Brewing Bad Ch. 24-30 (Patreon)

Ch. 24 - Goblin Hunting

Hura'gh and Lucas left early the next morning, leaving the other two behind to try to get the still running. It was producing alcohol that was good enough for industrial purposes, but Kar’gandin stubbornly insisted he could make it better. Lucas had tried to explain to him that the condenser loop needed to be longer, but the dwarf refused in almost the same language Brog had, which made Lucas smile. 

“This is the way it's always been done and the way it always will be!” he insisted. 

Lucas made a mental note to see what he could do to chill that reservoir a little more. That was, after all, the reason the “classic dwarven design” was so obviously underperforming in the warm Lordanin summer: deep waters were colder, and the dwarves had little intention of changing their designs to match the surface conditions. 

It didn’t matter, he decided as he tromped through the woods with his half-orc companion. He was pretty sure he had a potion of chilling draught in his notes, and hopefully, a few drops of that would resolve the issue. 

“Hmmm - I would have thought there’d be more of the little buggers out this early,” Lucas said finally when they’d been walking in circles for what felt like an hour. 

“Goblins fear me, as they should. All men should be afraid of the warriors of the open plains,” Hura'gh said without a hint of irony. 

Lucas let the half-orc go on like this for a while because he obviously enjoyed it while he focused on any sign that they were about to be ambushed. However, even after another ten minutes of letting Hura'gh lecture him on the superiority of the orc khanate, Lucas still hadn’t seen a single sign of Greenskins. 

Is it that stink bomb I set off the other day? He wondered as he sniffed himself experimentally. 

Normally, one didn’t have to go out of their way to look for goblins in the Greenwood; they just had to make enough noise to attract their attention. That had always been Lucas’s experience, but then he’d never come here with a hulking seven-foot-tall bodyguard. 

Lucas was just pondering whether he should come back by himself or with Adin another day when Hura'gh slapped him on the back hard enough to stagger him as he exclaimed, “You see, that is the only reason we do not already control the West. Because long ago, the humans stole our magic and perverted it to break tribal control of the whole of the realm!”

“I’m less concerned with who invented wizards and more concerned with finding some goblins to slice and dice,” Lucas answered, regaining his balance. “I got shit to do and don't want to be out here all day, man.”

The truth was that Lucas hated fighting goblins, but in this strange fantasy world he found himself in, it was a fact of life. In all his years of dealing back on Earth, he’d never killed anyone, and though people here and there had died because of his actions, none of that was on his conscience. Goblins, though, were just close enough to creepy looking horror movie children that he felt a little bad doing it. 

That wouldn’t stop him, of course. Out here, it was the law of the jungle - eat or be eaten and all that, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel a little like a murderer every time he cut one of the little bastards down. 

“We will find them,” Hura'gh said seriously. “An orc warrior always finds his prey.”

“Hey, no offense, man,” Lucas said, suppressing his sigh of exasperation, “But if you’re so big on the plains and the hunting and all that… why are you breaking legs in Lordanin?”

“Why am I… what are you implying, little man,” the half-orc asked, glowering at him. “Do you think I can’t make my own way away from the city?”

You said it, not me. Those were the words that he very nearly said, but he wasn’t sure if Hura'gh would have killed him by accident when he slapped the shit out of him or whether it would have been on purpose. So, instead, he answered, “That’s not what I meant at all, man, chill out. I’m just saying it sounds like you’d be happier out there, you know? Fresh air and the blood of your enemies instead of digging ditches and chopping trees.”

“My father’s people can be… unforgiving,” Hura'gh answered after a moment of genuine introspection. “I have fought no wars and raided no villages. I don’t even have a proper mount. They would not accept me as a warrior without some kind of honor or renown. It is a difficult burden for the orcs and half-orcs that dwell among the human cities to bear.”

There was also the little fact that a full-blooded orc was a foot taller and nearly a foot wider than the already imposing Hura'gh. Lucas had never had the misfortune to cross paths with one, but they were a force to be reckoned with. Lucas didn’t say any of that for obvious reasons. Instead, he just shrugged and said, “Yeah, I hear those land dragons are really something, aren’t they?”

“They are a glory to behold,” Hura'gh agreed heartily, slapping Lucas on the back again as they continued deeper into the woods. “They’re worth fifty warriors on foot or ten armored knights ahorse, and that does not include the orc riding them!”

This part Lucas actually listened to, because he found it interesting. He’d known that orcs were a nomadic people, and that they rode the giant scaled lizards that had more in common with an Escalade than a horse. Hell, they were like the evil love child of an alligator and a tank, but that didn’t make them true dragons. 

This world had a lot of false dragons. The real deal were supposed to be giant fire-breathing beasts, just like all the stories said, but there were other kinds too. The orcish land dragons, wyverns, and drakes, there were even—

Lucas’s attention was suddenly ripped away from Hura'gh’s words, and even his own thoughts by the sight of a spiderweb not so far in the distance. He looked around, and suddenly found that there quite a few that he hadn’t noticed until now, even as his half-orc companion kept droning on about how fierce land dragons were. 

Based on the pattern of the webs, Lucas had been expecting a greater orb weaver or something to attack them, not that he knew much about different types of spiders. It was only when he saw the 8 red eyes appear like orbs that he realized he was wrong. 

“Ummm Hura'gh, buddy… we’ve got—” Lucas started to say, pointing, even as he tapped the orc on the shoulder. Save for the eyes, the threat was invisible, but Lucas knew that wouldn’t last for long. 

It was only when the spider leaped from where it had been perched in the tree for the first time and lashed out at them that its hairy body faded into existence. Intellectually, Lucas knew that it wasn’t illusion magic or anything like that. Instead, it was more like an octopus with powerful natural camouflage. 

The short, stubby hairs that covered the abdomen and thorax of a stalking spinner could each be tuned to the color of its choice. As a result, it could blend almost anywhere until it was in a position to ambush its prey with its paralytic venom. 

It had apparently decided that was going to be Lucas, but even as it faded into existence predator-style, he dove out of the way and landed with his daggers drawn. Unfortunately, Hura'gh wasn’t so lucky. 

“These webs are old,” he said, turning around just in time to get a face full of spider. “Something already took care of this, so we can Hurrkk—”

The spider the size of an easy chair smashed into the half-orc, knocking him to the ground instead of Lucas, and knocking the air from his lungs. Even as Lucas got up and ran to help him, the two were already locked in a mortal struggle. 

The orc had his hands on the upper park of its two branch like forelegs, and was using all his strength to hold it off of him, just far enough to keep out of reach of its fangs as it snapped at Hura'gh again and again.

“Get the hell off him!” Lucas roared, running at the thing and burying both blades in its body. 

The arachnid let out a high, keening screech of pain as the steel slipped eight inches into its thorax and left long, gooey wounds where they ripped free. Now, it was thrashing again, but this time it was struggling to break free of the half-orc’s grip to face its attacker. 

That was impossible, though. With a quick look at Lucas and a grunt of determination, he gripped the thing's legs even tighter in his hands and began squeezing so hard that Lucas could hear the chitin starting to crack. 

Lucas didn’t hesitate. If the thing couldn’t turn to face him, he charged up the abdomen and stabbed it over and over again. As he did so, he cursed his short blades. 

If I had a sword, this monster would be dead by now! He berated himself, annoyed he hadn’t been better prepared for this. 

Another part of him said that he should have poisoned his blades before they’d gone out, but he ignored it. Instead, he focused on doing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible, resulting in dark ichor splattering across both of them. 

Still, despite more violence than he’d ever unleashed in his life, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until Hura'gh literally snapped the thing’s stiff right leg off and used the four-foot-long appendage like a spear and forced the jagged thing right down the throat of the giant beast. 

“Take this, Monster!” the half-orc roared as he silenced the stalking spinner forever. 

It was only when the thing collapsed to the ground that Lucas saw that he’d been bitten at least twice and that red blood was mixed with green ichor across his wounded chest. 

“Fuck, man,” Lucas said as he fumbled in his bag for a bandage or a healing potion. “I didn’t know it got you.”

“It is only a scratch,” Hura'gh said, refusing aid even as he looked at the puncture wounds. “I do feel a little light-headed, though.”

“No shit,” Lucas blurted out. “These things have serious poison. We need to get you back like asap!”

“We are not returning until we have what we need,” the half-orc said with a shake of his head. “I will not allow my mission to end in failure.”

“If you pass out in the middle of nowhere, then that’s still—” Lucas started to say. 

“I will not pass out. This spider did not beat me!” the half-orc roared. “We will feast on goblin livers, and only then shall we return triumphant.”

“Okay, fine, you win,” Lucas said, backing slowly away, muttering “your funeral,” under his breath. 

They’d been out for hours, and truthfully, he didn’t like the idea of being out here for hours more. With that much poison in the half-orc’s veins and no antidote in sight, he wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do. Then his eyes fell upon the cocoons already decorating the damaged greater orb weaver web. 

Noting the size, he quickly decided that those had to be dwarves, children, or goblins. While he hoped it wasn’t the first two, a couple goblins would be a godsend. 

The good news was that they were all goblins, but the bad news was that most of them had already been sucked dry and only green, desiccated goblin jerky remained. Eventually, Lucas found two that squirmed weakly when he opened up their silk prisons, and he quickly beheaded them before harvesting their black livers and the dark purple gallbladders that were attached to them. 

It was disgusting work but necessary, and when it was done, and he’d put the organs in the pot he’d been carrying all afternoon just for this purpose, all he wanted to do was take a shower, but getting clean would have to wait until he’d done the truly nasty part and extracted the bile.

Ch. 25 - An Emergency Potion

Despite Lucas’s best efforts, Hura’gh refused to be rushed, and by the time they reached the edge of the Greenwood, the half-orc’s movements had stiffened noticeably. “You sure you’re going to be okay?” Lucas asked. 

Hura’gh merely grunted. With great difficulty, he remounted his horse, and when he was in the saddle, he said, “I told you that you should have stayed for those venom glands! You could have made something to sell with them.”

“Whatever man,” Lucas answered with a shrug. “We got what we came for, now let’s go home.”

Lucas had no doubt that was true, but he was also pretty sure that if he’d taken any longer, the paralytic poison running through his companion's veins would have frozen him solid. If that happened, there was no way that Lucas was moving the man without tying a rope to him and dragging him back to their hideout. 

Not that things were much better now that he was on his horse. Hura’gh was so big that he made his stolen warhorse look like a pony. As they rode back to the Perin’s land, the man began to stiffen more and more. First her lost control of his hands, then his arms. 

That was when he let Lucas pour a healing potion down his throat, but the red potion did little besides close the wounds that had already been scabbing over. It didn’t stop the half-orc’s legs from going numb or from making Hura’gh slur his words. When that happened, Lucas took the reins and led the horse back while his nearly paralyzed companion complained. 

“Why dihd yhou nhot bring the aunty-venom with you ihnto a fhorsst fhilled with sphiderss Lhucasss…” he complained. 

Because you said you would have said, ‘the warriors of the plains are too strong for such things!’ he screamed for a moment in his head before he shrugged and said, “We’ll get you fixed up in no time; we’re almost back.”

The truth was that he’d completely forgotten. He’d known there were spiders in there, of course, but he didn’t think they’d end up fighting one. Honestly, he’d never personally seen anything worse than a goblin that close to the city. Still, he promised himself that next time, he would bring everything they were likely to need instead of everything he was sure he was going to use. 

When he got back to the cider house, Lucas pulled Hura’gh’s horse next to a pile of hay and then pushed the half-orc off his frozen perch on the saddle into the relatively soft landing it provided. “Sorry about that, man,” he said as he quickly checked for a heartbeat and found that the warrior’s heart was still beating strongly despite everything that had happened. 

After that, he rushed inside to grab one of the antidotes he’d made the day before only to find they were all gone. “Where did you put the green ones?” he yelled at Adin as he came up empty. 

“The yellow-green ones are in that crate there, and the bright-green ones are in the cider barrel out back,” he answered helpfully. He opened his mouth again, and Lucas was sure that he was going to ask about how his hunt for blue ingredients went, but instead of listening to the Viscount ask for a fix in the guise of pleasantries one more time, Lucas cut him off. 

“No, not those. The green-brown ones that sort of looked like muddy water,” Lucas sighed. “Hura’gh needs some antivenom like… now.”

“The uhh…” Adin paused. “Our bearded friend took those in the shipment he was taking to his cousin’s emporium today…”

“God damn it,” Lucas cursed, kicking a stool halfway across the room. “Wait - Kar’gandin is going alone into Lordanin? He’s not sending a servant? What about the wanted posters?”

“He said he had his ways and—” Adin started to answer, but Lucas ignored him and stormed over to a drawer full of ingredients to see what he could make that might be able to help the half-orc out. 

His ways. Lucas thought in exasperation. We all agreed that was a bad idea, but he Kar’gandin just has to do things his way, doesn’t he!?

He didn’t have much left to be honest. He’d used most of the ingredients they’d gathered over the last few days on a big batch of potions, and other than the stockpile of herbs that he’d set aside to make blue, he was kind of tapped out. 

Lucas pushed various mushrooms aside, and dug through one of his drying jars, and he came up with enough silver leaf and arrow root to do the job, mostly, but looking at the stats, he decided that probably wasn’t going to be enough to handle a double shot of a Stalking Spinner. 

Silver Leaf: End 1, heal 1, poison -2

Arrow Root: poison - 3, makes any potion containing it twice as bitter. 

“Hey, Adin, stop what you’re doing and go out and find me some broom thistle leaves or gold heather blossoms,” Lucas ordered as he dug out his mortar and pestle and threw the herbs he’d already gathered inside it before he moved to the small stove across the way from his workbench and started to pump air into the dying coals.

“The what now?” Adin asked. 

“Come man, you’ve gathered both of those with me before,” Lucas said, not bothering to look up at him. “I need the spiny leaves of the puffy yellow thistles or the bright yellow flowers of that weed I showed you. They’re in basically every field; you just have to look.”

“So did you want—” Adin asked, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Lucas whirled around. 

“Right fucking now, man!” Lucas yelled. “Hura’gh’s heart is going to stop if you don’t get a move on!”

That at least got him moving, and he ran off to the field without so much as a knife or a basket to find what Lucas needed. He took his sweet time, too. While he was gone, Lucas crushed the herbs he had, boiled some water, and did everything he could. He was honestly tempted to feed this mixture to the big lug, but deep down, he knew that -3 poison wouldn’t be enough to counteract the toxins coursing through Hura’gh’s veins, though. 

So he waited, and when Adin returned with a handful of crap, Lucas threw it on the rough wood counter and started throwing out everything he didn’t need. Yellow moth weed? Pass. Thorny worm tongue? Poisonous. Long plains grass? Useless.

Lucas rolled his eyes. Adin really has no eye for this, he thought to himself. When Lucas had finally reduced the pile of crap down to the herbs he actually wanted, he paused. 

Broom Thistle Leaf: Int 1, poison -2

Golden Heather Blossom: Str 1, poison -2

Would just the thistle be enough, he wondered. -7 poison is a hell of a lot of antivenom, but -9 would be that much better. There’s always the risk of an adverse reaction, though…

Tucked away in Lucas’s missing notes were recipes he’d developed and ingredients worth remembering, but more than that, he’d kept lists of all the ingredients that didn’t belong together. Some of them were as mild as nausea or foul taste, but others could produce bizarre and even dangerous results. 

The odds of that happening with any given combination of herbs was rare, of course, but the more ingredients he added to a given potion, the more likely it was that one or two of them wouldn’t like each other. Lucas had never been able to predict quite why that was. Theoretically there were synergistic combinations too, but he’d only found a few of those. They seemed to be a lot rarer than an adverse reaction. 

“Fuck it,” he muttered, throwing both of them in the mortar and pestle and getting to work. 

Two minutes later, he had all four bubbling happily away in the water as he boiled down the brown residue and then set it aside to cool in a flask. 

Bitter potion of Purity (1 dose): moderate purge poison, +1 to stats, bitter

As soon as it was cool enough to touch the vial, Lucas corked it, dunked the hot vial in a pot of cold water, and then whirled around. That was when disaster almost befell him. He knew where Adin was. He’d seen the Viscount out of the corner of his eye, but as he whirled around to take the potion to the half-orc, he ran right into the man’s sister. 

“Alright, lets—” Lucas started to say as he spun around, but the words died in his throat. 

Until that moment, Lucas had been so focused on the work he’d been doing that he hadn’t seen her. She squeaked in surprise as he knocked her on her ass, but for now, he ignored that. Normally, he would have been able to catch her and make a cute little joke about it if he'd been into the woman because he was smooth like that. 

This time, though, he looked past her pretty blue dress and the look of shock on her face as he watched the fragile vial he’d just worked so hard to create tumble end over end through the air. Everything happened at once as he lept over her falling form and grasped at the cylinder that was slowly falling to the dusty wooden floor. 

The world moved in slow motion as Adin looked on in horror. Lucas fumbled once, and felt his hand slip on the slick wet glass with his right hand, but managed to snatch it with his left before he hit the ground hard and rolled with it.

He was as surprised as anyone as he rose to his feet and found the ugly beige potion unbroken in his hand. He looked at the woman struggling to get to her feet while she drowned in her petticoats to her brother and back again before he yelled, “Sorry!” and ran from the building. 

Hura’gh wasn’t on the clock, per se. There was no evil countdown above the half-orc's head, which was slowly ticking to zero, but Lucas wasn’t exactly going to take any chances. If the roles were reversed, he was fairly certain that he would already be slowly turning to room temperature. 

Lucas found the warrior exactly where he’d left him in exactly the position he’d left him, which wasn’t a surprise. “Alright, buddy,” he said, “This is going to taste like shit, but it’s going to counteract the poison, so just do your best to swallow and then just relax until it kicks in, okay?”

Hura’gh said nothing, but then Lucas didn’t really expect him to. Instead he just poured a little of the beige liquid in at a time and stop each time the half-orc made any choking sounds. Once that was done, he waited, and when Hura’gh’s outstretched limbs began to relax and fall down to his side, Lucas knew he’d been successful. 

Lucas stood and went to rejoin the others but found they’d joined him outside. This time, they watched him from a safe distance, at least giving him the perfect chance to apologize. “I’m sorry about that, Denaria,” he said, “I was—”

“Oh, please, stop,” she insisted. “I was the one that was too curious and got in the way. You were only trying to save that poor man’s life!” 

“Yeah, well,” Lucas struggled for the right words. “Hura’gh is a tough bastard. I’m sure he would have made it through but… best not to take chance right?”

 “What happened to you two, anyway?” she asked, approaching him with a cloth and wiping away a bit of blood on his forehead from a wound that Lucas didn’t know he had. 

“Well, we went goblin hunting, and we were ambushed by a giant spider,” he said with a shrug. “We got the ingredients we needed, but… well, you can see for yourself. That was one tough bitch, pardon my language.”

She blushed at that and said, “Regardless, I think it’s very brave.”

“Thanks,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, not sure what to say. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few nasty ingredients to purify before I get started with the real work.”

“Oh? Is that for the blue?” she asked innocently. “Blue potions are mana potions, right? I’m sure those will fetch quite the price.”

“Yeah… something like that,” Lucas answered, shooting her brother an annoyed look. 

What the fuck is he doing telling his sister anything about a FUCKING drug lab? He raged internally. He said nothing, but Adin saw the accusation in Lucas’s gaze and shrank away. 

“Adin, you keep an eye on Hura’gh for me,” Lucas muttered as he walked back toward his lab. He didn’t have time for this amateur-hour shit.

Ch. 26 - A Simple Explanation

When he walked back inside the cider house, the last thing Lucas expected was for Denaria to follow, but that’s exactly what she did. He’d been so busy being pissed off at her brother that he very nearly slammed the door in the door in the poor woman’s face as she walked in behind him. 

“Is there something I can do for you, Denaria?” he asked, keeping any trace of annoyance out of his voice. 

It wasn’t her he needed to be pissed at. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t her fault that her brother had told her enough that it might get her into trouble if she casually mentioned it to one of her friends, and it made it back to the wrong people. 

“I just… all the sciences fascinate me, arcane or otherwise,” she said with a smile. “I thought I might watch and learn something, at least until Gerwin rings the bell for supper.”

“It’s just that…” he started to say. He had a dozen reasons why letting her stay was a bad idea: poisonous substances, filthy conditions, dangerous knowledge, and, of course, the most toxic thing of all: him. Still, something about her disappointed look when he was about to tell her to scram made his words shrivel up and die. 

“Fine,” he shot back instead, “But don’t get too close to anything hot, and watch out for the fumes.”

This caused her face to light up with glee, but he ignored it as best he could and started setting out the ingredients for today’s brew. Goblin bile, witch grass blossoms, wizened gnome caps, blue esper vine sap, and, of course, dwarf berries. He had to process the goblin livers to get the bile, of course, but he wasn’t about to do that with a woman in the room, so he set that pot aside and focused on the more normal ingredients. 

As soon as he put the purple witch grass blossoms into his mortar and pestle, he was peppered with questions. If it was Adin asking, he would have told him to fuck off, but with his sister, that was a more difficult proposition. She was just so sweet in earnest that eventually, he found himself answering and giving her a little lesson in basic alchemy. 

After a couple minutes he even had her crushing the blossoms in his mortar and pestle while he explained the reason behind each step. “To really unlock the uhm, magic… of an ingredient, you have to pulverize as much as possible before you add it to other things,” he explained, pointing to the flask of pale view vine sap. “Processing ingredients makes them useable, and then after that, you do other things to sort of… get them where you want them, I guess you could say. Fine-tune it, you know?”

“I was always taught that the magic was created when the ingredients were mixed together with one another, is that not so?” she asked, pausing her grinding to give him a perplexed look. 

“I mean, yes and no,” Lucas answered. “Every ingredient has the magic in it already, but most of them don’t exactly have a lot. Like the blossoms you are pulverizing have some mana restorative abilities, but not a lot. The same is true for this sap, but if you mix them together…”

“Then you get a mana potion!?” she asked excitedly. 

“Well, kinda…” he nodded as he did the quick math in his head. “These two ingredients would probably give you lesser mana restoration, but it might kill you too, so best not to try.”

“Kill me?” she asked. “Why would it kill me? I thought mana potions were perfectly safe.”

“Well, they are when done right,” Lucas agreed. “But most strong ingredients in any potion are poisonous, and pretty much everything that gives mana is. You have to leach that poison out before you can process it.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” agreed. 

Lucas went to the still, and took the spirits that had been slowly dripping into the small barrel that served as its reservoir and examined them. They weren’t the best, in the world, but they’d do just fine for this. 

Rough Common Spirits (weak): Purifying agent. Remove 50% of the negative effects of a single reagent. 

He sniffed it experimentally, noting the harsh smell that was probably more suitable as an engine degreaser than used for medical purposes, but he knew better than to taste it. This shit wasn’t poisonous, but it might as well be if you had more than a couple glasses. 

Lucas made Denaria stand back as he scraped the mortar clean, deglazed it with the grain alcohol, and poured the whole mixture into a beaker because it was a messy process. “You don’t want to stain your dress,” he told her, remembering how he’d already gotten it dirty. 

“That’s very sweet of you,” she smiled, “But I rather think a dress this purple would look lovely, don’t you think?”

Lucas looked from her dress to the flask, and back again. It was a lovely shade of deep violet, that was probably perfect for a royal garment, but he’d never really noticed it before until she pointed it out. 

“I mean, we could try that sometime if you want, Denaria, but…” As he turned back to face her mid-conversation, he found her standing closer to him again. 

She’d shown this habit more than once, but with her standing close enough to him that he could smell her floral perfume over the sour smell of saturated witch grass blossom solution, he suddenly realized something even more obvious that had alluded him up until now: she was waiting for him to make a move. 

The realization hit him like a slap in the face, and he was shocked that he hadn’t noticed it before. It was hardly the first time he’d been in this exact scenario before, after all. Rich girls were somehow drawn to drug dealers, even before they got hooked on shit like this. Lucas didn’t know exactly what that was the case. 

He’d never understood it on Earth either, but he’d seen it enough times that he experienced a wave of déjà vu. That was his cue to get back to work, and he turned away to focus once more on making sure his flask didn’t overboil as it started to reach proper heat. 

“Hey, ummm, so what is it you think we’re doing back here?” Lucas asked her after a moment of awkward silence where he tried to put that weirdness behind them. 

“What do you mean?” she asked sweetly. “You’re making potions with my brother and your other friends to help repair the finances of our noble house and raise the funds to clear your name.”

That’s at least half true, he thought, noting just how self-serving her brother’s explanation had been. At least she hadn’t mentioned drugs or illegal activity. 

“Right,” he agreed. “Mostly true, but like - you understand that this is a secret, right? You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Oh, of course,” she nodded vigorously. “As long as they’re still looking for my brother, his presence is keeping the rest of you in grave danger. Well, that and the Alchemists' guild. I don’t suppose they take very kindly to you selling unofficial potions and undermining their monopoly.”

“Exactly,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief at just how much her guesses were off the mark. At least she didn’t think he was a drug dealer. She thought he was an outlaw, and that was fine. “Those greedy bastards would love to keep charging so much for these things that no one can afford them, but we can sell ‘em for a lot less under the table.”

“You’re so generous, Lucas,” she said with a smile that melted his heart just enough to keep him from laughing. No one had called him generous in a long time. Certainly not after they’d seen his rap sheet. 

“Well, where I’m from, medicine was way too expensive,” he said, setting up the strainer so he could separate the herbs and the solution. “Making a profit is fine, but the shit’s gotta be affordable, you know?”

“Where is that exactly?” she asked. “Where you’re from, I mean.”

“Oh, umm… it’s a little kingdom called Idaho, and it’s a long way away from here. You wouldn’t have heard of it,” he mumbled as he picked up his tongs and grasped the glass flask. 

Painfully aware of her gaze, he carefully tipped the hot container and poured the boiling fluid through the wire strainer, separating the poison from the rest of the useful ingredients. What was once unprocessed witch grass blossom had now become purified witch grass blossom pulp and vaguely purple poison that might have made a fine ink or dye if he didn’t have other plans for it. 

Witch Grass Blossoms (Processed): Mana 4, Poison 1, intelligence 1.

Witch Grass Blossom Dregs: Poison 2

“Now I just need to do this a couple more times with some other ingredients, and before you know it - we’ll have a few mana potions we can sell for a dragon or two,” Lucas said, holding up the violet slime.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “After that—”

“What’s wonderful?” Hura’gh asked thickly, stepping through the door with Adin. His voice hinted that he wasn’t a hundred percent yet, but if he was moving around after only like twenty minutes, he was going to be fine, and that’s all that mattered to Lucas. 

“I was just explaining to our hostess how mana potions are made,” Lucas said, glad to change to subject. He stood up and walked over the half-orc, slapping him on the shoulder. “But wonderful is the fact that you’re still breathin’ man. You had us scared. How do you feel?”

“Like you should have brought an antidote potion with you into the Greenwood,” the half-orc said in a tone that might have been anger. He stood there glaring at Lucas for a moment, and just when he thought that Hura’gh might rip his head off, the big guy reached down and wrapped Lucas in a bearhug that threatened to crush his rib cage.

For a moment, he was too stunned to do more than struggle to breathe, but when Hura’gh released Lucas, he smiled his toothy grin and said, “But you saved my life despite your incomitance, so I will forgive you.”

“It was nothing,” Lucas answered, a little touched by the unexpected gesture. “I was just—”

“My life is not nothing,” Hura’gh growled, “And you have saved it twice. This is a debt I will honor Lucas Sharpe.”

Lucas could since another monologue on the warriors of the plains, but before that could happen, he said, “Alright, everyone is safe, and Denaria got her first alchemy lesson, but I have shit to do - these goblin livers aren’t going to keep all day, so everyone is going to have to clear the building so I can make the bl… potions, okay? Everyone out!”

For a moment, the three of them looked at him, but finally, they relented and, one at a time, left the cider house, leaving him in peace. Adin was the first one to leave, and his hungry gaze told Lucas all he needed to know about how excited he was about his next concoction. After he and Hura’gh left, Denaria shook his hand with her small, warm hands, letting him feel just how soft the skin of a woman who’d never had to work a day in her life was before she left him to the real work that lay ahead. 

Ch. 27 - Making Magic

Lucas wanted the peace and quiet of course, but more than that, he just wanted to work on his secret recipe without anyone looking over his shoulder. Whenever Adin had forced the issue, Lucas had talked about all the different ingredients and how complicated it was, but that was a lie. He wasn’t even really going to use most of the ingredients. He was going to use the leached off poison instead. 

But that was a ways from now. First, he had to get the goblin bile together, which meant wading into the goblin guts. Just thinking about that part sent a shiver down his spine and made Lucas wrinkle his nose. He hated this part, but there was no way around it. 

Carefully he opened up the pot and hung the livers from a nail above it. They were both about as big as his fist, and they stank like three day old roadkill. 

I’m definitely going to have to air this place out, Lucas thought to himself as he watched the dark organs drip their black bile into the clay vessel. Once that was done, he cut off the little purple acorns that were their gallbladders and squeezed them dry, too. It took over fifteen minutes to harvest half a cup of the dark liquid, but that was plenty. 

Lucas wiped his stained hands on a rag and then wrapped the drained organs in it and set them aside to throw into the midden heap when it was all done. After that, he turned to the blue esper vine sap he’d already drained and got to work adding alcohol to both the sap and the bile, bringing both of them to a gentle boil for several minutes. 

Goblin Bile: Poison 9, strength 3, endurance -1, violent diarrhea

Blue Esper Willow Vine (sap): Perception 4, poison 3, endurance -2, 20% chance to hear voices and/or experience paranoia for 3 hours.

Lucas was thankful that the marginal qualities like diarrhea and hallucinations were usually lost in the mixing process. That was a shame when they were more interesting, like the witch grass blossoms, but he supposed there was a reason that witches and other mystics were reputed to eat it raw. 

The reason he’d done these two first was because, as liquids, they couldn’t be filtered. Instead, he had to be clever and put all this fancy glassware to use with fractional distillation. It took a minute to attach the fractioning column and the simple condenser to the two flasks. He could have mixed them together at this point to make the set-up half as difficult, but he decided against it. 

After all, when he was done, he could turn the bile into potions of lesser strength and the sap into potions of true sight, but together? Who would even want to boost their perception and strength at once? He wondered. An archer? 

Maybe something like that would have high demand among the elves. He shrugged. It didn’t matter. They would get a lot of silver kings if he took an extra few minutes. It wasn’t like it was hard. He just had to align everything and then put a couple coals until the mixtures, and as long as he kept an eye on it, he could move on to the wizened gnome caps. 

They were simple enough, though he usually wore gloves if he had any cuts on his hands, just in case. Lucas had tripped hard on these ugly gray mushrooms exactly one time, and that was enough as far as he was concerned. He had no interest in seeing fairies coming out of his mouth whenever he spoke or feeling the grass and weeds of the earth try to tangle him up and swallow him whole while the trees reached for him threateningly. It was a bad fucking trip that he had no interest in repeating, and he’d have happily worn latex gloves if they’d been invented yet.  

Today, despite his fight with the spider, his hands were wound-free, though. So, he quickly got to work slicing and dicing before drawing the ugly gray chunks in cheap alcohol.

Wizened Gnome Caps (processed): End 3, Poison 1, 

Wizened Gnome Caps Dregs: Poison 1, intelligence -1

Once that was done, he quickly set aside the sludge and dumped the gray liquid into the purple alcohol he’d made with Danaira earlier, producing the start of what would quickly become a rather toxic compound. 

Slightly Poisonous Mixture (20 doses): Poison 3, intelligence -1

Lucas stirred that together well, and then reached for the next two fluids he’d concocted. The pale blue liquid that was derived from the esper vine sap made the concoction shimmer like twilight for a moment as the blues, purples, and grays swirled together without ever actually mixing. All that disappeared when he dumped the black bile dregs in too. It plunged the entire concoction into inky blackness. 

Very Poisonous Mixture (40 doses): Poison 10, intelligence -1

Then, it was all but done. He could heat it to try to intensify it or dilute it to make more of it, but all he really needed to do was add the juice of two dozen sour dwarf berries. 

Lucas didn’t do that just yet, though. Instead, he paused to appreciate this moment. 

He’d built himself up from nothing again for the third time on. As a snack, they were common enough among dwarves. It wouldn’t kill a human to try them, of course, but they were eye-wateringly tart and so sour that they made those little gummies he used to get at the movies seem sweet by comparison. They were a snack that only an IPA lover could enjoy, and that had never really been his thing. 

Sour Dwarf Berries (raw): Euphoria 1, intelligence - 1, sour, strong catalyst (alters the alignment of the largest attribute in the current mixture.) 

They did have one unique feature that wasn’t commonly known, though. They were just about the cheapest strong catalyst that one could buy. 

Most alchemists and merchants kept a long list of ingredients along with their elemental alignment, their known properties, and other trivia. Lucas didn’t have to do much of that because, unlike most, he could simply see what each herb and berry did and didn’t do. Fortunately, the man he’d apprenticed under when he’d first come to this world liked to get a little high, and that was where Lucas had disc discovered the grand alchemical cycle, so to speak. 

For a long time, he’d wondered what the catalyst tag was on some of the herbs in the shop, but it wasn’t until he’d watched that old bastard Mr. Keller sprinkle some vitriolic earth into some mana potion dregs that he finally understood. 

Now, he knew the people of this world had it backward: it wasn’t earth, air, fire, and water that mattered. It was a different Binary: healing vs poison and mana vs euphoria. It had only taken a couple experiments to prove it. His master had thought that turning poisoned dregs into some kind of mild hallucinogenic ambien had worked because the air in the vitriolic earth had interacted with the fire intrinsic to all mana, making it effervescent, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. 

Lucas was certain that was incorrect, though. Instead, a major catalyst moved the property clockwise, and minor catalysts did the same thing counterclockwise. There was probably more to it than that. If he’d written a paper and presented it to the guild, he probably would have been showered with riches to dig ever deeper into alchemy. 

He hadn’t done that, though. Instead, he’d done the next most logical thing: he’d learned to make hard drugs to sell and buy his way out of that little shithole town and make his own way in this world. 

A couple of years later, he’d finally found enough synergies to make blue, and the rest was history. Now he knew things had a specific order well, at least some things did. It didn’t seem to matter what he did them in. He could add the sap to the bile or the bile to the mushroom juice. In the end it would all turn black no matter what order it was done in. All that mattered was that the berry juice was added last.

He poured the clear liquid in at that moment, and watched as the tiny alchemical lightshow kick on. For a brief minute the black void lit up like a stay sky, as magical sparks and unknowable chemical reactions kicked the black morass over to a deep navy color that slowly turned more and more cyan with time. 

Lucas watched an alert flicker briefly before vanishing, but he didn’t need to read it. He’d read it a thousand times before. 

Catalyzed: Poison -> Euphoria. 

After that, it was gone, and he was left the same message as always. 

Brew of Mana Intoxication (pure) (45 doses): Euphoria 8, poison 2, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 180% for 1 hour. 

Inevitably, some of the poison was left, which was annoying. You’d think that since this literally turns one to the other, there’d be none left, but what can you do, he thought. Still, he ignored that and smiled just the same. 

“With this set up I can finally try to figure out what causes that,” he said to himself. “Maybe we can filter it or distill it and get closer to pure.”

For now the only way he knew to purify the stuff was to boil it down to a more concentrated form, like he’d done in the experiment that Adin had gotten a taste of. It probably wasn’t cost-effective, though. Even at its current concentration, they’d have people lining up around the block to pay five kings for the privilege. Even if they stepped on it a few times to make something more palatable to lower classes, they could still charge a silver or two and make a whole pile of dragons. 

Still, the former plan appealed to him more. While he liked the idea of getting a bunch of assholes in the upper crust strung out on blue, the part of him that felt guilty and getting a working stiff hooked on something so strong was growing large by the day. Other than maybe the guards he seemed to keep crossing paths with or Brog, he really didn’t wish that on anyone. 

Lucas took his time to meditate on these and other issues, and it was only when he was good and ready, and he’d sealed and stowed his jar of cyan liquid, that he started opening up the doors and windows to air the place out. Outside, in the shade of a badly overgrown apple tree, he found the rest of the gang, including Kar’gandin.

“Where the hell have you been? I thought we said we were going to stay out of the city!” Lucas asked before noting the dwarf was happily munching away on his very sour catalyst. “And why the hell are you eating all my berries. I need those!”

“Yer berries?” Kar’gandin laughed. “This is more like share and share alike. I think ye mean our berries.”

The dwarf started by catching Lucas up on his trip, and eventually even he was forced to concede that he’d probably done the right thing. Kar’gandin had gone to test security and see how tight things really were, and the answer was not very. He’d smuggled himself inside a wagon on the way in and had worn a big floppy hat as a disguise just in case, but even as he walked around the city speaking to various contacts, he’d never gotten the feeling that anyone was seriously looking for him. 

“On the other hand, I did get the feeling that people were looking for you, well - your little blue potions, at least. Apparently, it’s very popular stuff, and your old customers are frantic to find a new supply.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Lucas spat, hoping they tore Brog to pieces looking for a fix. “I don’t care what happens to them.” 

“Well, all I care about is a ready customer base, laddie,” Kar’gandin said with a shrug as he pulled out his pipe and began to pack it. “We have the product and the customers; now we just need to decide who’s going to handle the… ahem… distribution for us.”

Ch. 28 - Making plans

“Can’t we just sell it ourselves?” Hura’gh asked. 

“I mean, we can,” Lucas said doubtfully, “But I’m not going to stand on some corner like an asshole just waiting for the guards to notice me.”

“There’s lots of crime that the guards never seem to notice,” Adin added, having a difficult time keeping his eyes off the blue stains on Lucas’s hands. “Some say the watch is incompetent, and others say that the thieves guild gives the crown a cut. No one knows for sure.”

It was just sap and bile. It wasn’t even blue, but the lordling didn’t know that. Still, it was an excellent reminder that the man’s growing addiction was going to be trouble, and Lucas wasn’t sure how he was going to handle that just yet. 

“‘Course the guards are corrupt,” Kar’gandin laughed, “And of course the crown takes a cut. That’s just the way Lordanin runs lad. It’s the way it’s always run. The city is sort of a vast farm where they raise huge crops of gold and silver, and then they dump most of it in the castle. That place is like a bottomless pit for gold, and it’s always hungry.”

“Pity we can’t just rent a space, throw up a shingle, and call it a day,” Lucas said with a shrug. “‘Ye Olde Potions and Shit,’ I think it has a nice ring to it.” 

Everyone laughed at that before the dwarf added. “Ye could do that if ye were a member of the alchemist's guild, of course, but you are not. That would be a sucker's game, though. Ye’d have to charge guild rates and pay exorbitant taxes. No, in my opinion, we should go with the gangs. The pay-off will be much better, and the risks increase only a little.”

Kar’gandin launched into a long tirade about the different taxes and how it was cheaper to get the guards to look the other way, but about the time he started to enumerate the different fees based on types of products and all the rest, Hura’gh got bored and interrupted him. “But what good is saving money when the thieves will just steal from you themselves? Besides, don’t most of the gangs already sell drugs?”

“They do,” Kar’gandin agreed. “Faerie dust, demon blood, Dusk, and whatever else they get up to, but according to our man here, his stuff is going to beat every other potion out there, ain’t that so me, boy?”

Lucas nodded at that. “I do, but the jolly green giant has a point. The Beggars left a pretty sour taste in my mouth. Maybe we could give it to Adin and have him sell the stuff to his rich noble friends.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” the viscount chimed in. Lucas rolled his eyes at that. The man would agree with any plan that put him within spitting distance of the good shit. “I know plenty of dilettante that might show interest if we were to attend a party or—”

“Yeah, well, that would be a mighty fine plan one day, but ye’re still a wanted man,” Kar’gandin nodded. “I don’t see well-wishers lining up to deliver ye calling cards and ask about ye’re health. No, if anyone was going to do that, it would have to be Lucas here.”

“M-me?” Lucas sputtered, almost spitting out the sip of water he’d just taken from his skin. “Why would I have to do it. I don’t know these people.”

“Doesn’t really matter. Lord Parin here can tell you all ye need to know, and when ye get dressed up fancy who’s going to know one way or another?” the dwarf smiled broadly. “Don’t ye know, all humans sorta look alike.”

This time, only Kar’gandin and Hura’gh laugh. Lucas would have joined them once he figured out the punchline. However, but then he was too busy looking at Adin, as the man grew visibly angry.

“What, you think if he just tells everyone he’s a cousin of my family, they’ll—” Adin started to ask indignantly. 

“Aye, a cousin,” the dwarf nodded. “That’s great. Ole’ cousin Lucas from out of town come to share a little bit of blue from abroad. Maybe we can give it a better name to appeal to the upper crust. You know, like Sapphire Fire or Dragon’s Tears. Something like that.”

“But he can’t just pretend to be nobility. The man might be a talented chemist, but how’s that going to help him exercise all of the proper courtesies?” Adin scoffed. “The man knows nothing about dancing or jousting. He doesn’t even know which fork to use at dinner. No offense.”

That last part was tacked on at the very end and only mentioned when he realized that what he was saying might be offensive to Lucas, but he didn’t care what this asshole thought of him. Not really. 

“Well, then ye’ can teach him all that. I would love to see what our alchemist looks like when he’s learnin’ to dance!” Kar’gandin said before he burst out laughing. 

The half-orc quickly followed suit, leaving Lucas to spin it off. “Hey, I’m good with it,” he said with the wide smile he used most often to hide his growing annoyance, “But Adin is the one wearing the dress, alright? He’s about his sister’s size and…”

That made everyone laugh all the louder. Everyone except Adin of course. The nobleman fumed with his lips pressed together tightly until the laughter died off before he added, “None of this is getting us any closer to making dragons.”

“Aye, that’s true enough,” the dwarf agreed. “Dancing lessons will have to wait. Before we can afford to get Lucas dressed up nicely, we’ll have to find a larger source of revenue, which in my mind means the Knights of Brass or the Red Lantern Gang.”

The four of them debated the matter until nearly sunset, and in the end it was the arrival of dinner that decided things more than anything else. There were perhaps a dozen gangs worth the name in Lordanin proper. Each of them had their own territory and their own rackets. 

Some of these, like the Orphans, would have no interest as they dealt primarily with burglaries and other petty thefts. The Illuminated wouldn’t be worth the time to contact, either. Though Lucas kinda dug their brightly colored tattoos, they were largely dock workers and longshoremen and weren’t really good at much besides smuggling things in and out of the city. Their operation would have to be a lot bigger before they’d have to worry about sending things abroad. 

In the end, the Lordanin drug trade mostly revolved around four groups: the Alchemists’ Guild, the beggars, the reds, and the brass. A couple others, like the slants or the equestrians, might be interested, but regardless, it would be a short list.

According to Kar’gandin’s investigations, the Beggars had apparently tried and failed to copy Lucas’s recipe. They sold something black now that they called night and a dark blue formulation that was called dusk. Neither of these was apparently as strong as the mythical blue that had circulated through the city for a while, but it helped take the edge off of the junkies that Lucas had left in his wake. 

“Hah! They’re making methadone to feed the heroin addicts,” Lucas exclaimed, but no one got the joke, and he didn’t feel like explaining it. 

Almost every gang they discussed was already distributing some bootleg intoxicant that they made themselves, but Lucas didn’t care much about that. The beggars were obviously using his little trick to turn goblin bile into drugs. He regretted letting that little detail slip, but other than getting a bigger gang to murder every last one of them, that genie was out of the bottle now. 

Everyone else mostly dealt with reds, though. Reds were easier and more common to make. He’d never seen a good recipe before, but if he was a betting man, he’d say that they were healing potions that had been altered with lesser catalysts in the same way that he used greater catalysts to make his concoctions. 

According to feedback, he’d heard that things like Dragon’s Breath and Demon Blood were more like uppers. They were more directly compared to cocaine or Meth than blue. That made sense. 

Someday, he hoped to get a look at the stuff and see what his little identify screen told him about it, but he’d managed to keep his nose fairly clean since his arrival in this world. He had too much going on to pick up an addiction like he had in his last life.  

Lucas spent a lot of time thinking about this while he listened to the rest of his group argue about which gang had the best territory or was the least untrustworthy. Eventually, it was just too much information, and it made his eyes glaze over. 

Finally, when the debate had gone on long enough, and he could see that the food would get cold before everyone agreed, he rejoined the verbal fray. 

“Listen, you guys, I don’t care if we draw straws at this point as long as it's not the fucking beggars, but I’m at my wit's end here, so how about this,” he said before pausing to make sure he had everyone’s attention. “How about we send every group you can think of to send a member or two in some neutral territory, outside the city, like an inn or something. We tell them to bring along their favorite junkie, and then we, you know, give out free samples and let them bid on the price.”

“Bid?” the dwarf asked, stroking his beard. “Like an auction?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said, leaning forward. “Like an auction. Here’s our shit; you tell us how much you think it’s worth, and we go with the highest bidder, you know, like a real business!”

“Hmmmm, maybe, lad, maybe.” The dwarf said as he mulled it over.

Hura’gh wouldn’t let that settle the issue, though, and asked, “Doesn’t asking others how much they would pay for your potions make us seem weak? Would it not be stronger to simply tell them how much they must pay for our product and establish the dominant position?”

“Maybe,” Lucas agreed. “But when we let them decide, we're playing them against each other, you know? Now, it’s not us versus them; it's them versus all of their least favorite competitors. The question is no longer, ‘how much can I sell this shit for,’ it's ‘how can I keep it out of my enemy’s hands.’ Like… that batch I just made is pretty pure. They can probably step on it once or twice, and it will still sell fine. That’s like…”

Lucas did the math quickly in his head before adding, “Thirty or Forty dragons, but—”

“Thirty dragons?!” Kar’gandin exclaimed. “For a single batch? Are you making drugs or turning lead to gold in there?!”

“I mean, pure it's probably worth that to the right buyer too, but no working stuff is going to have that kind of cash, you know?” Lucas said with a shrug. “Anyway - They aren’t going to bid that. They’ve got to make a profit too, but one guy might say fifteen and another guy might say twenty, you know? We give 'em a taste, and then we see what happens.”

Hura’gh didn’t seem convinced, but he did seem hungry. So, instead of debating it further, he got up and strode over to the barn where they took their meals, ending the conversation for now, and Lucas was totally fine with that. He just wanted everyone to make a decision and move the fuck on, and this was the best non-decision he could make short of putting all the gangs on a dart board and letting his terrible aim decide for him.

Ch. 29 - Just a Taste

Over the next few days, Kar’gandin worked his contacts and reached out to representatives of the four gangs they were most interested in doing business with. Lucas was worried that people he knew would know that he was a wanted man, and that they might rat him out for the reward. He even said as much, but the dwarf just responded. “Humans? Maybe. They tend to be short term thinkers, but a dwarf? No chance.”

“You guys are just more loyal, huh?” Lucas asked. “What is it, like a clan thing, or is this just more of your anti-human bigotry?”

“Bah,” the dwarf chuckled. “Why would a dwarf turn me in for a few coins now when he knows my relationship and my favors might net him a hundred-fold more over the next century or two?”

It was an answer that Lucas would have never guessed, but it made sense, and it gave him something to think about while Kar’gandin ironed out the details. A few of the gangs seemed keen, while a couple were less interested, but none of them turned Lucas’s group down. 

After that, the rules were quite simple. Each group would be allowed to only two people to minimize the risks. The message was simple enough: we have blue and can get more, so come have a taste. 

Lucas was satisfied with the message. It was simple and to the point. It directed everyone to meet at the crow cages near the western crossroad at sunset. It was there that the dwarf showed his true value. 

The spot he’d chosen for the meet wasn’t even close to where they planned to do the deal at an inn half a mile to the south called The Fiddler’s Rest, but it was a wide-open area that made ambush impossible. That was smart. Lucas wouldn’t have considered that extra layer of safety, but he certainly approved of it since, in the end, it would just be him and Hura’gh going. 

Since neither the dwarf nor the Viscount were much for fighting, they’d decided that they’d make for a quicker get away with fewer people, and since there was no way Lucas could trust Hura’gh to be the sole messenger, and no way that he was going alone, that was just how it was going to have to be. 

While all of this was going on, Lucas did something more important: product testing. He didn’t test the blue, of course. He knew exactly what a bad idea that would be. He didn’t need to, though. Not when he had a volunteer like Adin was happy to help with this duty. 

After all, Lucas had been forced to lock the clay tankard of diluted narcotics down in a cabinet just to keep the noble's hands off it. The man hand paced back and forth like a starving hound once he’d caught sight of it. 

So, when Lucas presented the man a vial of the stuff he’d expected him to be over the moon. Instead the first words out of his mouth were, “It doesn’t really look like the same stuff, is that the right color?”

Lucas nodded at that. “Good eye. This batch isn’t quite as strong as I’d like,” he lied, “But it’s still more than strong enough to do what it needs to. Next time, maybe we can find more mats, and I can do better.”

Brew of Mana Intoxication (mid-grade) (1 dose): Euphoria 6, poison 2, mana regeneration decreased by 150% for 1 hour. 

In reality, Lucas could have kept it at euphoria 8 without watering it down, but he decided to do so for two reasons. The first was that he figured they’d make a lot more money selling seventy doses than they would forty, and the second was that he was hoping to ween Adin off the stuff. 

That would be impossible if he kept feeding him the full strength dose, of course, but something like this - that might be enough to make him high and enough for him to decide it wasn’t that big a deal. While they needed a taste tester like Adin on staff, the last thing they needed was a junkie. Someone like that could do a whole lot of damage. 

Adin looked from Lucas to the tiny potion and back. For a moment, it seemed like he was about to complain one more time before downing the thimble full of fluid. The result was not quite instantaneous, but it was still immediate and intense. 

The noble’s body relaxed immediately, and after wobbling dangerously on the stool he was sitting on, Lucas hopped to his feet and guided the man to the ground, letting him slump down into whatever hole the drugs were digging for him. He wanted to ask him how the trip was, but there was no point. He’d get any relevant details once Adin returned to the real world. 

The results were about what Lucas had expected. “It’s still an incredible high,” the man said, “It just maybe doesn’t have quite the kick that it did last time.”

In time, it was possible he could find a way to extend the high with another ingredient, though he couldn’t imagine the trial and error involved. He knew that if you added monk’s wart to several different healing potion recipes, it made the effect more gradual, like a time release capsule. There was probably something similar he could do to his blue recipe, given enough time. It would be a good compromise; make the high last longer without getting the user too high. 

It wouldn’t happen this time, though. All too soon, the appointed day arrived, and he and Hura’gh set out for their date with destiny just after a quick dinner when the sun was getting low in the sky. 

One of the reasons that Kar’gandin had chosen this place was that it was on the opposite side of the city from the Perin estate, which made it less likely they’d be followed. In reality, that meant that it was an almost hour-long ride just to see the damn place. 

The western crossroads were a lonely place. To the east lay the still visible walls of the city, to the north was the winding channel that led to Lordanin’s rocky harbor, and to the south and west were scattered farms and villages. A few miles further west would take you to the ocean proper, along with the city’s large lighthouse, but those dunes got terribly windy at night, and Lucas had no intention of going there. 

Instead, the two of them waited not far from the cluster of rusting gibbets that hung nearby. There wasn’t much traffic in this area normally, but this close to dark, there was almost none, and as the handful of horses made their way to them, almost every single one stopped to greet Lucas. They didn’t state their affiliations. In most cases, they didn’t even give their names, but then, they didn’t have to. It was evident in the colors and styles of the clothing they wore. 

The Knights of Brass, were certainly the most heavily armed. Officially they were classified as a militia in the city, but in reality they ran a protection racket on the west side. The Red Lantern Gang were the most beautiful, and beneath their cloaks, the ladies that came representing them wore beautiful dresses that even offered a hint of cleavage; that was something familiar to Lucas, but pretty rare in these parts. 

The slants came too, which Lucas had been expecting. He didn’t see himself doing business with the elves. They weren’t known for their deep pockets, and their tattered clothing showed as much. The eight of them waited around for a few minutes while they waited for the last group to show up. Everyone was a little uneasy, and it was clear there was no trust here, but it was equally clear that no one wanted to tangle with a half-orc. 

As the last group arrived, Lucas noted that they had four horses, which seemed to indicate that he’d been double-crossed, but as they got closer he could see that they were actually two separate groups. The first two were scarred, muscular men that obviously belonged to the Butchers that ran the slaughterhouses and the meatpacking district, but the last group was harder to place. 

In fact, Lucas didn’t figure it out before the dark-eyed woman from the Ren Lantern Gang hissed, “Whisperers. What are they doing here?” A murmur of agreement ran through the group. 

“I’m not sure exactly,” Lucas answered honestly, “Since she doesn’t seem to be on my guest list…”

“Nonsense,” the dusky woman said with a Cheshire smile. “You couldn’t expect that we not attend such an interesting gathering. Not when the whole town is abuzz about you, mister blue.”

Lucas cringed at the nickname but said nothing about it. Instead, he pivoted. “I mean, we’re flattered, but you aren’t exactly on the guest list, so…”

“Come now,” the woman said. “We’ve ridden a long way to see you. Surely, your little room at the inn can seat two more.”

“How did you—” Lucas began asking, but before he could finish, she cut him off. 

“After all - if you send us away now, who knows who we might tell?” She said with a glittering smile. It was a threat, but an effective one, reducing his world to two choices, take them with him, or cancel the whole thing. 

Reluctantly, Lucas decided they could come and turned his horse south to the fiddle, waving for everyone to follow him. The road there was rutted but straight, and they arrived not long after full dark, giving Lucas plenty of time to consider how it was that the Whisperers knew where they were going when it hadn’t been part of the message. 

He realized that the most likely answer was that they didn’t, and they’d just been bluffing, but the word on the street about the whisperers was that they were in deep with the mages and worse. They weren’t known for being part of the drug trade, as they typically dealt in the much more profitable markets of secrets and blackmail. All of that made their threats believable enough, and Lucas decided that the best thing to do was let it all play out. 

So they all secured their mounts at the stables, threaded their way through a common room that went quiet the moment so many hooded strangers entered, and then made themselves at home at the private dining room that Kar’gandin had booked for just such an occasion.

Lucas didn’t even try to insist everyone leave their arms aside. He knew there was no point. The Brass Knights might be the only ones to carry their swords on their hips, but he had no doubt that everyone entering the room was armed. 

Once they were seated, drinks were brought in, and the doors were closed and barred from the inside by Hura’gh, Lucas finally addressed the table full of strangers. Some of them looked at him with naked greed and others with annoyance. Only the Whisperers looked at him with amusement. 

Some of the assembled guests insisted on introducing themselves, and some insisted on making sure no names were used, but Lucas didn’t really remember all of those. The only name that really stood out to him was Mistress Artesia Dannica, who headed the Red Lantern Gang delegation, and only then because of how she insisted he call her mistress. 

Lucas of course, politely declined. He wasn’t into that kinky shit. Instead, he kicked off the meeting proper once the chit-chat had died down.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is why we are all here,” Lucas said, uncomfortable with so many eyes upon him as he began to pull out the small vials from his pouch one at a time, setting them in front of them. “I’ve got the blue, and I’m looking for a partner to help me sell it. Every one of you will have the chance to sample the goods and then place a secret bid on the slips of paper I’ll be handing out.”

The vials were tiny things. Their corks took up nearly as much space as the fluid they contained, but that was all someone like Adin needed to forget he existed for a few minutes. He had no doubt that would be equally true for everyone else in this room.

There was a storm of questions after that. Why couldn’t they bit out loud? Why did they have to do this so far from the city? The woman who was here for the Red Lantern gang asked, “Why not just sell to us and skip all of this. No one in this room can match us in either wealth or charm.”

“Listen, I’m not the boss,” Lucas lied. “He says jump, I say how high, and if he says he wants a sealed bid auction for a keg containing seventy doses of high-grade blue, then I ride out to the middle of nowhere to do what he says. Trust me, the boss gets scary when you tell him no. You don’t want to know what happened to the last guy to have my job.”

He looked around the room. Some of them looked like they believed him, but the rest - well, he didn’t really care. He just cared that they’d stopped talking. 

“Alright, boys, bottoms up,” he said as he walked around the room and started handing out bottles and slips of paper.

Ch. 30 - Just a Taste (part 2)

Everyone’s reaction to the vial was different. The Brass Knight, who looked a little like every addict that Lucas had ever seen, just popped open his vial and downed it without a thought. The elvish delegation discussed it at length in their strange musical language before doing likewise. The Butcher’s taster tried just a drop, trying to determine what it was made of, but became insensible before he could do much besides babble about how sour it was. 

In the end, only the beautiful ladies of the Red Lantern Gang and the Whisperers seemed to have no intention of tasting it. No, that wasn’t right, he realized. One of the Red Lantern women had taken the drug, but somehow, they remained standing or sitting, as the case may be. 

Lucas let out a low whistle and said, “Well, I’ll bet you’re fun at parties.”

“Julania has tasted the finest poisons and potions that this world has to offer,” the older woman with the plunging neckline said about her subordinate. “If she can handle Demon’s Blood, then something this weak would hardly be of difficulty to her.”

Suddenly, Lucas saw the wisdom in the dwarf’s words. He could see the younger girl was struggling with the effects of the blue, and for a second he wondered if she’d taken something to delay the effects, or to counteract them. He knew from bitter experience that taking uppers and downers at once could be hard on the body, but he didn’t mention that. 

Instead, he said, “That’s just the sort of hardball tactic that would have served you well if we were doing business one on one, but look around lady, everyone else is enjoying this but you. Well, you and the women in black back there. What’s a matter ladies, too scared to try it for yourself?”

“Oh, I don’t need to sample your work to know what it’s worth, Mr. Blue,” the tall, pale woman said with a smile that chilled him to the bone. “I’m sure you’ll find our offer more than reasonable in any case.”

As the tall woman spoke, the younger woman with violet eyes stood and walked over to Lucas, and handed him a slip. He hadn’t even seen them fill it out, but there it was, neatly folded before him. He took it and set it down in front of him unread. 

“Well then, the bidding has started,” he said with a smile. “Please confer amongst yourselves, and I will review your offers at the conclusion of this meeting.”

While everyone enjoyed or endured the effects of his drugs, he got up and ordered another round from the bar, along with whatever they had that was warm. Tonight was going to be a profitable night, so Kar’gandin could hardly be cross with him at splurging. 

Lucas helped himself to a few ribs and a decent stout while Hura’gh went through two turkey legs. It was about as much fun as you could have watching other people get high, and for the first time in a long time, it made Lucas crave something light, like weed. He had yet to find cannabis in this world, of course, but Faerie dust was supposed to be close. 

Lucas ignored that thought, though. He just had to take a hard look at the drooling idiot in battered armor sitting off to his left to know where that path led. They were called gateway drugs for a reason. 

So he made conversation instead. He spent a little time talking to each of the representatives of their respective gangs to pass that time. The topic of the conversation didn’t matter so much to him, though he did make sure to talk shit about the Beggars whenever possible. He found out that the Brass Knights were currently at war with Beggars over turf just south of the tannery and at other points all along the river, which was enough to raise his estimation a notch or two in his eyes.

Otherwise, the only thing he really learned was that all the stereotypes were true. The Red Lantern girls were haughty, the slants were standoffish, and the Whisperers were a bit of both. Still, as everyone started to come around and hasty conversations were had, numbers were scribbled on slips of paper, and those slips were handed in. 

It was only when Lucas had all five that he actually began looking through them, though. He didn’t want his reaction to give any of the parties an advantage in the bidding. That had obviously been the right move because the Red Lantern ladies had only given him their slip when it became obvious that nothing would proceed until that happened. 

Lucas quickly found that none of them were anywhere close to each other. The Butchers offered a price of five silver kings a dose, which came out to seventeen and a half dragons. That was probably the lowest bid. The Brass knights came in next, offering him twenty, which was another lowball, but at least in the realm of reasonable.

He’d been getting fifteen dragons for fifty doses from Brog which worked out to less than either of these bids, but to be fair he hadn’t had a rep back them. He’d had to take the first offer to come his way. Thanks to his crew, he wasn’t going to have to make that mistake twice, and that was enough to make him smile as he set those two slips aside and reviewed the rest. 

The Red Lantern ladies offered him only five crowns in cash, along with a seventy crowns of credit in any of the pleasure houses, which was enough to make him smirk. The Whisperer's offer was enough to make him smile even wider, just because it was such an asshole move. Their slip simply read, “One more silver king than the highest offer.” 

He was about to make a sarcastic comment about how that wasn’t how sealed bids were supposed to work, but when he got to the slant’s offer, he frowned instead. It simply said you have stolen. You have stolen from the forest. Our Goddess's love is not for humans to taste! Give us your recipe, or perish!

When he looked up, he could see the elves were serious, too. They’d looked at him with general contempt until now, but that was fairly common for their type. Beneath that, though, he could see the edge of violence. That was even more true in the eyes of the man who had tasted the blue than the ones who hadn’t. 

Are these fuckers religious fanatics? He wondered. Just what I fuckin’ need. 

“Listen,” Lucas barked. “We aren’t here for that shit, we’re here to do business, so if you’re only here to try to bully your way to a better deal, then you can…”

His words trailed off as they both shrugged off their cloaks and rose to their feet. Both of them were holding two hand crossbows. They weren’t as intimidating as a real cross bow, or even a long bow. In fact, their tiny bolts were more like throwing darts than the bolt he’d pulled out of Adin not so long ago. 

No one would have been afraid of them if not for the elves’ reputation for coating the projectiles with deadly poisons. “You have two choices,” one of them said, “You can give up the recipe, or it can die with you. The choice is yours!”

Lucas put his hands up out of force of habit as he said, “Hey, you’re talkin’ to the wrong guy. Even if I wanted to tell you, I’m just the messenger!” This wasn’t the first time he’d had a gun pointed at him, and he wasn’t particularly scared. He was just trying to buy a little time to figure out what the next move should be.

“Liar!” The other elf screamed. “They called you Mr Blue. The Whisperers know that…” 

The elf’s words trailed off as he looked over to the women standing in the corner and saw that the older one had pulled out a scroll. Scrolls were something that Lucas had heard of before, but he’d never seen one used before. They were a poor man’s mage. They were supposed to be a spell all written down except for the final word, and when that was said by its wielder, it activated. 

In this case, that word turned out to be “Velaforsanith!” 

None of them knew what would happen as the thin parchment started to burn while slender lines of arcane power traveled through the words, completing the complex glyph that powered whatever was going to happen next. The closer elf released two bolts at the woman holding the scroll, but she vanished before they struck home in a quick inversion of reality. 

One second, the two women clad in gray dresses and dark veils were there, and the next, there was a ripple that took out part of the wall and a few of the floorboards. The strange shockwave that caused was enough to cause a guest of wind throughout the room, blowing out all the candles and reducing them to the light of two oil lamps that had been shielded by their glass shade and the light from the common room that made its way out under the door. 

Everything happened at once after that. Hura’gh threw the nearest chair at the spot where the elves had been standing as the sound of swords being unsheathed and crossbows being fired filled the near darkness. 

After that, there were screams and the sounds of reloading. The people that used those devilish little crossbows often kept spare bolts on their thighs in a holster that allowed them to be reloaded at the same time they were being recocked in a single, quick movement. In that way, they really were like guns, only instead of a bullet putting you out of your misery quickly, you were stabbed with a pencil and then allowed to suffer as the poison ran its course. 

Even as Lucas pulled his dagger and leaped up onto the table, he didn’t feel anything hit him, but he wasn’t sure he would with all the adrenaline pumping through his veins. Getting shot was a problem to be dealt with only after he’d closed the distance, though. 

Fortunately, he wasn’t the only target. The Whisperers might have vanished, and the women from the Red Lantern Gang might have disappeared under the table to wait this out, but both the Butchers and the Knights of Brass were on their feet, and before Lucas had even gotten close, those burly toughs were hacking the elves to pieces. 

“Wait,” Lucas called out, but there was no point. He’d been hoping to get some answers to their sudden, bizarre outburst. Who was their Goddess? Why did they think the bliss of his drug specifically belonged to the elves? Were they just fucking crazy? He had no way to know for sure now.

When it was over there were a lot of armed men looking at each other uncertainly in the semi darkness of the room, and after a second Lucas realized they were looking at him. 

“Hey, I’m not the one that went crazy!” Lucas shouted defensively. “This isn’t on me.”

“You’re the one that invited them. You—” The Butcher with the salt and pepper beard said. 

“Is everything alright in there,” the bartender yelled, pounding on the door. 

“Fuck,” Lucas sighed under his breath. 

“Listen,” he said, louder this time. “This is going to have to be continued. We’ve got to bounce, but I’ll make it right with you.”

“How you gonna make this right?” One of the Brass Knights said as his friend slumped against the wall. “The bastards poisoned Ritchie!”

Lucas looked at the dart the man pulled out of his friend, but even as he did that, he was sheathing his blade and hopping down from the table. When he reached the floor, he pulled out a dark green potion of lesser antivenom and handed it to the man. “Give this to your friend, and he’ll pull through.”

He pulled out a second one, along with a healing potion, and said, is anyone else hit? “How about you, Hura’gh. You okay over there?”

“I hit them with a chair,” the half-orc bragged. “How could they hit me anything at all after that?” 

Lucas ignored that bravado and gave the big guy a once over, but he seemed to be fine. As the Red Lantern Ladies slowly stood up now that the coast was clear, it became obvious that the only other person to be injured was one of the Butchers. Since the elves had been holding bows instead of knives, it was obvious he’d been stabbed by his buddy, but Lucas didn’t say shit about that. 

Instead, he just tossed the man a healing potion and said, “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here before this gets any more complicated.”