That night, they planned a feast. After promising a mini buffet with great food—courtesy of Prisha and her few levels in the [Cook] Class—Micah even managed to convince Lisa to come along, and he told her to invite Garen and Mave if they wanted to come, though he doubted it. He pointed her in the right direction with an address and they split up.
Ryan and he had to drop by the house first to invite his parents and switch into clothes that weren’t damp, blood-splattered, or missing sleeves. They called the invitation into the kitchen as they rushed up the stairs. It was nine already. This would be a late feast. It was a good thing summer wasn’t over yet.
Micah got his money, backpack, and slipped into his more comfortable work clothes. He stuffed everything else from today into his bundle of dirty wash, which he slung over one shoulder with his backpack to bring along, so he wouldn’t have to do it tomorrow. Ryan just slipped into his regular things.
He slowed and Micah froze on their way down the stairs.
“Hold up, cat burglars,” David called over the banister, “you didn’t even tell us how it went. Did they tell you your grades already? How did you do? What did you bring them?” He smiled, the same as always.
His left cheek was beginning to bruise.
“Did something happen at the inn?” Ryan asked.
“Oh, this?” He gestured at it. “Yeah, some guy acted out. Nothing to worry about. He got a hit in, but that was about the end of it. I bet it’s nothing compared to you two.” He nodded in Micah’s direction and looked a little more sombre. “Something happen to you, kiddo?”
His undershirt did little to hide his bandages, especially since the sack on his shoulders had pulled it halfway up his waist. Micah yanked it down. “Bruised ribs,” he said. “Nothing that won’t heal.”
David smiled. “Same here.”
Still, he stared. Something about seeing a parent injured from a fight just seemed wrong to him. Parents were supposed to be untouchable. Especially David. How often did Ryan see his dad like that?
“I still have that healing salve…?”
David shook his head. “Maybe next time. I’ll heal it the old-fashioned way. Now, what’s this about food? I’m famished.”
“Get in line,” Ryan said.
“Behind me!” Noelle added as she joined them. “You know the rules. If there’s food involved, I get dibs. I’m eating for two here.”
“More like three,” David mumbled.
While his wife swatted him, Micah ran ahead to warn his sister.
Ryan took it slow so his parents could badger him with questions about the exam. Not that there was much to tell. According to him, he had just run around for five hours with nothing interesting happening.
Yeah, right, Micah snorted as he headed through the open doors of the bathhouse. He greeted Ed in passing, found a cousin a few years younger than him, and gave him two copper pennies to go to a specific address and invite someone there. Then he found Prisha and avoided her hug by lifting up his shirt and calling, “I’m wounded! I’m wounded! Please, have mercy!”
She froze and reached out as if to inspect the bandages herself. “Oh, what happened to you?”
“Nothing,” Micah said and dropped his shirt. “Nothing bad. It’s just bruises. But it might get worse if, you know, you crush my bones with a bear-hug? So instead, can you give me food? Lots and lots of food for lots and lots of people. I have money.”
He held out his coins.
Prisha squinted at him. “What did you do?”
“I did well,” Micah told her sheepishly. “So I invited some people to celebrate. Not many. Nine-ish, at most?”
His sister stared for another moment before she gave up with a sigh. She took half his coins and said, “Fine,” then fixed him down with a pointed finger before he could run off. “But you’re helping.”
When Ryan got there, they pushed a bunch of low tables together in the lamp-lit common room to make one that could seat twelve people, and washed off before they touched any of the food.
By the time they got out of the kitchen with the first of the supplies, Lisa had shown up and was standing in the common room, looking lost … and Garen and Mave were behind her, Garen standing around awkwardly, Mave sitting on the first seat into the room and snacking on some dips and crackers.
They’d actually shown up. Wow.
Micah briefly hoped Garen might have brought Anne along, for whatever reason, but there was no such luck. Why would a Heswaren come to such a quaint place like this? Because it’s great here, Micah thought. He hurried up to drape a cloth over the table and jumped over to introduce everyone.
“Prisha—Lisa, Lisa—Prisha. She’s my sister. Her husband, the tall one over there, owns this here fine establishment. She’s making the food. Buffets are her specialty. They are, right? Didn’t you say you got Skills for that? I didn’t know you were joking.
Prisha—Garen, Garen—Prisha. He’s a receptionist who works at the Guild. He made Lisa teach me the basics about the Tower, but she ended up teaching me a little bit on alchemy and stuff like fun facts instead. Oh, and Lisa is Ryan’s friend. She helped save me back then. No, they’re not related. She’s just living at Garen’s place. She’s a daughter of a friend, I think? Uhm, that’s Mave. He’s their janitor. Oh, David! Noelle! This is Mave! He’s the same age as you, I think. How weird is that?
Lisa’s a [Summoner]. Did you bring Sam along? Of course, you did. Hey, Neil, can she bring a monster out? It’s like a small dog. No? Fine. Sorry, Lisa. No, nobody mentioned a monster!”—he said that to his curious cousins. One of them looked like he had an instant crush on Lisa. Poor guy.
”Seat yourself. Anywhere. Here’s fine. I just have to get more plates. You know Ryan’s parents? They’re both [Guards], of sorts. Hey, Ed’s also a [Guard]. Maybe you can talk about [Guard]-y stuff. Or baby stuff? She’s pregnant. Uhm, if you weren’t brave enough to ask.
Sorry, sorry! Do you want more chips and dip? We also have bread slices and I’ll bring out the flatbread in a moment. No, I would never try to distract you with food, ma’am. I just got to go … be somewhere else now.”
It was chaos and Micah loved it.
All the while he’d been mingling, Ryan dutifully kept on setting the table with plates, drinks, glasses, and silverware. Micah helped both him and Prisha when she went back to cooking, carrying things out when they were ready. All of the stoves in her kitchen were occupied.
“I swear,” she complained as she pushed around pots to make space for a bowl, “the first thing I’m going to do when we renovate is get a bigger kitchen. And hire another person to help cook.”
Micah smiled a little. They were thinking of renovating? That was good news.
The food looked great. They had both flatbread and baguette slices, with cheese and meat spreads, dips, sauces, salads, something that might have been a casserole, beans and steamed vegetables, regular vegetables, mixed skewers, dumplings, a bit of fruit, and other little things. They put a little bit of everything on the table until they had a practical buffet that dominated the space.
Everyone got a plate and was told to dig in, courtesy of … well, him.
“And her,” Micah added, pointing at his sister. “She made everything.”
It still felt weird to have invited people to dinner, but he didn’t regret it even a bit. A lot of them only knew each other through Ryan or him, but they still found a lot to talk about. Plus, they ate like starved animals, wrapping everything up or slathering it onto bread slices, the silverware forgotten.
The two Stranya siblings never sat down. Micah ran around getting more drinks or refilling bowls in the kitchen as Prisha made seconds, and so he only got to hear snippets of conversations.
Mave sat at the far right corner. Clockwise, it went Garen, Lisa, Ryan, an empty seat where Micah would have sat, then at the far left corner Noelle, David, Prisha, Neil, two cousins who had snuck their way to the table, and Ed.
Of the two Nistar men, Mave looked reclusive and strangely overprotective of his food—Micah thought he caught him sneaking a swig from a flask—while the other looked awkward. That was, until Ed noticed the flask and got them into sampling new beers on the menu with Neil. And, of course, the old and trusted ones. Basically, all of them.
“Westhill beers,” Ed said. “You’ve never had any before? They’re practically the true brands of Hadica. Everything is grown here, by us, after all, not like those Tower hops and wheat. We Hadicans made this!” He proclaimed it proudly as he filled tall glasses for the both of them.
“I’ve had loads of Riverbend beers before, son,” Garen challenged him, but didn’t hesitate in taking the glass when offered. “And are those the true brands of the city?”
“Riverbend? Pah. Those fanatics don’t know what they’re doing. Riverbend makes Riverwater. Try this. This is the good stuff.”
Their words were friendly, but there was a weird tension underlying them. Micah was a little worried that they’d get into an argument. Two beers down, he didn’t have to worry anymore.
Finn, Lang, and Sol showed up on the tails of his cousin soon enough and wandered into the common room with their heads up, looking around like tourists. “We’ve been here before,” Lang said. “I never knew Micah’s family ran the place.”
Thankfully, Micah was still standing or there wouldn’t have been enough space as the three squished themselves next to Ryan. Lang made him talk about the exam, though Ryan insisted there was nothing to say … while Finn tried to introduce himself to Lisa across from him. It made for two awkward conversations overlapping one another.
That was, until Noelle noticed and shooed him away like a wild animal. “Hey! You— Yeah, you. Finn. Shoo, shoo!”
Finn, mortified by a mom telling him to stop flirting, backed off. Instead, he listened as Ryan proudly told them a story about how Micah had beaten a Kobold—a humanoid, scaly monster that could throw fireballs—into submission with his bare hands, sacked it up, and dragged it out of the Tower like a kidnapper.
“It didn’t happen like that,” Micah interrupted, worried he would go up in flames from the embarrassment.
“Oh, and how did it happen then?” Ryan asked him.
Micah thought about it, couldn’t find a better answer, and fled into the kitchen to get more bread slices, though those were the last of them. She was seated now and eating, so he wasn’t going to make her make more.
Micah briefly considered trying to make some himself—he could make potions, how hard could making bread be?—but decided it probably wasn’t a good idea. The last thing he wanted to do today was put out another fire.
“Really?” Finn was asking when he got back. “No way Flower Boy did all that.”
“Flower Boy?” Lisa asked.
“Because he smells like flowers, and stuff.”
“Oh, I call him Apples for the same reason, and stuff.”
“Really?” He gave her a bright smile. “That’s so weird. We have so much in common.”
“Finn, do not make me warn you again.”
“Yes, ma’am. Hey, Flowers. Ryan said you got injured. Let us see the battle scars.”
“Yeah, Micah,” Lang added. “Show us.”
Micah gave him a drole look and lifted up his shirt to show the bandages wrapped around his torso. “Not much skin to see. Unless you want to stick around 'till later? I am going to melt into the bath.”
He rolled his neck a little. He was also going to sleep in tomorrow, he knew. For the first time in months.
“Yeah, you need it. You don’t smell much like flowers now,” Finn commented.
“Micah,” Ryan corrected him.
“Hm?”
“Micah, not Flower Boy.”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” Finn said. “I forgot.”
Micah dropped his shirt and frowned at the exchange. Was Ryan sticking up for him? He needn’t have. Micah had gotten used to the nickname over two years, so he said, “I honestly don’t mind.”
Finn gave him a weird look and grinned. “Yeah, you don’t, you dog, you. Tell us about Anne!”
Garen perked up at the other side of the table and Micah immediately shushed Finn. He sat down and whispered urgently, “How do you even know about her?”
Finn grinned. “A little birdie told me.”
Ryan whistled like a little birdie.
Micah squinted at him for a moment. “Well, shut up about it. If my sister or—”
He froze and looked over to where Noelle and David had watched Ryan and Lisa sit next to each other all evening. He was endlessly relieved to see that Lang had wrapped them up in a conversation already, so they couldn’t hear. It was about what he was going to do in the Fall.
Lang was the best.
“Got it,” Finn said. “My lips are sealed.”
Micah sighed and got back up. He looked around, saw they had everything for a while, and looked for someplace to sit himself. He hadn’t even eaten anything yet. But then he spotted Lisa talking with Prisha of all people and inched closer to hear their conversation.
“Micah said buffets are your specialty?”
“They aren’t my speciality. That was a joke years ago,” Prisha said with a frustrated smile. “I just insisted on adding spreads like this to the menu because”—her smile faltered and her brows sunk down—“They were our sister’s favorite … I guess they aren’t anymore.”
Lisa frowned. “Why not?”
Ryan elbowed her in the side. Hard. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Ryan!” his mom hissed him from across the table. Apparently, she was still keeping an eye on him.
He shrunk down helplessly.
“It’s okay,” Prisha said. “It’s not like talking about Maya is taboo. Apparently, she became a [Gourmet]. I don’t know if you know what that is, but she only eats monsters now. I doubt she would like my cooking.”
Lisa nodded sagely. “Oh, that’s a good choice. I bet [Gourmets] are strong down here. But why wouldn’t she eat your cooking anymore? Can’t you just make a buffet out of Tower foods? Or is it because you live in Westhill?”
“I— I guess, I could make something,” Prisha said. “For when she comes to visit. If she ever comes to visit.”
Micah saw an opportunity and took it. “Lisa eats a ton of monsters. Maybe she could tell you what’s good?”
Prisha frowned at her. “You eat monsters?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“But you don’t look like you eat monsters?”
“Uhm … you don’t look like you eat chickens either?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Me, neither?”
They started talking about some easy stuff to make that wouldn’t be too off-putting, like mutton recipes using sheep from the Gardens, and Micah left by the time they started about how to prepare Archertoad legs. Making potions with monster parts was one thing, eating them as delicacies was an entirely other. Not that he would have eaten regular frog legs, either.
He headed off to get some water, meaning, of course, a whole bottle for himself, when Noelle dragged him between her husband and herself and hissed, “Micah! Sit. So tell us what’s up with that Lisa.”
Oh no, he repeated his thought from earlier. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you don’t,” she said, tapping the side of her nose.
“C’mon, Micah,” David said. He said it in his manly voice, but it still sounded like a gossiping school girl. “Tell us. You probably know more about our son than we do. We’re just curious, you know?”
You, too, David? he thought helplessly.
“I mean, I don’t think there’s anything,” he said, “but even if there was, I wouldn’t know. I’m not allowed to interfere in Ryan’s love life.”
MIcah didn't think he would mind Ryan and Lisa hooking up too much … unless they broke up. He liked hanging out with Lisa.
David’s eyes twinkled. “So he has a love life?”
“Why aren’t you allowed to interfere?” Noelle asked. “Did he tell you that?”
“No, it’s, uhm, a rule I made up myself …” Micah mumbled, shrinking down.
“Why?”
“Yeah, why?”
So Micah told them an incredibly embarrassing story about how he had misunderstood Ryan having a crush on Camille, and how he had tried to hook them up by staring at nothing for a few minutes. By the end up it, David was howling with laughter and Noelle was just barely managing to keep hers back. They looked at him like he was a different person.
Thankfully, the opposite corner was just as loud in a discussion over … sewer management, of all things. But everyone was so caught up in their conversations, their laughter went almost unnoticed.
David slapped him on the back so hard that Micah almost fell on the table and immediately apologized. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot about your ribs. But you’re going to make a great wingman someday.”
“I will?”
“Yeah, if you’re ready to make a fool of yourself for your friend.”
Micah scowled. “Can I go now?”
“Yeah, yeah. You can leave.”
The moment he got up, they turned on Lang and hissed, “Lang, Lang! Scootch over. We want to talk to you.”
He immediately looked terrified. Poor guy.
Micah grabbed some water, squeezed himself between Sol and Finn, and finally ate some food, which was mostly leftovers by now. At least, that meant he could wipe the bowls clean with bread without anyone complaining.
Lisa’s group headed off somewhere close to eleven, Garen with a small cask in one hand. The others took a short bath and Lang’s group followed.
Ryan and he did a slow clean-up after everyone and finally told Prisha about the exam, who sat on a nearby chair, tired. She seemed happy enough, if a little tired and reserved. He made sure to keep the story as vague as possible.
Rather than shamble home like David and Noelle did, they fell asleep on two couches in one of the two private living rooms and …
Micah leveled up.
[Fighter level 3!]
He didn’t get a Skill, which was disappointing. But that was fine. He’d leveled! And anyway, Ryan had, too.
[Fighter level 8!]
[Skill — Strike Down obtained!]
It didn’t take long to figure out what his new Skill did. Lots and lots of questions about what else it could do followed, and then—
“Hahaha!” Micah laughed with a stilted voice. The voice of a villain. He wore his work clothes, which were practically pajamas anyway, and cozy slippers on a Sunday morning after sleeping in. Ryan looked much the same.
In each hand, he held the stale leftover bread slices from yesterday and pointed one at Ryan, who held a ladle like a sword. “You’ll never get past my archers and climb this Tower! These are magic arrows!”
He threw one at Ryan.
He struck it out of the air effortlessly and then looked awkward. “Do we really have to do the voices…?”
“Yes.”
Ryan sighed, hiding a smile. Then he puffed his chest out and spoke in an appropriately heroic tone, “Of course, I will. With my ultimate Skill, [Strike Down], I will bat aside your arrows, climb up there, and defenestrate you, Dwarf!”
Micah cocked his head. “I’m on top of a Tower. There is no window?”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Shut up and throw bread at me.”
Micah happily obliged, throwing bread from a bowl across the living room as the other guy easily batted it aside with ladle, pillow, shoe, magazine, even his bare hands or, one time, his head.
Micah wasn’t sure if that counted. If these really were arrows, headbutting one didn’t seem like a good idea.
[Strike Down] was his new Skill. As in, strike something down anything that didn't have two feet on the ground. Ryan could do it seemingly perfectly, as long as he saw what was coming and had enough time to react.
With that in mind, Micah tried hiding behind couches. He went for ambushes, but apparently, [Enhanced Senses] covered that. So he gave up and settled on rapid-fire and scatter-shots instead, which worked much better.
They ran out of bread soon enough and started throwing other things—shoes, pillows, balls of yarn, sweets, small paperweights he found lying around; anything that would survive the trip. After an almost-mishap with a lamp, they had made sure to move everything fragile to the other side of the room and Ryan targeted his strikes towards the carpet or couches, away from the walls, floor, and table.
He could even control the angle already, as long as it was a sharp one. But no matter how fast Micah threw, he knocked most things out of the air and simply dodged the rest by rolling behind couches. It really was awesome. He wanted to try it out with his slingshot next. Oh, or a bow! Would Ryan be able to deflect an actual arrow?
When he ran out of ammunition, Micah dropped to his knees, cried out in fake anguish, “Nooooooo, I have been defeated,” and hung his head.
Ryan, breathing heavily from the exertion, laughed.
Just then, his sister walked in, saw the room, and froze.
“What?” she asked.
“Uh, oh.”
“What did you— Are those my pillows?!”
“Uh, Ms. Prisha,” Ryan said. “I can—”
“MICAH AMICAH STRANYA,” she interrupted him.
Micah blanched. It was never a good sign when she used his made-up middle name. He cried, “Run!” and took off.
“You get back here right this instance!”
----------------------------------------
Micah didn't make it three steps into the hallway before Prisha caught up and dragged him back by his ear to make them clean up the mess they had made, berating them the entire time.
Ryan still smiled to himself.
“Honestly, what were you thinking? Why couldn’t you do this outside? Why in the living room? You could have broken something.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Micah mumbled.
“And my pillows! They’re decorative. They aren’t meant to be thrown around like that.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ryan mumbled.
He honestly didn’t mind the chagrin. He hadn’t tried to run and was too excited about his new Skill to care. Finally, he had an active Skill. Finally, he knew what it was like to use one.
There was this saying, that you needed ten-thousand hours of practice before you could master something. By then, it became a second nature. Muscle-memory. But when Ryan said his Skill out loud—though he didn’t need to, he had quickly discovered—he felt like he had all those hours of experience already. His body just knew what to do all the sudden and almost acted on its own. It was kind of freaky.
He loved it.
Of course, he did not have those hours of experience. Sure, Ryan had batted aside a lot of monsters over the years. He was used to it and the concept was simple enough, but that didn’t come close to ten thousand hours. Or even just ten. He would need a lot of hard work, practice, and experimentation to get the most out of the Skill and discover its limitations, but he was looking forward to that.
He wondered if he could block something as fast as an arrow. Probably not. But if he got more perception or mobility Skills to help…?
“Didn’t you say you wanted to wash your clothes? And you wanted me to teach you how to sow! Your pants are missing an entire sleeve, Micah. So why are you wasting your time playing pretend and ransacking my living room if you have things to do?”
“Because it was fun …” Micah mumbled miserably.
“What? What was that?”
“I meant to say, sorry, ma’am.”
“I hope you don’t behave like this at Ryan’s place. What would his parents say?”
“He doesn’t,” Ryan assured her, “act like this, I mean. He does all the cleaning and makes breakfast for us.”
She frowned. “He does? ... Is it any good?”
“Hey!” Micah snapped while Ryan looked around. Everything seemed back in order. “My cooking tastes great, for your information. David helps, too. Now, can I go? I really do have to hurry. I have to do the laundry, and fix my backpack, and my pants, and mend my armor, and I still have to go to Nistar later to hand in my application there.”
Prisha sighed and rubbed her temple. “Yes, you can go.”
“Application?” Ryan asked him.
“Huh? Oh, my other one. For the afternoon classes.”
Ryan frowned. “Why? I thought you did well yesterday.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to have a back-up plan, right?”
Ryan tried not to smile. “No. It doesn’t. Well, since we’re taking the day off from training anyway, I promised Lang I'd help him study for his entrance exam. You want to come with?”
He seemed to think about it, then shook his head. “Nah. I don’t really want to study normal stuff … ever again. Not until I have to, at least. I would only end up getting bored, and then Lang would join in, and then it would be he and me trying to get you to show off your new Skill and equipment, and he would get nothing done. I don’t want to do that to him.”
Ryan shrugged. That seemed like an exact premonition, though he was a little disappointed Micah had been able to see it. He wanted to show off his new Skill. “Fair enough. See you later?”
“Yep. Have fun.” He paused. “Or not. Good luck?”
“I’ll take the luck.”
Tutoring Lang, Ryan knew he was going to need it. As it turned out, that didn’t matter, either way, because Finn showed up not five minutes after him and of course they didn’t get any studying done then. Why did Ryan even bother bringing books?
Still, batting aside pencils they threw at him while he sat on the carpet was fun … until he slapped one on the pointy end and it dangled from the palm of his hand. When they all stopped gawking or laughing, Ryan tugged it out and bled.
Lang cursed from where he sat on his low bed and asked, “Do you need a bandage or something?”
“No, it’ll stop,” Ryan told him, pressing a washcloth against it. “I’ll get Micah to put some salve on it later.”
“You survive an excursion into the Tower,” Lang said chuckled as he sat back down, “and it’s my room where you are injured. Fear the mighty pencil that can wound the great Ryan Payne.”
“Hey, I got injured,” Ryan insisted. “A wolf scratched me. Here to here”—he showed them—”And I would have drowned when this ink monster attacked me, and then I nearly got boiled by lightning instead—”
“Drowned? Lightning?” Finn interrupted him. “And here you told us yesterday that nothing interesting happened.”
“Huh? Oh.” Ryan had almost forgotten about that. He squinted and drew out the word, “Riiight," before shrugging. “Some stuff happened, okay?”
“Like what?” Lang asked.
“I mean, I did well—” Ryan started.
“Obviously.”
“By collecting one of each crystal, which was really hard. I had to run for like, five hours on end and avoid a ton of hordes. I might have saved a guy’s life, and then he saved mine by exploding an ink monster with a lightning storm. I stuffed a Sapling down a Stone Boar’s gullet and made it explode from the inside out. That was awesome. I had to hunker down behind my shield from the shrapnel. It has some scratches now, but I can just stick it in the ground later to fix it up because of its enchantment. Oh, and Saplings are these tiny Treants that explode when they get too warm. I can use Micah’s breeze potion to make them docile and my [Hot Skin] Skill to make them bristle. It’s really awesome. It’s like fireworks. You should come with sometime and—”
Lang and Finn had been watching and listening patiently while he made his garbled retelling of what had happened, but their patience ran thin soon enough when Lang interrupted him, “Guy? What guy? How did you save his life?”
“Again, man?” Finn added. “If you go on like this, you’ll get the [Hero] Class or something.”
Lang rolled his eyes.
“Then [Rescuer], or [Helper], I don’t care.”
Ryan paused and shrugged. “I mean, he saved our lives, really, not me. He had this relic, it looked like a twig. About this big. It even had two leafs growing on it. He just pointed and lightning burst out like a tree crown. It jumped down the tunnel like a cat’s cradle, killed everything and, shredded the skin off his hand. The wounds looked like roots going up his wrist.”
Lang looked a little disturbed by that, but Finn said, “That’s awesome. And he could just use it without any Skills or level?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Ryan said. “A lot of relics can be used by anyone. It might have needed mana though.”
Finn leaned back and said wistfully, “Man, I wish I had a relic.”
“And you’d do what with it?” Lang asked him. “Chat someone up?”
“I dunno. I’d just want to have it. It’d be cool. Back me up on this, Ryan.”
“Relics are awesome,” Ryan said. “But you have to sell those to the [Hoplites] when you get them, you know? It’s the right thing to do, since they protect the country and everything.”
Finn scowled. “Yeah, I know.”
“Oh, I finally managed to get my item to work?” Ryan remembered. “I threw a firefly at Micah because I thought he was some kind of hunchback monster climbing up from the depths. He almost tripped down the stairs to get away from it.”
“Oh, and now he’s a hunchback?” Finn asked. “That’s cruel, man.”
“He looked like a hunchback. He had that Kobold in a sack over his shoulder.”
“Just a firefly?” Lang asked. “The clerk back then said it could do more.”
Ryan shook his head. “I need to get used to it first. I can barely move my own mana. But it’s a step.”
He nodded, seeming to accept that, and said, “Show us.”
Ryan smiled. He gladly flung his arm out and—
Huh? His wristband wasn’t there. He looked around and checked his pockets, but it wasn’t in any of them. Where—?
Had he forgotten it in the lockers yesterday? He didn’t … remember taking it off before taking the bath, though. Had Micah borrowed it? No, Ryan hadn’t seen it with him at all and Micah would have asked. They had gotten changed at his place before. Maybe he had forgotten to put it back on there? Had he left it on his bed?
“You didn’t even bring it?” Lang asked.
“Yeah, I, uh, must have left it somewhere …”
“Embarrassing,” Finn said. “Tell us more about the exam. How did that Lisa do, anyway?”
“Uhm, she found two treasure chests,” Ryan mumbled. “I think one of them had a mage staff in it. The other … I don’t know. She said it wasn’t important. That means it was probably something mundane.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“A mage staff?” Finn asked. “What can they do?”
“They conduct mana,” Ryan explained absent-mindedly. Had he even had his wristband when they had gotten home? Shouldn’t he have noticed the shadows it threw when he moved?
“That makes it easier to create spellscripts. You only have so much room in and around your own body, after all, and moving mana a few inches away from yourself is supposedly really hard. A lot of mage staffs have really weird shapes because of that. For shaping spells, you know?”
He told them a little more about the exam and what he knew of [Summoners] and magic, but his mind was elsewhere. Where had he left his wristband? He almost never took it off. He wore it as much as possible to get used to it, always trying to shove mana inside.
“Magic, huh?” Finn asked. “I guess I could try that. Might as well, since nothing else has worked.”
“Micah has a beginner’s guide on it. I bet he’d loan it to you, no questions asked.”
“Do you want to go look for it?” Lang asked him out of the blue.
“The book?”
“No, your wristband. You look nervous.”
Ryan made a face. “No, I don’t.”
"Either you’re nervous or you need to take a dump. You’re bouncing your knee and your face looks constipated.”
Ryan scowled, looked down, and stopped bobbing his knee. He couldn’t really argue with him though. “Just a quick look? I’ll be right back. And then I can show you how it works. You can try, too.”
Lang got up. “No problem. I didn’t really want to laze around in my room all day anyway.”
“Thanks.”
They went to his place first and ransacked his room, but didn’t find it. Not even under his mattress or in Micah’s bedroll or treasure chests. So then they searched downstairs. He considered asking his mom, but didn’t. He didn’t want to worry her if he found it someplace soon.
Next, they stormed the bathhouse—meaning they asked the unfamiliar man at the counter politely to go inside; they were friends of Micah, they swore—found Prisha, and searched the living room, and common room, the baths, and the changing room. She brought them a box of lost & found items out and Ryan slapped Finn’s hand when he tried to take something from it.
But it wasn’t there, either.
“When was the last time you remember wearing it?” Lang asked them on their way out.
He thought about it. Really thought about it, but—
“When I threw that firefly at Micah.” That was all he could remember.
“Maybe you dropped it back then?”
Ryan shook his head. “I would have noticed. But … I might have dropped it sometime after that. I was in a hurry and did a lot of messy fighting.”
“But if you dropped it in the Tower, it’s gone, right?”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “I could retrace my steps from yesterday. I might still find it.”
“Now?”
Ryan nodded, making up his mind. “Yes, now. If I lost it somewhere public, someone else will have taken it. But the Tower isn’t changing, I might have a chance to find it before somebody else does.”
“Yeah, but now?” Finn asked him.
“Yes, now!” Ryan lashed out and immediately curbed his temper. “I mean … yeah. It was expensive. Really expensive. You guys know that. You were there. I have to go find it if I can.”
Lang gave him a worried look and said, “Right. Good luck then. Just … stay safe, you know?”
Ryan nodded and ran off. He got his bare-bones equipment and Micah’s slingshot, bought a day-pass, and thankfully made it to the Wolves’ Den on his first try. That was good to know for the future; he hadn’t been sure that would work at all. Then he made his way to the section of forest with the cut-down trees and stopped when he spotted a crowd of people before the cave entrance.
Two [Guards] walked up to him.
Peering past them, Ryan saw people in suits talking to others who wore work clothes and helmets, with measuring tapes, and clipboards, and tool-boxes. There were ropes, carts, and other tools he didn’t recognize.
They looked like they were inspecting the cave.
“We can’t let you through,” one of the men said.
Ryan frowned. “Why not?”
“Guild’s orders. They made it official this morning. Until they give the all-clear, this section of the Tower is off-limits.”
“What? You can’t do that. The Tower is free for all.” Ryan was pretty sure this was illegal.
“We can and we are,” the other said, sounding irritated. “If people start trafficking this entrance to the Den and it collapses, those deaths will get blamed on the Guild and we can’t have that. We can’t let you through. Now turn around and go home, kid.”
Ryan breathed for a second, considering running past them anyway, but knew he wouldn’t make it far. And if they really did have permission to do this, then he’d just be in more trouble than he already was. But … he had to find that wristband. When he imagined telling his parents that he had lost it—
He took a step forward and the man froze him with a glare.
“Don’t try it.”
Ryan stared at him, clenched his fist around his spear, and asked, “When will they give the all-clear?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Ask a receptionist.”
Well, fuck you, too.
On his way back, Ryan killed three wolves instead of using the archer method and pocketed their crystals. He had done it out of frustration, then excused it with getting some spear training in, then meant to give their crystals to Micah, but if he had really lost his wristband—
After talking to two different receptionists, he dropped by the Bazaar and sold his loot, clenching his fist around the coins as he made his way back to Lang’s. They'd both told him it could be a day, a week, or even a month before they gave the all-clear and officially announced the Salamander’s Den to the public. That was just great. That meant was going to spend all week looking for another entrance.
“Back already?” Lang asked when Ryan shambled into his room. They had books strewn out and were writing study cards. They were actually studying. So they only did that when he wasn’t around? Great. His good mood was gone. He dropped down in front of the bed and grunted.
“And? Did you find it?”
“Does it look like I found it?”
“Hey, I’m just asking.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t ask stupid questions.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go all bitch on us,” Finn told him. Ryan glared at him, but he hadn’t even looked up from the card he was writing. “It’s not the end of the world, you know? It might still turn up.”
Ryan bristled at his words, but forced himself to let it go and shook his head. “It’s gone. My parents are going to kill me.”
“No, they won’t,” Lang scoffed. “My aunt and uncle might, but your parents aren’t like that. They’ll give you a pat on the back, say they’re disappointed, and that they expect better from you in the future.”
Ryan leaned back against the bed and sighed. “Like that's any better. I screwed up.”
Just once, he would have liked to have done everything right. Just once.
After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Lang threw another pencil at him. It hit his cheek and plopped away. Ryan scowled. Then Lang threw another. He saw out of the corner of his eye this time and thought, [Strike Down]. His arm snapped as if on its own and smacked it away.
Lang threw another and he slapped that one away as well, mumbling. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Point taken.”
“Good. Cause I wanna’ see how good that Skill is in alleyball.”
Ryan looked up. “You think I can do it with my leg?”
“I don’t know. If not, maybe you could become a goalie. But if you haven’t tried it yet I want to find out.” As if that settled it, they jumped off and headed out of the room, leaving Ryan sitting alone on the carpet.
He rolled his eyes and called after them, “At least bring your damn study cards!”
----------------------------------------
Micah waddled as he carried his bundle of dried clothes to the living room and set it down over the armrest with a huff. He looked around and called, “Sis! I’m ready.”
She had offered to teach him how to iron, now that he was going to have to do this kind of stuff himself. Where was she?
He walked over for the other hallway and almost tripped over a large chest next to the sofa. Looking down, Micah frowned and crouched to get a better look. He noticed the pieces of mismatched wood and ran his hand over them. They flowed seamlessly.
Someone had fixed it. His alchemy chest.
It must have been his parents. They hadn’t gotten a new one, they had repaired the old one. And with a different type of wood. Why?
His heart picked up as he realized that if it was here, they might be, too. He— He didn’t know if he wanted to see them. Or talk to them. He wanted Prisha to teach him how to iron clothes, not have to talk to them right now.
Someone walked in and he spun on them, but it was just his sister.
“Are they here?” He pointed.
“Oh,” she said. “No, Micah. They brought that by this morning and wanted to talk to you, but you were still sleeping. They checked in and … we all thought it was best to let you sleep. You needed it.”
Micah didn’t know why, but he bristled at those words. “You thought? You should have woken me up and let me decide that.”
She cocked her head. “Wake you up to decide whether or not you want to keep sleeping?”
“You know what I mean,” he snapped.
Her expression shifted and she said, “Lower your voice. They’re gone. It’s done. I let my little brother sleep in, so what?”
She stared at him for a moment and Micah looked away. He mumbled, “I haven’t seen them for a week.”
She nodded. “I know, but they brought that for you. It’s the old one. They had it fixed, though I bet it was more expensive than having a new one made. Uhm, they said Aaron’s birthday present for you is inside.”
He perked up. “It is?”
“Yeah. If you want to look…? I haven’t yet. And I’d like to see what it is, too. I haven’t gotten any letters from him in months. Maybe he sent something for me, too?”
Suddenly, she didn’t look like a big sister at all, Micah realized. She looked like a little sister who missed her older brother.
“Oh. Of course.”
He crouched down again and inspected it. The last time he had seen this chest, it had been strewn out in their backyard as a mess of chunks of wood. Now, it was whole again, even if there was just as much new as there was old. They hadn’t just bought a new one, they had picked up the pieces, filed them down, and cut new ones to fit perfectly. Or at least, they had paid someone else to do it.
How did it stay intact? Had they used screws or something? Maybe some kind of glue? Either way, they didn’t want to erase it, then.
Micah opened it up. Inside, there was a large package wrapped and tied in cloth that filled up most of the main space. On top of it lay a thin, black binder—the type he would see in either of his parents’ offices—and a letter addressed to his parents’ house, but not to them. To him. Micah, it read.
He opened the binder first, Prisha hovering behind him.
It held magazine excerpts, hand-cut or torn out carefully. They were all on alchemy. It was news from different Tower cities, and all from districts like Westhill, that spoke of strides made in alchemy without Tower ingredients. Most of them were about middle-grade healing potions made with modern chemicals and medicines, working together with [Doctors] and [Chemists]. One spoke of an alchemist working with a man who had the [Magical Botanist] Class and could make all sorts of plants with alchemical properties. He was apparently accepting students in the hopes of them also getting the Class, but the text made it seem like it would be unlikely since the man had decades of experience before he even got it himself.
If they succeeded, they could create and grow their own magical flora outside of the Tower.
Then there were pamphlets of schools. None of them were in Westhill and only two in Hadica. They were science and medical schools from all five Tower cities. One of them was even a fancy school all the way in Lighthouse, where [Surgeons] were trained alongside Overseas people in modern medicine.
They were willing to send him to Lighthouse if he didn’t become a climber?
Micah shifted through it all once, twice, and the message it painted was clear, “We don’t need them. The Towers.” He tried to think about it for a moment, failed to organize his thoughts, and put the binder aside. But they slipped through. Then why did we build our cities around them? He opened the envelope instead. It was a letter in fine paper, addressed to him in an adult’s handwriting from his brother.
Aaron.
Micah waited a moment and read.
Happy Birthday, little brother!
Do you still remember me? Probably not. It has been nearly two years since we last saw one another. That probably seems like an eternity to you. I bet you are all grown-up by now. You even have your first class.
Mom and Dad wrote me that you are an alchemist, huh? My brother, an alchemist. And level six by age thirteen already. You must be some kind of prodigy. You are higher level than your sister was at your age. I didn’t even have my Class by then.
Let me tell you, Will has been insufferable these last few days. He’s been calling you his long-distance prodigy and acting like you’re related. You do remember me, right? Will? Who’s Will? I’m your older brother.
Below that, a line of text was struck through and the letter continued on like normal from there.
Hey there Micah! It’s me, your real older brother, Will. I hear you
I leave the letter alone for one second and he tries to worm his way in. Sorry. Ignore that bit.
But fourteen, huh? That’s the age. Now, you get to buy expensive things and sign contracts on your own. That is a lot of responsibility, young man. And with that in mind, I sent you a little birthday gift. It’s at the bottom of this envelope, but I bet you already knew that. I bet you took the coin out first and only read this letter a day later. That is what I would have done at your age after all.
Micah frowned and felt the envelope. What coin? The envelope was a little heavier near the bottom. He found a bump and pried the paper apart with two fingers to spot a small, golden coin in a corner. An actual Gold Coin.
He stared. Two hundred and forty iron coins, two thousand and four hundred Sewer Rat crystals sold to the Guild, and more than a third of what he currently owned, after paying for half of the dinner yesterday—Prisha told him some people had left coins behind, but he had made her keep them. That meant he only needed another and a little less than half to pay a full year’s tuition without any kind of scholarship. The thought slowly let him breathe again.
Micah read on.
I just hope you did not spend too much of it by the time you read this letter. Do me a favor and don’t spend all of it at once, okay? It’s a lot of money to a fourteen-year-old and you could really use it for other things. Consider it a birthday gift for the last two years from all of us, and a sponsorship for your alchemy … and a bribe, but more on that later. Shh. Don’t tell Mom and Dad.
But if you did read this letter first, you can use it to buy yourself something special today. Go out with your friends and buy cake or ice cream, or maybe save it for the summer festival and buy tons of color bags. You have my blessing. I wish you tons of fun on your birthday and this Summer, Micah. I hope you get well ... after what happened.
And on that note, this next part might be uncomfortable, but I hope you still read it someday.
Mom and Dad told me what happened, Micah, and I’m sorry. I wish I could have been there for you. Believe me when I say I know how frightening it can be to be stuck someplace with no way out. But you made it back home and it’ll get better. I promise.
They also told me why you went into the Tower; that you had run out of ideas on how to use everyday ingredients and didn’t have enough money to buy better ones? Well, I can’t do much about putting ideas into your head, aside from maybe sending you textbooks on biology and medicine. And I considered doing that, I really did, but then the post office told me how expensive it would be to send two encyclopedias halfway across the country and … well, instead I sent you something to solve both problems at once instead. Money!
The best present for those who lack imagination, like me.
It’s for your alchemy. Buy lots of books with it and study until your head pops so you can get the best apprenticeship when you finish classroom. And do that soon. And by soon, I mean as soon as possible. Because if you don’t have one by the next time we meet, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep Will off of you.
And yes, that is a threat.
You might think he is fun and cool, that he is patient enough to answer all your questions, that he lets you mix funny colored liquids together to make foam, or lets you help make fireworks, but to everyone else, he’s just weird.
Micah frowned again, but this time it was with a sliver of a smile. He had helped make fireworks before? He didn’t remember that.
Weird, I say, okay?
Sorry, I wrote that bit pretty late at night. If this letter seems a little disconnected to you, it’s because I’ve been writing bits and pieces of it here and there when I find the time for it.
Then again, I remember you being pretty weird, too. Weren’t you? So in case you have some money left over after buying those books I mentioned (Did I forget to mention I want you to buy books? Mom, Dad, if you are eavesdropping on this, I advised Micah to buy books!!!) and in case you don’t know which ingredients to buy, I let Will send a few recipes from one of his old journals along. He copied them over into a new journal. It should be wrapped so—
Are you still reading? Man, I hope you’re still reading.
Do not let Mom and Dad see the recipes, Micah. I repeat: Do NOT let them see. They would kill me if they did, do you understand? And try to hide this page of the letter from them. Make an excuse that it’s something embarrassing, like I’m warning you about puberty or something.
So yeah, a part of the money is a bribe for you to keep quiet. It will be our little secret.
And on that note, I must confess: I don’t know you, little brother. I’ve seen you five times in the last seven years and each time, you’ve been barely recognizable from the last. The last time I saw you, I only saw hints of my baby brother who never, ever, ever shut up. Seriously, you never stopped talking. But that side only came out when Will encouraged you to ask questions again, so maybe you’re not like that at all anymore?
I don’t know you. I don’t know your friends. I don’t know what your daily life is like. I would love for you to tell me, however. So if you want to write a letter to me explaining all that, write one. Tell me everything and I’ll gladly read it, even if it’s hundreds pages long and an incoherent mess of spelling mistakes.
But because I don’t know you, I also don’t know if you’re just going through a rebellious phase, if you’re simply curious, if you want to level, if you’re bored, if your friends are pressuring you into doing it, whatever the reason is. You’re a fourteen-year-old boy. The Tower probably screams of adventure to you.
I know it did to me.
But the Towers aren’t all that. You don’t need them to become an alchemist. Did you know there are monsters in the North? Real monsters, not living in Towers. They don’t even have crystals. They live in a massive area surrounded by a forest and live like normal animals, though they are clearly magical. William can make all sorts of things with them as ingredients.
Not that I want you to run North to hunt true monsters for your alchemy. That’s not what I’m trying to say. Do not do that. Absolutely do not do that. I do not encourage it even in the slightest.
I’m just trying to say that you don’t need the Towers. You can make all sorts of things even with normal plants and chemicals. With medicines. Maybe you could go into Overseas studies?
So despite the recipes I sent you, I hope they merely satisfy whatever thoughts and questions you have, so that you might quickly move on to other things. Better things.
I remember this spot, over on Shay Street in Westhill. You know the one that leads to the side-gate out of the city? You have to go down there if you want to avoid the main traffic through Westgate. But there’s a small plaza down a side-alley with an old well they sealed up ages ago. If you climb up a low wall to the left corner and up on the neighboring building’s wall—don’t you dare fall and hurt yourself; I won’t be blamed for it—you can get a view that can look over half the city.
Westhill is a great place. It’s a safe place. You might have sworn off the Tower after what happened. Who knows? But you are a fourteen-year-old kid, so I doubt it. Going into the Tower can be fun. Exploring the Fields with some friends, it’s an adventure. Especially to an alchemist. But when you are in there, Micah, Mom and Dad are sitting at home, restless, worried about you. They didn’t take Maya and me leaving home too well. And they just want what’s best for us.
So remember, you can do anything you want to do with your life, and with your class. Alchemy has limitless possibilities and if you want to buy and use Tower ingredients for your potions, that’s fine. But whatever you do, just don’t be too hard on them, okay?
They mean well.
The last word blurred when Micah started crying. The letter went on, but Micah didn’t read it. It blurred once more when a tear hit the page.
“Micah?” Prisha asked. “Is something wrong?”
He shoved the letter at her and hugged his knees, regret suddenly burning deep. How was he supposed to know? How was he supposed to know it would turn out like this? He wished he could go back. He wished he could go back do it all over again, right this time. He wished he could have found a way to make everyone happy.
Why couldn’t he have just told them about what he wanted to do from the start? They could have worked something out together. Just because he was too afraid to speak up. Just because he needed to do things his way. Was it worth it?
But it was too late now. He glanced over at the wood of the chest and saw the scars that had been replaced with new wood through blurry eyes, rubbed a thumb over the scars of his left hand and felt the same.
What had happened, happened. It was too late.
Prisha read quickly. When her eyes found the bottom of the page, she looked up at him and whispered, “Oh, Micah …” She reached out and he opened up so they could hug softly. “Come here.”
When Prisha pulled back and Micah wiped his eyes, she held the letter up and offered, “There’s more if you want to read it?”
He sniffed. “What does it say?”
“It’s a bunch about how he’s doing, and how everyone in the caravan is. There’s some funny stories and some nonsense. I think he might have been drunk while he wrote that bit. Some others say hello, too. Then he asks about you, and me, and Mom, and Dad. Here, look. He even left an address if we want to write back.”
She pointed at the bottom of the second page. It was an address for a post office in Trest. Below, Micah spotted a postscript.
P.s.: The coin isn’t the only present I sent. That would be too boring. I ordered something for you. I assume you’ve ripped off the packaging already? Don’t break anything. Don’t cut or burn yourself. Remember to get some fresh air. Have fun!
Micah frowned at that and then over at the cloth-wrapped package in the chest.
“Do you want to write something back now?” Prisha asked him.
He tore his eyes away from it to look at her when he spoke and admitted, “I’ve actually been trying to write something all week, but I didn’t know what. The words wouldn't come. I doubt I can just write an entire letter right now. Uhm … sorry.”
“That’s fine.” Prisha smiled. “I know the feeling. We can take our time and send our letters off together in a week or two. He also mentioned new recipes from Lean. That sounds exciting. Want to take a look at those?”
Micah nodded vehemently. He did. He so very much did.
They turned to the cloth bundle and carefully undid the knot at the top, then pushed it away to reveal glass. Lots and lots of glass. In came in all shapes and sizes: tubes, and flasks, and bottles, and beakers. Some had arms sticking out of them. Some had round bottoms. There were also empty oil bottles stacked on one another, thirty-six in three different sizes for oils, inks, and rose waters, Micah guessed.
They all had screw caps like Saga’s did and it immediately made him smile again.
There were also two wrapped metal flasks, probably for carrying around healing potions, a mortar and pestle, tongs, pipettes, wire gauze, a burner like he had seen at Mr. Faraday’s workshop, and what looked like two miniature, flat stoves. Lisa explained he could fill them with fire potion just the same as the burner and place the glass bottles—or just a pot for food—over wire gauze on top to heat things.
It was a complete distillation set. Or rather, a beginner alchemist’s one. There were even a pair of large goggles that looked a lot like the ones smiths wore, but thinner. No knives, though, Micah noticed. It seemed like the only dangerous things in the whole set were the burners. And the tweezers if he poked his eye with them, he guessed. But he had the goggles for that.
In between it all was a journal in the same vein as the two his father had given him for his birthdays. Micah left it where it was for a moment. He plucked the burner out of Prisha’s hand, put everything back where it was, and hugged the chest.
He loved it.
The only problem was: He didn’t have [Dissettle], so half of it was kind of useless for him right now.
“Can I leave it here?” Micah asked when he opened up the chest again. “If I took it with to Ryan’s, I’d be taking up more space in his room than he does.”
“Sure, you can,” Prisha said.
“Thank you. Then you can borrow the mini-stoves when I don’t need them.” He put one back in her hand. “Until you renovate and get your larger kitchen, you know?”
She chuckled. “I doubt I’ll be able to cook much on them, but thank you for the offer. Now, let me see those recipes. I want to know what you’ll be cooking up in the future.”
“I don’t know …” Micah said slowly. “Will sent it and Aaron said to not show it to Mom and Dad.”
“But you can show it to me?”
“I’ll check.”
Micah opened up the journal, took one look at the first recipe, and saw the words [Dissettle] and [Dissolve]. He couldn’t help himself. He started laughing. Apparently, his parents hadn’t told Aaron about his limitations, or maybe Aaron hadn’t mentioned it to Lean, but Micah couldn’t use these recipes. He flipped through the recipes—most of them simply better versions of the ones he already had—and most needed at least two of the three Skills, if not all of them.
“What’s so funny?” Prisha asked.
“They’re too advanced for me,” he said and put it back. “I can’t make them yet.” With his hands free, he got the letter and fished out the gold coin from within, an idea forming in the back of his mind.
No. He couldn’t use them yet.
Don’t spend it all at once, the letter had read. He wasn’t going to do that, but he also wasn’t going to save it all for his tuition. Sorry, Aaron, Micah thought. But you did say it’s supposed to be for my alchemy. And what was he apologizing? He might even have been proud.
“Hey, Prisha," Micah asked. "Can I borrow the backroom for my alchemy? I’m really in the mood to make some things.”
“You just said you can’t?”
“Not from that. From my other recipe book. I really want to try out this set right away and I'm afraid of doing alchemy at Ryan's house. I need the practice. Please?”
She hesitated, but mumbled, “Fine. But open and window and be careful, okay? And clean up after yourself when you’re done.”
“I will. I promise. You’re the best!”
Micah shot up and ran home to get his alchemy things from his treasure chests. He found his recipe book, leafed through it, and made a list. A very, very long list of things he would need and that he rounded up to make room for experimentation and mistakes. Ryan wasn’t there. He was probably still at Lang’s, so he told Mrs. Payne that he might come back late today. If she could tell him…?
“Sure.” She smiled. “Have fun. Don’t poison yourself!”
“I won’t!”
Most shops were closed now since it was close to Sunday afternoon, but not all of them. Micah ran out and bought fire potions with his new-found gold coin for his burner and mini-stoves. Then he went one place that he knew never closed—the Bazaar—and went to the shops that were still open there for what he could find, only haggling with the stallowners outside when he had no options left.
He knew what things costed by now. There was no way he was buying them for three to six times their value. “How much did you pay the climber who sold you that for it?” he’d ask. If they named him ridiculously prices, he would tell them they got ripped off and move on to the next stall.
It took hours, but eventually, he found everything he needed at acceptable rates and even discounts in one place where he bought a lot at once. He suspected some of it was about to go bad, but he didn’t mind. He wouldn’t need it for long.
It was so much, he had to make two trips with the heavy shopping bags. So at the bathhouse, he asked for a key that he could lock the backroom door on the way out in case any of his cousins went snooping while he was gone. Then he stacked everything up, checked his recipe book, checked his equipment guide that Mr. Barrington had given, the other Westhill [Alchemist], and started brewing things.
This was something that he should have done months ago when Lisa first paid him for Sam’s crystal. It was time he stopped limiting himself. He had promised that he would get the other two Skills someday, but not done something about that in four months. Well, now he knew how to get Skills better than before—it was all about what you did or needed—so that was going to change.
He only actually distilled three things himself that evening. Of all things, Sewer moss, Glow Roots, and later a potion to make it purer. After each use, it was a hassle to clean the tubes and bottles properly, but it was still exciting to use the equipment and stare at the bubbling water, the rising steam. He could practically see the higher-concentration patterns of the oil that dripped down to—
“AH!” he shouted and lunged for a glass. He had forgotten to put a container under the second tube during his first attempt. He shoved one of the larger oil bottles Aaron had sent him under and sighed in relief.
He still wore his gloves, though, and the goggles when he turned the burner on—half of the reason was that he just wanted to try them out to see how they looked. When he had the time, he found a mirror to see himself and he looked … strange, but not necessarily stupid. He grinned, noticed his chipped tooth and pressed right up to the mirror to see better.
Barely noticeable? Ryan was such a liar.
He quickly went back to check up on everything and constantly checked the recipe and his equipment guide to make sure he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it didn’t seem like it, so he lit the mini-stoves again and started heating some water on one and put a kettle on the other.
Over the course of that evening, Micah made four of twenty-three different recipes two to four times over. But didn’t use the recipes for [Infusion] like he had before, he used the ones for [Dissettle] and [Dissolve]. Each time, he experimented a little. When the recipe demanded that he use either Skill, he just heated the mixture—if he thought he could get away with it—and stirred or shook thoroughly until he got the physical result he wanted, then used [Infusion] to cover the essential one.
For [Dissolve], he sometimes had to infuse the pattern of the ingredients into the water, fish the ingredients back out with a sieve, dry them in the oven, mince, and then pulverize them before they dissolved properly in the water. It was a lot of work, but it was fascinating to see the physical process of what the Skill did on its own. And it made Micah think. Even if he were to have [Dissolve] and [Dissettle], sometimes, it might just be better to do some things by hand. It gave him even more fine control. He promised to keep that in mind for the future.
He also saw what Mr. Faraday had tried to explain to him then. The mixtures’ patterns were frail and faulty. As soon as the oils and water separated, they would fall apart in places and either not work as well as they were supposed to, or not work at all. He doubted any of the Stat potions he brewed would give him the Skills in confirmation.
But he did it all anyway and experimented a little. There had to be a way to get [Dissettle’s] effect with regular means. So he asked Prisha what she knew about oil and water and they tried adding eggs, then just egg yolks to some of the recipes to get the two to stay together.
It didn’t work quite as well as Micah had hoped, but it was still cool to observe the interactions. It worked best with stat potions that needed a lot of different types of fuel, like Strength Potions. He managed to make one that should work perfectly with fewer amount of ingredients than his [Infusion] recipe used, but with one more egg. Hopefully, that one extra egg wouldn’t give him food poisoning.
It took all afternoon and evening. The first pot of Ever-Fresh Coffee Micah brewed—it was simply coffee infused with its own essence and a bit fire essence, as far as he could tell—he poured a cup and downed in one go to keep going. Then he froze as it made him shudder for a minute. Coffee was bitter. He had known that, but he hadn’t thought it would be that bitter.
Why did anyone drink the stuff? A moment later, he understood. He was wide awake and felt like he should be doing push-ups or learning how to walk on walls. Maybe he should use less coffee next time?
The recipe said if he wanted to add milk, he would have to do it right before drinking it or it might curdle in the heat. Micah considered it, but didn’t quite see the point of that. It would just dilute the effect, right? And sugar would ruin the effect when it crashed too soon. He thought it might taste better cold in the Summer, though, Maybe he could use some ice to make an Ever-Cold coffee?
Next time, he told himself. Experimentation came later, when he had made everything and was working with the leftovers. And true experimentation would come when he had earned back all the money he’d spent today and had enough to pay for his tuition. But this was a risk like every investment. If it worked, if he got either Skill from a level up, making potions in the future would be cheaper for him.
He just had to try again and again, constantly emulating the effects of the two Skills in an attempt to get them from his next level up. It was just like practicing something for your Path, or priming yourself through training, he thought. Eventually, it had to work.
And with that in mind, when he no longer needed the distillation set to make things, he simply mixed things together and distilled them to separate them again. Over and over, he let it run in the background while he worked on other projects. He would mix oils and water, heat and stir them until they were one, and then distilled them into separate things again. He did the same with saltwater.
Over and over. He had enough money to pay for it and an entire recipe book to work through.
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Over the next week, they took it slow. Slow meaning that Micah walked slowly and traded most of his evening exercises for alchemy to go easy on his ribs, not that he in any way did less than he had before. And neither did they others, despite the final, official exam being over.
Monday, he and Ryan got themselves proofed at that office he want to and handed their updated papers in at the Guild, then went groceries shopping while his parents were out of the house. Hopefully, it would be a pleasant surprise to find all their cupboards full when they got home.
Afterward, Monday to Thursday, they went into the dark caverns of the Dripping Teeth every day and Ryan would scout ahead with Sam’s head sticking out of his backpack to look for an entrance into the Salamander’s Den—and subsequently, the wristband he had lost. He was really beating himself up over that.
Micah wondered if there was anyway he could help with that aside from being a dead-weight during the search. Maybe find him a new one? He kicked every stalagmite they passed and checked behind every nook and cranny, looking for hidden treasure, but found nothing.
And while Ryan scouted, Lisa and he quizzed each other on a bunch of different topics for the true final exam—the interview. The questions ranged from the school, their old school, themselves, their Skills and callings, over the exams, the Tower, the city, and even stuff like recent news, like that a Skybridge in the Gardens had collapsed during a fight or how the school was taking credit for having rediscovered the Salamander’s Den; anything and everything that might come up in conversation.
When Ryan finished his scouting, he’d set Sam free and it would run straight back to Lisa, where they would kill the horde following him and collect its crystals, then spend half an hour quizzing him while he caught his breath and drank some water.
But really, it was the first topic that surprisingly the both of them had troubles with—the school.
They knew next to nothing about it.
“How can you not know anything about the school you’ve applied for?” Lisa demanded while she smacked a giant centipede to death. She was still using her old staff. She said she was getting the new one appraised, but Micah got the feeling she was brushing him off for some reason. “Didn’t you read the pamphlet and information sheets they’ve been handing out?”
Micah shrunk down a little and offered meekly, “I skimmed them?” Before she could retort, he added, “I only read what I needed to know at the moment, okay? I was busy.”
In hindsight, he was glad that he had spent so much time studying. One more wrong answer during the written exam and he wouldn’t have been able to participate in the third exam at all.
Lisa looked up and frowned. “Wait, so when you didn’t know the way to the gymnasium during the written exam, that wasn’t just you being nervous? You actually didn’t know the way?”
He kicked a stalagmite and it held. No treasure, then. “How was I supposed to know where it was?”
“Because of the map. They handed you a map, Apples. And besides, you had been there before, right? During the Open House?”
Micah paused on his way to the next rock and rolled his eyes from corner to corner, trying to think of a good way of saying this, but what came out was, “... Open House? What Open House?”
He was suddenly very worried he had missed something important.
Lisa let her frustrations out on a tiny wax man that was squatting next to her leg, trying to set her pants on fire. She had a fire resistance Skill, though, Micah now knew. Courtesy of her [Mage] Class. He wondered if it extended to her clothes, then whether or not [Alchemists] got something similar. Either way, he envied her. None of the fire resistance potions he had made had given him the Skill in confirmation yet, not even the one he’d made with [Infusion’s] recipe.
His gloves stayed on during alchemy, which was only prudent, he told himself.
When the wax man was smoke and its crystal bagged, Lisa looked up like she was trying to remember some fact so she could bludgeon him to death with it. “There was an Open House … nine weeks ago where people could come look at the school. Please tell me you went.”
“Nine weeks?” Micah asked, thinking it over, and remembered, “Oh. That was before we decided to go. Were Ryan and me fighting about that time? Did we miss anything important?”
Lisa faltered. “... No. There were some people from the Guild, the Registry, and the staff there who spoke. There was a boring tour where we were led around in groups like sheep so we could gawk at brand-new, never-used equipment. They answered some questions for the parents and there was a buffet where we mingled with other applicants and the teachers. I remember thinking it was a waste of time.”
Micah smiled, faltered, smiled again, and frowned. On the one hand, he was glad that he hadn’t missed anything important. On the other hand, he hadn’t been entirely conscious during the written exam, the only time he had seen bits and pieces of the school. He hadn't even seen the main entrance yet and wanted to see more of it. So he asked, “Will there be another before school starts?”
“Maybe? I would have to check. But we could drop by, I bet, maybe ask a janitor or someone walking around for a tour, or just go in on our own. I doubt we would be turned away.”
Micah nodded happily. That sounded like a great idea. He kicked another rock just as Sam tripped and rolled into their cavern.
“INCOMING!” Ryan bellowed as he approached and Micah readied his slingshot for the next horde to come, staying back behind the other two again. Again, to go easy on his ribs.
It sucked.
What sucked a little less was the new ammunition he had adapted from two recipes. He had dyed them red and murky. Glue was white, Cataract poison purple, and healing was yellow. He planned on making a different type of healing soon, which he would then dye pink.
He readied one of the red ones, waited until Ryan got out of his line of fire, and shot at a centipede on the ceiling. The ball hit the ceiling right next to it went up in flames. The centipede fell off and hit one of its kin below and Micah smiled a little. He’d made ammo that would ignite when it burst. I am the master of flames, he thought softly, deluding himself. Fear me.
When the flames died down, the centipede was barely burnt. The shot wasn’t powerful enough to be very dangerous … yet. Or maybe never. The mist ones were the same. They didn’t produce much and the clouds they did make disappeared quickly. Both of them were more expensive than any of his other ammunition types. If he wanted to use them in the future, he would need a better recipe.
Micah switched to the murky ones and fired at the largest enemies, thinking about ways to improve its recipe to improve how quickly their fog spread. Maybe he should switch to smoke bombs? At least those didn’t make him afraid that his backpack would go up in flames. Something, he told himself, anyone would be reasonably worried about.
When they were done collecting all of that horde’s crystals, it was Ryan’s turn to explain why he knew surprisingly little of the school he’d applied for. Micah would have thought him a stickler for such things, but he said, “I know the basics, okay? What do I care about campus layouts and how many trash cans they have.”
Micah nodded in approval. Tuition, which classes they offered, and scholarships; that was all he needed to know. Plus, it was, like, right next to the Tower, so that was a huge point in its favor.
Lisa rolled her eyes.
On Tuesday, the letter with the invitation for the interview arrived. So with her warnings in mind, Micah took to walking around with the pamphlets and studying fun facts about the school while he practiced his alchemy in the afternoons. When he got home, he found Ryan doing the same during his exercises, glancing at the papers every now and then.
Micah … might have also taken to mumbling the stuff he learned to himself while he did, to better memorize it. So with his goggles on, pacing around, and mumbling with tubes and glowing liquids in the background, Prisha called him a mad scientist. Neil was actually a little worried about what he was doing in their backroom, so he stuck around for a few hours during which Micah explained the basics of alchemy and some of his recipes.
Afterward, he nervously searched through the information sheets until he found a paragraph explaining that inventive Classes, like his, would get their own workshop at school. Puh.
But it was like the good old—actually bad—days then, when Micah had spent his time experimenting. Only this time, people would drop by to talk to him, or remind him to eat dinner, or try to steal a potion without knowing what it did, just because it glowed brightly—it was a light potion. That was why it glowed. He told his cousin it was acid instead and they ran.
And afterward, he would go back to Ryan’s place and tell them what he had tried to make and they would tell him about their day.
In short, it was so much better than before.
Micah spent almost an entire gold coin in six days to make his entire recipe book two to four times over, always following the recipes for [Dissettle] and [Dissolve] and trying to get them to work with [Infusion]. It didn’t always work. Sometimes, he would find minor improvements. Sometimes, he would find band-aid fixes. Sometimes, they would work, just not give the Skill in confirmation. And twice, he finished coming up with a workaround only to realize the recipe he had created was almost the exact same as his [Infusion] recipe.
Huh. He wondered if Hale had worked it out that way as well.
But he made Stat potions—Strength, Toughness, Agility, Dexterity, Perception—and Stamina potions, which Ryan gladly drunk during his scouting trips, a potion of [Tough Skin], and resistance potions—Fire, Heat, Elements.
He made three different types of healing potions, the cleaning substance for metals that stunk, and a gel that was supposed to make water drinkable by dragging everything else to the bottom.
He made a viscous ink that glowed in the dark for marking tunnels during expeditions—or making graphitti, Micah daydreamed—and two different types of light potions, one that worked by keeping oil and water separate and reacting when you shook them together. The other just worked by dropping a light crystal inside and fishing it back out again.
He used those to light up the backroom when it got darker.
He made the fire- and mist bomb potions, and regular fire potions to fuel his burners, or start a campfire, or set spear- or arrow tip on fire.
He also made powders by working with what remained after distillation—one that helped with indigestion for travel, and one that was supposed to “reveal affinities” by glowing in different colors for the most basic appraisal of magic items.
His book mentioned he could use the second one to make a perimeter around his camp and it would light up when a monster touched it. He held crystals against it and it reacted to their essence. That was awesome.
And every time he had to wait while he made something, Micah studied or worked on another project: his portfolio for the interview. He remade all of his old recipes, looking for ways to improve them, and copied all of his working and presentable recipes over to his new journal so he had them all in one place.
His recipe book had been further defaced by all the tiny notes he had written in the margins during his experiments.
Only the illustrations were few, sadly, because Micah didn’t have the time to elaborate on them. But on Saturday morning, all his doubts didn’t matter anymore in comparison.
Because he leveled.
[Alchemist level 10!]
[Skill — Dissettle obtained!]
[Skill — Dissolve obtained!]
He woke up bleary and thought, What? He wasn’t dreaming, right? He wasn’t? It had actually worked? He'd leveled! And after just six days. Two levels. From eight to ten. Sure, he had been hoping for something, but this? How? Why? Just because he finished the book and practiced? He had gotten both of the Skills. He had all three of them. Alchemy would be so much cheaper now.
Well, not so much cheaper, he told himself, smiling. A little cheaper. Enough cheaper. Enough cheaper! Level ten!
He grinned and started thrashing around in excitement, then woke Ryan up by throwing himself over him to share the news. Ryan jumped up and shoved Micah off in a panic, then they both spent a minute apologizing awkwardly.
That was, until Micah remembered he was going to have to hurry if he wanted to go to the Proofing Office on time. He spent a minute running around like a headless chicken, looking for clothes until Ryan figured out what was even going on and reminded him that they weren’t even open yet.
Micah froze. “Oh. Right.”
So he waited. He jogged, and did his morning workout with Ryan when the other guy finally decided to get out of bed, walked his forms, even attempted to meditate a little—mostly on [Savagery], adding his fight with the Kobold. And he made breakfast, grinning all the while.
But after he got himself proofed, Micah’s feet carried him to a familiar street instead of straight back. He took a deep breath and ran down to its length to drop a copy of his new paper in his parents’ letterbox with the words, Level ten! Thank you for the present.
Then he kept on running. He still had a few hours left until the interview, but he didn’t want to be late.