Would anyone want it to end here?

“Brenda! This is the Lady of the Night! Please sure her respect!” I shouted.

Brenda’s face went black. She dropped to her knees, her chains around her wrists clinking as she did. “I’m fucked. The kingdom’s fucked. Rosemary! If they get you. Don’t you understand what that means! Your the strongest wizard in the kingdom! You can fight this!”

“Brenda, I… I want to help you. You are like a sister I had before these sisters. But your asking me to betray my Master?”

“Listen to yourself Rosemary! You’re a badass adventurer! You refused to bow to the king and become head wizard! You are amazing! You-”

The Lady of the Night looks worried. “You are our sister. Master’s little seer. You are going to help us bring her in aren’t you?”

“I… my Lady, may I ask for a moment to lay down?”

“Rosemary! I need your help! I am going to die without you!” Brenda screamed.

The Lady already began pulling me and I walked with her. We reached the hall and she stopped to look at me. “Are you okay?”

I smiled. “Quite! I was feigning confusion.”

“Oh?” The Lady asked me.

“I will admit the shock through me for a moment. But I don’t want Brenda to die, and the best alternative is to charm her. But if she thinks I am perfectly enslaved, it will be much harder to get her to drink one of my potions.”

“Oh sister, are you scheming?” she asked me.

“Of course! But this potion will need ingredients we don’t have. Can we speak with Vivi? I need some supplies. If we can get that. Then I can have everything ready by tomorrow. If you would permit me. I think the easiest method would be for me to sneak in tomorrow night and pretend I am free of the charm and planning to give her a strength boosting spell. But in reality, I will be giving her a resistance weakening spell.”

The Lady put her hand on her chin. “I will ask if Master permits your plan. You mentioned you understood why she resisted. Can you explain?”

I nodded. “Her biology. Her parents and grand parents were just as resistant. That is why prolonged exposure hasn’t affected her.”

“Is this a common level of resistance? Should we be worried?” She asked.

I shook my head. “Not at all. In the whole country, her line is probably the only one resistant enough. Others would need a potion or spell.”

Well that is good news, thank you. As for the ingredients we can do that now.”

I followed her as she lead me to Vivi’s chambers. She was doing paperwork. She shot up the moment we came in and gave the Lady a curtsy. “My Lady. How may I assist?”

“We need some supplies urgently. Please assist sister Rosemary with an order for delivery as soon as possible,” she said.

“Yes my Lady.”

With the assignment given, The Lady moved on and me and Vivi looked at each other. I actually tried to make it simply by grabbing a quill and writing down what I needed.

Vivi took a look. “Interesting. I know a few of these. They are going to be pricy, but I think if we sell some of these potions. We can manage.”

I nodded. She wanted me to explain the various effects. The rarity, any downsides or what kind of metrics any merchant would wanna know about with them. Even a third of these potions were more than worth the price of what materials I needed. After she took notes, she said we needed to see Freya.

Freya was carefully looking at feathers when we found her. “I found four so far!” She announced.

I smiled and took the four vanes for now.

Vivi handed the list over to her and she called a hawk over. She did some clicking noises at it before it took to the sky’s. Everything was in motion. Please just wait a little longer Brenda. Don’t do anything rash.

I made my way to Lillian and Iris. Once again Lillian was sending offerings. I smiled. Though she seemed sad that she wasn’t getting personal messages from the goddess of beauty. “Lillian, I could use your help actually. I’ll show you another recipe but I need something from Sofia and from Elise. I need some bags that are tight enough to hold powder. And some wands. Are you familiar with wands?”

Lillian shook her head. “Wants are offensive magic, I am a healer. I knew a bit of that but never at that level.”

I described that basically I needed wooden sticks that could have an empty space in the middle and a mechanism to open them up suddenly but still be tight enough to keep closed and not let the materials leak out. They were a difficult build. But they were really good for quick casting. “Oh! And if Lillian can get a leg strap with straps for my begs and wands, that would be great too.”

Lillian hesitated. “She will need approval from Master to make anything like clothing.”

“Could you ask Master on my behalf? I wanna spend the day brewing. It is important.”

“Of course sister!” she said.

I sat down in front of all the material. This time all of Lillian’s offerings had been taken. Iris’ garden was shrinking. I would need to make what I needed now, before I risked losing materials.

“I have a feeling by the look in your eye that you aren’t asking for this stuff for my hair request,” Iris asked.

I nodded. “Right. I’m not sure if I can share but I just learned someone dangerous is well, I wanna be prepared. Natalia is strong but I’m not sure she can handle this, and I’m the only person here that knows how to fight using magic. Master said I can brew anything. I imagine that extends to offensive spells.”

My go to was fire lances. But missing a component. Hmm. Some earth magic components would work here. Plus I’d rather not use fire lance on Brenda. Hmm. Yeah, gale would be good. We had plenty of materials for it too. Oh and maybe enough for two lightning spells. Yeah. I was liking this. About seven earth spells and ten air spells. That was the most I could make with this. Maybe I should have asked Vivi for more? No, this should be enough to fight Brenda at the very least.

The whole process took like four hours and Iris watched the entire thing with great interest. She occasionally asked me some questions. But this would complete my battle prep. Lillian came back too.

“Master approved it being made but wants to speak to you before dinner to discuss why it was made. But I got the other stuff.” She set five bags and three magic wands in front of me. Perfect. I decided to place two of the vanes in the wands before filling them with air magic dust and lightning magic dust.

The rest I placed in the bags. Which gave me one bag of lightning. One bag for four air magic, one of five air magic. One with three earth magic and last one with four.

“Perfect,” I said. “Now, let’s work on the hair care and last offering for the goddess of beauty for a while. We are a bit too low on material to do any more offerings. So let’s make this a big offering. Sound good Lillian?”

“Definitely!”

I had Lillian work on make her usual offering while I finished my brewing of a few other potions. I needed one strength potion and two concealment potions. With that, Iris’ garden was now officially out of combinations of brewing ingredients. For now.

“My garden is almost fully harvested,” Iris said. “I am both happy and a bit sad.”

“Oh right, almost forgot. Do you got the black berries?”

She nodded and showed me a bucket full. I smiled. Perfect.