Nifemi blinked a few times before lifting one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Whatever, luv, I’m here to help.”
“Be careful not to read anything yourself, if you see words, then stop, and I’ll figure something else out,” said Kara, biting her lower lip pensively. She didn’t want to ensnare her friend in the curse if at all possible. While she didn’t think her reading it would do it, she didn’t want to take chances.
“Why?” asked Nifemi, wrinkling her forehead. “What’s with all the cloak and dagger?”
“For reasons I prefer not to disclose for your own safety, I cannot know the andaridin ingredient that I’ll be working with,” said Kara.
Nifemi reacted as if perfume had been spritzed right in her face. “Then how the bloody hell are you going to make your potion?”
“That will be the fun part,” said Kara.
“If I didn’t know you, luv, I would think you’re being sarcastic, but I think you actually mean that,” said Nifemi, shaking her head and turning away. “You’re the only mage I know in the Halls who likes doing sudoku puzzles.”
“The box?”
Nifemi approached the package, while Kara stepped back, worrying at her fingernails with her teeth, a bad habit Gran would have thumped her on the head for.
Her best friend opened the package as delicately as if she were defusing a bomb, but after a tense, ten-minute wait, a stainless steel runed container sat on her table, devoid of any identifying information.
“What ya gonna do now?” asked Nifemi.
“I can tell you this much without triggering the binding, but I need to find the right catalyst for the andaridin using the tried and true method of trial and error,” said Kara.
“But if you don’t know what’s in there,” said Nifemi, tapping on the container with her fingernail, eyes wide with concern. “How are you going to keep from accidentally killing yourself with a bad mixture? Like you could add gorgon breath and end up turning this room into a poison death cloud.”
“If I do, you can have my room for the rest of the year,” said Kara. “I know how you covet my view of the city.”
Nifemi skewed her mouth to the side, flourishing her hand. “You know how I like a good view of the Spire, much preferable to a living breathing best friend.”
After Nifemi left, Kara stood before the container of andaridin wondering if her mother had joined the contest to provide a better life for her. She’d been a second year at the Halls when she’d given birth to Kara, and since her father had never entered the picture, Gran had taken care of her while her mom was at the Halls.
Kara knocked a strand of auburn hair from her face. “I’m gonna win this for you, mom.”
The next phase of Kara’s work on the Elixir felt like trying to juggle chainsaws while blindfolded. The mixture in the stainless steel container was a light blue liquid with the viscosity of a sugary lemonade, while emitting a faint anise smell.
Without doing a detailed analysis, Kara knew that the mixture wasn’t only one item, but a combination of multiple ingredients. At least one of them would be exotic, and all of them had to have been available to the druids of ancient Britain.
She’d considered trying to reverse engineer the ingredients to give her a better idea of the path forward. Kara speculated that determining the information herself wouldn’t trigger the curse, but it was vague enough that she wasn’t willing to test it.
Rather, she spent her days testing minute amounts of the andaridin—less than a droplet—on various catalysts to see which ones might work best. The work reminded her of a sudoku puzzle because she was only given part of the information and had to determine the missing boxes.
But in this case, she’d be solving the puzzle without ever seeing everything filled out.
While there were potentially millions of catalysts, the science of alchemy had narrowed them into eight different schemas with each type working best with certain categories of andaridin.
From each schema, Kara used three of the most benign catalysts on the essence, looking for signs of faez exhalation. While most of the catalysts triggered a small amount of faez, only two schemas—the one for the mind and another for animals—created a statically significant magical reaction.
The mind schema wasn’t a surprise, giving the intent of the elixir, but the animal one was. Kara kept her mind open about the possibilities, because alchemy was an imperfect science.
It took her a week to whittle it down to the two schemas, which gave her thirteen more days in the contest. Kara had no idea how the other two contestants were doing, if they’d even made progress, because she spent nearly every waking moment in the lab, sometimes falling asleep at the desk when her favorite stimulants wore off.
To find which catalysts from the two schemas might be appropriate, Kara returned to her notebook of druidic knowledge, working through the materials available to beings from that period in history. They had existed in the early years of the Roman empire, destroyed by Emperor Tiberius for being sorcerers, back when the existence of magic was met with fear.
While historians associated the druids with blood sacrifices and giant wicker men, the Honorable Order of Alchemists knew more about them than any other hall, since the druids were the earliest to practice their craft. Unfortunately, they had a habit of only passing knowledge verbally, so details were sparse, except for a few Romans who had secretly joined the druidic ranks and recorded their learnings.
Ancient druids had access to most mundane alchemy ingredients like bone ash, animal fur, lime, vinegar, and precious metals, but they were also the first peoples to associate with the Tuatha Dé, from whom they learned their magical crafts. Which meant they could have been using catalysts from the Otherworld, one of the first known realms besides the Fae that humans interacted with.
Knowing this, Kara experimented with catalysts of the mind schema like yew, spring water, and fulgurite which was petrified lightning. They each had promising results, especially the fulgurite, but none of them gave Kara the impression they were correct.
Frustrated by a lack of progress, Kara was taking a break in the dining area when Nifemi found her. She was wearing a poodle skirt over a skintight white bodysuit.
“Have you heard?” asked Nifemi, eyes wide.
“I’ve been busy putting my head in a drawer and slamming it repeatedly,” said Kara, as she set her pastrami sandwich onto her plate.
“Lex had an accident,” said Nifemi. “He burned half his body when his final mixture exploded.”
“Final mixture? How the hell is he...never mind, is he okay?” she asked.
“Word is he’ll live, but be out for the rest of the year and won’t graduate,” said Nifemi.
“Ouch.”
“Any rumors about what he was mixing that did him in?” asked Kara, knowing it was a long shot.
Nifemi shook her head. “Nothing. But I had been hearing that he’d been using his family’s pharmaceutical company to do research and testing for him.”
“How was...? Never mind, I guess I’m not the only one who can be clever,” said Kara. “Which probably means Seraphina is working with her mother in some way.”
“Why don’t you get your Gran’s help?” asked Nifemi.
“She is getting her yearly checkups and prosthetic adjustments next week in Invictus, but she’s not happy that I joined the contest so that’s out of the question,” said Kara.
“Could she ever get them regrown?” asked Nifemi.
“Even if she had the cash, I don’t think she would,” said Kara. “She’s a tough old broad, and they’re a part of her now. Plus I think her affliction makes it complicated, due to her monthly transformations.”
Nifemi nodded. “Are you going to continue?”
Kara forced herself to hesitate, only to give her best friend the impression that she was actually considering the decision. But the truth was that there was nothing that would dissuade her from finishing the contest.
With five days left i
n the contest, Kara began pushing the boundaries of her testing. The catalyst had thus far eluded her. She’d worked through a huge list from the mind schema and the compatible animal schemas from the reagent closet, but none of the reactions had been significant enough to continue further study.
While some of them might have made the elixir work partially, an incomplete transformation from the catalyst was dangerous, because the raw components of the potion could be deadly. She needed more exotic catalysts but lacked the resources to acquire them with less than a week remaining.
“What I could really use are some siren scales or satyr hoof shavings,” she said as she was leaning back in her chair, tapping her pen on her forehead for inspiration.
Both catalysts were problematic for acquisition, the former because they were dangerous and difficult to reach—she’d just as likely be drowned as get any scales. The later were difficult because they were a creature of Fae and while might live in the city, she had no way to find them.
“Realm hopping is out of the question, not that I know a damn thing about surviving in Fae, nor is heading to the coast to another restricted area. I probably couldn’t even get the permissions in time to visit a siren,” said Kara, as she was chewing on her fingernails, a bad habit that had plagued her since childhood.
She’d already checked the alchemy supply stores, but neither component were used very often, so they had little reason to carry them.
Kara picked at a gnawed fingernail. “I really should go to a nail salon.”
As the words left her lips, she shot straight up, dropping her pen and nearly catapulting herself out of the chair.
“That’s it, that’s the answer.”
Pulling up the nail salons in the city, Kara identified the stores with Fae sounding names or in locations that were known for having hidden Fae communities. Satyr hooves weren’t much different from horses, which had to be trimmed just like fingernails.
She called around to a dozen before she found one that would sell her some trimmings for a few of her precious blood gold coins. They’d clearly dealt with other mages looking for reagents.
By the time she brought them back to the lab, she was vibrating with energy, hoping the shavings were the answer to the elixir. Everything seemed to point to that direction, as the druids had connections with the Tuatha Dé.
Kara converted the shavings into a foul-smelling paste using high heat and a runic infusion. When she tested the mixture, the faez reading shot off the charts, indicating a high conversion catalyst.
With the final piece of the elixir in place, Kara went to the goblin market and purchased spring waters from the summer palace in Fae, which seemed like the perfect chyma.
As Kara made final preparations, her mind whirled with how much her life would change if she won the Ascendant Cup. It’d been thirty years since the last winner—Seraphina’s mother.
While she couldn’t write out the directions on brewing the elixir as the binding wouldn’t let her, she repeated the steps over and over in her head until she had it down cold. Then she got a good night sleep. She figured brewing the potion would take a little over five hours. She would finish it with a day and a half to spare, giving her time to make final checks, and schedule her testing with Patron Celesse.
The next morning, Kara shot out of bed like a missile. She had to force herself to eat breakfast, so she would be as alert as possible during the final mixing. The lab was exactly as she’d left it the night before with everything needed for the procedure set out in neat rows.
Brewing potions, especially new mixtures, required exacting measures otherwise small errors would compound problems. It was a lot different than the alchemical pharmaceutical companies, which mostly sold the simplified versions of basic potions, which meant they were cheap and easy to make without a lot of risk.
The Elixir of Weirding would require a ton of hazard, as not only was she making a potion for the first time, she’d have to test it on herself.
Since she didn’t have to worry about the andaridin or the chyma, Kara spent most of her time creating a purified version of the satyr trimmings. She’d tested the catalyst with an 80% pure mixture, but for the final potion she wanted a 99.98% or greater purity.
Boiling it down in successive cookers required three hours total, the final mixtures smelling less and less like hot garbage, until the purified version had the scent of freshly cut grass.
Based on the properties she’d discovered during her weeks long testing, the andaridin would require being raised to 400 Celsius for an hour with the catalyst to ensure proper bonding. Kara mixed the satyr hoof paste, andaridin, and spring water into a cauldron furnace, setting the ramp up for ten minutes to reach 400, then holding for an hour.
While the potion cooked, Kara monitored the cauldron, checking the sensors for temperature, pressure, and faez exhalation frequently. She kept a running log of each sensor on a piece of graph paper.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly until the forty-fifth minute. The gas pressures had built at the beginning, but then maintained as the catalyst stopped reacting with the andaridin. She expected this to continue until the end.
But as she was watching, the pressure spiked to the red line and continued rising past it. Kara checked the cauldron sensor equipment to make sure nothing had become dislodged, giving her a false reading, but when the cauldron began to shudder as if it were getting ready to blow, she knew the pressure increase was real.
Kara cut the power but there was no way to dissipate the heat, so the mixture kept reacting. The pressure had gone way past the red line and was headed towards the purple line that indicated explosion.
“No, stop,” she said, pounding her fist on the stainless steel table.
But there was nothing she could do, except jettison the cauldron into the emergency chute. Kara broke the glass with the meat of her fist, then reached through the hole and jammed her knuckles against the big red button.
The wall behind the cauldron opened in a flash, tipping the equipment into a room behind the alchemy laboratory. A few seconds later a muffled explosion shook everything.
In shock from her failure, Kara stumbled out of the room to get fresh air. Before she could reach the stairs, both Nifemi and Seraphina came bursting into the hallway from separate doors.
“Oh, thank Merlin, you’re okay,” said Nifemi, leaning against the frame with her hand against her forehead. She looked nearly to tears. “As soon as I heard the explosion, I thought the worst.”
Seraphina had soot smudges on her chin and leather apron, but the uncharacteristic messiness did not detract from the glint in her eyes.
“Oh, no, Kara,” said Seraphina, laying on the syrup. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I guess this means you’re out of the contest. Which is a real shame because I’m going to win tomorrow. Third time loser, right?”
Kara’s numb exterior burnt away as a fiery rage consumed her. She thought briefly of ripping Seraphina’s hair from her scalp, but knew she’d only get kicked out of the hall, so she squeezed her hands into fists and shouldered through the stairwell door.
Nifemi caught up to Kara around the time she burst into the sunlight morning.
“Kara, luv, I know you’re mad, but thank the gods that you’re alright. You could have been killed,” said Nifemi.
The reminder did little to dissipate the rage. “It would have been better had I been too slow. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with this crap. If Seraphina wins tomorrow, I don’t know...I just don’t.”
Nifemi grabbed her around the shoulders, looked her straight in the eyes. “Think about your Gran. She would have been devastated. I know this contest means a lot to you, but it’s a death trap. Either our dear Patron doesn’t like it when people win, or she makes it this hard as a reminder of our hubris. Take the lessons you learned in the contest and move on. There’s no shame in not winning.”
A heavy sigh escaped from Kara without warning. She nearly collapsed into her best friend's arms b
ut wasn’t ready to give up yet.
“This contest is all my family has.”
Nifemi straightened as she looked at Kara as if she’d grown a second head.
“This contest has ruined your family, luv,” said Nifemi, almost apologetically.
Kara would have responded but she knew in her heart that her friend was right.
Kara returned to the lab the next morning. She felt empty inside, but the act of cleaning her glassware and putting away reagents gave her tired hands a measure of control. The word was that Seraphina had scheduled her testing with Celesse around noon, so that everyone from the Order of Honorable Alchemists could be in attendance.
She burned her notes because she didn’t want any record of them, and as soon as the contest was over, she’d forget everything anyway.
When the appointed time for Seraphina’s victory arrived, Kara found herself joining the others in the grand hall. She stayed in back, not that it mattered because whispers and nods her direction ensured everyone knew where she was located.
“Welcome to the last day of the Ascendant Cup,” said Patron Celesse with Seraphina at her side.
A table with a glass container filled with a pale blue potion rested before them. Seraphina had changed her hair to look like black smoke hovering around her head.
“If Seraphina’s potion is successful, she will be the first winner in thirty years, and the first time a member of the same family has won,” said Celesse to a round of applause.
When it quieted down, Celesse gestured to Seraphina who looked the part of radiant goddess ascending.
She approached her potion, and Kara thought she saw a tremble in her hand.
“With this, I win the Ascendant Cup,” said Seraphina, lifting the glass to her lips, and after a moment of hesitation, she threw the mixture back.
Fantastic Schools: Volume One (Fantastic Schools Anthologies Book 1) Page 13
