The Land: Catacombs (Chaos Seeds Book 4) (39 page)

Richter shook his head. “Thank you for your faith in me.  All pledges of fealty must happen before the village Healer, Sumiko, however.  She is able to detect any lies or falsehood.  We can handle it any time in the next week.”

“I understand, my lord.  I will see you in a week.”  She turned to Beyan. “As for you, pig!  I look forward to having you work beneath me.”  With that, she stalked off towards the herb garden. 

Three men watched her leave, one standing more than six feet tall, another at four feet and the third at three and a half.  They all shared an appreciation for what they were seeing though.  When she was beyond earshot, Beyan grumbled quietly, “I already tried to work under her.”

Richter looked at him, taking in his black eye again and asked, “Okay, man.  What the hell happened to your face?”

Beyan looked down for a second like he was embarrassed. “I was just taking your advice and trying to connect with people.”

“Ha!” Sion scoffed.  “He was trying to connect with her alright.  Just a specific part of her!”

Richter chuckled, the picture becoming clear. “So you made a pass at her and she decked you?”

“No,” Beyan said sullenly.

“No?” Richter echoed.

“No,” Sion said with a smile.  “A woman named Mimi decked him.  Apparently she didn’t like Beyan flirting with her wife!”

“Oh?” Richter said, wondering if he had heard wrong.  Then he said, “Oh.  Oooh!”  He started chuckling as he looked at Tabia again in the distance.  She was chatting with Isabella, presumably about getting access to ingredients she would need to make her potion.  “Well if it makes you feel any better, man, I’m going to give you credit for having a threesome.”

“Really?” Beyan asked.  His face had a hopeful look that the situation could somehow be salvaged. 

Richter laughed even louder. “Of course not!  You got beat up by a girl!  But come on.  Let’s go deconstruct some potions.”

Sion joined in on the laughter.  Beyan had a sour look on his face, but still followed the two Companions into the Dragon’s Cauldron.   

CHAPTER 24
 

Once again, Richter was overwhelmed with the beauty of a building made entirely of glass.  He held his hands under one of the rainbows created by the light coming through the walls and smiled at seeing the vibrant colors.  Beyan cleared his throat, impatient to learn new recipes, and Richter acceded.  He was eager to see what would happen too.  He walked over to the central cauldron and put his hands on the rim.

The first thing he did was give Sion complete access and the ability to alter other people’s access.  Sion’s eyes unfocused for a second, but then he told Richter he had received his new clearances to use the Cauldron. 

Richter also gave Beyan and Tabia access to the Cauldron for one week.  Then he asked them to organize anyone else with Alchemy skill in the village and see if they could be helpful.  Richter wanted to have a stockpile of potions.  If he had his way, every villager would carry at least one health potion in their belt pouch at all times.  While he was attending to those matters, Alma flew into the Cauldron and settled onto his shoulders.  He reached up and scratched the scales along her back, eliciting a happy croon from the familiar.  Now that the administrative matters were out of the way, he pulled out his first potion. 

The first thing that he did was place a Potion of Clarity into the cauldron.  A prompt appeared asking if he wished for the potion to be deconstructed.  He excitedly chose “Yes.” 

This is a naturally occurring substance.  No recipe exists and so it cannot be deconstructed.

“Boo,” Richter said aloud.  He told Sion and Beyan and they looked equally nonplussed. 

Then Sion asked a pertinent question while looking down into the central cauldron at the small amount of liquid at the bottom.  “How do we get the potion back out?”

All three of them looked down and Richter said, “Shit.”  He put his hands back on the Cauldron, and was about to try and lift it to pour the valuable liquid out when another prompt appeared.

Do you want to retrieve this potion?  Yes or No?

He chose “Yes,” and the liquid rose into the air in a thin stream and deposited itself into the empty vial he was holding.

“Well that was easy,” Richter said with a smile.  “Let’s do the next one.”

He pulled out the box that held all of Sonirae’s poisons.  He placed the first one in and selected “Yes” on the deconstruct prompt.  This time something spectacular happened.  The beating vessels of the cauldron began pulsing faster.  As they watched, the potion drained out of the pot though there was no obvious hole.  Then Sion exclaimed and pointed at one of the vessels in the walls of the cauldron.  The blue potion could be seen flowing through the clear veins before tracing down through the vessels in one of the cauldron support columns and then disappearing into the floor.  The barely perceptible throb of the central cauldron increased in strength until it seemed like it was all Richter could hear.  The sound wasn’t deafening, it just seemed like all other sounds in the Universe had disappeared until all that existed was him and the beating heart of the Dragon’s Cauldron.  His own heartbeat synced up to this mighty rhythm and then a prompt appeared.  Suddenly the knowledge of how to make the potion was etched into Richter’s mind, chapter and verse.  He was also provided the knowledge of how to make it with local ingredients.  In the space of three more beats, the volume of the Cauldron returned to a normal, barely perceptible level.  He smiled broadly at his Companions.

“Did it work?” Beyan asked.

“What do you mean?  You didn’t hear that?” Richter responded.

“Hear what?” Sion asked.  The gnome and sprite looked at one another in mild confusion. 

Richter just laughed. “I can’t explain it to you.  You’ll understand when you connect with the Cauldron.”

One by one, he placed all of the Assassin’s potions into the central cauldron.  He had to use several doses for some of them before the recipe was revealed, but they all yielded their secrets and all had local equivalents of their ingredients.  The names changed to represent the underlying purpose of the potion.

Drowned One Poison became Water Damage Poison.  Beyan said the recipe contained some expensive ingredients if they would have had to buy them in Yves.  The local ingredients did not sound hard to procure though.  It required three scales of a sling eel, the dried petals of the dusk clover flower, the congealed blood of a spotted deer, bark shavings of a kerrigan tree and a few other things.  Brewing the potion required several steps and had specific cooking and drying times as well as a prescribed number of times to grind certain ingredients.  The petals, for instance, just needed to be broken into small pieces while the bark had to be ground into powder.  Richter had no idea how anyone would find this out by trial and error. 

Just figuring out the recipe of the first potion made Richter appreciate the power of the Cauldron.  It also made him appreciate how difficult it was to make potions.  Beyan told him that specific recipes should be used to make only a small number of doses.  The number of doses was determined by the alchemist’s skill rank.  Beyan, as a journeyman, could make four measures of a potion without compromising the formula.  Apparently, proportionally increasing the ingredients to make large quantities of the potion all at once increased the chance of the entire alchemy being ruined.  Learning that made Richter appreciate the Cauldron’s ability to clone a potion and make nine more copies all at once with a 100% success rate.  Beyan said that at his rank, he had a 65% chance of making a solution-level potion correctly, but that it would also take at least three hours.  Richter quailed at hearing how involved the process was.  One thing was clear.  He had to find more alchemists and level up the ones he had. 

He told Beyan to expect more hunting trips and that he would be required to start training with the militia to increase his martial skills.  There was no hemming and hawing this time.  The gnome understood.  He also gave Futen an order to pass along to Randolphus.  He wanted every recipe to be recorded and compiled on a daily basis.  Then the scribes were to make a copy and create a book.  The third part of the order was to get his villagers taught in the ways of Herb Lore if possible.  There were long rows of empty shelves running down several of the Cauldron’s walls.  Richter wanted the building stocked with any ingredients that they could find.

Next they put in various health, mana, and stamina potions.  For each, they received the recipes and instructions on how to make them.  Most of the recipes Beyan and Sion already knew, but there were a few that were unknown to them.  Richter was happy to find that apparently a common weed could make a solution-level mana potion.  It would be good to have a few more of those in his Bag. 

The last thing he pulled out was the Elixir of Luck.  Before he poured it into the central cauldron, he looked at Beyan and asked, “Happy now?”  They both remembered Beyan’s meltdown when Richter had almost “thoughtlessly” drank the potion.  The gnome smiled expansively and waggled his eyebrows. 

“Don’t… don’t do that, Beyan,” Richter said.

“Yeah, it’s a bit creepy,” Sion cosigned. 

Beyan stopped in mid waggle. “Pour it in then!  My lord.”  The last two words were clearly added as an afterthought. 

Rolling his eyes, Richter unstoppered the silver potion and poured it in.  He answered “Yes” on the prompt, and the Cauldron consumed the elixir.  Once again, they saw the liquid drain through the vessels of the quasi-living cauldron.  This time in addition to the two recipes,
he received another prompt.

The primary ingredient of the Elixir of Luck,
Shiverleaf Frond,
is ‘rare’ quality.  The general location has been marked on your map.  This spined plant grows in water in the absence of light. 

Richter opened his Map and saw an area a couple hundred yards across highlighted with a red circle.  It was about eight miles to the west.  Beyan and Sion checked the other ingredients and said they were relatively easy to come by, but agreed that they had no idea where to find the shiverleaf.  Richter remained undaunted. “Looks like we’re hunting to the west today, boys.”

He checked his clock and saw that he had a little under an hour left.  He decided not to risk the Potion of Nil Ability yet.  He only had one dose after all.  The way Sonirae had gone on and on, it sounded like it was incredibly valuable.  Once they made some luck potions, he’d feel more comfortable taking the chance.  Sion and Beyan said they could make a quick potion or two before noon, so he bid them goodbye.  Right before leaving, though, he remembered something. 

“Sion, do you still have that recipe for the stagnation poison?  The one that stops health regeneration?”

“Yes.  Honestly, I’d forgotten about it.”

“Well, get it to Beyan and see if you can make a few doses.  I still remember that troll we saw a while back.  If we see another, I think it will go better if we had something like that.”  The two men nodded at him and said they would handle it.  His business at the Cauldron done, Richter jogged over to the Quickening.  Some of the village children were playing tag in the meadow and one used him as an obstacle to avoid being made “it.”  Watching the future of his people, his heart felt light.  It was good to be reminded of what all of his fighting was for.  Walking towards the white tree with the sun shining down on him, it felt like everything would work out. 

As he got closer, the two sprites Hisako had left to guard Elora and the tree appeared in front of him.  They appeared to step out of nowhere and once again, Richter was glad to have the sprites as his allies and not his enemies.  “Anything to report?” he asked.

“There is one thing, Lord Richter.  Perhaps you should see for yourself,” one replied, gesturing to the tree. 

Richter walked under the boughs of the tree, and as always, the presence of the Quickening filled him with utter contentment.  The soft velvet undersides of the leaves seemed to float on the wind, slowly shifting on their branches.  As he got closer to the braided trunk, he could make out the intricate tracing on the bark.  Above him, he saw the fruit of the Quickening changing from a green color to a dark silver.  They still showed as “immature” on the prompts, but he took the change in color as a good sign. 

When he was close enough to touch the trunk, he saw immediately what the sprite guard had been talking about.  On the inside of the hollow trunk was Elora’s cocoon.  It shined and looked like it was spun from pure silver.  Those details were no different than before, but now light was peeking through the cocoon in odd spots.  Richter could clearly see yellow, gold, and blue lights.  He even saw several filaments of black light that seemed to leech color from whatever it touched. 

“How long has it been like this?” he asked in awe.

“Two days, Lord Richter.  We assume it means that the pixies will be born soon.”

“I look forward to meeting them,” he said, gazing at the cocoon in excitement. 

Richter left the warm embrace of the tree and made one more stop before leaving the meadow.  He jogged over to the memorial made for his fallen villagers.  Gazing at it for several long moments, he silently vowed to do better for his people in the future.  Then he cast
Haste I
again and started jogging back down to the village proper.  He would have liked to have checked on the skath eggs and crystal garden, but they were on the far edge of the meadow and he had two more stops to make before noon. 

The first place he planned to go was the eastern edge of the village, where the hunters dressed their kills.  He had to get the new quest.  Before he was halfway through the village though, he ran into one of them.  Without even needing prompting, the woman told him about worrisome tracks that had been seen to the west.  They were large and always seen around broken trees.  The hunters were too afraid to hunt over in that direction since they had started seeing this.  A prompt appeared in Richter’s vision. 

You have been offered a Quest:
Hunter or Hunted II.
  Your hunters have seen signs of a powerful and violent creature.  They have not seen the actual monster, but the tracks are large.  Will you look for and remove this threat?  Yes or No?  Reward: Unknown.  Penalty: Decreased hunting grounds for your people.

Richter accepted the quest.  He couldn’t just allow something to control part of his lands.   It was also in the direction of the shiverleaf, so hunting it would be killing two birds with one stone.  The huntress thanked him and then also thanked him for the increased weapons and armor.  She showed him that her arrows were now tipped with moonstone heads.  He smiled, said he was glad to help, then left and headed to the Forge.