Book 3, Chapter 18

Watching my sister perform alchemy was somewhat nerve wracking, if I was being honest. Though I’d made the equipment myself and it would take a giant dropping a boulder on the glass to so much as scratch it, I still winced every time Senica carelessly smacked two pieces together. Some mixtures were so sensitive to impact that even I had to use magic to smooth out the process, but if my sister didn’t learn a little respect for my workshop, she wasn’t going to have to worry about learning those.

“So you have to go back in a few days and see what they decide?” she asked, ignoring my cringing as she tossed a stoppered vial full of a glowing blue liquid into a box on the floor near the workbench.

“What have I told you about throwing the potions around?” I asked.

“That the glasswork is indestructible so it’s fine if I drop it.”

“Well, yes, but what else?”

“To always label the end product so I don’t get them mixed up?”

“How about, ‘Don’t throw potions around, even if you know they’re not volatile?’”

Senica affected a thoughtful pose for a second. “No, I don’t remember that one.”

“That’s not because I didn’t tell you. Maybe you need a demonstration.”

I ignored Senica’s protests and stood up. The lab had three full sets of equipment, each taking its own wall. This allowed me to work on multiple projects at the same time, an expensive but handy upgrade to my old lab since a lot of alchemy involved waiting for a reaction to complete. I could either sit there and stare at it, or I could get started on something else, and I prized efficiency in my work.

She was working at the north wall, so I took over the table on the west one and started mixing ingredients together. “And yes, Grandfather told me to give him a week. I don’t strictly need to learn how to do this; it might not even be possible for humans to duplicate, but if it is…”

“Unlimited mana,” Senica said. “Or close to it.”

“See, you can be smart, when you want to be.”

“What about the other thing?” she asked, ignoring my jab at her. “The old kingdom that screwed everything up.”

“I’m going to wait. I’m almost ready to push my mana core to stage three now, just another year or so. I’ve already got all the mana stored for the process, so it’s just a matter of my core reaching its maximum natural size.”

“Okay, but can I go with you?”

“Absolutely not,” I said immediately. “Apprentices need to stay home and focus on their studies. Maybe in another four or five years when you’re a full mage.”

A full apprenticeship took anywhere from three to ten years, usually. It really depended both on how much the apprentice knew going in and how quickly they learned. A generous master who showered them with all sorts of resources could speed up the process, as well. Unfortunately, I was as mana-starved as the rest of the world, which meant Senica spent a lot more reading about the theories of magic than she did on practical applications.

Unless I started feeding her my mana, Senica was not going to graduate to what I’d consider full mage status any time soon. My standards were high, though. By the time I was done training her, I expected her to be able to take on a mage strong enough to have been part of the Wolf Pack’s inner circle and win.

That was assuming, of course, that she didn’t blow herself and my lab up somewhere along the way. While I was here, looking over her shoulder, I could prevent catastrophes-in-waiting from being unleashed, but at some point, Senica would need to be able to work without me acting as a safety net for her.

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” she asked while I worked on my demonstration.

“Practice what you already know. Consider ways to expand upon it. If you can’t ever learn without someone else walking you down the path, you’re going to be a stunted mage when you grow up.”

“It’s not my fault I got the best teacher in the world,” she said.

“You’re not coming,” I told her, unimpressed with her attempts to flatter me.

“Oh, come on! It’ll be so boring here. Mom never lets me do anything fun unless you come along.”

“I’m not leaving for another year, and it’s not like I’ll be gone forever. I don’t expect this to take more than a month or two. Maybe three, depending on what I find when I get there.”

“If it’s only a few months, it’s not a big deal for me to – uh, Gravin? That vial is smoking.”

I glanced over at one of the reagents I’d prepared. It glowed a dull brown and a trickle of black smoke rose out of it while it hissed softly. I capped the bottle with a glass stopper, then returned to the materials I was processing. “It’s fine,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it. And yes, it is a big deal.”

“What are you making?” Senica asked, worry plain in her voice.

“A lesson in caution,” I muttered to myself, almost too quietly for her to hear me.

I ignored the rest of her questions until I was done. At the end, I had a single vial that had three liquids stacked in it, each one separate and refusing to mix together. The empty space in the top got darker and darker as more and more smoke filled it with nowhere else to go, and Senica was eyeing it up with ever-increasing concern.

“Let’s take a walk,” I suggested.

“Maybe we should talk about that thing in your hand first,” Senica said.

I glanced down at it. “No, I don’t think we have enough time for that. Come on.”

My original lab had been built below our new home when we’d first settled in the valley, but I’d quickly changed my mind about that once Senica had expressed an interest in learning alchemy. I needed a place that was both bigger and not directly beneath our living room, just in case there were any accidents.

To that end, I’d raised a new building on the east edge of our shelf in the southern valley wall, one that I’d sealed completely to keep curious people out of. It took mana every time I wanted to go in or out. The door opened at my command, though it was really more that the stone wall rolled back to let us out.

I walked into the afternoon light and held the potion out to Senica. “Just give that a nice toss in an open space,” I instructed.

“How… how far should I throw it?” she asked as she gingerly accepted the potion.

“Well I wouldn’t drop it at your own feet. You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”

While I was talking, I reached into my phantom space and pulled out the other potion I’d brewed. This was one a cool, icy white with swirls of blue drifting through the liquid. Senica glanced at it curiously and asked, “What’s that?”

“Fire suppressant potion. It’ll snuff out any fire, at least anywhere the liquid touches.”

“And, uh, we need something like that?”

I just smiled at my sister and gestured for her to throw the vial.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Senica asked.

“Just throw the damn thing,” I said. “Are you a fire mage or are you not?”

“Fine,” she huffed. “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

Then she gave the vial a soft, underhanded toss that sent it in a graceful arc to land in the dirt about fifteen feet away. The vial landed on its side with a thump, forcing the liquids together, but nothing happened.

“I don’t understand,” Senica said. “I thought it was supposed to explode.”

Without saying a word, I chucked the frosty-white vial to the same spot. It made it half way there before the concoction completely destabilized and it exploded into a giant sphere of frost. Senica shrieked and flinched back, though we were only caught in the very outside edge of it and our shield wards were more than enough to protect us from the sudden temperature change.

A few seconds later, the cold air dissipated, leaving only an empty vial, the cap blown clear off it, and the one I’d handed Senica to throw. I turned to look at her and asked, “Do you understand?”

“No.”

I sighed. “Stop throwing the vials. Just because the glass isn’t going to break doesn’t mean what you made won’t explode, especially if you didn’t make it right. Sometimes, even if you did make it right.”

“Couldn’t you have just said that?”

“I did say that. I’ve told you at least a dozen times. You don’t listen, so I thought maybe seeing something that didn’t look dangerous actually explode would help things sink in.”

For all the ways my big sister was a prodigy at magic, at the end of the day, she was still a pre-teen child. Worse, she hadn’t been raised in an environment rich in magic. This was all relatively new for her, for everyone here, really. But no one else was using my alchemy lab, so she was the one who needed this particular lesson right now.

“Seems like a lot of effort when you could have just said it,” she said again.

“This is why you can’t come with me next year,” I told her.

“What? What does throwing potions have to do with anything?”

“Because half the time, you think you know better and you don’t listen. Sorry, but you’re not mature enough for me to trust you yet.”

“This is so unfair,” she muttered.

  *

Eyrie Peak hadn’t changed a bit in the week I’d been away, but when I approached in air elemental form, I got only curious looks from the brakvaw instead of being challenged. I swept across the mountain slopes, looking for Grandfather, but I suspected I wouldn’t find him until I shifted back to my human form and someone let him know I was here.

I could go straight up to the grave island, but it felt like I might offend someone if I flew there uninvited, so I opted instead to approach the gargantuan tower in the center of the peak’s caldera. That was where I’d met Grandfather’s projection the first time; it seemed like a good spot to find him again.

I shifted back to my real body and stood on the top of the tower. “Grandfather?” I called out. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can,” he said from behind me, no doubt hoping to startle me.

I rolled my eyes and spun on my heel to face him. “You could have appeared in front of me,” I said.

“I could have,” he agreed, chuckling.

“Does that trick work often?”

“Often enough that it’s worth trying, not so often that I get bored of it.”

I considered that for a second. “Fair enough.”

“Good of you to humor an old bird,” Grandfather said. “I suppose you’ve come to hear our answer to your request.”

Right to business, then. That was fine by me; I had never developed a taste for extended small talk. “I have.”

“You’ll be happy to hear we’ve decided to indulge this experiment of yours, on the condition that if it works, you help maintain the cycle of mana long enough for me to relocate my physical body without interruptions.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Do you have any guesses how long it’ll take?”

“We don’t even know if it’s possible.”

I was sure it was. I’d been experimenting with brakvaw-style mana manipulation myself for the last week, and while I hadn’t managed any break throughs, my initial results were promising. If nothing else, it gave me a new project to pursue while I waited to see if my theory about creating an artificially rich mana environment panned out.

“There is one concern,” Grandfather said. “Despite your talent, you are… rather small. We aren’t positive that you’ll actually be able to handle the flow of mana with such a small core, but all we ask is that you try your best.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be too much of an issue,” I said.

“No?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.

“No.” I smiled. “Tell me, how much do you know about core advancement?”