The door to Isabella's potion shop was closed. The sign said so, at least. Trader found it odd. Isa said she had finished her weeks-long nap five days earlier, so the alchemist would be on her feet for at least two months still.
The Symbiote knocked on the door.
"It's closed, read the sign!" The shop owner shouted from within.
"Isa, is everything alright?" Trader matched her tone.
"Trey! It's you! Come by in an hour, I'm busy with, uh, reagents!" Isabella answered. Even this far her voice was recognizably shaky.
Trader was confused. The potion maker was always working precisely so she could always afford to take a break to talk with a client. Even when they first met, Trader walked into the store and Isabella simply said she'd be with her in a moment because she was mixing ingredients. But she didn't close the shop down. Something was wrong, Trader could feel it. A moment later she reached a decision, and grabbed the door's handle. It wasn't locked, and so she came inside.
Isa was a very orderly person. Each tonic and elixir she made was labeled and placed in an alphabetical order and divided into sections. Each bottle had to be placed on the right shelf, in the right distance from other bottles. Each ingredient in a specific box, clearly labeled and aligned perfectly with other boxes.
What Trader saw now was definitely not how Isabella would have liked.
Bottles were shifted from their places, knocked over, some even spilled on the ground, which threatened a violent reaction should some of them mix. Boxes were opened, turned over, emptied. A shelf was ripped off of the wall.
The air was filled with the chaotic fragrance of many magical substances. One breath was sweet with a hint of sourness, the next bitter and sneeze-inducing. Toxins and healing vapors combined to create a cacophony of pleasant, irritating, soothing pain.
Trader immediately prepared a muscle enhancing spell to potentially leap out of the building should a mixture become explosive.
As the magic settled within her body, a shapely, twenty-something woman came out from the back of the shop. Isabella wore her blood-red hair in a bun. Her curves were covered by a light gray coat she used in the lab for safety reasons. When she met her gaze with Trader, her blue eyes went wide in panic.
"Trader? I told you to come back later, what are you doing here?"
"You told me you never close your shop. I thought you were in trouble." The alien explained.
"That she is." A voice from behind Isabella said.
The shop owner was pushed aside by a tall man clad in armor. The chest piece was covered by a red cloth depicting an emblem of a tiara above three claw marks. He held his helmet in one hand, the other on the hilt of a sword hanging on his hip. His exposed head was bald, his trimmed beard black. His bushy eyebrows were raised in curiosity at the sight of Trader.
"And if you don't want to be in trouble as well," he continued, "I suggest you introduce yourself."
[So much for amassing resources until I'm ready to go public.] The symbiote thought.
"My name is Trader," She said, "And I assume you're a guard, who's authorized to search someone's property for whatever reason?"
"I am, my name's officer Cradeen. I'm also authorized to get more than just your first name. Family name, ancestry, and your occupation, please."
"May I first ask why am I suddenly a person of interest?" She stalled, thinking of a way out that wouldn't involve bloodshed or getting arrested.
"Two days ago, at night, there have been sightings of something falling from the sky and falling somewhere within this district. I've been tasked with finding out what that was, where it is, and why."
"What are your plans for this… object?"
"Frankly, I'm going to write a report on the situation, and let this become somebody else's problem. The higher-ups are worried that this is some sort of attack. Now, please, introduce yourself in full."
[So they don't know anything. Or at least they're not telling me. This might be a gamble, but maybe if I cooperate, I'll find something out. I haven't done anything wrong, so law enforcement shouldn't be much of a thorn in my side. We'll see how this plays out in practice, though.]
"In that case, I'm happy to inform you you've just solved the case." She said.
The officer raised his eyebrows again. "You know where the thing fell?"
"More than that, I am the thing that fell." She smiled.
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Half an hour later, the three of them were talking at the south district's guard station. Well, two of them were testifying.
"...and you have no memories from before?" Officer Cradeen asked for the third time.
"No, and I assure you, it's even more frustrating for me than it is for you." She confirmed.
"And you've been working with mister Karrel Damorny, correct?"
"Yes, he's been gracious enough to help me get settled after I fell on his house."
The guard wrote down something on the paper.
"And you had just met her today?" He turned to Isabella.
"This morning before sunrise, she came to the shop. I have not seen her before in my life." Isabella nodded.
Cradeen spent the next few minutes finishing his report, and then he stood up.
"Alright, miss Clavill, you're free to go. I'm sorry about the mess I've made, the situation had the whole station running around, and I needed to make sure you weren't hiding anything. We'll send someone over to assess the damage, and you'll be compensated for it."
"I hope you understand that we could've all blown up if the wrong potions mixed with each other in all that mess." Isabella grumbled and left the room.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"As for you, Miss Trader, I'm afraid you'll have to stay at the station for another bit. You're not in trouble, but you're in a bit of a gray area legally. The closest thing would be an asylum seeker, I suppose. I'll talk to a few folks, and we'll see what we can do."
She nodded, and the officer left the room, locking the door behind him.
[I'm not in trouble, but I can't leave, huh?] She thought.
The wait has been short, for a bureaucratic oddity. After one hour, the door was unlocked, and a short man with red skin and long horns that curved backwards sat in front of her. He opened a briefcase and laid out a few documents on the table, as well as a pen. Only then he spoke, seemingly just noticing Trader's presence.
"Hello, I am Kazniek Xeronith, from the Department of Administration. I've been told about your situation, and I'm here to provide you with proper documentation. Your citizenship request has been preemptively confirmed, since even if we wanted to send you back to the country of origin, we lack the resources for interstellar transport, and we don't know where you're even from."
She snorted at that.
"I'm happy to see you're in good mood. Let's begin, then. First name?" The man asked.
"Trader."
"Family name?"
"I don't have one. You said you were familiar with my case?"
"Yes, but it's the protocol. If you don't have one, you have the opportunity to choose your own."
She thought for a moment, and decided to be descriptive. "Fleshforger."
"Ah, the dwarven format. Very well. I assume you don't know your ancestry?" Kazniek asked.
"I'd be surprised if I had ancestry."
"In that case, please give me your hand. I'll take a blood sample."
As Trader obeyed, he took out a syringe from his briefcase, and put it up to her arm. He looked confused for a moment, as he couldn't find a blood vessel.
"I'll do it." She grabbed the syringe from him and inserted it in her neck. As she pressed a button on the top, the syringe filled with a black liquid. She pulled it out and handed it to the administration worker.
A bit taken aback, he took it, and inserted it into some small taumachine. The blood was siphoned into the contraption, and after a minute of whirring and buzzing, a small piece of paper was ejected from the device.
"Huh. Apparently you're third gen. Normally people have scales at that level, though I suppose your situation is unusual anyway. You're technically a noble, but since you don't belong to any house, you won't have any political power, unless of course you awaken, but that's not likely without a house's resources."
"Third generation? Good to know. Good to know…" she trailed off. There were many more questions after that, but she was mostly focused on the implications of her little blood test.
It was even more clear now that blood magic was outlawed for the sake of keeping control. The "bloodline" aspect was more literal than previously thought. She had little reason to believe a dragon was in her family tree, considering parasites can only breed with their own. But in that case, what did the machine measure? She'd have to investigate.
"Alright, we're done." Kazniek's voice brought her out of her musings. "When your ID is ready, we'll send it to your stated address, so mister Damorny's house. Welcome to the empire."
He grinned and gave her a hand to shake, which she did.
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Karrel was full. No, he's been full two plates earlier. He was stuffed. It was almost to a point where he had trouble standing up, but he did manage to do so eventually. After he wobbled his way home, he threw himself into his bed. It creaked in protest, but at that moment he could not care less what his furniture's opinions on his weight. He just wanted to fall into a food coma. And so he did.
"Karrel, we have a situation!" Trader's shout woke him from his blissful sleep.
"Huh?" He asked.
Trader sighed, and jumped to bond with him. Once bonded, she proceeded to explain what had happened, and the implications, while taking his excess calories for herself.
[We have a solid lead now.] Karrel processed the information.
[Yep. I'm going to compare our blood samples, and hopefully we'll find out what makes someone more or less capable of awakening.]
She got up, to Karrel's protest.
[Not today… I'm spent.]
[It's barely afternoon. Don't we have three more orders to go through anyway?]
[Ha, «we». Yes, we do. Alright.] He stretched his arms. "Let's do this."
As the smith read the next order, Trader decided she wouldn't be much help in making frost enchanted boots, and just filled two syringes with her and Karrel's blood.
She at first scanned the blood while it was still in their bodies, but that yielded little results. Her ability was purely biological, and while the machine at the guard station was surrounded by anti-divination arrays, she could still sense the "taste" of mana mimicking mana, like an artist painting the picture of himself painting a picture - metamagic, where mana interacted with other types of mana. There was some property of blood that existed on a purely magical, maybe purely conceptual level, that the box measured to determine someone's bloodline's strength.
"Do you have a metamagical analyser?" She asked the artificer.
"Come on. Who the hells do you take me for? It should be in that drawer." Karrel pointed.
The device looked a bit like a wooden wand, the sort that was used to direct the mana flow better so a caster can hit something from further away. The structure was reversed here, to draw mana from outside. On top, there was a plate of mitlum that served as a data display.
She pointed the analyser to Karrel's blood sample and poured pure mana straight from her soul into the wand. The display hummed, but otherwise didn't show anything.
"Nothing. Then again, it is virgin blood. Can you increase the sensitivity on this thing?" She asked.
"The ring of metal behind the screen can be rotated. Clockwise for more precision. But this old thing might be busted, 'cause I'm not a virgin."
She looked at him, puzzled. Then she burst out laughing.
"Oh, no, no, you misunderstand. The blood is virgin, as in, it has not been used for magic. Certain rituals only work with virgin blood because it doesn't cause any mana interference." She explained.
"Right. Sorry, I forgot for a second you're an expert in a discipline that's been purged from society. Out of curiosity, is the virgin blood thing really that important for demon summoning?" He wondered.
"I don't think so. I mean, I don't really know how to summon one in the first place. And either way, demons are rarely worth it. Maybe if you're on a really tight deadline and don't care about collateral damage, but otherwise, anything they might give you is better achieved through other means. Same goes for the fae, if not more so. Tricky bastards. I wonder what they did to me to warrant such a dislike?" She rambled.
"Don't deal with otherworldly beings. Got it." Karrel summarized.
Trader pointed the analyser back at the blood vial. She turned the dial as far as it would go, and activated the device again. This time there were some tiny traces.
"Transmutation, abstract, fire, and body. I'm guessing the body part is blood magic." She read off of the screen. "And those would be your affinities."
Every person had varying degrees of affinity to different schools of magic. A particularly high affinity could even let someone cast that type of magic without any prior knowledge. Those people were known as sorcerers.
Karrel nodded. "Enchanting falls under transmutation, and we've already established that my forge magic is a flavor of conceptualism."
"Huh. Remind me, what was your ancestral dragon's element?" Trader asked.
"Lightning. But it falls under fire, right?" He answered.
"Yes, fire is the element of energy and change. And it's actually as strong as your body magic. Which might suggest both were inherited from the dragon." The symbiote stroked her chin. "Let's check mine, now."
She pointed at her own blood sample.
"Okay, body is strongest, and I also have transmutation, because alchemy, but apparently, there's also a trace of sympathetic." Trader read.
"I've heard about dolls that look like someone, and when you stab the doll with a needle, the person would feel pain. That's sympathetic magic, right?" The smith stood up to see the readings for himself.
"That's one application. Generally, you make an image of a person, creature, or object out of mana, and you can affect the original by acting on the reflection, or vice versa. The most interesting applications for me are divination and teleportation." She explained.
"Yet another thing on our to-do list, then: teach you sympathetic magic. So, what can you say based on all this?"
"Other than what affinities we have, not much. I'm guessing that the body mana here means blood magic affinity, but this device won't show it. I need to have something more powerful, more sensitive. Or we need to somehow get our hands on the machine they had at the guard station and open it up." She answered.
"It would be very interesting to get my hands on something like that," he admitted, "but taumachine engineers are notorious for keeping their schematics a secret. The device would be hard to obtain, and harder to examine without activating some self destruction contingency that I'm sure had been installed."
She nodded in acknowledgement. "So, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"I hope I'm not, because I'm thinking that we're going to do a heist." He answered.