—WILBUR—

Wilbur was starting to get used to the sounds of nightly activity, having only his two other brothers for company for so long. Distant voices reached their crypt, together with the sounds of dinner and the occasional laughter. Wilbur preferred to be cooped up alone or be content with the company of Ryne, his favorite brother, but having other people to liven up Rothfield monastery was rather pleasant. Unlike the other fake monasteries they’ve inhabited, this one was meant to grant sanctuary to those who needed it. The more people, the better.

Selfishly, Wilbur felt empowered to have a sense of purpose again. He missed being in his station as a physician. With the ores they harvested, he was already planning on making medicines from the unique flowers lying dormant on the cloister garth. Once he woke them all up again, that is.

Before everything else, Wilbur must wake up the everbanes, the last of the medicinal plants still slumbering deep underground.

In the darkness of the crypts, a single flame cast enough light to show all the ingredients needed for this experiment. Wilbur stared at it, the orange flame lit by Ryne’s kindflame powers bestowed on him by Saint Gaelmar.

His hands were efficient and methodological. He placed a single fire opal in a mortar and began to crush them with the pestle. It broke easily enough, crunching into coarse powder. Wilbur continued with the rest of the fire opals he had gathered, transferring the red powder to one of his many pouches. As he was about to reach for the cinder voids next, he heard the church doors open and the shuffling of footsteps enter. Ryne had begun to invite the villagers of Kent every night. He offered the nave as their temporary shelter as they slept, most of whom were the elderly and frail, the women, and the children. The strongest warriors slept outside in the granges with Harlan, lying on cots or the bare grass. Little by little, the huts grew on the granges.

Wilbur turned his attention to the cinder voids, noticing that he barely chipped away at the ore. “This might prove tedious,” he whispered to himself.

As he worked on it, he remembered the villagers as he observed them come out from a church service Ryne held. They look better somehow; revitalized within even though they still looked thin and hungry. Still, some of the friendlier children waved at him when they spotted him in the corner. Even Ryne looked better somehow. At least until the next night when he expended his energy in running the monastery and its increasing requirements to be functional.

He blew out a breath. Wilbur actually wished Claude was with Ryne every day, but the boy had stopped visiting Rothfield monastery ever since their little adventure. He hoped he was not frightened.

Then Ryne’s voice filled the air. Wilbur smiled. His hair may be longer, but at least Ryne’s voice was still light. When Knox preached, it was condescending and harsh, like a smattering of stones. Ryne’s tone was kind and caring. No wonder people listened to his words of hope. He heard him give thanks to Saint Gaelamr and he felt the wind whoosh from upstairs.

“Blast it.” He was not making any progress in chipping away the cinder voids. With Ryne’s preaching continuing, he placed the cinder void on the ground and began to crush it with his boot. After a few stomps, it cracked in half. “Finally,” he whispered triumphantly.

“I thought you I heard stomping,” Woodrow called from somewhere the stairs leading down to the crypts. Wilbur hadn't realized the night service had ended. “You letting your frustrations out, brother?”

Wilbur looked at him and tossed him a rough shard of cinder void. “Help me crack them into manageable bits.”

Woodrow held it near his eye. “They look like weird worm-like stones clumped together.” He placed it on the ground and stomped along with Wilbur. When he was done with his ore, he asked, “How did you make the bottles of explosives?”

Wilbur pointed to his trusty satchel. I discovered some tiny little glass bottles hidden there. Once I smelled one of them, I knew what they could do. I sewed them shut, apparently. You better check your cloak. Maybe you have a little secret there of your own.”

When Woodrow found nothing, he continued helping Wilbur crush the cinder voids until they were out of breath. They paused for air. “I appreciate Brother Ealhstna’s magnificent strength more and more,” Woodrow panted.

Wilbur poured the powder fire opals into a glass bottle with a cover and a long beak-like spout on its side. He placed a metal holder on top of the sacred candle Ryne had lit earlier and positioned the bottle neatly on top. Of that flame.

It smoked, filling the air with an unpleasant odor that smelled like burnt meat and mossy water. Wilbur added a pinch of cinder voids to the smoking fire opals, causing a tiny spark inside the bottle. Woodrow jumped back reflexively while Wilbur covered his eyes with one hand, squinting at the compound. Wilbur took the weird experiment out of the flame until it cooled then swirled it around until he saw the powder combining and melting into a thick black soup.

“That smoldering icky black goop is going to wake your flowers?” Woodrow asked, incredulous.

“You haven’t seen us at work, have you?” Wilbur replied.

Wilbur proceeded to the cloister garth and poured the unsightly mixture on the soil next to the dormant everbane and feverflukes. The silent, wonderful oak tree seemed to be staring down at them.

“Oh,” Woodrow said. One palm finger was pointing at the tree.

“Oh,” Wilbur said. He saw the short fan of leaves on the lowest branches of the once leafless oak tree.

“Does that mean we’re doing good?”

Wilbur did not know, nor did he answer him. But he hoped so.

The soil began to react to the burnt black mixture. Woodrow stared at it, and it occurred to Wilbur that it was his first time seeing something of his creation bloom. He made an appreciative whistle as the soil came alive and pushed out the odd slumbering flowers underneath.

They were shaped like roses but more sinister-looking with curling thorns shaped like a beetle’s pincers. Its color was of brooding blood. Instead of a tightly wrapped shy center, these odd rose-like everbanes showed a sad, pus-filled bulb. Wilbur plucked one gently from the flower. He was afraid that he would pop it right there and then. As soon as he received the bulb, the pincers of the roses moved and cut its own stem and the everbane flower fell to the floor, dead.

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“Lovely,” Woodrow remarked.

“Something tells me this is poisonous and probably toxic to human hands,” Wilbur said as he stared at the sickly-colored bulb.

“Good thing we’re not proper humans,” Woodrow commented as he followed Wilbur back inside the crypt.

They both held a breath as Wilbur pricked the bulb with his long sharp nails. The pus oozed out like a broken yolk into another glass bottle. It smelled of sulfur and rotten eggs.

He spooned in fresh water until it turned into a slurry. He mixed half the slurry into the golen medicine made from yellowtongue flowers in one bowl and also mixed the remaining half into the shivering maiden medicine.

The black sludge reacted to the yellowtongues immediately, turning into a liquid with the color of dark amber. When nothing happened to the shivering maiden mixture, he analyzed it under his microscope and deduced that it needed more water and a reaction to activate it. Wilbur poured fresh water on the mixture and placed it atop the candle’s flame. It bubbled, and once the liquid reduced, the mixture turned into a cream-like paste on the bottom. He extracted the liquid from the solid, putting it into two separate different bowls.

Wilbur inspected the newer version of medicines under his microscope.

“Oh, my.” Wilbur’s eyes saw the compound and he consulted the diagrams in his journal. “It’s made up of blobs with many keys,” he explained to Woodrow, describing the sight. “Imagine the miasma’s sickness as these weird leaves with a pattern that locks itself in the human body… a pattern that keeps changing because of its mutating properties. That’s why my previous medicines won’t work with each wave of miasma. But these new medicines have the same pattern that attaches itself to the locks of some of the current sickness of this wave of miasma, unlocking it, then absorbing and destroying the dangers, curing the person.” Wilbur looked thoughtful. “It would be accurate if I could inspect their blood to check, but my guesses are still sound, I think.”

“Right, Ryne mentioned that you can diagnose by sampling their blood. Handy power, by the way,” Woorow said. “So… you have a yellowtongue medicine that is a potent version of all the feverfluke flowers,” he said, trying to summarize the information given to him. “The. there’s the shivering maiden which is…?”

“A genetic crossbreed of some evergreen flowers and weeds with the influence of compatible minerals from ores.”

“How do you combine them?”

Wilbur shrugged. “I studied them. For years all throughout our journeys. Some flowers have certain elemental properties like the elements that make up these precious stones. Fire, wind, water, and earth. They just have to be mixed in the right order.”

“How do you know what order that is? Saints, I sound like Ryne.”

“Through many mistakes and explosive failed experiments. Why do you think I hide my work in all the dungeons of the monasteries we inhabited? And me smelling of weird smoke.”

Woodrow looked at Wilbur. “To think I made fun of your work. I owe you an apology.”

Wilbur and Woodrow looked at each other. “It’s fine. You can make it up to me later.” Wilbur sounded grim. “You wouldn’t like it, but it would help the monastery and its new people immensely.”

Wilbur went on. “Back to the shivering maiden. It’s more to do with the death-chill sickness. You know the one. It is the opposite of high fever. Your body doesn’t have the strength to produce warmth and your many organs fail. As for the everbane flowers, I don’t remember making them, but the journal I’d written before our memories were erased showed clues of me being a rather busy alchemist. I procured some strange materials like boar tusks and even silver. I didn’t know where I got the recipe for it.”

Woodrow tapped the surface of the sarcophagus. “You should name them.”

“What?”

“Your medicines. So that you keep track of them. Who knows, maybe we will lose our memories again. You should write the names on your journal so that it’s basically spelling it out for you.”

“What happens if somehow Blake tears the pages?”

“At least you tried. You can stow them away if you like. Make copies and hide them all around the monastery. You can slide them through the cracks in the walls or put them inside one of the mouths of those skulls.” Woodrow looked thoughtful. “But remember, we didn’t build Rothfield. We’re improving it, sure, but the Saints themselves built this. Blake may have minimal power to destroy this place, at least not in his full strength.”

“Hm,” Wilbur said.

For three nights, Wilbur tested the properties of the everbane nectar, and the crypt witnessed the many failed experiments of bubbling foam and sputtering flame. Once, a puff of deadly smoke rose and he had to evacuate the crypt and tell Ryne to not let any of the villagers of Kent inside. He grew hungry but satiated his thirst with animal blood. He discovered nothing, save for proving that the first combination of mixing medicines was correct. He cleaned his reliable glass vials and bottles, actually kissing them, and thanking them for sticking with him for this long.

And then he noticed a small crack forming on the glass bottle he used most. He would need to stop making experiments that failed for a while or risk not doing any experiments at all. He knew the kind of glass that made up his equipment was hard to come by.

That night as the villagers slept, Wilbur wrote down his findings on the pages of his journals:

Yellowtongues. A superflower made from combining all the different variations of feverflukes in all the meadows since a hundred years ago. Its distilled nectar cures common high fever at small doses. Cures the odd fever caused by the miasma in its regular dose.

Note: Woodrow insists I name my medicines. I have no patience for this. I shall call them simply “Fluke I”.

Shivering maidens. A crossbred perennial superflower made from holly, spruce, and winter rose. Cures the common chill in moderate doses. Its distilled nectar cures the deadlier, miasma-induced death-chill in frequent regular doses.

Note: I shall name the ice-cold medicines “Shivermaid I”.

Everbanes. An odd flower that looks like a sinister rose. The yellow pus has some harmful qualities by themselves. But mixing with “Fluke I” and “Shivermaid I” medicines improves their potency as well as their effectiveness against the first wave of mutations we saw.

I shall call them “Fluke II” and “Shivermaid II”. Again, no patience for names. Ryne helped me name the flowers themselves, for crying out loud.

The harmful qualities I mentioned earlier: When the everbane’s nectar is mixed with Fluke II and Shivermaid II medicines plus their corresponding waking ores, they turn into elemental explosives when heated above Ryne’s kindflame. One turns into a flaming bomb that could potentially burn enemies while one freezes and slows them down.

Wilbur yawned and stretched. Dawn was about to creep up from Mount Lhottem. He was about to sleep when he heard Ryne upstairs. He just realized that the boy didn’t sleep in his sarcophagus. Did he even sleep at all? He climbed up the secret passageway and saw Ryne by the entrance, blessing the newer batch of crops that came from Kent. Ryne was smiling, but Wilbur saw his bleary, shadowy eyes.

The boy will tire himself out if he keeps this up, Wilbur thought.

He wanted to grab him and wrap his arms around his head and tie him to a chair and force-feed him pottage and bread with cheese. But the rays of the dawn was making him irresistibly sleepy, even though his hands ached for Ryne, and he managed to slither downstairs back into the crypt to lay down on top of his sarcophagus.