“We’re out of Valerian Roots again.”
The alchemist discovered and announced as much when looking through the jars of prepared ingredients. The case had been checked every other day, and this particular jar had been half-full during the last inspection, yet now it was all gone.
Where it had disappeared off didn't matter. What mattered was the lack of a vital ingredient, if the alchemist wasn’t to be executed for treacherous negligence.
“Sounds like your problem,” Edna said, confirming his beliefs. A distant set of screams interrupted the exchange before it could continue, however, both of them looking out from the wagon. Further down the hill, where the found village was settled, people were being cut down. Some fought against the alchemist’s comrades, some tried to run, and some were on their knees begging. It all ended with the same result, though the laughter varied a little. The sadists liked watching them flee. “Even a shithole like that should have a storage room. Go down there and find what we’re missing.”
The alchemist looked at his superior in disbelief at the order. Edna didn’t spare him another thought, however, already leaving the wagon behind to tend to some other inane task at their impromptu camp.
He was being told to go down to the village.
The village that was currently being pillaged by the troops he didn’t want to be around unless absolutely necessary, due to their extreme homicidal tendencies.
Please no.
His mental begging did little to influence the reality around him, sadly. With a defeated resignation hanging over him, the alchemist brought out a worn leather satchel, a set of lockpicks if a door wasn’t already broken down, and a dagger in case… somebody forced his hand.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t be the case.
Leaving the hill of safety, the alchemist ventured down towards the village. Some of the houses on the edge were being set ablaze. A common method of destroying the places they visited, since the warriors rarely had an interest in doing it manually. And the time saved from this method wasn’t half-bad either, though it didn’t help him in this specific situation. If he didn’t hurry, the building holding the needed resources might very well be gone before he could get to it.
Hurrying over the broken fence that went around the village, he walked into the main area. It had become more quiet than it had been a few minutes before, the last of the vocal stragglers cut down. Now the people he kept fed were searching for the ones who tried to hide. A hard task for ordinary folk, but the alchemist knew that it would barely be a challenge for these hounds.
Those thoughts left him as he spotted the next building. It had been built with slightly higher quality wood, and the crude windows in the walls even looked polished. The village’s gathering place, and, by the side of it, likely the place where more valuable things were stored.
Finally.
Taking a step around the corner of the building to reach the front entrance, the alchemist was met with the blade of an axe headed towards his head.
He saw his face in the reflection, saw his eyes widen, and saw the pieces of dirt on his cheek that he hadn’t bothered washing off this morning. The alchemist didn’t expect to have time to see all those things, with how fast the blade had been going towards him, yet it stopped a breadth away from his left eye.
“Oh, damn it, I thought I’d found another one.”
It was the closest that the alchemist had ever been to dying. A terrifying experience. He felt his heart catching up with that fact as adrenaline rushed through his body, the blood pumping as he looked up at the giant.
Green pupils stared back at him in disappointment. Then the bear of a man walked forward, hitting the alchemist’s side as the warrior hurried on in their pursuit of a potential kill.
… This is normal for them.
That nonchalance, that lack of an apology, that lack of a second glance sent his way, it all grounded the alchemist. What he’d experienced couldn’t matter less to the hounds running around the broken village. This was what they’d been going through every week for the past several years.
And they loved it.
Rabid beasts.
The alchemist didn’t say it out loud, fearing that the enhanced hearing would catch his words. Not that his lungs would have obeyed his requests, as his body focused on calming itself once more. Blood still ran hot, his limbs felt lighter than usual, and his muscles were tense to the point he knew he would be sore within the hour.
It would be sore anyway, though, so that wasn’t anything new.
“Valerian Roots,” the alchemist finally muttered, continuing onwards. That’s what he needed. A single jar would be enough for now, two would easily last a month, and bringing three would make his superior angry at him for wasting space. “Just one.”
Just one.
It took seven steps to get to the large door that led into the village’s main building. What hadn’t been ripped off during the initial purge at least. Everything around the entrance was thrashed as well, tables thrown over, cabinets emptied and smashed. Further inside, next to what might’ve been a small bar area, the alchemist could see the wooden floor stained alongside the smell of alcohol in the air.
Damage for the sake of doing damage. The alchemist didn’t understand the need for it, yet he supposed it made the search a little easier in the sense that there was nothing useful in this room anymore.
Or on the first floor outright. The rooms further in had suffered the same fate as the entrance area, everything broken to a hundred pieces. The second floor was the same as well, much to the alchemist’s displeasure.
Even without the enhanced senses of the bastards running rampant outside, his nose still caught the hints of herbs. A slight sting of drying Ironleafs was in the air. It was unmistakable, the alchemist having been forced under the torture of sleeping next to that plant for weeks at a time when it was being prepared. Even when it had been half a year since the last batch had been made, his body could still recognize it in an instant.
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Yet that smell had only lessened on the second floor in comparison to the first, and even then it was faint.
And it hadn’t been outside at all, which meant the hiding place was out of plain sight.
There’s a basement.
The alchemist was sure of it, but there were no stairs leading down to it. Nothing that hinted at its existence, no leads other than that smell. That smell of…
“Bloodgrass.”
Another herb not commonly found in these parts unless especially cultivated by a practiced hand. The discovery caused a smile to form on the alchemist’s lips. His chances of survival would have increased tenfold if only he could find where the entrance into the basement was hiding.
More desperate measures were needed.
“Guide me,” the alchemist whispered as he held out his right hand. A simple gesture signaling the process of something infinitely more complex, as the incantation traveled through his veins, into his heart, before passing by his Core.
He felt a tug from within and then it came.
Channeling of [Plant Bond] has been activated! Current cost: 3MP/sec
A thin thread escaped his outreached palm. It floated in the air, aimlessly for a moment before pulling the alchemist towards the front of the building once again. A scent, a magical one, had been noticed, and the magical energy craved to combine with the source.
The alchemist smiled. While the hounds outside could catch a drop of sweat a hundred meters away, they hadn’t noticed the scent of the herbs hidden beneath. Tunnel vision would be their downfall.
“Of course, you’d hide here,” the alchemist muttered as the thread pulled him toward the corner of the entrance room. It was on the far right side, previously hidden behind the small bar, now hidden beneath the destroyed wood that had made the furniture.
The broken bottles of liquor had been too good at masking the scent. If the brutes outside had taken a better look at the floor, before they had covered it with broken chunks of wood, they'd have noticed the planks not being identical to those elsewhere. Instead of the separation lines usually seen in the wooden flooring usually used, these were connected in a square-like fashion. And that indent on the left side wasn’t because of age wearing it down, was it?
Putting three fingers into the hold, the alchemist pulled upwards. A smile reached his lips when it opened up, showing a staircase leading downwards.
You did well, magic of mine.
The glowing thread of green dispersed as he took the first step down into the darkness. He couldn’t see any way to light the room up, but he didn’t mind. It showed that whoever kept this place healthy was smart since too many of the dried herbs he could smell were best preserved in total darkness.
Still, without the knowledge of how everything was stored, it was hard for the alchemist to know what was what. Two steps after reaching the end of the stairs, he could somewhat see a cabinet filled to the brim with jars of various sizes. Most had words written on their surfaces, but the darkness made it hard for the alchemist to see what they said.
“Can’t ask for much, I suppose,” he murmured, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The minutiae of light coming in from the staircase worked its magic a dozen seconds later, the labels revealing the contents of each jar. “Sparrow Flower? How novel.”
Putting the first jar away, his eyes surveyed the rest of the cabinet for what he needed. It was all stored alphabetically, apparently, allowing him to skip ahead to the near-end and find what he needed.
Valerian Roots.
Barely a week old as well. The alchemist couldn't have asked for anything better than this, his life secured for another month at minimum. Or, well, as long as the brutes upstairs didn’t decide he looked too much like a local. He had low expectations of them, now that he was carrying something from here over to the rest of the caravan.
… Maybe it’s best not to take more than this.
Some of the dried plants on the upper shelves looked rather enticing, with how much they would cost in the cities, but the alchemist refused to tempt fate more than he already had. It wasn’t like he didn’t have access to an ocean of illegal and highly-priced plants already.
Turning around and heading for the stairs, he almost made it to the first step before noticing something to his right. The cabinet that he’d stolen from was to his left, standing next to the wall, but the other side had much more space for anything that needed to be in the darkness.
And there was.
That glint of light that caught his eye had come from a person. Somebody looking right at him.
And not just one. As he turned fully to look at them, more and more eyes were revealed. Several dozen, all mute as they stared the alchemist down. There had to be nearly fifty of them, hiding in complete silence. The alchemist was shocked that they hadn’t been found already, though the fact that the room hadn’t been noticed explained that.
They would’ve gone unnoticed entirely if he hadn’t needed the herbs.
…
Nobody moved a muscle. Nobody attacked him in the hope of keeping him quiet. Perhaps they understood that the slightest noise out of him would alert those above. Perhaps they were just as frozen in fear as he was. Perhaps they were trying to signal something to him.
Whatever it was, he couldn’t see it, his eyes not as adjusted to the darkness due to the light being stronger next to the staircase. He could only see the eyes.
…
This isn’t my job.
He didn’t have to do anything here. The alchemist had been sent to gather Valerian Roots and then return as quickly as he possibly could. Doing anything about this would impede that process.
And so, strengthening his soul a little more than normal, he ventured up the stairs without saying a single word. He wanted to just leave the building instantly after, but he hesitated at the top, considering whether or not he should close the hatch.
Had he not already done enough?
The internal discussion didn’t matter, in the end, when the front entrance was used by somebody other than him. Looking at the giant, he saw those very same green eyes he’d seen when he almost lost his life fifteen minutes before. One of the hounds, their expression filled with glee as they saw the revealed hiding place.
“I knew it was a good idea not to kill you!” the giant happily exclaimed, before taking a step back to shout at the other brutes outside. “I’ve struck gold, lads!”
The staircase downwards could just barely hold the massive form of the man, but the warrior made do with what he had as he hurried towards the last remnants of the village. Metal hit metal, some light flickered in and out, and a few more giants forced their way into the fray below seconds later.
It barely lasted a minute before it was over before the last of the screams ended, and the only thing in the air was the heavy breathing and laughter that the alchemist had heard so many times before.
Then came the chanting.
“He’s the Butcher of Verness!” one shouted.
“Yes!” another agreed, more laughter coming from below, as the title was repeated over and over again. It seemed that the first giant had won whatever game they’d been caught up in. “All hail the champion!”
…
The alchemist went back to the caravan at a steady pace. No words escaped him as he showed his superior the found roots, as he sorted them into their storage, as he helped make food for the group of hungry hounds, or when the night began to reach them.
When the day came again, he simply continued his work as he’d always done. As he’d done for over a year. As he would do for over a year more. Nearly three more years, in fact, before he got out and took another name.
It was the same with the giant, their name only thought of the day they left that life behind. At least however much they could leave it. Titles had a way of sticking to the skin.