The Alchemist’s Familiar

I’m back in Daliah’s squalled little shack. My apprentice is working diligently at a mana potion. It’s going to be hard seperating with that at the end of the session, it was worth more than I had at the moment. Daliah could afford it either, but luckily she works at a place where ingredients are easy to lose.

“Did you sell the other potion?” I ask as she stirs.

“I did!” She grins. “I made a few coins off of it.” Her voice was laced with the forbidden thrill of the crime.

“You’ll make a lot more with this.” I gesture to the bubbling blue potion. “ if I could just find a steady supplier that wasn’t Celeste I could start really focusing on my business.”

“You’d do better if it weren’t in the middle of the woods.” She says with a smile.

“You’d be surprised by the foot traffic I get.” I’m distracted today, not giving my all to the teacher performance. Daliah is coming back to the dungeon with me today, and I just have to figure how. The lust potion is obviously a good idea. Once she starts drinking that it’ll apply to her permanently. Having a permanently horny pet for the dungeon sounds fun, but unfortunately we all have duties for the cause. Can’t have her humping everything that moves while the rest of us put in the hard work. Plus the lust potion has been doing more work than my charm lately. Is Daliah ready to accept what I really am, and what she could be?

“Do you have any political commentary to go along with this potion?” She asks coyly.

I find myself admiring her beauty, a real diamond in the rough this one. Her long curly brown hair, sharp chin. “Of course! I say with a laugh. “I apologize, I’ve forgotten myself.” I think on it for a moment. “Actually, I’ll let you figure this out. Why is the mana potion more expensive than the healing potion?”

She gives it a moment, but I think she’s been sitting on this. “Blue Sodium is more rare.”

“Nuh-uh.” I say perfectly smug. “They’re available at pretty much the same volume.”

“Then it’s the subsidy you talked about. The government doesn’t make it cheap. Cheap mana potions would mean more spells getting cast. The kingdom doesn’t want that so they let the price of blue sodium take care of itself.”

“Exactly right.” I smile.

“Why are they against magic and religion?” She asks. Rather bluntly.

I shrug. “I don’t really know. I’d say it’s as simple as them not wanting anything they can’t control being in our grasp. But who knows, maybe they have a grander plan.”

“You don’t like that, huh?” She says, eyes judging me. “You’ve got something against the kingdom.”

“I don’t blame them.” I say cautiously. “They’re pursuing the interests of the state and their people by doing what they doing. But you’re right I don’t like it. That old forest I live in is quiet now. All the monsters are dead. This week I went into a dungeon that very well might have been the fragment of a dead god’s palace. There’s something wrong with this world and my prejudice is telling me the kingdom is behind it.”

She sits with that quietly. “You shouldn’t talk like that. The inquisition will get you.”

“Probably.” I say. It suddenly strikes me how strange it is for a single woman to be living by herself. Outside some kind of bird flaps noisily about, and breaks my concentration.“Anyway, speaking of politics, what’s Celeste like?”

“Scary.” Daliah laughs. “People tell me all the time how lucky I am to work for a three star, but I don’t see it. She’s barely human.”

I snap to attention. “Celeste is a three star?” Mt heart stars thrumming. The woman I’m spying on. The woman she’s stealing from. My business rival, is a 3 star?

“Yeah, you didn’t know?”

At that moment I become aware of a sniffing noise coming from outside the hut. I jerk my head just in time to see something with bat wings fly in through the window and splash into the cauldron.

“What was that?” I gasp looking into the cauldron.

“A bat?” Daliah asks, trying to use her spoon to fish out the offending creature.

That’s when the bubbling blue mixture turns green and starts to sizzle.

I don’t think that was a bat.

“Shit!” I grab Daliah by the shoulders and try to throw her away, but the cauldron explodes before I can save either of us.

The cast iron is ripped to shreds, and it continues that **** by shredding me in turn.

I fall to the floor, bleeding out, Daliah’s hut is on fire and burning around us. I see her to my side just as torn up, maybe dead.

All I can think of, all that comes to mind is how little I understand what just happened.