Nora managed to convince Gabby to sit down and talk before we left the sanctuary that was the Hollow. It was a blessing in disguise for me. I watched just long enough for Nora to hand Gabby a silver oval-shaped necklace that brought the girl to tears before I excused myself and disappeared into the forest. They didn’t need me there standing around and twiddling my thumbs without a damn thing to say. It was better for me to be refilling the canteens from the freshwater that made up the river (Don’t worry, I checked very carefully that it wasn’t sewage-related) or hunting for resources that might keep us alive.
There were countless crafting materials for me to harvest in a place like this. My scouting skills along with liberal use of my Identify skill had my inventory overflowing before I’d even made a full circle around the place. An impressive feat given it wasn’t that expansive. If I had to guess I put it at about the ten-acre mark. Maybe fifteen if I was being generous.
In the whole time I was exploring though I only found one Weeping Widow Lilly that wasn’t gracing Jacob’s grave. I plucked it quickly and stashed it away, sure it would be important one day.
I still didn’t understand how a place like this could exist underground, and in a sewer at that, but it was too good to question it. If Melumek could so easily destroy the world who’s to say some other, far kinder, primordial couldn’t litter it with pockets of paradise?
I thanked Jacob one more time when I walked past his gravesite. If it hadn’t been for the Gunslinger's cowardly need to hide, this place probably would have stayed hidden right up until the last player fell.
Stella followed me the entire time I marched through the trees, stopping here and there to sniff at something interesting. Frank had decided to remain silent and statue-like once more. I think he knew it made me uncomfortable when he did that. In fact, that might be the entire reason he did it. I couldn’t think of a single other reason the bird would just zone out. Perhaps he just had a very noisy inner monologue that occasionally demanded the entirety of his attention. Nah, that seemed a little unlikely. I’d believe the ebony-feathered bastard didn’t have two cents to rub together up there in his tiny skull before I believed he was lost in intense thought.
I don’t know how long it took me to make the round through the tree but when I returned to the place I’d left the women it was to find Gabby fast asleep with her head in Nora’s lap. The girl’s face was still as red and damp as it had been earlier. She looked peaceful now though, a small relief given everything that had happened.
I opened my mouth to speak only to have Nora lift her hand and shake her head. She didn’t want me to wake up Gabby. I guess I could understand that. There would be time enough to hear the story later. I turned away, finding a comfortable spot atop an oddly shaped boulder. Stella curled up on the ground beneath my feet.
I pressed the three lines tattooed on my inner wrist and navigated to my crafting menu. The list of ingredients was so long I had to scroll to look at them all. For some reason, despite the janky mechanics of scrolling by thought alone, the expansive nature of my goods made me giddy.
I searched through the ingredients, trying to decide what potions to craft first. My traveling alchemist toolkit would help make stronger and more refined potions just so long as I used it right. To be honest I was still fumbling a bit with that one. I wasn’t a chemist so the proper way to use these things wasn’t information I had. I was just making it up as I went along, occasionally writing down things that worked and things that really didn’t in my notebook.
I would have to find another book at some stage now that I was thinking about it. The one I had was getting a little full.
Now that I was done procrastinating again, I focused on the list glowing in front of my face.
Ingredient
Quantity
Property 1
Property 2
Property 3
White Snakeroot
22
Resist Stun
?
?
Hemlock
32
Nacrotic Poisoning
?
?
Oleander
4
Restore Health
?
?
Aeger Fern
23
Lingering Sickness
?
?
Lavender Sprig
15
Drowsiness
?
?
Toxic Toad Terror Tongue
1
Nacrotic Poisoning
?
?
Wallaby Tail
7
Resist Elemental Damage
?
?
Huntsman Spider Eyes
8
Enhance Stealth
?
?
Crimson Dragonfly Wings
6
Weakness to Burning
?
?
Assassin Bug Saliva
4
Enhance Stealth
?
?
Sandpaper Fig Leaves
16
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Nacrotic Poisoning
?
?
Strychnine Fruit
3
Paralysis
?
?
Rosemary Sprig
15
Invigorate
?
?
Sage
6
Enhance Intelligence
?
?
Wattle Seed(s)
20
Enhance Perception
?
?
Dandelion Root
15
Invigorate
?
?
Lemon Myrtle Leaves
19
Resist Stun
?
?
Kurrajong Seed(s)
19
Enhance Perception
?
?
Dried Coffee Bush Berries
15
Invigorate
?
?
Weeping Widow Lilly
1
Drain Magicka
?
?
Cinchona Bark
27
Restore Health
?
?
Cat’s Claw Vine
36
Enhance Strength
?
?
Manchineel Sap
41
Burn
?
?
Gympie Gympie
29
Paralysis
?
?
Bloodwood
18
Restore Health
?
?
Twenty-five different things to play with. Why did that make me so happy?
I took to creating potions and poisons as quickly as I could, carefully avoiding the things I knew wouldn’t work. I even avoided things I was pretty sure wouldn’t work. A violent blast to my face was probably going to wake up Gabby and anger Nora. Neither of those things seemed like a good idea right about now.
By the end of my crafting, I had a good stash of potions for my inventory. Some would help me and my clan members and others would deal some serious damage. There were still ingredients I didn’t dare use like the Toxic Toad Terror Tongue and the Weeping Willow Lilly. Those were precious somehow, I was sure of it.
Filling my stock full of potions wasn’t the only benefit I received from my harvesting and crafting. The corner of my lip rose as the golden word danced in front of my face.
Skill Upgraded: Alchemy (X)
75% potion crafting success rate.
With my stash of ingredients almost completely depleted I changed screens until I was looking at my inventory. When I saw the icons crowding my available spaces I was grateful again that potions that were the same type and level grouped together. I filtered the items and looked over my collection.
Potions:
19 x Basic Enhance Perception Draft
4 x Basic Enhance Stealth Draft
15 x Greater Potion of Invigorate
16 x Simple Wasting Poison
12 x Basic Potion of Resist Stun
16 x Simple Potion of Restore Health
3 x Simple Paralysis Poison
When it was all said and done I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of what alchemy could do for me. I could lose myself in hunting down ingredients and crafting potions and poisons. Maybe one day when we’d set up our safe zone in Stanthorpe I could open up a potions stall. The clan could use it to get some gold in our coffers. It would be a task far more up my alley than going out and fighting monsters head-on. That was Nora’s domain.
Of course, I couldn’t ignore my quests just to run a little shop. That wouldn’t get us any closer to defeating Melumek and banishing the Crocs and the rest of the mutated monsters he’d unleashed on us.
“Joe… Joe, are you listening?... Joe, wake up!”
Nora’s insistent bellowing took a while to penetrate my skull but it eventually did. I blinked and closed my menu, unfolding my painfully stiff body and stretching until my back made a series of satisfying popping sounds.
“Whatcha want?” I said, a little surprised by the groggy sound of my own voice. Had I fallen asleep as well? No, no I couldn’t have. I’d been working.
Nora sighed and rubbed at her temples forming deep grooves in the skin there as her fingers circled. “Are you coming with us or staying here?”
“Oh, I’m coming,” I said.
“Good, let’s go,” she said in a rush turning and marching away with Boopzy on her shoulder and Gabby by her side.
“Watch out when we get back into the sewer tunnels,” Gabby said quietly. “That’s where the Howling Devil got us.”
Her comment made me remember something I’d forgotten the moment we’d reached the Hollow.
“Gabby can’t go near the Outsider’s main hall,” I blurted out in a rush.
Nora and Gabby froze in place, turning back to stare at me with disturbingly similar looks of surprise. How could two people who looked nothing alike give off the exact same energy?
“What are you talking about?” Gabby asked me.
I cleared my throat, unsure if I should have even said something at all. The Goddess Umbra might not have told her disciple about the wolves hunting her. Maybe she only told me. Would it be worth scaring her when she was already so fragile? It felt wrong like I would be doing something insensitive and cruel. She had to know though. It was her life in the most danger from the weird ghostly beasties. Not Me. Not Nora. Just Gabby.
Before I could figure out what the hell I should do Nora spoke up, her voice shaking and her face pale, “The ghost hounds?”
Well, if Gabby didn’t know before, she knew now. Nora wasn’t the most tactful person in the world. Judging by the look on the girl’s face though, she already knew that toothy invisible specters were hunting her.
Nora noticed the look and grabbed the girl’s shoulder, proving she wasn’t a complete lost cause when it came to other people's feelings. “It’s alright. There are other ways out of this place. We don’t need to go back that way.”
Maybe you don’t, I thought to myself as the image of the bouncing and spinning stone of coffee and cream materialized in my mind's eye. That thing was still screaming my name even from this distance. If I left this place without going back for it I would never forgive myself.
Nora and Gabby to safety first, then the pretty rock. I sighed at my own reasonableness. Sometimes I wished I could be a heartless bastard, it would save time and a hell of a lot of heartache. It’s a hard thing to turn off your innate nature though. Trust me, I’d been trying since I was a boy to not give a shit. To push anything that even resembled a feeling deep down in the depths of my brain where I could forget about it until it exploded in a ball of rage. It’s harder to do than it seems. Maybe, all things considered, it’s a good thing I never quite worked that one out.
“Okay, stay close,” Gabby said as we neared an outcropping high up on the wall. The waterfall pounded downward beside us. A layer of mist rose into the air, soaking our skin. “Things get a little tricky here.”
Nora grunted and readjusted her hold on Stella. I felt bad letting her carry the dog all the way up the almost sheer cliff but she was the only one that could handle Stella’s weight for an extended amount of time. Stella didn’t look too happy about it either. Her soft brown eyes were staring daggers at me like it was my fault she couldn’t scale the mountainside on her own.
“Watch me. Do exactly what I do.”
Gabby crouched down and ran to the very tip of the outcropping before launching herself upward. Her wings beat once, almost like she hadn’t meant them to before she grabbed onto a ledge above us and clambered atop it.
Nora looked at me with her mouth hanging open, her gloved fingers digging deep into the dense fur of Stella’s belly. “Ahh, maybe you should go first?”