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Brewing Bad Ch. 83
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 14:00:01 +0000 UTCAs of this week, Brewing Bad is going to twice a week on RR/SH, so as soon as that works its way through Patreon's bonus chapter backlog, it will go twice a week here as well. Should be before the end of the month.
Ch. 83 - The Waiting Game
That strained interaction got Lucas and Heisenburgle’s new adversarial relationship off on the right foot. Normally, Lucas would have hated to be around someone who constantly needled him with tests like this, but in this case, it was kind of funny, and it was much better than the dismissive elitism that gnome had shown him to date.
The gnome still didn’t believe that Lucas’s recipe for Blue was real, but while they waited for some goblin bile to test it, they passed the time in other ways. Lucas did it mostly by talking shit and telling stories that alternated between somewhat true and completely false as the gnome tried to pry into his background. When Heisenburgle insisted that Lucas had to have attended some Alchemist school for at least a year or two, he made one up in Esterbrock.
“But Esterbrock doesn’t even have an Alchemists Guild!” the gnome complained loudly.
“Yeah, none that you would have heard of, I agree,” Lucas said before he proceeded to spin an elaborate yarn about the black market Alchemists Guild that was wholly owned by the thieves guild of the city. It was an easy enough lie given the dark reputation of the faraway port, and though Heisenburgle still claimed to believe none of it by the end, Lucas could see in his eyes that he was definitely a believer in the Shadow Court of Poisons and Poxies. He would have laughed long and hard if that wouldn’t have ruined the joke.
He also made some time to make notes about which ingredients he most wanted to try for his own experiments when he had the chance since the laboratory was literally a reagent supermarket of sorts. He made a note of anything that didn’t look too expensive but had good stats. He also kept his eye out for any properties that lengthened the effect of a potion, and honestly, there were more than he would have imagined.
Heisenburgle alternated between peevish testing of Lucas’s ‘supposed’ knowledge and long-winded stories of his past. The latter might lead anywhere, and though they always portrayed Heisenburgle as a genius, sometimes they could be interesting enough. The former, though, were pretty predictable.
If the gnome asked Lucas a question about an ingredient or its properties, he was always going to know the answer. It was pretty impossible not to. If the gnome asked him about something in chemistry, like how to distill a concentrate from a dilute solution, he was usually pretty spot on. It was the weirder, magical, and elemental stuff that he always got wrong, not that he really cared about it.
“Listen, I know you guys swear by that stuff, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just a superstition,” Lucas said finally, exploding at the man as they sat in the lab for the third night in a row doing nothing but talking when he wanted to get to work.
“Superstition?” Heisenburgle said with a laugh. “You know nothing, Lucas Parin, nothing at all. You might be a fair hand at collecting and processing ingredients, but real alchemy, well… let me show you…”
Once the gnome was worked up, he got to work, quickly setting aside a number of ingredients as he lectured Lucas once more on the importance of elemental alignment. “Today, we will illustrate this once and for all by creating a flight potion,” he said after he’d finished running around the room and snatching jars and vials off of the shelves. “Well, two flight potions, really. It is the most dramatic example I can think to properly educate a truculent, negligent ignoramus like yourself!”
Lucas ignored the hilarious insult and instead focused on the ingredients the man had gathered. He’d never heard of a flying potion, but he was more than interested to see if such a thing really existed.
Plucked Peregrine Pinions (powdered): Agility 3, speed 1, poison 1, endurance -3. Strongly air-aligned.
Concentrated Storm Shards (minor): Poison 3, speed 2, strength -1. Strongly air-aligned and electrically charged.
Gust of Wind (south): Speed 4, endurance -1, strength -1, poison -1. Strongly air-aligned.
The results were somewhat disappointing. Not only was each ingredient more ridiculous than the last but there was nothing at all about flight listed on any of them.
Lucas crossed his arms and stood there as the gnome assembled the apparatus he planned to use to mix this, never once asking for Lucas’s help, which was good because Lucas had no intention of helping the gnome make something that he thought was going to be a complete bust.
Still, he watched with interest as the gnome lit the flames of objects that looked like nothing more than a trio of ornate silver candlesticks but behaved suspiciously like bunsen burners. Then, he used those and began to distill each of the ingredients into their own solutions. The gust of wind actually made the water it was dumped into effervesce, which Lucas found silly, because it was literally just air. Seeing was believing, though, and as soon as each flask was bubbling, he opened a dog-eared recipe book and began to mix the three compounds in precise ratios with a glass pipette.
“I don’t need the book, of course,” Heisenburgle said dismissively. “That’s for your benefit. I just thought you’d like to see what the recipe calls for since you obviously have no experience with this sort of advanced alchemy.”
Lucas had had about enough of the gnome and was about to give the little guy a piece of his mind when something strange happened. As his eyes went down. The page, glancing across the detailed instructions about how intense the bubbles should be and what the temperature the liquids should be before they were mixed. None of that particularly mattered to him, though. Not until he saw the pop-up.
You have learned the recipe for Potion of Lesser Flight.
“What in the fuck…” Lucas said, not quite sure what to make of that screen. He was used to the ingredient pop-ups, but from his personal notes or from the low-rent alchemist he’d apprenticed for when he’d actually fallen into this world, he’d never seen a display like that. Not even mixing a perfect batch of Blue gave him that sort of message.
“You’ll see,” Heisenburgle chuckled to himself. “You’ll all see one day.”
Lucas stood there completely baffled, but eventually, he tore his eyes away from the book and back toward the experiment. He had no plans to reveal any of his secrets to the gnomish alchemist, but at the same time, he was sure his poker face was for shit at the moment, so he was glad that Heisenburgle was obsessed with dripping his bird feather tincture into the bubbling leaden mix of storm and wind water.
For a moment, it seemed like nothing would happen, and then, with the eighth drop, the liquid went clear, and the display changed from Alchemical Mixture (elemental) to Minor Potion of Flight. That wasn’t the most impressive part, though. The most impressive part to Lucas was that the liquid instantly turned so clear he almost couldn’t see it, and then it started to drip up out of the vial as if it was weightless.
Minor Potion of Flight (1 dose): Poison 3, agility 2, speed 2, strength -1. Very short-acting. Strongly air-aligned. Allows the imbiber the power of limited flight for up to a minute.
Heisenburgle had obviously been expecting this and slammed the cork on the thing before any of it could escape. Then, when that was done, he looked at Lucas with a smug expression and said, “And you didn’t think it would work.”
“Well, who says it did?” Lucas asked, instantly regretting it when Heisenburgle released the vial, and it floated there in midair.
“Okay, I give,” Lucas sighed, reaching for the vial. “You can make a potion of flight. I agree, but how does that have anything to do with—”
“That, my young apprentice, can only be answered with a second experiment,” the gnome gloated, snatching it out of the air and tucking it away in his robes. “Come on then, much to do, much to do.”
Lucas was still more distracted by the pop-up than the potion, but he was lost in his thoughts and stayed quiet the whole way down the tower. Even after they reached the ground and the gnome took him to another set of stairs that went down into the earth, he said nothing. Not until they reached a second lab that was almost the twin of the first.
“Wait, you really built two of these?” Lucas asked, more than a little confused, as he looked around. “And you restocked them with… everything? That must have cost a fortune!”
“Ah, but it wasn’t my fortune,” the gnome quipped, “So what does it matter? Besides, I didn’t build two. I built three. We have a water lab, too, and as soon as we make progress on the Prince’s latest assignment, he has sworn to build me a fourth so I can have a fully functional lab of every element.”
“You’re going to build a lab that you can light on fire?” Lucas asked. “That’s nuts.”
“Maybe, but then again, maybe you won’t feel that way after you see what comes next,” the gnome said with a broad grin.
He quickly got to work, repeating the same experiment with the same setup. Lucas checked his pop-ups and verified to his satisfaction that the ingredients used were identical. They were the same reagents in the same quality and quantity. That wasn’t good enough for Heisenburgle. The whole time he was performing the experiment, he asked Lucas questions.
“Please verify that the recipe says…”
“Notice I am putting in the quantity specified, no more or less.”
“The ingredients are from the same batch, so there is no difference in quality.”
Each time he finished a step, the gnome made a statement like that. It made him sound like a magician, promising the crowd there was nothing up his sleeve before he pulled something out from his sleeve. Lucas’s suspicions mounted, but it was only when they got to the end, when the mixture clarified into a potion, that he understood.
Lesser Potion of Flight (1 dose): Poison 3, agility 2, speed 2, strength -1. Very short-acting. Strongly air-aligned. Allows the imbiber the power of limited flight for up to half a minute.
Lesser, he thought, narrowing his gaze as he studied the thing. I’m pretty sure the other one was minor.
“What's the matter,” Heisenburgle asked. “Don’t see a difference?”
“No, I do…” Lucas answered hesitantly as the gnome produced both vials with a flourish. “This one is clearly weaker than the other one. I just don’t…”
Lucas’s words trailed off as the short alchemist released both potions, letting them float weightlessly in the air next to each other. The Lesser Potion of Flight merely hung there, but the minor one started to very slowly float above the other like a balloon.
It blew Lucas’s mind. Even after Heisenburgle grabbed them both and put them away, his mind still boggled at what it was he’d witnessed.
“So let me get this straight, Mister H,” Lucas said. “You’re saying that the elemental affinity of a potion matters, but the elemental affinity of the place it’s created matters too? That’s crazy.”
“The only thing crazy about that is that no one ever taught it to you,” the gnome said with a shake of his head. “This is not just a matter of mixing up a few berries with a few mushrooms. Now you see why I take your supposed recipe with a huge grain of salt. Alchemy is a very precise form of magic. Everything matters. The type of reagents, the quality of the materials, the temperature of the liquids, and even the phase of the moon can all have an effect on the quality of the product!”
“The phase of the moon, huh?” Lucas asked. He might be skeptical, but after what he’d witnessed, he wasn’t sure he was willing to doubt it.
“Indeed,” Heisenburgle answered, looking very pleased with himself. Now, come along, and I will find you a book or two on the subject.
Lucas rolled his eyes at that, but he said nothing. Instead, he followed the gnome back up the two flights of stairs to the surface. It was going to be a long night.
Comments
Darastrix
TYFTC, I can't wait till we get 2 weekly chapters.
