DWinchester
patreon
Brewing Bad Ch. 69
🕑 Added 2024-07-22 14:00:09 +0000 UTCCh. 69 - Harvest Season
Lucas wiped the sweat that had gathered on his brow in defiance of the chill. “Is that the last one?” he called up to where Hura’gh was manning the pulley above him.
“Nah,” he called down. “Still a couple more to go.”
They’d installed this trap door so they could surreptitiously store all the extra tried herbs and purified reagents they’d been gathering for weeks now once all the other hands had gone to bed. While it was convenient, he certainly missed little things like freight elevators and would love to find a magical equivalent, though that was hardly a priority, he thought with a sigh as he started to shove the crate, sliding it against the far wall.
The half-orc didn’t seem to notice the cold or the weight of the crate he’d just lowered into the lab, but just looking at it made Lucas tired. It was definitely getting colder, but snow was still at least weeks away. At least he hoped it was weeks away because they had a lot of shit to gather if they wanted to keep producing blue and healing potions all winter long.
Obviously, they should have started all this sooner. They should have prepared for winter right about the time Annise had ambushed him on the road months ago, but everything had kind of gone to shit after that, so it wasn’t like they’d been slacking or anything.
Still, all of their hired hands and most of their muscle were off searching far and wind through the Greenwood and everywhere else to get everything worth getting before the first frost made reagents a whole lot rarer than before. They were going to be fine, he’d decided, probably.
Lucas had already let Sir Tristin with the Knights of Brass know that shipments would be a little slower in the winter, and most of the nobles he sold to regularly had been informed that rough winter weather could make shipping schedules unpredictable. Those fig leaves would let Lucas cut their output by almost a quarter until the weather warmed up without much issue.
It wasn’t like they needed the money, not really. Kar’gandin had informed them at their last meeting two days ago that their stash exceeded a thousand dragons now, and now that their strongbox was all but overflowing, he was going to have to start depositing the excess in the dwarven banking system.
“You sure that’s safe?” Hura’gh asked. “I heard banks are like graveyards for money. It goes in the ground somewhere, but it never leaves again.”
“Well, if ye like, we could buy more chests and start burying it ourselves,” the dwarf grumbled. “The mansion grounds have plenty of space for such a foolish thing, but in the bank, our funds will earn interest and—”
“It’s fine,” Lucas said. “It’s your money, too, and though I don’t trust banks, I trust a dwarf not to lose money.”
“Well, at least there’s that,” Kar’gandin smiled.
The truth was they were making money hand over fist. It wasn’t even just the drugs, either. They were selling so many bootleg potions that they were starting to shape the market of the city. Kar’gandin’s cousin had informed him that with the amount of mana potions they were making, they were no longer worth the glass vials they were being sold in, for one.
Once upon a time, the other blue potion they made had been worth so much that they were their second-biggest moneymaker after blue. These days, they only brought in a few silvers a week, and almost a third of their funds were made from excess healing potions and salves, and Lucas hadn’t even intended to sell those originally. They’d been to bribe people and win the villagers over, but between his and Cassara’s efforts, they had more than Meadowin and the surrounding towns could ever use. The pretty red-headed herbalist had been incredibly helpful, but even so, selling the rest only made sense.
So, between the medicine and the poison they were selling, they were reaping huge sums every week. That was likely to fall during the winter, of course. Everything would slow down once the snows fell and the rich and poor alike retreated to the warmth of their hearths, but even so, based on Kar’gandin’s figures, it didn’t seem likely that they’d ever fall below a hundred dragons a week ever again, but counting unhatched chickens was a bad habit, and as easy as it was to do the math and figure how many more months it would be before he could buy an inn free and clear he resisted.
Not just because of possible money troubles, of course, but because he knew that he had the tiger by the tail now, and if he let go, people would be coming for him, and it seemed unlikely that his dreams of a quiet life could survive such vengeance. That’s fine, though, he thought with a shrug as the crate finally came in contact with the wall and stopped sliding. It’s no margaritas on the beach, but this life isn't the worst thing in the world either.
As he moved back to the trapdoor to prepare for the next crate, he decided he had things pretty good. Life at the manor was pretty sweet. Adin was barely around these days, and he had all the time in the world to cook and play with potions most days now. He could even turn invisible on command, which blew his fucking mind. No, Lucas counted his blessings right down to his partners, who, shockingly, were still pulling their weight; it was hard to believe that things would have turned out any better if he’d fled the city as he’d originally planned.
They spent another half hour moving the last few crates and barrels down into the basement. Then Hura’gh came down and helped him stack them neatly against the wall to make the large space a little less cramped. That was hard, though, since it was full to bursting with stored supplies.
“You think this might be a bit of… what’s the word… overkill?” the half-orc asked.
“I think that if we had twice as many herbs on mushrooms, I’d still try to squeeze a few more in,” Lucas laughed. “No, let's close this place up and call it a night.”
Despite all their hard work, once they extinguished the lamps, took the ladder back up into the cider house, and put some barrels over the trap door, it was like it had never happened. Instead, it was just an empty room filled with everything you’d need to make hard cider for the winter season. There were worse things in life.
Lucas went back to the big house and left Hura’gh and Kar’gandin to call it a night. Lucas spoke briefly with Gerwin when he returned before calling it an early night. That was pretty much his life now. He cooked, chilled, met with the Torvins to discuss the next steps, practiced being invisible for longer and longer lengths of time, and, of course, spent time with his new instructor.
This time, it wasn’t a dancing instructor, though. Lucas was sick to death of dancing, and even though he could do it without embarrassing himself when Danaria forced him to go to parties, he doubted he’d ever develop a taste for it. Fighting, by contrast, was something he was almost equally as bad at but something he desperately wanted to improve upon. Kar’gandin had taken to calling those bouts dancing lessons as well and often watched him as he tried and failed to defeat the instructor that the Knights of Brass were kind enough to loan him for a small fee.
In fact, when Sir Milen arrived the following morning, the dwarf, along with everyone else who happened to be around, sat down and got comfortable as Lucas prepared to get humiliated all over again on that chill autumn morning. Unlike actual dance lessons, though, these small humiliations were worth it because there was no denying he was getting better.
“Not bad,” Sir Milen said when Lucas reached up and blocked the man’s blow with the wooden dirk in his offhand, rather than having to use his sword to deflect the blow.
That still didn’t let him touch the man with the vicious underhand swing that followed as the knight moved lithely back half a step with more grace than anyone but an elf should have been able to muster. Sir Milen was a trusted lieutenant of Sir Tristin and not much older than Lucas. The main difference between the two of them, though, was that while he’d spent half his life getting high and the other half making shit for other people to get high, Sir Milen had been kicking ass, and it turned out that the difference between those two paths was profound.
They spent the entire morning like that, with only a few breaks to get water or discuss his form. The fact that Lucas could see his breath most of that time didn’t stop his instructor from fighting, stripped to the waist, showing off his muscular body and the extensive collection of scars he’d obtained over the course of his life.
“You should not be ashamed of your scars,” he told Lucas as he had on more than one occasion in the past, implying Lucas should strip off his leather armor, too. “You would move better if you were less weighed down, and you will learn faster if the blows hurt more.”
Truthfully, he wasn’t ashamed of his scars. The angry red marks that the owlbear’s claws had left him looking like a murder victim, but after months of potions and exercise, he was in the best shape of his life, so they weren’t holding him back anymore. Even so, he still popped a curative flask every morning before this training, just so he wouldn’t embarrass himself. He’d worked out a strength version, too, but he didn’t take that one. Somehow, one felt like a performance enhancing drug, but the other just felt like cheating to him; Lucas wanted to get better at fighting, not at juicing.
Long Lasting Curative Flask (3 doses): Endurance 3 (for the purposes of recovery only), lasts for four hours.
“Last time, you almost broke a rib,” Lucas answered with a tight smile. “I think I’ll stick with the padding until I figure out how to keep your sword at bay.”
Sir Milen laughed at that. “You will be wearing it forever then, I think.” Their small audience laughed at that one, and Lucas saved up his annoyance at that to power his next flurry of blows despite how tired his arms were. His blade sang, moving through the complicated pattern he’d been practicing so vigorously the last few weeks. Even so, he only scored the lightest of touches before his dagger missed the parry, and he took a blow to the head hard enough to daze him and make him bleed a little.
“And now you are dead again,” Sir Milen smiled, “though, at least this time, you would have been remembered in the form of a new scar.”
“Yeah, well, at least there’s that,” Lucas sighed, staggering over to his chair and sitting down to press a rag to his head to stop the bleeding. This probably didn’t need a healing potion, but if it did, he could grab one in a minute.
“Just a small one though,” Milen said, making everyone laugh again. “Still, this is progress, I will not dispute it!”
Lucas knew the man was mocking him, but he didn’t really care. Progress was progress, and things were looking good across the board. Any way he measured it, things were looking up, and if this was the way he got good enough to fight whatever it was that was coming next, well, he would endure the occasional bout of mockery or blow to the head.
