Fjorgyn: A Rebel Rises

by RJ Castiglione

  Rose and I spent our days in the kitchen brewing potions. I had increased to Journeyman rank 37. She had reached rank 30, spending many sleepless nights preparing ingredients and crafting solutions in a futile effort to catch up to me. By the time we were ready to review invisibility elixirs, we had already filled our quota of healing potions, over 300 of them lining a shelf on the far side of the room.

  I sat in my rickety chair, elbows on the kitchen table. In front of me were the ingredients I needed for the invisibility potion: moon grass, jasmine flower, wisp root, and fresh water collected under a full moon. I scratched the skin under my slave collar. Although the replica wasn't as rough as my original collar, it did irritate my skin. I wanted to remove it, but Clifford warned us all to keep them on at all times, even when sleeping and bathing. He let me remove it when we bathed together. I was glad for that.

  "Now you're going to have to explain these ingredients again. I didn't get it the first time."

  "You mean the first three times," I snapped back. Rose slapped me in the back of the head, warning me not to be smart.

  "Alright. Let's start with the ingredient translation. Most potions and elixirs need a delivery component. Roots are the easiest. Moss can also work in some cases. For invisibility potions, it's important to have an ingredient that can deliver the magical properties of the drink quickly. Ginseng root can't do this. The result would be only partial invisibility."

  I grabbed the wisp root in my hand and began separating the strands of the roots carefully. "Now these roots are also fragile. That's why invisibility is broken whenever you take any damage. Because of their fragile nature, you have to be careful when loosening the root ball. If you break any roots off, the magic will leave the sample. If you use the roots when they're all balled up, the potion won't work."

  "Like combing hair?"

  "Yes. Like combing hair." She whacked me again, accusing me of being fresh.

  Ignoring her protest, I continued with my explanation. "Now the jasmine serves a different purpose compared to a healing potion. With the healing potion, we only cared about the mana in the petals. This time, we need the mana in the stamen and pistil." Rose had a blank expression on her face. "That's the male and female parts of the flower."

  "Flowers don't have a gender."

  "Yes. They do. They have both. At the same time. You're just going to have to trust me on this."

  Even though she didn't believe me, she respected my knowledge.

  "We care about these parts of the flower precisely because they contain the most potent mana. It is too strong for healing potions and would overwhelm the recipe. For invisibility potions, though, it's a perfect fit. This is also an incredibly fragile ingredient. To release the mana, we need to steam it for less than five seconds. Once the mana is released, you have less than a moment to mix it with the other ingredients."

  "And the moon grass?"

  "The moon grass is less sensitive. Just beat it into a pulp, and it will be ready. Because it has absorbed mana from the moon, it is the best ingredient we have to tell the wisp roots what to do. It'll convey properties that will bend light around anyone who consumes the potion. Only, it doesn't have enough mana to say it loudly enough."

  "Hence the moon water."

  I was struck dumb by Rose's unprompted insight. I could only offer her a blank expression. I caught her hand when she tried to hit me. "You got it! You finally got it!" I yelled, standing up to spin her around in a happy dance.

  I let go of her hand after she relaxed. She had a giant grin on her face, pleased that she understood an ingredient before I explained it to her.

  The two of us began to prepare the concoction. We beat the moon grass into a fine paste, carefully massaging the paste into the untangled wisp roots. I had to setup a different cooking system for this. We had one big pot over the fire, the water at a rolling boil. On the surface of the water were two small pots containing steaming moon water. Adding the moon grass and wisp root to the smaller pots, we carefully peeled off the bits of the jasmine we needed and held it over the steam until the small stalks began to sweat. Rose followed my instruction and dumped the jasmine into the mixture.

  I placed my metal spoon in the pot and began rotating the water, trying my best not to break any of the roots. After a minute, foam formed on the top of the water. I carefully spooned the foam into a glass vial I held in my other hand careful not to spill any of the precious fluid in the process.

  The bubbles in the foam began to dissolve, allowing a green liquid to settle at the bottom of the vial. With the foam gone, the flask was about one-eighth full.

  "That's it? Not even an entire potion?"

  I looked at Rose while I put a stopper in the vial. "Yup. We have to do this eight or nine times—At least until we receive a notification. If the vial fills before receiving one, the creation has failed."

  And fail it did. Over and over again. It took us forty batches before our first success.

  You have created (1) Lesser Invisibility Potion. Quality: Good. Class: Rare. Must mix with one drop of blood from the imbiber. When consumed, provides 30 minutes of invisibility. Any damage or healing received breaks invisibility.

  We brewed for a few more hours. I prepared the ingredients while Rose made the potion. She was about to quit for the night, too tired and flustered to do anything else. I convinced her to finish one more vial. On her last batch, she received the notification informing her of her success. The little elf started dancing around the kitchen, shaking her hips to celebrate her victory. I was pleased with my student, not only because she mastered a new potion. She also learned from me the fantastic art of the “happy dance.”

  When she calmed down, she sat in a chair across from me, clutching the vial in her hands.

  "You know, a part of me thought our plan was doomed to fail. Holding this potion in my hand now, I feel we can do it." Her attitude grew sullen. "When the soldiers came that night, I thought our lives were over. I imagined a life where our children and grandchildren were resigned to servitude." She examined the vessel, the cloudy liquid coating the sides of the glass.

  "And now we have a chance to be free again. Thanks to you, little elf. What you have accomplished here is unbelievable. I first saw you when you were level 2. I saw too much of you for my liking. I thought you were wretched." She set the vial down on the table and grabbed my hand, leaning forward to look into my eyes.

  "But you went out of your way to help us when we were at our lowest point. You've made us stronger and better than we were before. My daughter trusts you. My husband has sworn to follow you the rest of his days. He even told me you promised to make him a farmer again! Is there no end to your compassion and kindness?"

  She hushed me before I could answer.

  "I know I was slow to like you. It's always been particularly challenging for me to make friends with other elves after the way my village treated me. I found love. And because of who I found it with, I was exiled. But you're different than other elves."

  She sighed. She was trying to get the right words out but was rambling.

  "What I'm trying to say is that I trust you, my young friend. I believe in you. Only time will reveal whether my faith is justified. If we all get out of here alive, you may count me among your allies."

  Congratulations! Your disposition with Rose Thatcher has increased from Friendly to Trusted.

  "I have no doubt that we're all going to get out of here." Rose and I both turned towards the source of the voice at the entrance to the kitchen. It was Nila Hislop. "But we have a problem."

  Clifford was standing in the doorway behind her. He stared at me with a tinge of stress in his eyes, tension lines casting shadows across his forehead. The two of them had just returned from the palace where, until recently, they had spent most of their days. They were wearing the forest green cassocks unique to learned scholars, trimmed with gold thread and a golden sash. We followed them upstairs to Clifford's study at their request. Cilden and the othe
rs were waiting for us there, whispering quietly among themselves.

  Normally, the room had a comfortable lounge area where I had spent a few evenings reading one of the thousands of books Clifford had collected over the course of his life. Instead of sofas and end tables, the area was stripped bare save a round table. Two maps were pinned to the surface of the table. A map of Elatha was on the left with various markers and notes penned onto it, dictating the location and headcount of slaves planning an escape. It also had individual paths to be taken to get the slaves out of the inner ring of the city with minimal notice.

  The second map was a regional one. I recognized the text above a red marker. It was the area around the ruins Clifford planned for our new home.

  My friend and master stood by my side. I felt his body press up against mine as we both looked on the maps Nila had procured. She stood opposite us chewing on her lip, trying to come up with the right words to say.

  The tension in the room was so thick you could drown in it. I was about to speak up and ask a question when Nila finally broke the silence.

  "Our little plan hasn't gone unnoticed," she said, her eyes fixed on the map of Elatha below. "Apparently, some guards have picked up on an average level increase among the slave population. We're only lucky that they haven't decided to go door to door to take a census. If they did, we wouldn't be here now."

  She sat down in a nearby chair, having lost all the color in her face. She nodded to Clifford to continue.

  "We've just come from a council meeting at the palace. While the guards want to perform this census, enough of us were able to lodge a complaint, suggesting that the invasion of our privacy was a high cost to pay for an unverified suspicion."

  He left my side and walked over to the entrance of his balcony, looking out at the city below.

  "They did, however, decide on one course of action. The Protectorate is going to ask the Maintainers to increase the strength of the spell. When complete, the spell will deal triple the amount of damage instead of double."

  A wave of silence overwhelmed the room again. Cilden was holding Rose in her arms, the elf woman overwhelmed at the thought of exposing her children to such a risk.

  I coughed a bit in shock. I knew what this meant. Even if we pooled all of our resources together, it would be almost impossible to get the core group of us through the barrier alive. No one wanted to break the silence. It was my plan. I had to.

  "What does this mean?" Nila and Clifford both ignored me, unsure of how to answer my question.

  "What I mean is... how is this done? How do they make the barrier more efficient? And why haven't they done it already if it's so easy?"

  "It's not easy," Nila said. "It requires all maintainers at once. Even then, they need to draw from an immense source of mana to accomplish it. It's not like flipping a switch. The spell to amplify the barrier takes hours to complete."

  I mulled over her response with great care.

  "This is perfect," I said. I heard a few whispers from the others in the room. Clifford knew the way my mind worked, however. The corners of his mouth upturned. He motioned for me to continue.

  "My guess is that they're going to need all of the masters present to do this. They have to get the mana from somewhere, right? No group of slaves is going to offer enough to fuel the spell when compared to the collective mana of the masters. Right?"

  Nila nodded.

  "Which means that for a few hours on the night of the casting, slaves will be left unattended. And the guards will be too distracted at the palace to notice the movement of a few hundred, invisible slaves!"

  "What you're suggesting is risky. We'll be moving hundreds of people through a barrier that could amplify at any point. Half of you could be trapped inside before escaping."

  I dismissed her complaints with a wave of my hand. Her brow furrowed at the gesture, the master in her taking over for a brief moment.

  "We'll just have to start earlier. And without as many invisibility potions. When are they planning on doing this?"

  "One week," Clifford said. He had now returned to my side as I began moving markers around on the map.

  "So here is what we'll do." The entire group was standing over the table listening to my new plan. When I reviewed it, I noticed that Clifford and Cilden listened earnestly and thoroughly, trusting every word I was saying. The others were more skeptical. I was able to convince them in the end.

  Congratulations! Your rank in Leadership has increased to 10. You are now able to form raid groups consisting of 25 members. Improve this skill further to gain additional perks and rewards.

  Chapter 14

  "I have a surprise for you," Clifford said to me from one room over. I woke up on the morning of our great escape in a zombie-like daze, unable to sleep well the night before. My heart was racing all night as I pictured every possible avenue for failure in my head. I stepped through the plan detail by detail, shaking Clifford awake every time I hit a significant doubt or roadblock.

  Vindur had long since abandoned me, choosing to sleep on the ground in front of the fireplace instead.

  At 5 AM, Clifford ordered me out of bed. I took the opportunity to draw a bath, hoping that the warm water and steam would calm me down. I must have fallen asleep in the tub. His voice startled me awake, causing me to thrash around in the water wondering where I was.

  Lifting myself out of the tub was agonizing. Crisp air assaulted my body. My nipples became erect in response to the cold. I looked around for a towel, but there was none. The escape plan required all of our attention in the last week. Menial tasks like laundry and cleaning and cooking served no purpose now.

  Walking back into the bedroom, I was dripping on the floor. I looked like a wet dog. My silver hair matted against my head, cold streams of water running down my chest and back. I shivered like a child getting out of a pool.

  "Unless you're going to tell me that they screwed up and the barrier vanished, I've no interest in your surprises. Your last big surprise killed me, remember?"

  He tossed me a damp towel that he had used the night before. It was mostly ineffective but managed to soak up most of the remaining water on my body. Casting the towel over my shoulder, I stumbled over to the other side of the room to see what Clifford was arranging on the table. When I got closer, he draped his arm around me. His hand settled on my exposed backside. The warmth of his torso was enough to scare away my shivers.

  On the table in front of me, Clifford had neatly laid out a new set of clothing and armor. I couldn't say anything. I was stricken with silence, my mouth hanging open in shock.

  "Things are going to be dangerous tonight. I don't want you to have to worry about the barrier or your ability to heal."

  "It's too much," I mumbled to him, feeling more like a house boy with him as my sugar daddy.

  "No, it's not. You're risking everything for your friends. That's too much." He pulled me closer to him. I could tell he was nervous about the risk we were all going to take tonight. "Now. Put it on. Unless you're going to do this naked, which is more likely to end up in your getting arrested before you even reach the barrier."

  Staff of Druid's Healing. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Epic. Damage: 25-31 DPS. Can be broken by stronger weapons. Stats: +60 MP, +3% increase to healing and damage spells.

  Tailored Scholar's Hooded-Shirt. Quality: Professional. Class: Uncommon. Armor: Light(5). +5MP. +20% to stealth when wearing the hood. Can be destroyed by weapons.

  Nurturer's Leather Jerkin. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Rare. Armor: Light(20). Stats: +20 MP, +20 HP, +2% increase to healing and damage spells. Set: 1 of 4

  Nurturer's Leather Pants. Quality: Professional. Class: Rare. Armor: Light(15). Stats: +20 MP, +20HP, +2% increase to healing and damage spells. Set: 2 of 4

  Nurturer's Leather boots. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Rare. Armor: Light(10). Stats: +20% movement speed, +10HP. Set: 3 of 4

  Nurturer's Leather Bracers. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Rare. Armor: Light(10). Stats: +15
HP Set: 4 of 4

  Mana-Dowsed Ring of Protection. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Epic. +35MP. Trigger to cast a protective barrier over a target that mitigates 25% of incoming damage for 30 seconds. Charges: 5/5. This item gains one charge per day until full.

  Ring of Spell Storage. Quality: Exquisite. Class: Epic. Stores one spell for later use. This ring can only be filled once per day.

  I placed my old armor and staff into my inventory. It was now half full. I could feel the weight of the added items pull on my shoulder, although even at maximum capacity my inventory would not be substantial enough to slow me down.

  Clifford helped me put on my clothes and items. The green leather pants were the first. Although usually opposed to leather pants, these felt more like cotton. They hugged my body, stretching with me. The pants were not constricting and extended with ease when I moved.

  The scholar's shirt was next. It was a simple, black v-neck shirt that cut off at the shoulders. I wasn't used to wearing something that left my arms exposed, but I saw the advantage it offered for spell casting and wielding a staff. The shirt also had a hood that could be worn to activate additional effects.

  The brown leather jerkin wore like a glove, bending with my torso without catching or pulling. It was stitched together with a shining silver-green thread. The vest had green straps and jade buttons.

  The green leather bracers were also soft and comfortable. I'm not sure how Clifford managed it. The bracers seemed to settle on my skin. They didn't shift or slide when I swung my arms.