The Way Ahead

Edwin nearly jumped as he spun to face the demanding voice, turning away from the random patch of wall he was staring past to instead come face-to-face with a figure clad in black robes.

Catabolic Alchemist

Oh hey! He had just been thinking about how he wanted to find another alchemist. That was kind of convenient. Less so was the bloody knife the alchemist was holding, but hey, you couldn’t have everything. Hopefully this wouldn’t devolve too quickly….

“Well?”

Edwin blanked, and he just sort of stared at the alchemist hopelessly, “Uhhhhh.”

“Wha’ are you doing here- nah, wait, are you that Alchemist who Minseven tried to drag back here in a bag? Never mind that, the boy’s an idiot. How did you get in, anyway? The window? Kind of impressive, I’ll say. No’ many people get Climbing. Was tha your Exile?”

Edwin still struggled processing what was going on, “Say that again?”

“I’ve jus’ been wanting a peer to talk to for so long! Come on! Lemme show you my work!” the black-robed figure, who, given the speckles of gray in his goatee, had to have been the oldest human Edwin had yet seen, reached out to grab Edwin’s arm before realizing that he was holding a sizable blade in that hand. After pausing for a moment, though, he made it vanish with a flick of his wrist and reached out again.

Edwin drew back from the attempted touch, letting his hand rest next to the dagger on his belt, “Please don’t.”

“Oh, stop being such a baby. I won’ hurt ya. Come on!” the Alchemist grabbed Edwin’s forearm, but Edwin found that he was actually able to pull away fairly easily, much to his surprise, “Will you just come along? Lots ta see, lots ta see!” he insisted

“Wait!”

The alchemist spun around to look at Edwin, “Yeah?”

“I… broke in here, you realize that, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And you’re just… okay with that?”

“Ahhh, well, you know, my guys started it, it’s not that secure, and what’s a little burglary between friends anyway? Do you know how long I’ve wanted someone to talk to about my work? Ages! Now let’s go!”

It… probably wouldn’t hurt, right? At the very least, he might be able to use this to get a lay of the land once things went south. So, while Edwin made sure to keep his dagger close to hand, he still followed the alchemist as he ventured into the next room over, which turned out to be some kind of kitchen. A few dried meats hung from the ceiling, and a pot boiled on the countertop, though Edwin couldn’t see its contents. The far wall held a doorway, opening out to the balcony Edwin had seen the sentry snoozing on, and off to the other side of the kitchen, a staircase ascended along the side of the curved wall, right next to another staircase descending through the floor. No handrails, which was… iffy, and the stairs didn’t look quite solid enough to support his weight, but the alchemist bounded up them without hesitation, and when a bit of testing didn’t snap the wooden plank off under Edwin’s weight, he hesitantly followed the enthusiastic man up.

Seriously, was Edwin just an extrovert magnet or something?

“You coming?”

“In a minute! These stairs are a bit…”

“Ah! Right, right. Here, I can give you a hand!” the stairs at the top began to creak under the weight of the man.

“That’s… perfectly fine! I can handle myself alright! There’s no need for you to come down.”

“If you’re sure! Oh man, this is such a mess, I need to…” the voice faded away as it was drowned out by clattering, rustling, and in one instance shattering, “Damn. I’ll actually have to clean that up. Oh, you made it up! Sorry about the mess, I wasn’t expecting anyone to ever see my lab.”

The alchemist was standing over a broken pottery jar, surrounded by its former contents, a yellowish salt. Edwin only spared a few glances for that particular mishap while the man moved to start sweeping up the powder, as his gaze was drawn more to the countless fascinating things everywhere else in the room. A glass jar held the slowly-beating disembodied heart of some animal, another jar held a ton of different eyeballs, some twitching of their own accord, a third a golden syrup sloshing around with no apparent driving force. The more Edwin looked, the more fascinating things he saw. A pile of color-changing glasslike beads; a frog with transparent skin hopping around under a bell jar, even an ant farm with ants glowing a bright blue.

“Well? What do you think? Pretty impressive, yeah?”

“Yeah… wow. I’ve never seen a lab like this before. Do you do… biological alchemy?”

“Alchemy Vitae! I’m hoping for the Class, myself, but it keeps just missing it every time I evolve. The Grimoire says I need the Vital Alchemist path, but I just can’ quite get it to work. Slimes don’t count, an’ I can’t get anything more complex to actually formalize pas’ the Vels’arrin stage. I always mess up with the Folthstar catalyst, though I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.”

“How do you have all this stuff, anyway? And why are you all the way out here? Not in a city or something?” Edwin felt like he was in a real-life hidden picture game, there were just so many cool things! Was that a circulatory system embedded in some kind of gel? It looked like it, given that pool of blood suspended in the center which was beating like a heart…

“-was done, I made most of the stuff myself! What do you think? Do you approve?” he looked at Edwin expectantly. Aww. He wanted validation. Edwin could relate, Impostor Syndrome was real.

“Yeah, yeah. Wow. I’m impressed at…” Edwin tried to think of some platitude he could give. Compliment people. That way they wouldn’t notice you got distracted by something, “Your methods. I don’t know if I could do it myself, I just don’t know that I’d be capable of even half what this stuff takes.”

“Oh, I don’ know, you certainly have the capabilities, I’m sure!”

“I mean, I have Alchemy, but I just don’t have enough practice with this sort of thing to accomplish half of what you’ve done here.”

“It’s just a matter of mindset! Once you…”

Edwin kept listening, but his attention was pulled away for just a few moments as he saw a distillery setup with two spouts and started wondering about how that might work- could you magically make one substance go down one side, and another the second way? That would be so cool! Unfortunately, once he realized that he was no longer processing what the alchemist was saying, he had missed the bulk of whatever he was actually saying.

“…out of the way, and the fact you don’t mind what it takes, you’re good to go!”

“Sorry, could you repeat that? I got distracted. There’s so much cool stuff in here!”

“Ah, it’s fine. I get it. You’ll do fine. Stay here and work with me for a bit! I’m a touch low on fresh supplies, but my backups will do nicely before I can restock, you catch my meaning?” he winked, which was odd, but whatever.

Edwin just gave a noncommittal shrug in response, “Sure?”

“Excellent! You can help once it comes time. So, what kind of alchemy do you focus on?”

Well, fair’s fair and all that. If he was going to be getting some kind of instruction, maybe even a place to stay for a few days, the least he could do would be to help out when creating new ingredients. Heck, that would be its own reward in some ways! Right, what kind of alchemy he used. Well, fellow scientists and all, no harm in that bit of info, “I managed to get the Mana Infusion skill, and so I’ve been using that. Charge up some chemicals and go from there. I’ve made some cool stuff, though I’ve never been able to work with already-magical materials. But I’m not sure that I want to stick around for more than a day or two? I am kind of on the run from some guys that wanted to steal my creations from me.” It wasn’t strictly true, but it was close enough.

“Empire?”

Edwin shook his head, “Blackstone dwarves.”

“Huh. Never heard of ‘em.”

“So what brought you out here, anyway? Also, I don’t think we ever really introduced ourselves. I’m Edwin.”

“Niall. Nice to meet ya, Edwin,” he dropped down into a high-backed chair, looking at the ceiling, “Well, you know how i’ is. I’s the same story everyone in our line of work’s got. As a kid, people were talking, worried about me when I started walking so late- took me until I was almost a year old, and by that point people were swearing that I must have something wrong with me. Still haven’t managed to get the Skill, nor any other Physical.” He kicked at a table leg in frustration, “You know the pain, righ’? Everyone knowin’ your entire life tha yer different, solely because of something you got no say in?”

Edwin could, though it wasn’t quite the same for him. Still, he nodded and let Niall carry on.

“Course, I couldn’t keep up with any o’ the kids, and it became obvious what my crippling was when I was ten and still hadn’t gotten Walking as an option. I could walk just fine! It was just my stamina that was the problem. I didn’t need the skill, not really. But you know how it works, I don’t need to tell you that. Well, because nobody wanted a boy with a broken Skillset, I ended up, well, ya know,” he mimed a kick from where he was sitting, “So, tossed ou’ of my home, had to figure out wha’ to do with my life, stripped of Citizenhood, an’ with no hope of getting a License, had to avoid settlements, all that stuff. Least I didn’t have to deal with the Management, so I could get other Skills.”

There was anger there, Edwin was sure. However, it was buried under layers and layers of quiet resentment and even resignation, so it wasn’t too obvious.

“Had to survive through a few bandit camps, and doing it without a Physical wasn’ easy, but I managed. Being small and quiet helped. Got First Aid, Cooking, all the fun Skills.” He shrugged, “Cooking went to Alchemy once I found the Grimoire, then Life Alchemy. First Aid became Surgery then Anatomy, so I managed to make myself too useful to throw out for them at least. Never a single Physical or Weapon, though. Took me a few years, but I met Minione. He kept me alive for years after I saved his life. Not the brightest, you know? None of the lads downstairs are. Terrible conversation partners. Proud of ‘em, though. They do their jobs and keep me alive. Then I get to do my work in peace. But now you’re here! An’ in this amazing tower! It’s the perfect location, found it an’ it was clearly abandoned for years, mostly Unobtrusive, and the location is phenomenal!”

“Wait, why weren’t you able to get a License? Wouldn’t that have helped in some way? Let you live closer to town or something?”

“Well, what do you think? Beyond the fact it doesn’t matter if you’re licensed, nobody wants you anyway, the wait times are atrocious, you basically need to bribe the bureaucracy to get them to work, with far more money than anyone has at ten, the application process takes weeks, and don’t even get me started on that Enforcer.”

“Tara?”

“Who’s Tara?”

“The… enforcer?”

“Really? Must be new. In my day, it was a really cranky old Imperial Inquisitor, named... named… ah, doesn’t matter. He hated anyone that didn’ have a spotless record, and his Wanted List musta been in the hundreds! Someone like me, not following the Basics? Oh man, first time he visited my village he about near threw me straight through the wall of my home. I was six! All cause I didn’t bow quite deep enough to him behind his back, and was missing Walking ‘worthless already, might as well deal with him before he’s a problem.’ I still remember that, all these years later. I hated that man. But you say he’s gone? Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.” He took a deep breath, “My apologies. Thinking about him, even all this time later… really boils my blood.” He cracked a smile at that, grinning at some unseen joke, “Did that answer your question? I quite forgot what it was you had asked!”

“Yeah, I… guess it does. Enough, at least?”

“So, you up to stay around for a little while? I can teach you a ton o’ stuff! Get you going on the right foot.”

“For a… few days, I guess. Could I see that Grimoire you’ve mentioned a couple of times?”

“Certainly! Where are my manners?” Niall sprang up from his chair and began rummaging around through a pile of books on one of the tables near the wall. After a few moments, he pulled out a black-covered tome and dropped it on a bit of empty space on the table nearest Edwin, where it thudded down “Here you are! The informan’ for everything I’ve ever accomplished! The Zosiman Grimoire!”

Edwin ran his fingers over the charred leather. It felt ancient, yet new at the same time. It was well-worn and covered in small burns and discolorations on the patterned scales of the black leather. Bold, golden lettering glittered in the center, wrapped around a hole where it looked like a jewel once sat, proudly declaring its name.

The Zosiman Grimoire- Fourth Edition

Complete Secrets of the Alchymic Arts

Finally. It was time to learn what his class was supposed to do.