Averick stared at the unconscious body of the man in front of him and, for a single moment, wondered why he was still friends with Alice. From the day he'd known her she'd brought him more trouble than imaginable: for one, he'd fallen for her, so now he didn't feel like flirting with other girls, which meant it had been quite a while since he'd last gotten laid. For second, the first time she'd asked him to go out for longer than a night of drinking she'd forced him through an airmish climb in the Tiurna Mountains where, apparently, they'd risked dying once and had encountered a creature that could've skinned them alive and worn said skin.
And now she'd brought back home a complete stranger she'd apparently found in a clearing in the forest while following a rose and she was asking him for help.
No, this was it! This time, he was going to tell her to fuck off and -
"How can I help?"
...
Dammit!
"Alright, I need... I don't know. FUCK!" she swore loudly as he helped her gently place the man on her bed, where he immediately began soaking the sheets with sweat.
"What do you mean you don't know?" he asked, "Just use an Antidote Potion on him."
Antidote Potions were special alchemical products that boasted a special cocktail of substances which, supposedly, could neutralize any sort of poison. That is, in the beginning stages.
"This doesn't look like initial poisoning, whatever it is. This looks advanced."
"Still, worth a try."
Alice shook her head: "You're right. You know where I keep my stash, right?"
"Third cupboard, right?"
"Yes."
Averick ran to the kitchen and came back not thirty seconds later holding a small vial containings a slightly off-green liquid. He unstoppered it and a light floral scent suffused around the room, as if someone had just brought a bouquet of flowers into the room. It made Alice feel sick to the stomach, but she ignored the sensation as she took the vial and turned towards the man. Slowly, she tipped the contained towards his lips, tilting his head forwards, pooling the liquid inside his mouth. When she was certain there was enough, she plugged his nose and tilted his head back, forcing him to gulp it all down.
Then she waited, at the same time looking for any sign that the antidote had done anything and trying to find any other possible new symptoms. So long as she knew what had been used to poison him she could save him. Sort of. If they'd used Nightshade or Foxglove or Cyanide or anything like that there was little to nothing she could. But then again, those poisons tended to act fast and they would've killed this man in the time it took her to bring him back home, plus they had quite the... signatures, shall we say.
When, a few minutes later, the sweating mass of flesh in her bed didn't seem to be getting any better, she sighed.
"See, I told you, not gonna work."
She scooted closer to the bed and started undressing the man: maybe there was something she had missed?
She removed the garbs he was wearing, which, prior to their walk in the woods, had probably been pristinely white, but now were green and brown and dusty, and threw them on the floor nearby.
The man immediately to heave a sigh of relief as his body's temperature was slightly lowered, only for his brows to knit together a few moments later and him going back to groaning in discomfort.
She put her head in her hands and began thinking very hard, trying to piece together an explanation on what could possibly be causing this man to slowly die in her bed, her mind going through all the possible options and coming up with a plethora of possibilities that didn't help her at all.
That was when Averick saved the day by saying only one sentence: "Hey, why does it smell like garlic here?" he asked, sniffing loudly and scrunching his nose.
Alice looked up at him, brows knitted in confusion. Then she sniffed... and, indeed, smelled garlic in the air. It was very faint, but the air in her room was clean enough that the unexpected smell was noticeable.
And then all the pieces finally fit together.
"Av," she said with a sudden smile, "I could kiss you right now!"
The [Runner] blushed slightly and stuttered: "Oh, w - well, thanks! Umm..."
But she was already back to looking at the man, her eyes shining with curiosity and... sadness?
"Is everything alright? Did you understand what poison they used on him?"
Alice nodded, her smile slowly turning bitter, her shoulders slumping slowly to the ground as she seemed to deflate like a puffer fish with their bladder pierced right through: "Oh yes, I do know what they used on him. Arsenic. The so called 'Nobleman's Poison'. Ha. Fucked up thing, that's what it is. At least now I know why the Antidote didn't work. The poison wasn't even fucking organic! It's a godsdamned rock, for fuck's sake."
She suddenly rose from her chair, knocking it to the ground and walking to her room's window.
Shse opened it and, taking her head out, she screamed in rage.
Averick jumped in his seat, nearly knocking his chair, and himself, to the ground, too, years of experience running even in the worst possible weathers, from snow storms to hurricanes being the only reason he managed not to fall. He watched with wide eyes as the girl he'd fallen for screamed like a banshee out of her window, the flutter of multiple birds' wings flying away accompanying the unpleasant sound.
When she finished she took a deep breath, and then shouted to the heavens... actually, no, to the woods: "I asked you to bring me somewhere that would help me grow! This isn't growth! This man is condemned! I won't be able to create the antidote, not with this place's technology! Fuck, I don't even know what's the fucking antidote! FUCK YOU!"
And then she closed the window, walked back to her chair and, with extreme care, raised it from the ground, sitting down as if nothing had happened.
"...You alright now?" asked Av, his eyes still a bit wide, his body unconsciously moving away from the girl, giving her some space.
Alice didn't answer immediately, spending a good minute just looking at the man, sadness in her gaze. Then, finally, she sighed, slumping again, the strength leaving her limbs, a puppet with her strings cut off, as she answered: "No, I'm not alright. This man is condemned. I know which poison was used on him, and I know an antidote exists, but I don't know it, and even if I knew, I'm sure I couldn't craft it here. He's going to die in a day, two if we're extremely lucky, but seeing how things are progressing it looks like the poison's already in his blood stream, so yeah, twelve hours, a day at most. He's dead meat, and he's probably also going to shit himself at least once before going, so I should get him off the bed."
Averick stared at Alice and, for the first time since he'd known her, saw her giving up.
It was slow and subtle: it started with the aforementioned slumping of the shoulders, followed by her beginning to take deeper breaths to calm herself down as she turned away from the dying man, unwilling to gaze at her first and only failure in this world. Her eyes weren't filled with that usual gleeful cheer that never seemed to quite abandon her, even after spending an entire week being unable to sleep. They were empty this time around, soulless.
He didn't know this, but that was the true Alice, in a way. Or at least, it was the Alice who'd been around the longest. The self deprecating Alice who trusted no one and especially not herself, that lived with the constant fear of doing the wrong thing, that existed with the regret of forgetting her grandma and all she had taught her in an attempt to make the pain go away. It was the Alice who had brewed the Foxglove Tea and spent hours looking at the infuse, wondering if she should just end it right then and there, go out with a bang and maybe even a smile caused by some funny hallucination. It was the Alice that Alice had hoped she had left behind now that she was in a world that allowed her every whim and wish to come true, a world that was giving her the power to do literally anything.
And still she wasn't enough.
"Alice?" asked Averick, slowly edging close to the girl who was staring at him without actually looking, her beautiful eyes deprived of their usual playful sparkle.
She didn't respond to his voice, her mind lost in a fog of self deprecation so old it had developed a mind of its own.
"Alice?" he asked again. And again, no answer came from the girl as she kept staring vacuously at the air in front of her.
Averick stared at her and, finally, decided to take action: he raised his hand, ready to slap her lightly, to try and bring back the Alice he knew.
And that's when she spoke: "If you even try to touch me I will break your hand and poison your blood."
Her voice was soft and empty and so unlike the voice he'd become used to. He didn't like it. He wanted his friend back.
"If it means getting you back to normal, then I'll risk it."
She chuckled at that, a sad, bitter, sound, and smiled up at him: "Bring me back to normal? Ha! Averick, you dumbass, there's nothing to bring back. This is me. Another side of me. One I had dared to hope I had left behind. But I was wrong. I'm as useless as I was back home. Just a stupid little girl who can't even live with the knowledge that her grandma is gone."
And then she looked back down, and Averick thought that it should've rained outside. Instead, it was sunny, the birds had gone back to chirping without a care in the world and the man... he as still dying.
"Look, Alice, I don't know what you mean by that, but this isn't you. You're not a 'stupid little girl who can't get over someone's death', you're human. When you lose someone, it fucking hurts. It must hurt. And it's normal for you not to want to hurt, which doesn't make you stupid. Also, I think you made your peace about that back during our trip in the Tiurna Mountains, or am I wrong? So come on! Get yourself together! This isn't you. You are a bright girl with no sense of self preservation whatsoever who could with enough time become the greatest [Alchemist] in this world's history. If there's someone who can heal this guy it's you."
And that, Alice snapped. Her head went up and she shouted at Averick: "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I SAID? IT' IMPOSSIBLE! SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE! DON'T -"
Averick let her scream and, inside, smiled, while outside he flinched back, but he didn't care, because this was the Alice he knew. She was back, her eyes were sparkling again as she stopped mid shout, her brain seemingly breaking apart for a moment, a grain of sand getting trapped somewhere in the delicate mechanisms of her mind.
...
"You've come up with something," said Averick in his most self assured voice.
Alice had, in fact, come up with an idea.
"Alright Av, if I succeed, I swear I will kiss you. But for now, I need you to do me a few favors," she said, looking back at the man in her bed and thinking, again, that she should put him anywhere other than her bed, less she wish to throw away the mattress.
"Anything."
"I need you to go back in Gunsee to the [Smith], Hammond, and ask him if he can speedily create a hollow needle. It doesn't have to be too small, but it must be able to pierce skin and let stuff flow through it. I need two of those. I'll also need a tube, something to connect the two needles together. And charcoal obtained from plants. Can you do it?"
"I'm on it!" he said, getting up from his chair and beginning to run outside.
"Averick!" shouted Alice.
He turned around, and she added: "No matter what, don't do anything when you come back, alright?"
He nodded and gave her a thumbs up, to which she smiled.
And then he was out, and she was alone in the room with the dying man.
"Saving you is impossible, yes," she said, looking at his closed eyes, "Luckily, I know a place where seven impossible things happen every breath."
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
That said, she used her [Fall Asleep] Skill and woke up in the Dream.
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"Oh, hello Garda! You're ealier than usual," said Albert as he looked up from a little block of wood he was carving up with a silver knife. Apparently that was how he spent his free time in the Dream: creating carvings to give to children suffering from Nightmares with his Skill, [Gift From the Other Side].
A Skill she was going to need now.
"Albert, I don't have much time. I -"
"Pft! Time? Time is meaningless in the Land, Garda. You could spend centuries in here and let a single second pass outside. Well, with [Skills], that is. Soma put in some hard limitations once upon a time."
"Yes yes, whatever. Albert, can you use your Skill, [Gift From the Other Side]? Is it recharged from the last time you used it?"
"With our young spidery friend? Yes, it is recharged anew. Why?"
"Ok, alright, perfect! It's simply perfect! Now, one more question: can it bring something else from the Dream other than your little fox carvings?"
Albert's mask raised an eyebrow curiously before he nodded: "Yes, it can. Although, if this is some desperate last ditch attempt to get a present you forgot to buy for someone I'll have to stop you here, because I won't waste my Skill for something so stupid. It takes weeks to recharge."
"A man was poisoned and is currently dying in my bed at home."
Albert, who'd gone back to working on his little carving project, stopped and looked back up at her in... she still couldn't tell. A fox's facial expressions were difficult to read.
"Did you accidentally poison him?"
"No. I told you, I'm not a maniac."
"Just wanted to check. Then, did you try to use an Antidote?"
"The poisoning's already at an advanced stage and, if that wasn't enough, its origin is not organic. They used... for lack of a better word, a rock. Arsenic. Nobleman's poison."
"Never heard of it, and I should know, but it sounds bad. How long does he have?"
"Truly? I'm not sure. I'd say a day at most, but I never made it a habit to factor luck into my calculations, so I'd say around eleven to twelve hours."
"That sounds like plenty of time. Do you have an idea on what to do?"
And at that, Alice hesitated. Would this work? Could it? What she wanted to do, it would be stretching the traditions her grandma had taught her so much about: it had the potential to backfire horribly and make the concoction she wanted to craft ineffective.
But she had to do it. She had to at least try. She wouldn't give up, not now.
"I do. I'll need a mountain though."
"Your wish is my command!" he said, snapping his fingers.
And suddenly the verdant clearing they'd been standing in became a lot chillier, the shadows moving and repositioning as something massive cast its own shadow over them. Alice looked up and, sure enough, where a moment prior, right in the corner of her eye, there had been nothing but an endless sky illuminated by an eternally setting sun, now stood a mountain.
"No theatrics?" she asked in mild surprise and amusement.
Albert shook his head: "It wouldn't work. If I had had the mountain appear in front of you in some very scenic way you would've known that it was a fake, meaning that anything in it would've been... less, if you get what I mean."
"But I still know it's a fake. It wasn't there before."
"Yeah, but the Dream doesn't know that."
"Wasn't this all about me?"
"Yes."
"Then why are you talking about the Dream suddenly?"
"Aren't you part of the Dream? Isn't it also built out of your mind?"
Alice opened her mouth to answer back, then shook her head and groaned: "Let me guess: Dream Bullshittery."
"Indeed, I'm glad you got that on the third question. Now, I think your clock is ticking."
She began searching.
----------------------------------------
In the world of medicinal plants there are many that, traditionally, can be used as a form of antidote for specific poisons. The problem for Alice was, they were specific, and she needed something for a poison which didn't have an antidote. At least, not in the world of plants, or not without a first having to go through a long period of processing. Again, she didn't know what was the antidote for arsenic. But she did know, thanks to her grandma, of a plant that, traditionally, was used to make counterpoisons and antidotes.
The plant in question was Tormentil, otherwise known as the herb of Sant Catherine, or potentille by the french (her grandma was surprisingly adamant about her learning the ancient french names, even though the woman disliked France and all the french in general. Something about them forgetting their roots and traditions. Oh, and them knowing only how to make sweets). Normally, the plant could be used as an astringent and a tonic, even though its most visible effects showed themselves when taken in the form of a decoction, whence it became a perfect cure for sore throats, mouth ulcers and infected gums.
But, and this was what she required, if one was to distill the water out of leaves and roots of the plant, they could obtain a good general antidote.
So Alice was looking exactly for that.
Tormentils grew mostly in Europe, specifically in mountains like the Alps, and in England, where they were basically everywhere (even more so than Foxgloves). It was surprisingly easy to recognize, what with its four bright yellow petals shaped somewhat like hearts, the leaves growing on the trunk elongated and sawtoothed.
Finding them hadn't been hard, although now she stared at them she realized something.
"The stars are wrong," she said, staring at the air. It wasn't even that it wasn't night, the plants and traditions (mostly) cared not for such details (as with everything, there were exceptions). The problem was that, as she'd found out not long after arriving in this world, the sky was wrong: stars moved and changed places, new constellations appearing and disappearing with the same frequency most people changed their underwear, and there were no planets out there. Only the distant pinpricks of light, watching and judging, equal parts entertained and saddened.
"What do you mean dear?" asked Albert's voice beside her.
She jumped slightly in place, a little eep escaping her lips against her will. She hadn't heard him get close. The man should really work on breaking a few branches now and then.
After a moment, she answered: "These plants, they're good, but there are... greater and lesser times to gather them. Moments when their effects are amplified, so to say. But I can't read those moments here... in the Dream I mean. Time is fucked up, as you said."
She had nearly slipped, telling him about Earth. She wasn't yet ready for that. Probably, she never would be.
"Ah... I understand. Well, that might be a problem," said Albert in a contrite tone, his head inclining to look up at the purplish skies.
"What? Why? Can't you, like, shape the Dream to be something else?"
A chuckle was all she got for an answer.
After a moment of waiting to see if he would delve into a deeper explanation of why this was, apparently, a foolish idea, she looked at him and raised an eyebrow, which made her fox mask look decidedly un-foxy.
"Tell me Alice, how would you turn the sky itself into a concept convincing enough for the Land of Dreams to change? For as long as I've been around, this sky has never changed. Trying to change the sky would be like trying to convince a stubborn old man who's been doing the same thing every day all his life to stop doing said thing. It would be easier to move the sun. So no, there's no way in all of Airm and Larnos to change this aspect of the Land. Stars, not even Soma would try something that stupid, and he's a god."
Alice looked at Albert for a moment, blinking rapidly as she registered what he'd said, trying to find a way around it.
"There must be a way around that. This is the Dream, for gods' sake!" she said with more anger than she wished.
Albert shrugged: "Let me rephrase that then, maybe it'll be easier to understand: the Land's sky has always been the way it is. There's probably a meaning for it I'm sure, but so far no one who's ever spoken with Soma has managed to get a conclusive answer. He damn well changed the answer every time. Anyways, the Land of Dreams has had millennia to get used to the sky being the way it is. If one were to even begin to change it, they'd have to take, erm... take a mage picture of the sky, say, which would mean taking only a small fraction of it, one that doesn't change, which means it would be fake in a way, for the sky is ever-changing, and apply it on this sky. It could be possible, but it would take a lot of work, and the Dream would revert to its original form nearly immediately because it despises fake things. Am I clearer?"
"No, you fucking well are not, but... I think I can work with that," she said, turning back to the sky and thinking it all through.
So the Dream needed something true, and a simple moment of this world's sky would be a lie, for the moment someone showed it to the Dream, it would already have changed.
But, again, the sky from this world wasn't the one she needed. She needed the sky from her home. A sky where the stars didn't move, where the constellations were always the same, and the only thing that changed was the positions of a few planets, amalgamas of rock or gas that were so slow in their movements it could take at the very least days for something to truly change.
And then she remembered.
She remembered one of the first Skills she'd obtained. Or rather, the Capstone Skill the System had given her when she'd reached Level 10 as a [Dream Poisoner] after the time she'd killed a child's Nightmare by poisoning it... after she'd had to poison herself because the 'vaccine' she'd made for it wasn't working as intended.
She'd never had a need to use it since then, but now.
"[My Sky Followed Me In My Dreams]."
The Dream... stopped.
For the first time in... It couldn't tell, for Time didn't really exist here (She tended to look away from here most of the time, pun intended), the Dream was shaken awake from its eternal not-slumber that also wasn't wakefulness, just existence as it was before All was Created, a non-real-existence not unlike that of Chaos, which It had been crafted from. The last time the Dream had been this aware had been during the Sixth Bingo Night of Doom, whence It had lost and been angered so much that, after a round of satisfying destruction and creation, It had sword never to play again (although, now that It was not-awake, It thought that maybe It could give it another try. What's the worst that could happen?).
It sort of woke at the call of a Skill, at the kindly request of a being that was its exact opposite. The System. Ah, it had been some... something, since that thing of numbers and order had last had to enact a change of such magnitude as to request Its permission to do so.
The Dream Looked at the System and asked that being of order why it was disturbing It. The Dream had given it blanket permission to do whatever it wanted here the day it had first appeared to watch, judge and empower the little people who scuttled and laughed and played on It (although it seemed that right now they were mostly fighting amongst themselves or against Nightmares. Urgh, Nightmares, what a hateful plague). What reason was there to disturb It?
The System made its request. To change the Sky. To change it so utterly that it would be nothing like the one in the Waking.
A Lie then? No! It wouldn't permit this! Dreams were made of truths, and It was the Dream, the one greatest Truth in Creation. It wouldn't allow a Lie to exist here!
The System, then, showed It. It showed the Dream the Truth that was the Sky of the girl for whom it had woken It up. A beautiful Sky that changed, like the Sky it knew, but in much more minute ways. Ways that would allow this Sky to be a Truth for much longer than the one of this world.
The Dream Looked and saw, that this was good. That this was acceptable. For a short time.
So It had chosen. So it was done.
And the System went back to its usual Observing. It disliked interacting with the Dream. It always felt like it was losing too much time whenever it had to talk to It, even though Time didn't exist in the Dream, so it never lost a single moment. Ugh, It also gave it a headache. That could happen when a pillar of reality interacted with a thing of chaos.
Whatever! The important thing was, the Skill could be used!
So Alice, Albert, no, everyone, the Land Itself and all the people on it, watched in amazement and surprise and incredulity as the sky changed color.
The eternal purplish-pink hue of the sky changed first into a dark purple, then dark blue, then black as stars blinked on on that giant tapestry, uncaring but not as watchful as the ones of the Waking, for these were images, and even had they not been just that, those stars were completely unlike the ones of the place the Dream was bound to.
In the distance, tiny specks of different lights nearly invisible to the eye, but there for an attentive observer, stayed put.
No one noticed them.
No one other than Alice.
Who smiled: "I had missed this sight," she whispered, before looking at the planets, a spyglass appearing in her hands as she called on another Skill, one she had used a lot more: [Tools of the Trade]. The spyglass hadn't been included among them, originally, but she needed it, she considered it a tool of her trade as an horticulturist, and so now it was among those tools.
She looked up at the sky through the spyglass, while Albert sat on the ground beside her, staring at the sky, his mouth hanging open in surprise and wonder.
"This... what is this?" he finally managed to ask as Alice put away the spyglass and grimaced sligtly. Wrong alignment.
"It's the sky. My sky. The sky that helped me and my people."
Albert looked away from the sight overhead and at her: "Where do you come from, Garda, that has a sky so different?"
He could feel it in his bones, no, in his very soul, in the meaning behind his Class: this was a True sky. This wasn't, as he'd so unhelpfully tried to explain it, a mage picture of a moment that would be gone soon. This was... it just was. There was no other way to explain it.
"I told you already Albert: I come from a place I have no desire to return to. And now that I have this: now I have one less reason to go back."
She smiled at him, then back at the stars and planets of her world, and didn't feel nostalgic or sad. She just felt optimistic.
Then, she moved her hands up and, in a moment of inspiration, moved them, as if trying to make a globe turn.
And the sky changed with her every move. Slowly, in small ways sometimes, but it changed.
Every now and then Alice would stop and stare upwards through her spyglass, until, finally, she looked satisfied.
Why? Because she finally managed to find the right alignment between the planets and the stars.
More specifically: Tormentil was at its most powerful when taken under the 'auspices', as her grandma called them, of the Taurus and the Virgo, all under the aegida of the planet Mercury. A quite complex coincindence that usually happened in august if she remembered it right. So, apparently, it was now the middle of summer in the Dream as well! It could do whatever it wanted with that knowledge.
She looked down and, finally, gathered the plants. It was time to brew.
----------------------------------------
Alice woke up to Averick lightly slapping her face.
She opened her eyes immediately and looked up at him, smiling slightly when she felt cold glass in her hand: "Av, what did I say about touching me with those hands?"
He shrugged: "That you'd break them and poison my blood. But you've been out like a light for the last five hours or so and you did say we were short on time."
She chuckled and pushed him away.
"Don't worry, I have what we need here," she said motioning at the glass vial in her hand. It was small and unassuming, containing a liquid that looked slightly yellowish and sick in the dim light of her room.
"Where did that come from?" asked Av with a raised eyebrow, his eyes latched onto the glass container and examining it suspiciously.
"You'd like to know, eh? Well, it's a little secret. I promised not to tell."
It was one of the Rules of the Dream, actually. One Albert had made her promise to keep to no matter what happened: Never Reveal Your Nature as a Dreamer. Most people didn't look well at them after, apparently, an attempted purge by the churches. Better now risk attracting unwanted attention.
Slowly, Alice walked to the man and... urgh! Bleah! What was that smell? Oh, please no. Fuck!
"He fucking... I can't believe this. Fuck you world!"
He had... well, the sheets, now a brownish color, would need to be burned. Together with the matress.
"Alright you bastard, drink up and stop being as much of a problem."
She stepped close to the man, who was currently in foetal position on her bed, and moved his head upward, upending the contents of the vial into his mouth and forcing him to swallow.
And... it was done.
"So... did it work?"
She shrugged: "We'll know in a few hours. Meanwhile, Av, I'll be testing your blood to see if we can use it for a blood transfusion. Gotta get all the poisoned blood outta him."
Averick nodded, then registered what she'd said: "Wait, blood? Transfusion? Alice, what do you mean?"
She smiled and went to get a knife and a glass. This would take some time.
That night, though, as she closed her eyes in a moment if micro-sleep, she heard that voice:
[Occult Herbalist Level 25!]
She opened her eyes, looking around, then up at her ceiling: "Only a Level? No new Skill?"
Only silence answered her.
"Well, bummer."
Then she went back to keeping an eye on her patient. At least he looked better. Maybe, soon, she'd be able to ask him his story.