Over the next few days, Micah finished up with his Sewer moss experiments. He ran out of pure Sewer water much quicker than moss, and then resorted to trying to recreate whatever was in it that made the moss glow.

Well, that didn’t work out.

Sometimes, the moss would “die” during the week, meaning that it wouldn’t glow even if he put it in Sewer water. It happened more often when he experimented, and especially when he added salt to the mixture. He supposed the salt poisoned the moss somehow? But he wasn’t sure how. Micah didn’t think moss ate salt, so what was the problem? Maybe it ate it by accident ...

“Salt bad”, he scribbled down in his notes anyway.

Keeping the moss itself inside of infused water both made the potion last longer and glow brighter, because then both the moss and the water glowed together. It wasn’t by much, but every little bit helped after all.

Adding sugar did nothing that Micah could see. Adding sugar for [Infusion] did fuel the moss pattern somehow, but whatever it did, it didn’t affect the glow in any way.

Adding insects for [Infusion] usually just changed the color, but sometimes it also made the potion go out more quickly. Micah wasn’t sure if that was because of the moss sample—he tried to get them all the same size—or if it had something to do with the insects. The patterns weren’t quite pure afterward. They looked bent, chipped, and bloated, so he assumed it was the latter.

Adding lemon balm for [Infusion] made the potion last a little bit longer. Again, for no reason that Micah could see. But he could reproduce it every time, so it had to be true. At least, that was good to know.

Adding mint leaves for [Infusion] did nothing on the other hand. It was the same for most other herbs.

Someday, Micah promised himself he would figure this all out.

Lastly, adding sun-soaked marbles for [Infusion] made the potion a little bit brighter. But when he asked his father about it, he said it was about a candle’s worth of light. So still not nearly good enough to be a proper light potion.

That was the best Micah could get it.

Finally, he wrote everything down in his almost-full journal and gave up. He had other things he could work on.

That’s how he found himself staring at a rat tail hanging from a crystal in front of his face and mumbled, “Ew.”

He had no idea what to do with that. It still hadn’t started rotting—Ryan had assured him it wouldn’t happen for a long while—so Micah got out some of the tailless flesh crystals instead. He wanted to use these to make a healing potion, but he wasn’t quite sure how. Ideally, he hoped they could just replace blood in his mixture, but that might not work. Flesh essence and actual blood were two different things, after all. For one, the flesh essence didn’t have a stable pattern. It behaved towards a pattern, but it wasn’t quite there. It was like the difference between icy water and solid ice.

And otherwise, they came from rats, so Micah wasn’t sure if they were pure. Human blood was much different than almost-but-not-quite rat flesh after all. Maybe he could kill an actual rat to compare? Or a fully formed one in the Sewers?

Yeah, no. Micah did not want to do that. If he was truly desperate for information he might someday, but he’d rather just ask Lisa before-hand.

[Personalized Alchemy] was giving hunches at the back of his mind, too, but Micah shoved those aside for now. He needed a proper healing potion first. He hadn’t made one since he’d gotten back out of the Tower. They needed to simmer for a long while after all, and that meant they needed a flame for a long while, and Micah was not going to spend that much time around one. Even if it was just the stove and he could sit at the table a few feet away.

Not yet, at least, he thought. He bit his lip then, impatient, but assured himself he was working on a solution.

Yeah, yeah. I’m hurrying up.

He did have [Kinetic Infusion], but Micah hadn’t been looking forward to shaking a potion for an hour, and so he’d forgotten healing potions as a whole. Now, he realized he could just stir the mixture for that long as well, right?

It was worth trying.

But following his parents’ new rules, he had to do that downstairs at the kitchen table, where they could see him.

Stupid rules.

The honey didn’t dissolve properly at first because the water wasn’t warm. Micah broke it apart with a spoon and kept on stirring until he had a goopy mess of equal parts water and honey. He used [Infusion] on that and kept on stirring for a while. Then he added the shredded willow bark he’d gotten from the park.

Mr. Faraday had told him that he believed the bark, and not the blood, was the reason his second healing potion didn’t heal wounds as quickly as his first. Micah had two different recipes, after all. One which required blood and one that didn’t. He’d always thought that the one which did was simply better, but Mr. Faraday had told him the other was probably safer to drink and better are relieving fevers and pains; the symptoms of wounds and illnesses rather than the actual cause.

So Micah did have two different kinds of healing potions. That was kind of cool. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought.

He made the second one first because his parents were home. He couldn’t cut his hand for blood around them, and he wouldn’t have anything to stop the bleeding if he did.

A member of said parents walked into the kitchen just as Micah was busy infusing the willow bark into the water.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Making a healing potion,” Micah mumbled as he tried to fish the willow bark back out with a sieve. He’d washed it beforehand, and he would use an even thinner sieve later just to be sure he didn’t miss anything—maybe he should have used a tea ball? Would that work?—but he didn’t think putting tiny bits of bark on an open wound was a good idea.

He would have loved to have [Dissolve] right about now.

Then again, Micah could just drink it. Then again, it had willow bark in it, which Micah also used for comfort potions. Then again, it also had alcohol in it. Rubbing alcohol, which wasn’t supposed to taste good …

If it was an open wound, Micah decided, he’d pour it, and if it was something else, he’d drink it.

He still kind of wanted to drink a beer someday. Or at least get a good look at its pattern. When was Ryan’s birthday? He’d turn sixteen then ...

His mother eyed the bottle of rubbing alcohol as Micah slowly measured one-parts-ten in a cup and poured it in.

“To disinfect the wound?” she asked.

“For its pattern, at least. But yeah.”

Healing needed a pattern that was pure and purifying, and unsurprisingly, soap did not fit the bill.

He infused the mixture even as he poured, before the alcohol could cause too much harm.

“But it’s tricky,” he explained to his mother. “Because alcohol likes to break things. You can’t add too much or else it’ll ruin the potion, but you can’t add too little either or it’ll be useless. You need juuust the right amount.”

Micah squinted at his mixture. Yeah, he had the right amount, he thought. He’d almost forgotten how complex the second healing potion was. No wonder it took him so long to figure it out.

“And the daisies?” his mother asked.

“To distract the alcohol,” Micah mumbled.

His mother didn’t reply. It took Micah a moment to realize how weird that answer must have sounded. They did, though. The daisies. They gave the alcohol something it could safely break apart instead of the main pattern. When they did, their yellow fragments would just get soaked up by the honey’s yellow pattern, even making it a little stronger. Sort of. Mr. Faraday had said it was pseudo-alchemy what he was doing. But hey, as long as it worked. And anyway, Micah disagreed with the man.

“Uhm, Mr. Faraday approved,” Micah told his mother.

“I’m sure he did,” she said and put the rubbing alcohol back in its high cabinet. Micah had to use a chair to get it out of there.

“And the other ingredients are honey and…?”

“Willow bark,” Micah answered.

His mother frowned. “Those don’t sound like things you should put on a wound.”

“It’s mostly just for their patterns as well,” Micah explained. “Honey’s pattern is sealing and nourishing. The perfect thing for growth and regrowth. And it and the honey itself are good at soaking things up. They’re a much better base than just water. The willow bark I fish out again.”

“Hm. And this is for a low-grade healing potion?” she asked, crouching down to peer at it as well. “With so much honey, it doesn’t look like it’d soak well into a cloth.”

A cloth. Of course, that was one way of applying the stuff. When Micah thought of healing potions though, he thought of the middle-grade ones that would heal a wound in an instant.

One day, he’d make those, too.

“Well, Mr. Faraday says you can drink it,” Micah offered.

His mother raised an eyebrow. “You’re not drinking that,” she said. There was no question, no room for bargaining.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Micah quickly said.

“Why not just make a salve?” she went on. “I’ve always thought salves are better than low-grade potions.”

“They are,” Micah mumbled. “In many aspects, at least. But the recipe I have mentions melting beeswax and I don’t want to ...”

He trailed off as he realized what he was talking about.

“It’s alright,” his mother assured him and pushed a hand through his hair. “I’m sure your potion is just fine. What is it for, by the way?”

I’m working on it, Micah told himself.

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“Ryan,” Micah immediately lied. “He gets scraped a lot during alleyball and training, y’know?”

“It’s nice that you take such good care of your friends.” His mother gave him a smooch on the forehead before walking back out. “Just remember to clean up when you’re done.”

“Will do,” Micah mumbled.

Afterward, he went upstairs and made two more healing potions. Away from the prying eyes of his parents. One required blood—he got distracted staring at the cut in his hand. It didn’t hurt—and one that he used by feeding a steady supply of crushed flesh crystals into the mixture. He’d used a cloth and a hammer to break the crystals apart, even though a little bit of their essence escaped during the process. But it was necessary.

Slow and steady, [Personalized Alchemy] told him. Just enough that the healing qualities attuned themselves to healing flesh, but not so much that they got overwhelmed by it. Micah imagined it a lot like pouring water into a straw.

He managed it on his second try. One potion needed three of the rat crystals. Both were new records.

Now Micah had three different types of healing potion. Or rather, two and a half. He didn’t think the flesh healing potion had any sort of specialization. It was too … too little. Maybe he could change that in the future?

Either way, Micah packed everything back up again. He’d probably need them tomorrow. 

Tomorrow ... Micah had spotted a slingshot in the market a few days ago. Along with what Lisa had said, it had formed an idea in his head. 

He bought bandages and rope, and collected a bunch of small rocks over the week that he tucked away in his pocket. Micah didn’t know how to use a bow, but there wasn’t a boy in the city who couldn’t fire a slingshot. And he remembered just how effective rocks had been against the leaking wolf as it ran down that slope. Just to wear a monster down, Micah hoped it would be enough.

Lastly, he packed his alchemy knife. He’d wanted to buy a proper dagger, but the vendor that sold them had looked at him weirdly when he’d tried. Then he gave a much higher price than what the sign said. When Micah had asked why the man had told him so the purchase would be “their little secret”.

Was Micah not allowed to buy a dagger? He doubted it, but he wasn’t in the mood to argue, he didn’t have as many funds anyway, and he was running out of time. He just put the dagger down and left.

He’d make due with a stick if he had to. It didn’t even have to be a sharp one.

On Saturday, he bought a day pass on his own.

----------------------------------------

Micah was incredibly still as he stood in front of the portal to the Tower, his breathing slow and steady. This time, he thought, it might have something to do with inner peace after all. It reminded him a lot of his first visit, except that his mind wasn’t muddled by a comfort potion. He was focused … to a degree. There was a part of him that shouted he was being stupid, that he should be more considerate. He shut that part up. He was tired of consideration. Tired of nightmares.

If this didn’t work out, Micah had brought a sack along to collect some Sewer moss. But somehow, he doubted that it wouldn’t.

And so he thought of trees, and grass, and fog. Of wolves hounding him, howling, and retching up demon eggs. Finally, he just imagined [Savagery]. The grass poking into his knees felt so real when he did, it almost surprised Micah that he hadn’t stepped inside the Tower yet when he opened his eyes again.

He fixed that at once. One step, a sense of elsewhere, and he was back where he’d started.

Almost, he caught himself thinking, Home.

----------------------------------------

Micah had his knife and a stone in the one hand and his slingshot in the other as he surveyed the forest around him. How was distance measured here, where there was no structure? Distance from the portal? Weren’t there more than one of those? Maybe it was based on the trees …

Probably, different rules applied.

The portal behind him was beautiful, Micah noticed. It spanned between two trees that had grown into each other. He only offered it a glance, but he was immensely relieved that it was there at all.

He checked for any signs of life, then he made his way inward.

He didn’t recognize anything as he did, but he hadn't been expecting to at first. He’d been unconscious during the time that Ryan had carried him out of the Tower after all—how strong was Ryan?—and this might not be the same portal at all.

Why didn’t you hide in a tree? Micah remembered him say as he told him about his trip into the Tower.

I didn’t trust them.

This time around Micah had done his research.

There weren’t any wolves around, or at least, he didn’t think there were. The clones could be ignored, but Micah didn’t have a claim on him this time. He was fair game. Every half a dozen trees or so, he climbed one to look around. If Micah saw a wolf, he planned on either waiting for it to leave—they were supposed to ignore people in trees, Ryan had told him—or he would pelt it with stones until it went away.

The [Archer] strategy, the Beginner’s Guide had said. It had taken Micah a while to see it because he’d had skimmed the tips for other Classes, but he’d gotten around to it eventually. Apparently, there were strategies for purely long-ranged fighters to fight in the Tower. Even on their own. Micah didn’t consider himself one of those, but he was sure-as-hell going to abuse any advantages he could get.

This one was perfect.

His slingshot also helped determine which wolves were unmade and which fully-formed. It would tell Micah had to react to them. Any fully-formed he would avoid, of course. He had a slingshot and a slightly-bigger-than-average knife with him. Even now, doing this, he recognized that would be considered suicide … by others.

But the wolves weren’t the main reason why Micah was here. It was something Lisa had told him on Tuesday.

Apparently, the floors aren’t cleaning up after themselves, and people can go back to places they recently visited.

Almost two months. Was it too long? Micah thought he recognized certain things as he walked. There was a stretch of trees that looked familiar. Hadn’t he fought there before? He vaguely remembered tripping over that root just there. Or was he just imagining things?

Something rustled in the distance, pulling him from his memories, and Micah immediately threw himself up the nearest tree. From the first tall branch he could sit on, he leaned forward and tried to spot what had caused the noise.

There! he spotted a hint of pelt. Something ran through the fog. Then it was gone. Micah’s heart pounded even though he felt calm, and he spun his head around to follow it. Carefully, he put one hand on the branch, then the other, and spun himself around to face the other way. He spotted three signs of movement before he got a good view of his first wolf. It was running past him at the top of a nearby slope.

Micah drew his slingshot back and fired. He missed.

If he waited and ignored them, the wolves would leave eventually. Not entirely—especially not if this was their “territory”—but they would act as if they hadn’t seen him. Micah didn’t want that. He might get caught in an ambush three steps away from the tree if he did. And so he shouted, “Hey!” to draw their attention and kept on firing rocks into the forest.

If you wounded a wolf from a tree, they’d get out of range. They couldn't fight back, after all. That would give Micah a window to run.

Eventually, he hit a wolf right as it stepped out of a brush below him. The stone smacked between its eyes, and it flinched and looked up at him with a growl in its throat. For a second, Micah thought it might try to climb the tree after all. The Towers are changing, he heard Lisa say, and it certainly looked mad enough to scale a tree.

Then it howled, loud and clear, and turned around and left leaking light from its head.

Cold memories trickled down Micah’s spine. He waited a few moments, took a deep breath, and climbed down.

Then he sprinted to the next-best tree and climbed up again. There, he waited until he spotted a wolf and pelted it with stones. Each time he did this, the wolves would look at him before leaving. Sometimes, they’d howl. Each time Micah looked into their eyes, they looked a little angrier.

He found himself smiling fearfully.

Serves them right.

He repeated the process three more times before that smile was replaced by a ragged breath and an impatient frown. This was slow work, and Micah wasn’t even killing anything. Good [Archers] were supposed to burst the wolves on the third floor with one hit using this method. Sure, it was just as slow for them as it was for him, but at least they got something out of it. Micah didn’t believe in safety for the value of safety. He believed in rewards.

No, not crystals. Dead wolves. That was his reward.

Below, a wolf leaked light from three different points on its body. Micah imagined a single strong kick would make it burst.

One more tree and it had four points. It must have been really angry to have followed him this far. Other wolves had left already. Or maybe they were just lurking out of sight.

Micah bit his lip and checked, but could only see two other hints of movement that were gone in a flash. The fog gathered mostly near the ground—he could look over it—but how good were wolves at hiding?

Screw it, he thought. Three wolves at least. Some of which were bound to be clones. All the others too far away for him to see from his vantage point. He would take those odds.

He monkeyed his way down the tree’s trunk and readied his knife. When the wolf got close enough, Micah jumped it.

It ducked and shrugged him off immediately, but then Micah had gotten his knife into its side already. He dragged it along as he rolled in the duff. Then he threw himself up and back at it again, pulling out his knife and turning the wolf into a pin cushion.

It burst into smoke.

Micah shielded his face against the rush and looked around in case anything else attacked him. He snatched the crystal up as soon as he saw it, then sprinted for the next-best tree. A howl edged him on to run faster. Something panted and growled close by.

Micah knew he wouldn’t make it up the tree before the wolf would drag him back down again, probably with its teeth in his leg. He did not want something biting his leg. He turned to face his enemy and saw a clone. Immediately, he threw himself into a roll through it. Its red antlers grinned at him as he did.

He pulled his slingshot out of his bag, pulled the mist crystal back in it—it’d take too much time to switch it out for a rock—and scanned the forest for his true assailant. It ran out of the undergrowth a moment later, and Micah planted the crystal right in its nose. It kept on running. Micah dropped the slingshot and switched the grip on his knife. He leaned forward, knees bent, body low, “as if sitting on a really low chair”, Ryan had told him. When the wolf was close enough, he stepped to the side and tackled it.

It turned even as he moved, flexible as it was, and tried to snap at him. Micah pushed his knee into its neck to keep its mouth away from him. It was leaking light from its nose as well as a spot on its shoulder, meaning that he’d wounded it before. He cut stripes into its stomach, but it wouldn’t burst.

Something else howled in the distance. Calling for allies? Trying to scare him off? Micah had time, so he ignored it for now.

Either the stomach of the wolf wasn’t a weak point or his knife didn’t have enough reach. He stabbed it one last time just to make sure—it didn’t burst—before he went for its throat.

Any longer and he wouldn’t have been able to hold it down anyway. He simply didn’t have the strength to do that. The thing burst beneath him and Micah fell through the sudden cloud to the floor.

He picked up his slingshot and tucked away the one crystal, pulling a stone out of his pocket instead. Then he made his way not up a tree, but further into the forest. He listened. The last time he’d been here, it had been filled with a cacophony howls of the pack. This time, nothing answered the lone howl in the distance.

The wolf was on its own.

Micah scaled a small slope and frowned, glanced back from where he’d came. From above, he thought he remembered something. He looked around and headed left. Something in him was pushing him on.

This way, this way, it seemed to say, like an incessant child. Micah followed it without question. It sounded like himself.

He stepped into a clearing and froze. A boy was wrestling a wolf in the middle of the clearing. He was half-sitting on its back, with his rolled-up pants in its mouth, pulling back each leg like horse reins. Slowly, he strained his left hand closer to his right. In a sudden jerk, he took over that leg as well. The moment he did, the wolf slipped free and turned to go for his throat. The moment he did, the boy leaned forward and pulled his knife from where it stuck in the wolf’s jaw.

It was over in an instant. The boy won, but it didn’t really look like a victory to Micah. He was covered in filth, and blood, and bandages.

Is that me?

He looked so … broken.

Something ran up the slope behind Micah. He shook his mind from the memory and jogged into the middle of the clearing. When he turned around to face the last wolf, he held his mother’s hunting knife again.

Something I lost.

It was just one of many things, but it was good enough for now.

Another wolf stepped into the clearing to Micah’s left. A glimpse of red antlers told him it was a clone. He acted as if he didn’t know that. When the true wolf tried to take advantage of his fear, Micah spun on it, heedless of the fake, and took it by surprise. Curiously, when it died, the clone didn’t. Not immediately.

Micah stared at it until it turned into mist.

He picked up two more mist crystals then. One had belonged to the angry one and lain in the middle of the clearing along with his mother’s knife. Micah hadn’t had time to pick the knife up back then, not to mention cut the wolf’s crystal out. But where were its bones? The wolf’s corpse was gone, but the other two things were still here.

Micah didn’t know what that meant.

He looked around to find his bearings. Mentally, he marked one direction as his way back to the exit. Then he marked another. And finally, a third. Micah followed the third. He counted six trees and climbed up one, waited, made sure he was safe and climbed back down again. He never spotted any more wolves, but he kept on doing it anyway. He had his reward, after all, might as well be safe.

Eventually, he found the cave.

Not the high cave up in the wall, which he had slept in for those few nights, the place the wolves circled.

No, this cave was nothing more than a crack low in the wall. It was dark; the dark Micah had crawled out of. He shrugged his bag off and pulled out his bundle of rope. There'd been half a dozen rabbit holes in that cavern of rubble. Micah had escaped after crawling his way through only three.

It was time to explore the rest.