The Alchemist

I FUCKING HATE BEING PATIENT!

It's blasphemous frankly. We're supposed to pursue as much pleasure as we can, as often as we can. This is the way of Bellowyn, but alas I had a higher calling.

Sigh.

I leave Daliah undrugged, and unbothered. Hopefully earning some more of her trust, as I do.

"When's our next lesson?" She asks eagerly.

I shrug. "I'm not taking you on as an apprentice. I showed you enough to get you on your way, but I've got my own practice to worry about now."

She snorts. "Your mysterious hut in the woods?"

"That's right." I smile. "As surprising as it sounds, I had six customers this week out there, and I'm not even done building. Apparently there's a dungeon somewhere out there."

"Oh yes." She nods. "Parties have been all around the shop this week. Apparently that's where the horde of goblins came from."

"Makes sense."

"You're really not going to teach me anything more?"

"You can live a good life, just selling healing potions." I say.

She shakes her head. "But I want to learn more." Daliah 9CP (-38) "There's so much that mistress can do, she's amazing. I want to be like that. I want to make something of myself and not just be a rat clerking in whoever's shop will pay my rent."

Oh that felt good, ambition, and a lust for knowledge. Daliah I almost didn't think you had it in you. "This is a tale as old as time. Pretty girls asks a person of knowledge to teach them." I shake my head. "It always ends with the teacher getting his throat slit by the apprentice."

She balks. "I would never. It's not like that, I just want to get out of the slums."

"You'll never have a big enough business with your boss sitting in the middle of town like she does. I had to sell my potions at a loss just to compete."

Daliah to her credit is persistent, maybe even intelligent. "I'll buy a cart, and become a travelling alchemist. Like you."

I scoff. "Then sell those three potions, to get you started." I shake my head, like I'm thinking the whole thing over. "Fine." I took out a piece of paper and wrote a new list of ingredients. "Next week's lesson."

She takes the list eagerly and looks it over. "Okay, great!" She beams, and I realize she didn't gain any corruption from that. She's already committed to stealing from her boss. Very well I'd have to think of something in the meantime.

"I'm off." I say, heading out the door. "I've got errands to run before it gets dark."

"Thanks again!" She says, and plants a kiss on my cheek. Daliah +1CP (-37)

Aww. I smile and head out. I guess that why you don't want to turn every person you encounter into a sex sweating whore. Everyone has potential, and everyone can be of use to Bellowyn. Sometimes you just have to be patient. Uplifting a waif into a fine alchemist wouldn't provide me any sexual pleasure, but I guess there were other joys to take from life.

From the slums I head to Daliah's place of work.

You see my mind is still on that dungeon.

As I'm sure you've noticed I'm not very good in a fight. I'm a poisoner by disposition, which don't make for good dungeoneers. So what I'm going to do is grab a combat position from the shop with what cash I was able to make and recover from the forest. Then I'd bring it back home, and see if I could reverse engineer the formula.

This master Alchemist might have been a genius, but alchemy is a science. Everything we do can be reduced to a formula, if only you have the tools to measure.

I enter into the shop expecting to see another clerk sitting where Dalilah is supposed to be, but it's not so. Instead walking the floors of the with that chittering alchemical monkey, is a tall and imposing woman, with glowing gold hair, and skin very nearly silver in color, but instead it rests as simply lustrous grey. Her robes like Dalilah's are fantastic, but these more so. The star and formulas on her robes glow, etched in lustrous gold silk.

She looks up at me as I entered the building, and my breath catches in my throat. A feeling of pure terror overcomes me, like a prey spotted by a predator. It lasts for only a moment, but she's made her point. When I dare to look at her again, I see a small smile playing across her lips. I can't claim to know what that was, but clearly this was a woman I'd be foolish to mess with.

Tragically for me, I'd already begun.

"Welcome to my shop, is there anything I can get you?"

"You're the master alchemist?" I ask, through I already know the answer. The hair, the skin, clearly this woman had made some fabulous alterations to herself.

"Indeed I am. Cobalt Celeste, Third Eye of The Capital's Alchemist's Guild, and owner of this humble shop." Alchemist's guild... I didn't have any information on that. Our spies aren't perfect, smaller organizations can escape infiltration.

I'm still standing in the door way. My body won't allow me to move any closer to her. So she comes closer to me. "I'm looking for a combat potion. Maybe a potion of Minotaur's Strength if I can afford it."

She moves closer, sniffing the air about me for one freaky moment. Is it sad that it was working or me? I love freaky women. "You're an alchemist." She says at last a wide smile playing off her lips. Perfect teeth, by the way. She purrs momentarily savoring the air about me. "You were just making a healing potion." She says with a final nod.

"How did you...?" That was an amazing bit of witchery she'd just pulled off. It doesn't take much skill or knowledge to guess that the person who smells like a pharmacy came on them, is an alchemist. I'd been standing over a pot of boiling sludge for the last two hours. But to guess what potion had been made just from the smell? What was this woman?

"Which means, you're actually interested in stealing my formula for the potion." She breaks with me, and heads behind the counter where the large rack of potions wait. "What's the plan, sell them at the arena for the festival?"

"I need it for a fight." I say truthfully, avoid the subterfuge she'd rightly guessed from nothing but a whiff of my clothing. What else did she already know about me?

She tsks and pulls out a bottle. "If an alchemist is fighting someone then you've already failed. Poisons do exist, love." And she was murderous? This woman just kept getting better and better.

"You can't poison an entire dungeon." I say.

She looks disappointed in me, something I'd learned long ago really turns me on. "I reject that hypothesis. Never the less I wish you luck. Deciphering this will be an interesting challenge." She flicks her hand and sends the bottle spinning on the top of her finger. It's perfect, not a hint of a wobble as she keeps her finger beneath it.

"Suddenly I'm scared you've poisoned it."

She smiles. "Perhaps so, but if you're skilled I think you'd be able to discover and extract the offending material from the mix."

"That's assuming I plan on deciphering it at all."

"Then you would have been wise to raise your objection before I touched it."

I sigh. "I see why you let your clerk and monkey handle the shop. You're a terrible salesperson."

"I'll tell you what." She sets the potion down. "If you can bring me a proper recreation of this potion, I'll reward you for the effort. The guild masters are always saying I don't do enough to encourage the art."

"How much does it cost?"

Too much.

She tells me the price, and it's the rest of my money. I'm afraid with the price that high I may not even be able to afford the ingredients to recreate the potion, assuming I hadn't already bought them.

Still, she had offered a reward hadn't she?

I suppose I could wait until I was in less dire financial straights to take on this challenge, but...

I never liked being patient.