by Logan Jacobs
“Har har,” the dwarf pushed back. “I’m talking about somebody a little bit shorter. Ya know, somebody who’s seen you naked.”
“Of course, of course.” I winked at Kal’s violet eyes in the rearview mirror. “Let me amend that statement. I’m glad it will be next to three beautiful women like you.”
“Much better,” the dwarf nodded vigorously. “Now we can all die happily.”
“Kalista!” Ariette hollered in annoyance. “You’re not very helpful.”
“Hey, we all gotta go at some point, Ari,” the dwarf said nonchalantly. “And hopefully one of you will knock me off before we have to talk to that bumbling old dryad again. Because we’re here.”
The van slammed to a halt, and I fell forward, straight into Ariette’s breasts. She laughed and clutched my head against her chest for just a moment. She may have been teasing me, but I didn’t miss the way her fingers stroked through my hair lovingly. It was as if she wanted to memorize me before she let go.
Maybe all this talk of prophecies and death really got to her more than I had thought.
I pulled my head back and leaned into the side of her head. “It’s all going to be fine,” I whispered in her ear.
My lips brushed the outer rim of her ear as she nodded, but she didn’t say a word. Then, Maaren slid the door of the van open with a clang and leapt out onto the blacktop.
“Look, no dusty red dirt.” She grinned at the clean, landscaped courtyard in front of us.
“And no crazy ogres, either,” Kalista grumbled. “Unless you count the stressed out, overworked students. Okay, I take it back. Now we’ve got a hundred thousand ogres to face. Ah! There’s one!”
The dwarf gasped and leapt behind Maaren as she pointed a finger at a young green nymph. The girl turned to Kalista, and her face wrinkled into a look of disgust and annoyance mixed with a heaping serving of young adult attitude.
“They don’t like it when you point at them,” Danira whispered to Kal as the nymph sashayed away.
“Well, I don’t like their holier-than-thou ‘tude, so we’re even,” the dwarf spat back as she eyed the nymph’s back suspiciously.
“Come on you guys,” Ariette snorted. “We don’t have time to waste. We’ve got to get to Limmer before he decides office hours are closed.”
We pushed our way through the throng of students as we headed to the back of the campus. They were all milling about the courtyard, with their black backpacks and tired expressions stretched onto their faces. Almost all of the students were scurrying around, assumedly trying to make it to class on time or rushing back to their dorm for some much needed rest and relaxation. It was a total ratrace, and it all reminded me just how much I didn’t miss my college days.
We finally reached the lonely corridor of run down offices and classrooms. This time, we didn’t even bother to knock on the professor’s door this time. I burst into the room only to find the old dryad at his desk with a red pen in hand and an anguished expression on his face. Oddly enough, one of his infamous sticky notes was stuck to the center of his forehead so it came down and blocked part of his coal black eyes.
“It’s as if none of you even listened to my lecture!” he said in near anguish. “Wait a minute … did I mention this in the lecture? Oh dear--Milton! Hello!”
“Professor, hi,” I reciprocated before I paused at the dryad’s almost vacant expression. “Do you remember why I’m here?”
“Do I remember why you’re here,” he repeated slowly as he sat back in his chair thoughtfully and turned his head up to the ceiling.
He clearly had no idea, and the five of us sighed collectively.
“Alright, who’s going to tell the crazy bastard he’s got to cook up a magical serum?” Kalista asked, but the professor was still deep in thought and didn’t hear a word she said.
“Oh wait!” the little creature exclaimed and reached one gnarled red hand up to snatch the sticky note from his forehead and read from it. “‘Milton has gone to the Nahul Plains for Ghoul’s Bread.’ The Nahul Plains! Of course!”
“Yep, that would be the one,” Kal grumbled behind me.
“But … you’re alive!” he shrieked again, and his voice rose about five octaves. “How are you alive?”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, prof-man,” the dwarf scoffed with offense in her voice.
“What can I say?” Ariette shrugged. “We’re just that awesome.”
“Dear Lord, why ever did I send you to that awful place?” he tutted as he shook his head and returned to the note in his hand.
“To be fair, we kind of sent ourselves,” I pointed out. “We just got the idea from you.”
The professor stared at me blankly. “F-from me?” he asked curiously. “Why would I ever send you to such a dreadful place?”
“Because that was the only place we could find the mushrooms for the serum,” I explained slowly.
“Oh! You’re supposed to use essay B-Thirteen to create a serum,” he continued as he read the next line on his note, now serious once more. “Essay B-thirteen, huh?”
The dryad hunted on his messy desk for a moment until he found a stack of papers and held it aloft victoriously.
“I have the Ghoul’s Bread right here,” I said before he could go on another forgetfulness-bender.
I dug down into the pockets of my combat pants and fished out the mushrooms.
“You know, it’s a good thing I wrote myself this note,” he said seriously, completely ignoring the Ghoul’s Bread. “I had completely forgotten about this! I seem to be doing that quite a bit recently.”
“We noticed,” Maaren replied caustically.
But the old dryad didn’t seem to hear her snark. Instead, he just stared in wonder at the two mushrooms that hung before his tiny black orbs. He stroked one gnarled finger gently along the soft tops of the plant, almost as if they were a puppy or a baby and not a deadly mushroom.
“Alright, I’ll need some of your DNA,” the dryad said casually without even looking up at us.
“My DNA?” Kalista gasped loudly. “Uh-uh. I never give that stuff to anyone. Someone could use it to do all sorts of crazy stuff. Like clone me! Could you imagine if there were two Kalistas walking around? That wouldn’t be good for anyone. No way!”
“Yes, it would be terrifying indeed,” Danira muttered with a chuckle. “Double the sass.”
“This is no laughing matter, Danira,” the dwarf moaned darkly. “Do you want a clone of you walking around town?”
“Actually,” the commander answered, “that might be pretty nice. I’d never have to fetch my own coffee or do my laundry again.”
“You don’t do that anyways,” Ariette interrupted. “You make the interns do it.”
“They’re the ones who say they want to see my work first-hand,” Danira acknowledged. “Everybody knows an elf can’t do her duties without a cup of coffee and clean clothes.”
“He doesn’t want your DNA to make a clone of you, Kal,” Ariette interrupted as she rolled her ocean blue eyes. “There could never be another you, my friend.”
Kal crossed her arms across her chest and let out a puff of air. “Damn straight,” she muttered.
“The elf is very right,” the old dryad agreed. “I want to bond the Ghoul’s Bread’s DNA to your specific sequence in order to create the serum. Everyone’s DNA is completely unique, so the fusion may respond differently to each of you. Now, I have some burettes here, somewhere … where did they go?”
The dryad wandered off into the stacks of shelves in search of his equipment. Seconds later, there was a huge crash, as if an entire shelf had just come down.
“Oh my goodness, I do need to clean this place!” Limmer exclaimed from somewhere among the mess of plants and furniture. “Here they are!”
He emerged with a few thin test tubes held aloft, and a gash on the side of his head that dripped amber sap down to his cheek.
“Are you okay?” Maaren exclaimed when she saw the injury.
> “Huh? Oh, yes,” he assured her insistently as he touched his forehead with a red hand. “Just a scratch, my dear. Now, if you would all please.”
His sentence cut off rather abruptly as he handed us each a little tube. The glass objects were open at one end and tapered into a thin point not much larger than a needle at the other, with a silicone cap on the small end so the contents couldn’t escape.
When Limmer had handed each of us a vial, he stepped back and waited impatiently while his coal black eyes appraised us.
I looked around hesitantly at my team, but I was met with looks of equal uncertainty.
“Well, spit!” Limmer finally exclaimed, as if it was obvious the whole time.
“Spit,” Ariette repeated. “In the tube?”
“Yes, in the tube,” Limmer replied sassily. “Unless you’d like me to rip out a strand of your hair. Or we can cut your palm and take some blood, or other bodily fluids will work as well.”
“Nope, no, spitting is fine,” Ariette replied quickly.
The blonde held the end of the burette up to her lips and delicately spat into the tube. Kal and Maaren were right behind her, although I could see hesitation written all over their faces.
I held up the little glass object to my lips, conjured up all the saliva in my mouth, and spit into the tube. When we had all produced a significant sample, Limmer carefully took them and labeled them with bits of tape.
“This way,” he explained as he put the final piece of tape on my tube, “no one gets the wrong genetic sequence. That could cause a whole mass of problems!”
“What kind of problems?” Danira questioned as she narrowed her good eye.
“Oh well, let me see,” the dryad said thoughtfully. “Possible mutations of your Hand of Power, of course. Taking on a whole new Hand, maybe. Quite possibly a whole lot of physical mutations, especially when mixing DNA from a different race. Actually, that could be quite a fascinating experiment.”
The professor finished rather abruptly and tore open a drawer in his desk. He rummaged through it hastily for a moment and then produced a small brown pouch. The pouch glowed a soft yellow from whatever was inside, and the dryad looked at it victoriously.
“Perfect, Honey Mold!” he exclaimed, and then he bolted off through the stacks of shelves toward the far corner of the room.
“Wait, Honey Mold?” Maaren called after him in alarm. “Isn’t that used for love potions?”
“You are right, my dear girl,” Limmer called back proudly. “It’s one of the strongest aphrodisiacs known to man.”
“Hey, uh, maybe you should go see what he’s doing,” I said hesitantly to the hunter.
Maaren nodded nervously and hurried off to find Limmer before he decided to get a little too freaky with his serum.
“Milton, if someone gets ahold of my spit and clones me, I will never forgive you,” Kalista huffed and threw her small body into Limmer’s chair.
“You know someone could just get your DNA from your dirty dishes, right, Kal?” Ariette questioned tauntingly. “I’ve seen the way you devour your food. Your saliva must be all over those.”
“Oh my God!” the dwarf’s violet eyes went wide at the thought. “They could! What if someone’s already cloned me? This is a disaster.”
“Relax, Kalista,” Danira chortled. “Nobody would ever want to clone you, I promise. No offense, but you’re quite the handful.”
“Noonnne taken.” The dwarf grinned as she leaned back in the comfy leather chair with her arms behind her head.
She went a little too far back, and the chair tilted up on its wheels. The dwarf flailed about for a moment before she shifted her weight forward and brought the desk chair back down with a thunk.
“Holy crap, guys,” she panted with a twinge of fear, “I totally almost just died.”
“Professor, I don’t think that’s a good--” Maaren started to shout from the back corner.
Before the hunter could finish voicing her concerns, there was an enormous boom.
I spun around to see thick tendrils of dark gray smoke creep toward the ceiling, which now had a circular black burn mark on it. We all raced back to the corner and found Maaren and the professor covered head-to-toe in soot.
Maaren’s white hair had been turned a dark gray from the ash and was wildly frizzy where it framed her face. Meanwhile, streaks of black covered her blue cheeks and forehead. Her green eyes were closed in frustration, and I could see her chest heave up and down rapidly as she tried not to scream. The hunter shoved two fists to her forehead.
Limmer, on the other hand, looked as if he had rather enjoyed the little explosion. His red, bark-like skin was also covered in soot, and the little sprout that had been on his forehead was now nothing more than a smoldering stump. But his coal black eyes were bright, and the largest smile adorned his aged face.
The two of them stood in front of a wide brown table, where Limmer had laid out the burettes and sliced up the Ghoul’s Bread into small pieces. A tiny flame burned under a glass beaker, which was now charred and jagged from the explosion.
“I told you not to put the dragon’s breath over the fire,” Maaren muttered. “It’s a very unstable flower.”
“Quite right, my dear, I do know that,” he tutted calmly as he reached for a new beaker and another piece of the Ghoul’s Bread.
“Are you guys alright?” I asked worriedly.
“Oh, quite alright, my boy, quite alright,” the dryad responded. “I was just trying to find the right binding agent for the DNA, you see.”
The last tendrils of gray smoke cleared from the air, and Maaren took in a deep, calming breath.
“Okay,” I said, not totally sure about what he meant by that.
I never liked science in school, and Fae science was even more of an enigma than the human variety.
“This should do it, though,” the dryad exclaimed as he dropped a chunk of the Ghoul’s Bread into a copper lemon squeezer and held it aloft over the flame.
I waited expectantly for something magical to happen, possibly for some sort of ethereal glow or another explosion, at least, but nothing happened. Limmer just hummed to himself as he held the lemon squeezer over the flame and watched it.
“Ouch, this is getting rather hot,” he announced after a moment. “I must be careful. I’m partly made of wood, after all!”
“Yes, it’s metal over an open flame,” Kalista muttered next to me. “That tends to get hot.”
“Perfect!” the dryad exclaimed suddenly. He swung the lemon squeezer over a fresh glass beaker and pressed down hard with a loud grunt.
Tiny droplets of thick black liquid cascaded down through the holes at the bottom of the instruments and fell with light plops into the glass beaker. They looked as viscous as oily sludge, which seemed all the more ominous. When Limmer was satisfied he had enough liquid, he cast the Ghoul’s Bread aside and picked up one of his tubes.
“Ms. Dieyre,” he announced before he tipped the vial over and splashed some of Ariette’s spit into the beaker.
I held my breath as I waited. For all we knew, this was going to be an equally bad experiment, and we’d have to hit the deck at any second now. My friends must have been thinking the same thing, because Kalista and Danira both backed up a few steps in preparation.
When Limmer had emptied his burette, he gave a little giggle of glee before he snatched up the brown sack with the Honey Mold and pulled out a pinch of yellow dust. He started to sprinkle the vibrant, glowing dust over the beaker before he replaced it over the open flame.
We all held our breath as we watched the dryad work. This serum held so many possibilities, but after the conversation Maaren, Ariette, and I had had in the van, I realized just why it was so important to me.
Maybe, if I was more powerful and stronger than any Fae that had come before me, we had hope. Maybe the last part of the prophecy wouldn’t be true, and I would survive my final battle with the Phobos.
And in that moment of clarity, I un
derstood just how much I was counting on the ancient dryad.
I expected the serum to boil or sizzle together like some sort of sauce, but what actually happened was a sharp reminder of the magic of the Fae.
The combination of clear spit, black sludge, and yellow dust started to swirl and turn of its own accord, like a miniature tornado had landed inside the beaker. Then, the tornado suddenly started to evaporate as tendrils of dark yellow liquid turned to gas and rose into the air.
“No! No, no, no! This should have worked!” the dryad cried out and yanked the beaker off the flame in an attempt to save it. He put a gnarled, red hand over the top in an effort to stop the leak, but it was too late. We were left to stare at a beaker that was just as empty as it had been five minutes ago.
There was a tense silence in the air as Limmer gasped out over his failed experiment. His hand was still over the top of the beaker, and his shoulders shook in anguish for a brief moment.
I looked around to look at my team. Despite the uncertainty they’d shown earlier, we had all desperately wanted this to work, and we’d clung to the hope that this ancient dryad’s theory was true.
Danira’s communication device buzzed angrily on her hip, and the commander gave the dryad a sad smile before she left the room to answer the call.
“I’m sorry, Milton,” the dryad said finally. “I thought for sure that would work. I don’t know why … I did everything the way it should have been done. The Honey Mold created an attraction between all of the molecules so they would bind together, and yet … I don’t know what happened.”
“It’s alright, Professor,” I said gently and approached the old dryad. He looked up at me, and his face was filled with remorse.
“I know what that prophecy says,” he finally whispered. “I thought maybe this could save you.”
My heart swelled at the old man’s generosity, and I patted his rough back gently.
“Don’t worry about it,” I assured him. “You’ll figure it out someday. Maybe in time for our next adventure, after I’ve vanquished the Phobos?”
“We don’t have until someday,” he replied darkly, and I was taken aback by his bleakness.
