Last Words chapter 33 (Patreon)

Stepping through the door to the real world was…transcendant. Not because I loved it there, or because it felt like home, but just because the other world felt so dangerous all the time. Of course, I was also standing alone in the library building of a college campus in the middle of the day. No one was in the reading room, thankfully, and without blinking, I stepped aside, letting Ron and Cal follow me through.

Denny and Sonia had stayed behind to watch over the camp and the professor, but Ron had decided he wanted to see his wife and son while I was taking care of my business here…and to bring them a little gift.

Reaching into a pocket, I pulled out a small bag. Two fruits, two bloodfire mushrooms. Ten thousand dollars worth of enhancement. “Make sure they’re careful,” I warned him. “Not just using them, but careful what they let on. The mana body won’t change them too much initially, so it should be easy to hide at the start, but easy isn’t the same as automatic.”

He took the bag quietly, intensely. “I know,” he said quietly. “And…thank you. I mean it. Knowing they’re going to start preparing, it means a lot. This is a fighting chance a lot of people won’t have.”

“Not sure how much of a favor it is,” I admitted. “If they do draw attention, they might run afoul of some of the other speakers. And there are a few REALLY scary ones.”

Cal raised a hand cautiously. “Um, not to interrupt your momentous moment, but are we going to be ok to leave here? It IS midday, and we don’t exactly blend in with the co-eds and the frat boys. I mean I might be able to pass for a hunky senior in his prime, but Ron here is very obviously a member of the greatest generation.”

“FIrst of all,” Ron said waspishly. “The only kind of senior you could pass for eats tapioca and gets their kicks at a bingo parlor. SECOND of all, I was born in nineteen seventy two, which makes me fifty three years old. The greatest generation were alive in the FORTIES.”

Cal jerked a thumb at him, shooting me a conspiratorial look. “Old people, am I right? Always trying to compare birth dates. We youngs are too hip for such behavior.”

I snorted out a laugh. “Clearly,” I said dryly. “But to answer your question ‘fellow young’, it won’t be a problem. This is a public access building. Students are the main entrants, but there are also teachers, custodial staff, TAs and a dozen other flavors of random passersby. Not to mention that most people in here are focused on studying, not getting in other people’s business.”

“Nerds,” Cal said derisively. “Who studies for classes?”

“People who aren’t idiots,” said Ron sweetly. “Which includes basically every person who gets into Harvard, and does NOT include you.”

I snorted at their banter. “Meet me back here in six hours. While leaving won’t draw attention, going INTO the reading room and not coming out will be suspicious. Easier to just sneak in through the blindspot after dark.”

Ron shot me a grateful smile, then clapped Cal on the back. “You’re coming to my place. You’ll have dinner with us and you can call and check on your niece.” He smiled at me warmly. “You’re welcome to come too, Gus, my wife has been dying to have you over for dinner. I’m sure she’d love the chance to show off her cooking to my new boss.”

“Appreciate it, Ron,” I said warmly. “But I have some family business to attend to. Maybe next time, ok?”

He nodded and we said our goodbyes, filing out of the library. Ron and Cal went one way, I went the other, and I circled around to the front of campus, pulling out my phone and calling myself a cab. I gave the driver Deke’s address, then settled back in the seat and closed my eyes, deciding to try to get a quick nap in during the drive.

I was awakened by a loud throat clear what felt like second later, and I looked up to see the driver, an older man with a salt and pepper beard, staring impatiently. Chuckling, I sat up and reached into my pocket, pulling out my wallet, which I’d had squirreled away at the camp while I’d been on walkabout at Derkhollow. He took my card, swiped it, and then nodded gravely as I climbed out, heading upstairs to Deke’s.

Reaching into my pack, I pulled out the alchemy primed book. I was almost salivating. Deke was…well, he was kind of a dunce sometimes. My cousin was off in his own little world half the time, and he was absolutely a danger to himself and others when not properly watched.

That said, Deke was GOOD with plants. Not just good. He was a savant. And Alchemy was just…plants. Weird plants. Alien plants. But plants. If anyone in this world was BORN to be an alchemist it was Deke. He might be absent minded and goofy, but he had a mind for plants and biology that bordered on the photographic. He LOVED agriculture of all kinds.

When I knocked on his door, I was surprised that he answered it himself. He blinked at me. “Gus,” he said slowly. “Did I know you were coming over? Jacob, did I know Gus was coming over?”

“Yes, you said he’s not welcome anymore, send him away,” he sniped back. Deke, of course, ignored him entirely.

He shrugged, then turned around and ambled back into the room. “So, what can I do for you cous’?” he asked cheerfully. “Since apparently I didn’t know you were coming over this must be a surprise! I love surprises. Probably. Or possibly I hate them. It’s definitely one of those two things.”

I snorted. “Yeah, it is. I picked up a book I want you to check out. It’s about rare plants. The kind you’ve never seen or heard of before. Stuff like the mushroom I showed you before.”

His eyes, sleepy and bored, sharpened in an instant. He reached for the book, took it, and started leafing through it. Once he had it in hand, he turned and strode off deeper into the apartment, towards the room he’d brought me to before. When we made it inside, he dropped down at a table and started flipping through the pages.

His gaze rolled over the pages, scouring every inch of the text in an instant, seemingly devouring the information. It was…awe inspiring. Seeing Deke like this was rare, because it was a real glimpse at the frighteningly sharp mind he hid under the facade of absent mindedness and levity. He was flipping through the book so fast I would have assumed he wasn’t even registering it if I hadn’t watched his eyes fully track along each page.

Finally, he reached the end of the book and snapped it closed. “Samples,” he said bluntly. When I looked confused, he rolled his eyes. “I need samples. As many as you can get. Do you HAVE any?”

I thought back to the stuff Esther wanted, the Erumpent. I focused on buying some.

Purchase: 1 pound of Erumpent. 10 Delyrans= 500 USD

Huh, that was cheaper than expected. I paid it, letting the tangle of silver furred leaves drop onto the table. I grimaced at them. Apparently buying ‘a pound’ meant literally one pound of Erumpent by weight. I don’t know why I had assumed they would be packaged or something, but I supposed that was on me. I pushed them toward my cousin, who greedily snatched them up.

He picked them up, sniffing them lightly, then licked one. “Erumpent,” he said slowly. “Page two hundred and six, second entry. Densely packed nutritional value.”

Striding over to one of his microscopes, he slipped the plant under it, adjusting the scope. As he did, he snagged a set of tools from a drawer and started to slowly dissect the plant. “Fascinating,” he breathed in wonder. “Fibers are dense, but there’s a tangled capillary system through the matter connected to these hairs. Some kind of nutrient storage? I wonder.”

Pulling out an eye dropper, he sucked up a droplet of condensation from the partly dissected plant, then dripped it on the slide of a second microscope. Then hummed triumphantly. “This is…breathtaking. Some type of hypercondensed nutrient fluid. I had the order backwards. The hairlike protrusions intake materials of…some kind. They’re filtered through the dense fibers and cycled through the capillaries to be further refined. The liquid is like some form of nutrient dense concentrate. I just wonder what exactly they’re condensing.”

Except I knew that. Mana. Or more likely some kind of mana touched water. If the plants were condensing actual liquid mana I suspected they would be much more valuable.

Deke looked back at me sharply. “Wait…did you pull this out of thin air?”

“You JUST noticed that?” I asked him dryly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in some kind of hyper observant scientist state?”

He chuckled in embarrassment. “I might have gotten a bit overexcited. But seriously, how did you do that? And what ARE these? Where did you get them? And where did you get this book? It’s a primer on not just the plants themselves, but on concoction methods for mixing them in a sort of elementary form of herbalism. Nothing too specific, mind, just a few oblique references, but still. This kind of systematic approach represents a rich investment of time and resources.”

“Yeah, there’s a whole field of study devoted to it,” I agreed. “Alchemy. Not like…with metal. Or not just like with metal, because that’s apparently also a thing? Or maybe they don’t call it that. Whatever, the point is that I have access to an entire discipline using unique and strange plants and how to combine them, and I want you to learn it with me.”

“Dope,” he said cheerfully. “When do we start?”

I blinked at him. “You’re not going to make me tell you everything first? You just asked about where I got the plants.”

“Oh yeah, where DID you get it?” he asked with realization. 

I just sighed. “Never change, Deke. I conjured it, basically. I have magic powers, and they let me go to a different world. Want to come see?” His brief flare of lucidity was wearing off, and I didn’t have time to soft sell this. Besides Deke’s capacity for strangeness was fairly high, it was one of his more charming qualities.

“Yeah, sure,” he shrugged. “I’m not busy. We gotta bring Jacob though. If I try to go without him he’s going to worry. I know you guys like to bicker, but if we’re going to be working together a lot you guys need to get along.”

“I can promise grudging civility and minimal glaring,” I said bluntly. “That’s the best you’re getting.”

I’d kind of assumed that he would insist on his shadow following us back over, and I was prepared for it. I wasn’t HAPPY about it, but if that was what I needed to do I’d do it. This would be good for both my cousin and myself. Besides it would give me an excuse to get Jacob under contract, which would eliminate a lot of the risk.

“Close enough,” he said happily. “Now we go make nice. I have tests to run on these plants. It’s going to take me a while.” He shooed me out of the room quickly, pushing me out into his living room and slamming the door behind me.

Turning to Jacob, who was sitting on the couch holding a book he’d partially closed, I raised an eyebrow. “Hey, want to see a magic trick?” His derisive snort as he returned to his book told me everything I needed to know about trying to make nice and how successful it would be. Honestly, there was no pleasing some people.