A few days later, Jeb once again arrived at his Introduction to Alchemy course.
“Good morning...” Professor Quicksilver paused for a long second, dragging out the final sound of the word, “Jeb.” He tilted his head as he said Jeb’s name, as though unsure whether it had been the correct name.
Jeb nodded vigorously. “Good morning Professor Quicksilver. I had a question about the discussion we had after the last class session.”
“One moment,” Professor Quicksilver said, pulling out his notebook. After frantically flipping through the pages, he nodded. “Ah, have you thought more about growing plants for the Alchemy Department?”
“Somewhat?” Jeb replied. “I don’t know if I have the Skills or experience necessary to grow them effectively. I’m also not sure what plants you might need.”
Professor Quicksilver began to nod. “I have a list of plants for which the Alchemy Department would like to increase its supply. Let me find it.” He pulled out a large bag from somewhere beneath the desk. Given that the desks were open in the front, Jeb was not entirely sure where he had been hiding it. Still, it was far from the strangest thing that he’d seen a Professor do since coming to the Academy, and he shrugged it off.
As the Professor rummaged through the bag that seemed to be continuously growing, Jeb looked around the rest of the classroom. The syllabus had said that they would be making their first potion today, Distilled Water. Exactly how it was different from distilled water, Jeb had not been able to figure out from the syllabus. He assumed that there would be some sort of Magical purification in the process, though there was nothing which explicitly said as much.
Lost in his thoughts, Jeb did not notice when Professor Quicksilver finished rifling through his now body sized bag and pulled out a sheet of paper.
“Here it is!” he said triumphantly, startling Jeb out of his thoughts.
Handing it over to Jeb, he explained, “the plants here are listed alphabetically by their Standard Alchemical Name. In cases where there are multiple plants with the same Alchemical Name or multiple Standard Names for the same plant, I have listed them together. Beside each plant name, there is a ranking based on how difficult Druids have historically claimed the plant is to grow, a second column ranking how difficult it is to source them now, and a third column with the quantity that the Alchemy Department desires. I have color coded the plants by their expected value, with the redder ink being used for plants which are more valuable per plant, and thicker ink being used for plants with a higher expected total value. I hope that you will find this sheet informative. I am, of course, available to discuss anything on the sheet at any point.”
Jeb quickly skimmed through the sheet, noting that most of the plant names were written in thin black ink. The few red names he saw were only slightly thicker, and the few thick names he saw had only the slightest blush. As he neared the bottom of the list, however, he saw twenty or so plants that were all inked in thick red letters.
“Why are these plants inked so thick and red?” Jeb asked, pointing to the bottom of the long page.
“There are a number of potions that the Academy sells. Chief among them are the Statistic Enhancers that many rich families feed their children.” Jeb was curious what Quicksilver meant by “Statistic Enhancers,” but the Professor kept talking, mind already traveling down a different diversion. “I remember the first time I heard about how much they were worth. I debated dropping out of the Academy right then and opening a small boutique Alchemy Emporium that only sold those potions. Of course, when I mentioned as much to my advisor,” he chuckled, “well, you can imagine the look on her face. She reminded me that the high prices those potions command is as much due to the hassle of testing and sampling to comply with all the regulations as it is a function of their demand. The demand, though, is only limited by the stock.” He trailed off, as though aware that he’d lost the train of the conversation at some point.
“Where was I?” he asked, looking at Jeb.
Jeb spent a brief moment considering redirecting the Professor into talking about Statistic Enhancers, but swallowed the urge. The topic would come up again some other time, he was sure of it, and he did not want to lie to a Professor who so far seemed completely willing to be forthright with Jeb about anything he asked.
“I think you were describing why you didn’t drop out of the Academy to make Statistic Enhancers,” Jeb said, realizing that he could use that to segue into his question.
Unfortunately, Professor Quicksilver began speaking almost as soon as Jeb did. “Right! Well, as I am sure you can imagine, I fell further in love with the subject over the course of the term. By the time that the term ended, and my advisor told me that she had found someone willing to take me on as an apprentice for the term break if I was interested, I knew that I wanted nothing more than to study this most beautiful of Magics for the rest of my life. I told her as much, and she pushed me to become a Professor here.” He smiled fondly at Jeb, as though remembering his own days as a student in an Introductory Alchemy course.
By the time that the Professor had finished reminiscing about the good old days, when there were enough Druids on campus for the Alchemy Department to be able to supply every course, with plenty to spare for Professors doing research, the rest of the class had filed in. Jeb resolved to stay after the session of class ended to ask what, exactly, Statistic Enhancers were. As Quicksilver had continued his recollection, it sounded more and more like they were potions that the rich fed to their children to improve their Statistics.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That’s ridiculous, he thought to himself, there’s no way that something like that would exist without anyone knowing about it. The fact that the Academy, at least, knew about it made him less sure of that conclusion.
As Professor Quicksilver began lecturing the classroom about how to safely decant water from the starting vessel into the alembics, Jeb put the thought away. He could revisit it when the period was over. Until then, he needed to focus on learning Alchemy.
By the end of the class, Jeb still had no idea what differentiated Distilled Water from distilled water. As far as he could tell, the only thing that the class had done was evaporate water to collect it in another jar. Jeb clearly wasn’t the only student confused, at least if everyone’s hesitance to leave the room was any indication.
Professor Quicksilver turned back around from his desk, where he had worked all period to slowly fold his bag back into itself. “Is there a reason that none of you are leaving? The laboratory is finished for the day, you all successfully distilled water.”
“Professor,” one of the other students spoke up. Everyone else in the room turned to her. Jeb had to imagine that they were all as grateful as he was that she had been willing to speak. “What is the difference between Distilled Water and distilled water?”
“Hmm?” Professor Quicksilver cocked his head and frowned. “Distilled Water requires multiple intricate stages of Mana purification, and is worth its weight in whatever precious metal you happen to prefer. Why do you ask?”
“The syllabus said that we would be making Distilled Water today.”
Professor Quicksilver’s frown deepened, and he moved to her desk. She pointed to the section in the syllabus where it explained what the goal of the day’s experiment was. He nodded as he read the description for the day’s work, and then flipped to what seemed to be a random page in the syllabus, where he nodded again.
“My apologies,” he said. “I did not review the notes for this course as closely as I might have, and whoever last wrote the syllabus had a habit of capitalizing the name of the final product of each day’s experiments. In most cases, the product listed is correct. However, as you noticed today, that is not always the case. I will endeavor to warn you in advance should it happen again.”
If the disgruntled noises a few of Jeb’s classmates made was any indication, they had been aware that Distilled Water was incredibly valuable, and were less than pleased to learn that they had not made it during the class. Jeb was curious what made Distilled Water so valuable. After the Professor’s repeated statements, he wondered if it was due to regulations, or whether it was due to how inherently difficult it was to produce Distilled Water. He waited around with hopes that the rest of the class would leave before the Professor did.
Instead, as the Professor kept folding his bag, eventually he disappeared into it. Somehow the bag fell into itself and disappeared as well. The members of the class who had not left yet let out different sounds of disappointment and turned to leave. Jeb followed, having no better ideas.
Back in the Stacks, he read through the sheet that Professor Quicksilver had given him more carefully. He wrote the names of the plants written in the reddest ink onto another scrap of paper, then started wandering the Stacks. Even though he was not a Librarian, let alone a Stacks Librarian, it had clearly grown accustomed to Jeb’s presence during his many searches for books with Margaret and Philip. When he looked for books, it had begun to lead him to the right section, assuming that he was not looking for anything too difficult. He hoped that a compendium of Alchemical plants would not be too arcane of a request.
As Jeb walked through the Stacks, he paid attention to the labels on each of the shelves. When he saw the same number for a fifth time, he paused. This was clearly the shelf he was looking for. Or, it was at least as close to the correct shelf as he was going to find.
As Jeb scanned the titles near eye level, he found one that seemed like what he was looking for. It was a thick and clearly well used tome. Jeb pulled it off the shelf and started walking towards the circulation desk without looking back.
Almost as soon as Jeb had learned that the Stacks would be willing to lead him to the correct book, he had learned that the Stacks would also use that as an excuse to try to trap him. When he had run into Margaret after wandering for two hours through books that grew less and less physical, she told him to be more careful if he was going to continue wandering. The implicit approval to wander did not go unnoticed, and Jeb had taken to strolling through the Stacks when he had nothing else to occupy his time. He’d found that being willing to spend time in it when he wasn’t in a hurry meant that it was more willing to let him leave with whatever treasure he’d found when he was in a rush.
Even though he had no other appointments for the day, Jeb wanted to get the Library into the habit of letting him leave when he had picked up books. Jeb wasn’t entirely sure why that seemed like an important habit to drill into the Library, but he had grown to trust his gut instincts more and more the longer he stayed in the Academy, especially when they encouraged him to do something that felt strange. Just as he was starting to worry that he’d grown too distracted in his walk, the Stacks gave way to the open space of the Library entrance.
Kaitlyn was standing beside the circulation desk. As he walked near, she blew a loose strand of light purple hair out of her face. She frowned slightly as she looked at the book in his hands.
“You haven not checked that book out,” she accused.
Jeb thought back to the other times he’d found a book in the Stacks. Philip or Margaret was almost always the person he saw at the circulation desk. On the few occasions that it hadn’t been one of them, Jeb ran into a Librarian he had never met before. This might have been the first time that Kaitlyn had seen him with a book he had found himself.
“I have not, and I was hoping that I would be able to,” Jeb replied.
Kaitlyn clearly considered asking why whatever Librarian had gotten the book for him had not checked it out when they did. She also clearly came to the conclusion that asking the question fell too close to her desire not to pry into Jeb’s relationship with his hometown Librarian and refrained from asking. “Do I need to remind you on the policies for returning Library materials?” she asked, already returning to her office.
“No, I think I still know them,” Jeb replied.
She gave him a small smile and closed the door.