I can with you. It’s just that most of it is just about how to be a familiar and I’m not sure it applies to anything.”
“No thanks necessary,” Chester waved a dismissive hand at my retreat as Kat subtlety tugged me toward the front door. “Lily and I look forward to camping out at the cottage while you’re gone. She says it has better light than our apartment upstairs. Now, go grab some grub before you go.”
I skirted the counter between us and gave Chester a hug that surprised him for only a moment. I probably hung on too long, but it gave me a chance to fight back a sniffle. The way he returned the hug assured me that Lily wouldn’t hold it against me. I was going to give her one just like it before we left. I hadn’t even thought of having someone look out for the cottage. I didn’t want to hurt Chester or Lily, but once we were out of town, I was getting off this grooved path to make some waves in this world. This girl wasn’t groovy.