The potions store was a small room in the far reaches of the guild that was full to the brim with glass bottles of all shapes and sizes; some were simple and circular with cork stoppers and paper labels, others were crooked and covered with intricately webbed fabric, while a few even had colourful jewels embedded into them and metal snakes curling around them from top to bottom as though squeezing the oddly shaped glass in a sinister grip.
“What does this one do?” Saffie asked, pointing at a multicoloured one that was filled with bubbles.
“Don’t drink that, whatever you do!” Ashmi warned. “Makes your entire body go stiff as a board for two hours. Learned that the hard way. Literally.”
Saffie ran her fingers over a few of the others as Ashmi rummaged for something in a messy wooden box.
“Oh, and that one you just touched - that’s an Eldertonic. Never mix it with a Lardershake. Paul Tomkins told me the combination would make me very fragrant, but later realised he’d mistaken the word fragrant for flatulent. It was like I’d eaten ten ton of baked beans with the odd rotten egg thrown in for extra pungency. They had to evacuate the guild for the entire afternoon. Ah, here we go, two full potency Evergreens - that’ll do the trick.” She bit into the cork of the one, yanked it out with a pop, and spat it across the room before handing the bottle to Saffie.
Saffie sipped. Unlike the rich Mage’s Brew Keith had given her the previous day, the Evergreen tasted of fresh mint and witch hazel with a hint of basil. She gulped it down and saw her health bar rise back up to a perfect 100%, going from burnt umber to bright green in a matter of moments.
As she shook the last drops onto her tongue, a boy with a toad panion on his shoulder entered the store carrying a sack full of new potions, but when he saw Saffie he fumbled and almost dropped it.
“Whoa, Ruben!” said Ashmi. “You okay? Haven’t been boiling Dungwisp Root again have you? You know the fumes gave you vertigo last time.”
“No,” he said, as his panion clambered clumsily off his shoulder and onto the nearest shelf. “Just, uh… tripped a little on that loose slab - you know, Keith should really get that fixed.”
Saffie vaguely recognised him from Willow Grove. If she wasn’t mistaken he was one year above her. He was tall and gangly, with very fair hair and pale skin which looked even paler next to the gnarly, spotted skin of his panion.
“This is our new guildmember,” said Ashmi, slapping her hand on Saffie’s shoulder and shaking her. “Saf-”
“Saffie the Stra-” Ruben cut in. “I-I mean… Saffie Sparkes.”
“You know each other?” said Ashmi.
“We… go to the same school,” Saffie explained. “But I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.”
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“Well,” said Ashmi, turning to Saffie, “here’s something you should know about Ruben. This guy’s the best alchemist in the whole of Overworld.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Ruben, looking embarrassed.
“Come on, don’t be modest!” Ashmi said, playfully punching one of Ruben’s skinny arms with a force that seemed to hurt him more than was intended. “You, like, created more than half the potions we have in this room! Listen to this, Saffie. This guy invented the Elixiris, the most potent healing potion Overworld has ever seen.”
“It was simple, really,” said Ruben, rubbing his bruised bicep. “It was just a combination of Frogspool, Cloudwisp, Decaleaf, Oldbark, and Glowsap. And of course brewed at an exact temperature of a hundred and two degrees for no longer than forty seconds and no less than thirty eight. Anyone could have figured it out, really.”
“Yeah… ‘course they could,” said Ashmi, looking at Saffie with a blank expression before grabbing the sack from Ruben and rifling through. “So, what have you got for us today?”
“Well, there’s seven bottles of Junipuddle, some Essence of Nox, a couple of vials of LullDraught, and a good handful of Manaphilters.”
“Wait - Manaphilters?” said Ashmi. “Don’t they makes players start howling like a hyena?”
“No, you’re thinking of MANIAphilters. Manaphilters restore MP in full.”
“And that’s just what us mages need!” Ashmi beamed. “Rube, you’re a legend!”
Ashmi threw Saffie a bright blue bottle that was shaped like an oval.
Saffie uncorked it and sipped. This one tasted of blueberry bubblegum mixed with vanilla. As she drank, Acorn trotted along one of the wooden shelves towards Ruben’s toad panion, but reeled back with bristling fur as it burped loudly.
“Bultras!” Ruben hissed. “What have I told you about doing that to other players’ panions?”
“Have you got him jumping yet?” said Ashmi, and Ruben looked away sadly as his panion just sat there looking heavy on the shelf.
“Not yet, but I’m… working on it.”
As Saffie’s MP rose back up to full, she noticed that Ruben kept glancing at her nervously then averting his eyes, his milky cheeks blushing pink.
“I’d better get back to the Alchemist’s Guild,” he said. “Mrs Hibbins got bitten by a Hedge Hatter and she’s grown a cyst on her left hand the size of a tennis ball. She’s desperate for me to brew her an antidote.”
“Okay, don’t forget to get your guilders from Prue,” said Ashmi. “And if she tries to short-change you again, just slip some Joviality Juice into her cup of tea. I dare say it’d do the miserable cow a bit of good.”
Ruben just smiled embarrassedly before hurrying out of the room with his empty bag, almost tripping over his own feet again.
“Guilders?” said Saffie. She hadn’t heard of the term.
“The currency of Overworld,” Ashmi explained. “You didn’t think we used real money, did you?”
Saffie hadn’t even considered any money being exchanged at all.
“You know, I’ve never seen Ruben act the way he did today,” Ashmi said curiously as she fetched Saffie a potion belt that would allow her to carry an array of potions with her at all times.
Now that Ruben was gone, Saffie thought it best to come clean about her notoriety.
“Even though I’ve never spoken to him, my… reputation kind of precedes me,” she said, strapping the belt around her waist underneath her robe. “Everyone in my school thinks I’m diseased and contagious.”
Ashmi chuckled in disbelief.
“Why would they think that?”
“It’s a… long story,” Saffie said, not wanting to get into the whole Beatrix bullying thing. “But the reason he was acting all nervous is because he’s afraid of being close to me.”
Ashmi smiled at Saffie, and there was a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
“Saff, that’s not the behaviour of someone who thinks you have a disease,” she said. “THAT is the behaviour of someone… who has a crush.”