Tanisha didn’t have anywhere to go, she just wanted to finally get away from everything for a little while. She was frazzled and didn’t know what to do. She always wanted to be a mage, yes, but everything was moving so fast. Two weeks ago she was a student studying to become an alchemist; yes she was a noble but it didn’t matter, she was effectively cut off from her family.
Things just seemed to sink in differently now. She was really not a mage, and Bjorn was really something from the higher planes. Her core, the maya, the cultivation system thing she had, they all finally sunk in as something so unnatural. Now she was one choice away from even losing her identity as a wendigo. There had only ever been one Nature’s Wrath. The founding warrior king of Yuhia, Hjalmar Kinshalbur, he was also the first wendigo sorcerer. He was blessed by the Forest Father, a son of divine retribution against the druids and humans that hunted wendigo.
She was not some divine creature created by their True to be a greater. She was just some unlucky girl that without her familiar would be rotting in a troll layer. Marriage, magic, maya and her mother’s Left Hand who was here in the city for some reason; there was so much she had to consider.
She finally looked around at her surroundings when she noticed the density of people had increased dramatically. Bjorn had to raise his long tail and curl it over his body to keep people from running into the spikes at the end. He looked like he was imitating a scorpion. Tanisha was in the inner ring shopping district which was unexpected, but it wasn’t like she had been directing Bjorn. He had just been walking in a random direction.
The market district was awash with people, shops, restaurants and wholegoods sellers. Every business was fancy, catering to the higher wealth of the area. Tanisha stopped Bjorn when they came to an alchemy shop. It was nestled rather snuggly between two other adjacent businesses. All of the buildings were connected, but this one seemed to take up half the space the others did.
She got off of Bjorn. He was too large to enter this establishment so he sat at the door, attracting some attention. Inside the shop was a cornucopia of ingredients and concoctions. The space was packed to bursting, shelves taking up nearly every available space. Live plants hung from the ceiling; each had its own mana lamp since there were no windows. In the corner a stairwell spiraled up to a second floor.
A single human man sat at a desk, running some experiment on one of the most expensive alchemy setups Tanisha had ever seen. The man worked without even noticing her, adjusting heat on one of the gas bunsen burners. Using gas instead of the flare stone burner on the table beside him meant he was working with exceedingly magically sensitive material.
Tanisha didn’t know how to quantify human ages; she had only ever known Mat and Julie who were about the same age as her. She did know that humans were far shorter lived than wendigo. Maybe he was in his middle ages. She didn’t know, but he had a big bushy beard and a slim frame.
Tanisha watched him work without interrupting him. He looked to be on the middle stages of whatever he was making. He pulled out a mana stone to infuse the heated potion as it spun in a centrifuge alongside several other vials of liquid of various colors.
She returned to quietly looking around the shelves. Her fingers lightly grazed a shelf full of potions, herbs and even a few mana-tools. She was lost in the wonder of it all. She had never seen such a complete collection. It put the somewhat random assortment of tools she got trading with Owen and Helina to shame. No, it wasn’t even close to a comparison.
“Wow,” Tanisha said as she looked around.
The alchemist wrote something down and looked up from the ongoing experiment.
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“Ah, hello, hello young lady. Welcome to Drew’s Herbal Emporium,” the alchemist said. “I am Drew the fourth, by the way.”
Tanisha almost jumped at his words, having almost forgotten he was there while she perused the shelves. She had to take a second to compose herself.
She nervously responded, “Hello, sorry for interrupting you. I, uh, just stumbled upon this place and I… just wow, it’s amazing.”
“A young inspiring alchemist in the making perhaps?” Drew asked with a disarming smile as he set aside his notebook.
“Yes, I have always had a fascination with alchemy. I was learning it in the academy I attended,” she responded with a shy smile of her own. “What are you working on?”
“Ah, this? Come-come let me show you,” Drew said, motioning her over. “I always love seeing the next generation interested in the sciences. Right now I am brewing the Draught of Ironskin. It will temporarily make the person that drinks it many times more durable.”
Tanisha walked over and he pulled out a seat for her on the opposite side of the desk. There were manuals, formulae and diagrams neatly arranged in the corner. Drew’s personal notes were written in the human language of… Tanisha didn’t know what language, but everything else was in Valish. Drew showed her the manual on the Draught of Ironskin then explained where he was in the process.
Tanisha fell back into student mode and felt like she was back in her alchemy class. She wanted to take notes but didn’t have anything to write with or on. Drew saw this and handed her a pen and a sheet of paper, telling her it was on the house with a wink. She asked questions as Drew continued the brew, explaining the process along the way. Tanisha was right in her assumption that this was a mana-sensitive concoction.
Tanisha was there far longer than she had intended; an hour flew by, then two as she continued to take notes and even help a little in the creation of the potion. Drew was very pleased with her level of competence and attention to detail. Tanisha read through the manual, procedures and cautions before she even tried to assist. Potion making could be quite dangerous if one went into it half-heartedly. She remembered quite vividly a time in her class when a distracted classmate nearly blew his arms off after a potion of Resist Fire ironically exploded into a massive fireball.
When the potion was finally done, both of them sighed in relief as the small bottle of bubbling clear liquid settled and was corked. Tanisha smiled brightly at a job well done. She hadn’t intended on any of this, but alchemy was still a passion. Drew seemed to finally realize that a customer just spent the better part of two hours helping him on an order. He thanked her profusely for assisting him when he’d only intended to show her a little of what he was doing. He gave her sixteen silver for her work, which had shortened his time working on the potion by half a day.
“I feel as though this is a little late, but what brings you to my shop?” Drew asked, slightly embarrassed. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“I really just came to look around,” Tanisha said, now feeling far more comfortable around the man. “Well actually I do have a northern blue moon, but none of the other ingredients to make anything with it.”
The alchemist nodded sagely. “Northern blue moon is a high quality ingredient, rare in these parts too. I have a few specimens myself.” He turned one of the large books on the desk to a page on the magical flower. “Hmm… what are you trying to make? Greater health potions are common usage for them.”
“That’s what I wanted to make with it, but I have never used a high-end ingredient before.” Tanisha looked away from Drew.
“Well, I have everything you need to make the potion here. Bring it over and we’ll make it together as thanks for your help today,” Drew said, cutting straight into the heart of Tanisha’s concerns. “I can tell you have a deep passion for alchemy.” He looked over his store. “When I was your age I was the same. I saw the magic of alchemy, not just its utility but something more.” A smile graced his lips. “It’s the perfect remedy for a troubled soul. Consider my shop a sanctuary, where troubles melt away like ingredients in a cauldron.”
Tanisha looked at the man for a long moment. She knew he saw right through her troubles and helped her to take her mind off of things for a while. She then looked around the shop and smiled, seeing her own shop one day. When she and Bjorn were safe, when no one was trying to hurt them, when she was far away from the Salstars, when she could really do what she wanted. She couldn’t help but smile brightly at the idea, the dream, no, the goal.