by Jez Cajiao
As I rested, I took the time to inspect the room, suddenly aware of the motion of the ship. I’d felt it before but dismissed it as unimportant, but now, I watched the front wall, seeing a flare from one of the ships, followed by the feeling of sudden weight as Jian fed more power into the engines and sent us up, frantically avoiding a blast of lightning from a ship’s cannon fired from the rear.
“Does that happen often?” I asked him dully, my voice raspy and weak.
“Every so often,” he admitted. “As long as I know they’re going to fire, I can dodge, probably, but it’s a guess which way to go, and I can’t keep this up forever…” He watched over his controls, hissing under his breath. “Reserves are at seventeen percent…” he said calmly.
“What?” I asked, then coughed and summoned a fountain of water, washing the knife clean and dunking my face into it to refresh me. Feeling a little better, I began studying the cloudy magical displays that covered the walls. We were closing on our fleet, that much was clear, but they were still far ahead, and those that were chasing us were much closer.
“Seventeen percent,” Jian repeated. “The reserves. If we use it all, we will crash. We have better engines than them, faster too, but they have more power, and we can’t seem to get above fifty percent cruising speed. The engines just can’t do it, but they’ll take the power, so there must be leakages everywhere. They’re catching us slowly. If I push more power to the engines, we can outrun them for a time, but we’re using power at about one percent an hour currently. The engines, and the ship in general, are leaking like a sieve. Every time I feed more power in, it costs us. A boost like that…” He said, gesturing back toward the ships that were falling behind steadily now. “… it costs us two to three percent. If I keep doing it, we can outrun them… until we crash and all die. Or I don’t, and they shoot us down. Their ships are being pushed to their limit and draining their stones as well, aren’t they?” he said, looking to the wisp.
“They are,” she replied smoothly. “The chasing ships are poorly built. While this ship leaks mana due to damage, they are wasteful due to poor construction. They can apparently afford to run us down, though. Our maximum current cruising speed is slightly less than theirs, while our boosted speed is considerably higher, but they can boost more often. This is a race of attrition, with no way to know which side will win.”
“We can help…” Frederikk said slowly, moving into view from where he’d been seated examining a relay. “…I think.”
“Explain,” I said tiredly, rubbing my eyes and contemplating the second to last mana potion I had. I desperately needed more, and I needed to keep Tang going, as well as trying to keep myself sane. If I could stabilize him again, maybe heal some of the deeper wounds enough that the internal bleeding would slow further, could I make some more potions? The simple ones only took a few minutes to an hour, after all…
“We worked this ship once; we can fix it again…but there’s only three of us that were trained for it, and taught. The rest would be following their instincts…”
“Go on…” I prompted, giving him my full attention.
“I must explain… Gnomes are the greatest artifabricants in all of reality, because we are the chosen people of the god Svetu,” he said, rubbing his temple. “When the god left us, we… changed. Some grew angry and refused to invent new things, instead taking inspiration from the world around us, improving old designs, adjusting things, but swearing to never create new. Others believed that the disappearance of the gods and the Cataclysm wasn’t an abandonment, and that if we served them truly, if we were what we should have been, then they would return, and they concentrated on only creating new things…”
“We’ve got no time for this…” I sighed, and he held up his hands, begging for patience.
“The final group, well, they believed that the gods had abandoned us because they were never gods in truth anyway, and they set off to find out the secrets of the realms, making the manaengines and more. This ship and others were built by all three working together, but all we have left here is the second and first group. We as a race spent hundreds of years growing more and more focused, and now, we are all we can be. I can rebuild something a thousand ways, using the designs I know but to create from new? It is against all I am, much like I cannot spread my arms and grow wings to fly away. Our people will ‘fix’ the ship, but it will not be what it was. It may be better, but it may not survive it, either,” Frederikk said solemnly.
“What?” I asked in shock. “No. No, you literally built a fucking train a few hours ago!” I pointed behind the ship in the direction where we’d come from.
“We made attachments for the Badunkas to join together, as we have done before,” he corrected, and I shook my head.
“Fine, whatever. Do it,” I snapped, thinking that the gnomes were a massive pain in the ass to deal with at the best of times, and that was before hearing this bullshit excuse.
“You accept the risk?” he asked, and I waved my hand at him.
“Yeah, yeah, fine!” I turned back to Tang, the gnome already forgotten. Maybe if I…
“We could also use some of the stash…” he suggested in a wheedling voice, and I turned to glare at him. The residual anger over everything that had happened flared in my chest as I clumsily tugged a solid stick of their drug out and tossed it at him.
“You pick now to try to get your itch scratched?” I growled at him. “Fine, but you fuck this up, and I’ll throw you over the side personally!” I hissed threateningly at him, shoving him out of the way as I started dragging my alchemy gear out and spreading it out on a counter nearby. “And send Giint to me!” I ordered, knowing that crazy bastard would have some weird shit that I might be able to use for alchemy, if any of them did.
I spent the next ten minutes working on Tang, and finally, I felt he was stable enough that I could take an hour’s break.
I tried to sit back down and found Giint fast asleep in my chair. When I startled him, he bared his teeth and snarled, before sniffing and evidently deciding he liked me after all, switching to grinning up at me instead.
“Yooou have gifffft for Giiiint?” he asked me hopefully, and I frowned at him.
“What? No. Well, maybe… have you got any alchemy ingredients?” I asked him, and he shrugged.
“Some mebbbbie, Giiiint liiikes smelly herbbbbs,” he said, as though embarrassed.
“I’ll give you this…” I promised, holding up an entire stick of their wonder drug. “…if you give me whatever you have.” He froze, eyes wide.
When he didn’t respond, I waved the stick back and forth, and he followed it doggedly. I put it back in my bag and he growled at me momentarily, before apparently remembering my offer and pulling out three bags. I recognized two of them as having been on the Badunka riders we’d killed earlier, I and passed him the stick when he put the bags on the desk.
He ran off to the corner quickly, gnawing on it and making strange sounds, and I looked around hesitantly before pulling out one of the remaining sticks and using ‘Greater Examination’ on it.
I could see a number of notifications waiting for me by now and resolved to check them quickly next.
Gnomish Wonderdrug
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This substance is known by many names, Krissa, You’Oli, Ginesen, and occasionally, Valerian.
Ingredients:
1) Catnip
2) Valerian Root
3) Lemon Balm
4) Xnathar Gum
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Rare
No
100/100
N/A
I read it, then blinked, then read it again, and again, before starting to snigger. I’d spent years working in clubs and bars. I’d beaten the shit out of dealers and had force fed them their own shit over the years, and the ‘Wonderdrug’ that the gnomes were addicted to… was some kind
of industrial strength goddamn catnip!
Not one of these things had anything dodgy in it, except maybe the gum; all the others were simple herbs that chilled you the hell out, or sent cats loopy, and that was what the gnomes were off their heads on!
I couldn’t help it; I had to laugh.
It started out low, a collection of sniggers and stifled chuckles, before growing and growing, until I couldn’t contain it anymore, and I was shaking. My fears and exhaustion had taken their toll on me in little ways that meant that such a simple thing had a profound effect.
For some reason, as finally I calmed myself and got back to the plan, setting up the last few parts of the alchemy kit, I found that I felt better than I had in hours. Days, possibly.
The thought that I was enabling the gnomes to get their rocks off with some kind of seriously harmful drugs, potentially harming them permanently, in order to serve my own ends, had been sitting badly with me, but finding out that it was basically super-strength catnip that they were addicted to?
It changed the entire way I looked at their race. They had been hyped up as these almost mystically smart creatures before. Considering how amazing the Fenris was, and the way people spoke about gnomes, that had only reinforced that image, building upon a foundation that I’d had from all the games and lore of my own world. Finding out that instead, they were a race of drug-obsessed lunatics, and meeting an offshoot splinter of them that had basically regressed to a semi-feral state, had made me start to hate them.
It was as though, in my mind, they’d betrayed me by not living up to an image I’d had of them. Now, though… now, I’d been forcibly reminded that not only were they real people, and as such, owed my mental image of them nothing… but they were even more batshit than I thought they were.
They were off their tits on goddamn catnip!
I let another round of the giggles escape as I searched through the bags that Giint had given me, finding a collection of mainly fungus, with a handful of additional herbs that had adapted to low-light conditions, or that had clearly been grown near a magelight, considering the bleached out and worn look of them in real sunlight.
Ginseng
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These long leaves have many uses. Perhaps further investigation is needed?
Uses Discovered:
1) Cure Disease
2) Restore Health
3) Stamina Boost
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Warnock Root
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This root has many uses. Perhaps further investigation is needed?
Uses Discovered:
1) Cure Disease
2) Lesser Poison
3) Perception Boost
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Pergola
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These long tubers have an earthy taste but are oddly satisfying.
Uses Discovered:
1) Sleeping potion
2) Blood Cleansing
3) Enrage
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Greater Spotted Cap Mushroom
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These dark spotted mushrooms feel slimy to the touch and make your skin shudder away instinctively…
Uses Discovered:
1) Cause Disease
2) Paralysis
3) Lesser Poison
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Green Flutes
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These pale green fluted mushrooms give off a sense of enormous relaxation…
Uses Discovered:
1) Somnolence
2) Calming
3) Poison
4) Restore Mana
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Rotting flesh
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This flesh gives off a pungent odor and makes you feel unclean…
Uses Discovered:
1) Disease
2) Greater Poison
3) Smoke
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Mora Telendril
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
This dark and flat fungus branches out to form solid tendrils that draw in the spilled lifeblood of those caught by Delicious Snare plants
Uses Discovered:
1) Restore Health
2) Paralysis
3) Endurance Boost
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
Delicious Snare
Further Description Yes/No
Details:
These plants give off a heady scent of summer and sweet fruits ready to drop… but the plants themselves are coated in razor-sharp needles that cause copious bleeding when disturbed…
Uses Discovered:
1) Major Damage Health
2) Paralysis
3) Calm
4) ?
Rarity
Magical
Durability
Charge:
Common
No
100/100
N/A
I read through the notifications for the various ingredients as quickly as I could, dumping the majority back into the pouches, and keeping out only the Mora Telendril, the Ginseng, and on a whim, the Green Flutes.
I checked Tang again, verified that there no emergencies that I could help with, then drew a deep breath and started.
I spread the ingredients out on the table before me. Using a short, sharp blade, I separated the heads from the Green Flutes, then split them lengthways, peeling back the fibrous outer layer to reveal a sickly glowing sap that ran the length of them.
I stripped this out; my basic knowledge of alchemy, combined with the practice I’d had thus far and the little training I’d received, guiding me as I worked.
Once the sap was out and had been squeezed into a vial, I started to chop the root itself, finding that it dried quickly once the liquid was removed, becoming brittle and crumbly. I chopped it as quickly as I could, then set it aside in an alembic, putting it on a low boil with some pure water I summoned, filling a handful of beakers quickly before letting the spell wink out.
While that was boiling, I worked quickly to peel and chop the Mora Telendril. These were short, stubby roots, almost like tentacles, but as solid as sweet potatoes and lined with dozens of tiny holes. I diced them up and dumped them into a vial with a small solution of the glowing liquid from the Flutes, watching as the liquid was absorbed with alacrity.
I muttered notes to myself, removing the previous vials from the alembic and replacing it with the new one, then getting to work on the next one.
The next hour passed at speed, and soon, I
had half a dozen different potions set out before me. Some, most likely the majority, I knew, would be failures, or at least very weak, but that was fine.
I did a little healing on Tang, then set to identifying the potions and memorizing what had worked, and what had resulted in wasted ingredients.
All in all, from the dozen potions I’d managed to create, I’d made real two successes, which were both healing potions. Three new potions, I’d not made this way before, which were variously a potion of Somnolence and two potions of Cure Disease, accompanied by seven utter failures.
