Book 2, Chapter 24

Whoever had set up this operation had devoted a lot of mana to keeping it hidden. I breached the mana shielding enchantment right as I passed from the hallway into the main grow chamber. Between one step and the next, I went from being unable to sense any mana at all to it practically exploding in my mind.

The tables were a bit too tall for me to comfortably examine the various plants sitting on top of them, but I could feel the mana in them. Someone had done their best to recreate the natural environment of an area that wasn’t scarred over in order to grow alchemical reagents. It appeared alchemy wasn’t a completely forgotten discipline after all.

Who owned this place? More importantly, how hard would it be to take control of it? I hadn’t even begun to catalogue the resources available to me now, but I was already considering a few concoctions that could prove immediately useful, as well as several others that would keep for extended times and wouldn’t have any sort of negative effect on my phantom space. An emergency stash of potions was never a bad thing.

A few healing potions would be a good start. The basic ones were easy enough to make and I knew a few dozen recipes using different ingredients. Whatever was growing in here, I was positive I could find a way to mix them together so that the imbiber would heal rapidly. I wasn’t expecting to find the rare, esoteric ingredients for something like a potion of limb regeneration, but wound closure and blood replenishment were all that a person really needed to survive an imminently fatal wound. The rest could come later.

Sadly, a mana potion would be a waste of time. It would require more mana to brew one than I’d gain from drinking it. Besides, with my tiny core, most of the effects would be wasted on me, even for a weak mana potion. My crystal did a better job of holding extra mana for when I needed it.

Most temporary potions or elixirs wouldn’t be all that useful right now. All they did was store magical effects I could duplicate on my own, albeit at a slight savings in mana since I’d be stealing already grown reagents from this room instead of having to invest mana into budding plants. Shape changing potions were great for people who lacked the ability to cast the spell on their own, but inefficient since I already knew the invocations for dozens of forms. It was the same with potions of night seeing, spider climbing, flight, and a variety of other effects.

Really, there was only one single thing I was interested in at the moment. There was an ointment that had been part of my original plans, one used to smooth out the pangs from artificially aging too fast. That was a complicated process that could easily kill the subject if it was done too quickly, since the body needed time to properly build on itself and all the magic did was stretch what was already there. It was all too easy to stretch too far and tear or break pieces of the body.

The ointment of aging helped alleviate that by providing all the energy and nutrients a body needed during the accelerated aging process. On my own, I could shave perhaps two or three years off my journey to adulthood as long as I was careful and consistent. With an unlimited supply of ointment to reinforce my body, it would be more like ten years.

With the proper preparations, almost all of which were out of reach, I could form a nutrient vat to submerge myself in a magically enforced slumber for a year and emerge an adult, my core fully intact and ready to advance to stage three. I had just such a vat secreted away inside one of my vaults in the Night Vale, if only I had a way to reach it.

But right now, if I could find what I needed here, I could get the process started. It wouldn’t be an instant change, of course, but it would be a beginning. Once I dealt with the Wolf Pack, I could devote my time and effort to expanding my core size. This route also had the benefit of leaving me active so I could take a hand in shaping events to my liking. There was no telling what the Council back home might try to do to my family if I wasn’t there to serve as a deterrent.

I didn’t recognize most of the herbs, flowers, thistles, or weeds growing in the planters, some of which were large, rectangular troughs up to ten feet long, others were singular pots with lonely occupants. The walls were lined with trellises that had flowering vines creeping across them. In places, I caught flashes of bright colors from berries hidden behind the leaves.

Not recognizing them by shape and color did not mean I couldn’t make use of them. Each and every one had mana running through it, and any accomplished alchemist could get a feel for that and at least make a guess as to what kind of properties they could expect to find in a given sample. It would take me hours to sort through the dizzying variety, but I had no doubt I could catalogue this entire room.

Not all plants could grow in such restrictive climates, of course. Sometimes, a plant needed actual sunlight, not artificial mana lights. Even mana shaped to mimic daylight couldn’t always provide everything a particular plant needed, which I supposed was probably why those smugglers had their own grow room. It was too much of a stretch to assume they weren’t connected to whoever owned this place. Perhaps their leader, Hyago, was the mage in charge of all of this.

If I hadn’t been actively examining the various mana signatures in the room, I might have missed the feeling of something shifting above me. It was a presence, something mobile and doing its best to hide its mana. If it hadn’t moved, it could have remained hidden, since it appeared to me as nothing more than three thin, fragile lines of mana, easily lost in the noise. Once it did move though, it became more obvious.

The lines shifted like the limbs of some sort of three-legged spider, scurrying across the ceiling and hidden behind the mana lights pointed straight down at the plants. The creature, whatever it was, drew closer, then passed overhead. Once it was behind me, the legs started extending as if they were gently bringing something down from the ceiling.

“How curious. A street child has wandered where he doesn’t belong,” a voice said behind me. It had a soft, hissing quality to it, not quite a lisp, but something close to it. “Nothing new there. Children often worm their way into places better left alone, but to find one here is a surprise.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see a deformed man not much taller than I was. He was hunched over, his right limbs larger than his left, and his face disfigured. Despite his apparent height, he still loomed over me due to two black lines of twisted cloth reaching up into the darkness, the hem of some sort of robe that was draped across his body and belted at the waist. The third length of cloth was braced against the floor now, helping support the man’s waist. Even as I watched, the three limbs worked in unison to bring the man a step close.

Now that he was within a few feet of me, I could see the gaps in the shielding hiding their mana. It was better than the shrouds I’d seen other mages craft, but not quite the complete concealment that a true shield would offer. Similar to throwing a threadbare shirt over a lantern, most of the light was blocked, but there was a glow that the thin patch couldn’t quite hide. The robe was an interesting example of local enchanting techniques, but not without its flaws.

“Tell me, child, how did you get here? Someone must have brought you.”

“You are wrong,” I said. “I came on my own. I saw an interesting tunnel dug to connect to the sewer lines of the city and decided I wanted to know more about what was at the end.”

“Impossible,” the man rasped out. “I would have known if you’d come from that way.”

I shrugged. It didn’t matter if the man believed me or not. In all likelihood, he’d be dead in the next few minutes anyway. I was making assumptions, but I’d be surprised if the man wasn’t a member of the cabal I’d come here to find. He was certainly strong enough to be a mage, and unless I missed my guess completely, had a stage two core. It was admittedly hard to tell through the robe shrouding his mana.

“Do you have any loclamir growing in here?” I asked. “Or really, anything at all that focuses mana into its roots in a Falinshir weave?”

“You know a bit about alchemy? Even more curious than I thought,” the man said. His robe pushed him forward until we were face to face. “Does my appearance not scare you, child?”

“I’ve seen worse.”

The man started cackling, then quickly cut himself off with a fit of coughing. I took a step back to avoid being sprayed with his spittle. “You’re brave or stupid. I haven’t decided which,” the man said. “Either way, I’ll find a use for you.”

“I have no interest in becoming one of the aberrations you keep locked up in those pens.”

“No one ever does,” the man told me. “You seem remarkably calm, considering you’ve been caught in my domain.”

“Hmm. Yes. About that loclamir?”

“I’ve never heard of it, but I have a few substitutes with the right mana structure in the roots,” the man said. “What do you need them for? I can’t imagine you’re some grubby-fingered sneak thief looking to grab something to peddle for a night’s food in your belly and shade over your head.”

“I’m looking to make an ointment of aging,” I said. “I would also be willing to buy some if you have any in stock of sufficient quality.”

Rather, I’d love to know if I should bother to go looking through his storeroom for it later. I doubted either of us thought we’d both be walking away from this conversation alive.

“Aging? Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up. You might end up looking like me.”

“I’d just make a malleable flesh potion to reshape my body to my liking if that were the case.”

“As if it were so easy,” the man said, his voice full of scorn. “Just a pinch of this and a dab of that. Hah!”

I pointed to my right at a leafy plant with a thick stem. “Drippings from that to serve as a catalyst in a base solution of liquid mana.” My finger moved to a different potter with a small red herb, its body hidden mostly in the dirt except for what appeared to be a bundle of red pine needles. “That, ground into a powder and dissolved at a ratio of three parts in ten to the liquid mana to serve as a lifeforce stabilizer while remolding the flesh. Mix using the Caldiver method for three hours, add some of this bearded leaf here for the isolator component, then let sit in a blue box for six days until it’s ready to be activated in a high-density furnace.”

The man’s eyes darted around, following my finger as I pointed out the different ingredients he’d need to craft the potion. His mouth worked silently for a moment and I could see him processing the directions, trying to poke holes in it.

“It… could work,” he said begrudgingly. “Worth experimenting on, at least. How do you know this? Who are you?”

“Keiran,” I said. “And yourself?”

“Vurican is my proper name, but everyone just calls me Freak.”

“Seems rather rude.”

“Not because of my appearance,” Freak said. “I have… proclivities…”

“Ah, because of the flesh crafting.”

“It’s a misunderstood art.”

That might have been because Freak wasn’t very good at it, but I didn’t see any point in insulting him to his face. I couldn’t tell if it would set him off or if he’d just laugh. There was something broken in the man’s head, and that was a dangerous state to be in when combined with the ability to use magic.

“I think I’ll keep you,” Freak said as he studied me. “You’re too interesting to waste on the cutting table.”