“What were you foraging for out in that forest, anyway?” Saffie asked Ruben as they headed to the Alchemists’ Guild after a brief stop at his campsite to help him pack away his tent.

“Just something very rare for a special potion I’m creating,” Ruben dismissed, and said very little else until they arrived at the guild, which was located in the abandoned Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford, North East of the Thames.

It was a grand, impressive building that was alive with the sound of cauldrons bubbling, vapours hissing, and glass clinking, and as Ruben led them through the entrance, a rich smell of roasting mushrooms, root vegetables, and woody herbs wafted into Saffie’s nostrils.

In one corner of the main area a plume of giant toadstools were being cultivated, in another there were hundreds of glowing crystals growing out of the walls, and running through the entirety of the main space was a giant concoction that looked like it belonged in a mad scientist’s lab; it was a gangly structure of interconnecting glass tubes and bulbs that intertwined around balconies, with liquid shooting through it and steam billowing out of multiple vents. The whole building felt alive with a mix of nature and machinery, and it was also alive with players, who seemed to have a real problem with tidiness. There were pestle and mortars strewn about the place, recipe books lying open everywhere, and food and stains on just about every surface.

As the group followed Ruben through the bustle, a guy with a giant slab of meat draped over his shoulder jumped in front of them.

“Rube! You’ll never guess what happened when you were away - a hogfiend broke in here and ate all your preserved polyfruits.”

Ruben’s face fell flat.

“Hogfiends only eat live hopping helibugs, Geoff. The next time you want to cover up the fact that you ate someone’s ingredients, you might want to get your Overworld facts straight.”

The guy licked a bit of fruit juice from the side of his mouth guiltily, and Ruben pushed past him.

After Saffie almost tripped over a young girl who was chasing a load of little spider creatures that had escaped from a jar, they arrived at a gnarly old desk at the rear of the main area which was covered in furious, messy notes, but before Ruben could explain what he was planning on doing, an elderly woman hobbled over.

“Ruben! I’m so glad you’re back! I’ve had terrible trouble with my foot lately!”

She pulled up her skirt and slapped her foot on the desk, which was sprouting not five, but sixteen toes, all squished together and fighting for space. Saffie had to look away because it was turning her stomach.

“I’ll, uh… have to see to that later, Mrs Hibbins. I’m a bit busy right now.”

Ruben grabbed an empty cauldron from the shelves behind him and cleared a bit of space on the desk for it as the woman hobbled away in a huff.

“Are you going to tell us what we’re doing here, or are you just going to leave us in the dark?” said Cora, running her fingers over the collection of bottles on his shelves.

Ruben ignored her and said, “Open potion book.”

Much like Saffie’s magic spellbook, an old looking tome materialised in front of Ruben, which was frayed around the edges and a little torn. As Ruben rifled through it, Cora picked up a large bottle of a multicoloured liquid from one of his shelves that was labeled ‘IMPORTANT!’

“Don’t touch that!” Ruben snapped, craning his neck to scold her. “That’s what I was foraging ingredients for! It’s still on half! And it needs at least another week of resting before I can continue!”

“Mirrorpetal, Ironore, and Protoplasmia?” said Cora curiously, eyeing a handwritten list on the back of the bottle. “I’m no alchemist, but aren’t those the base ingredients for a Muscle Booster?”

Ruben’s cheeks flashed beetroot red, and he said nothing as he continued to flick the pages of his book with his skinny arms.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

As Ruben landed on the page he was looking for, he said, “Saffie, grab me a bunch of Spriggerleaf from the fauna quarter - it’s bright blue, you can’t mistake it. Nate, can you chisel two quartz of Copper Crystal from that wall over there with your dagger? And Cora…”

Cora followed Ruben’s line of sight to a vat of what seemed to be jellied eyes on a neighbouring table.

“Don’t you dare ask me to get a handful of those eyeballs,” she said dryly.

“I’d never ask you to do that,” he said. “I want you to get two handfuls.”

As Saffie returned to Ruben’s desk after plucking a few leaves from the strange looking plant, she noticed a freestanding tank of clear liquid with several documents floating around in it tucked away in the shadows of some pipes.

“What’s that tank for?” Saffie said as she dropped the leaves on the desk.

“Oh, that’s a normalising solution,” said Ruben. “Mahmud up on the balcony found a bunch of enchanting scrolls on some errand he did, but the text is all jumbled up. Soaking them in the solution should make them readable.”

Saffie felt a flutter of excitement in her chest, and she quickly pulled her scroll from her belt. She had made a habit of carrying it around with her, in case she ever came across something that would help her restore the text.

“Do you think it would be able to repair this? It got erased accidentally.”

Ruben took the blank scroll from her and raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe, although that tank is strictly for use by guild members only. Do you trust me with it?”

In all honesty, Saffie didn’t, but the prospect of finally finding out what was on the scroll was too irresistible to turn down.

“How long do you think it would take to restore?” Saffie asked him.

“For a completely erased document? We’re talking weeks.”

“Oh,” Saffie said, her excitement diminishing. “Well, it’s no use to me like this.”

She handed the scroll to Ruben, who took it over to the tank and dropped it in where it submerged slowly.

Once they’d all collected the ingredients Ruben asked for, he stuck them into the empty cauldron and added three ready made potions from the shelf behind him. He said “Ignite,” and with a whoosh, the underbelly of the pot lit up. Within a few minutes the mixture was bubbling away like some putrid stew.

“Lastly, I need a watch,” he said, looking at their wrists.

“Nobody wears a watch these days,” said Cora. “Nobody our age, anyway.”

“Nobody our age…” Ruben muttered to himself, then shouted, “MRS HIBBINS!”

The old lady limped over, peering at the mixture with disgust, and Ruben very politely asked her for her watch so he could give it a quick dunk.

“My watch?” she said. “You ain’t sticking my watch in that filth! This is a Rolex!”

Ruben bent down and rummaged for something in his desk drawers, then pulled out a small vial of something bright yellow.

“Cures curious maladies of the hands and feet,” he said. “Two drops of this every morning for a week, and you’ll be eleven unwanted toes down.”

Mrs Hibbins went to snatch it out of Ruben’s hands, but he held it back. Saffie had never seen someone remove a watch so fast in all of her life.

Ruben took it and twiddled the mechanism that changed the date and the time, his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated. Then he held it above the bubbling liquid before plunging it under the surface and holding it there, the bubbles popping around his forearm.

“And he calls you the strange one,” Cora said to Saffie, watching Ruben with a raised eyebrow.

“Isn’t that burning you?” Saffie gasped. “That’s boiling hot liquid!”

“I’ve still got two minutes left of a Heat Resistor in my system,” Ruben explained. “That should do it.”

He handed the watch back to Mrs Hibbins, who took it with forefinger and thumb as a gloop of brown slime and a little eyeball slid down the face.

As she shuffled away, Ruben grabbed a few mismatched empty bottles from another one of his drawers, scooped them one by one into the mixture, and handed one each to Cora, Saffie, and Nate.

“Wait, you want us to drink this?” said Cora. “I thought you were brewing it for yourself!”

“What does it do?” said Nate, sniffing the contents of his bottle.

“Just drink it,” Ruben urged. “You’ll see.”

Saffie let out an incredulous laugh.

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “You poisoned my uncle, and now you hand us all a potion and say ‘Just drink it’?”

Ruben let out a frustrated sigh.

“If I didn’t want to help you, I wouldn’t have brought you here. You’re just going to have to trust me. Look, I’ll go first to show you that it’s perfectly safe to drink.”

He knocked his own potion back, and waited for them to do the same.

Saffie and Nate glanced sideways at each other. Nate shrugged his shoulders and took a large sip.

Saffie followed suite and hesitantly sipped some, but nearly heaved from its rotten taste.

“Yeah, you’re gonna want to swig the entire thing in one go,” Ruben advised. “And try not to chew the eyeballs. They have a tendency to get stuck in your teeth.”

Saffie pinched her nose with her free hand and poured the remaining contents of the bottle down her throat.

She gulped, shuddered, and waited a few moments.

“So,” she said, “what happens now? I don’t feel anythi-”

“Guys, I don’t fee so good,” Nate interrupted.

“Me neither,” said Cora, gripping the rim of the desk to steady herself.

Saffie glared at Ruben, whose face was becoming blurrier and blurrier.

“Ruben, what have you-”

But Saffie couldn’t even finish her sentence. As the room began spinning rapidly, she keeled over.