Brewing Bad Ch. 118-119

Ch. 118 - A Recount

Both angels looked at him skeptically before the second one said, “A recount? That’s impossible. The decision has already been made.”

“Yeah, the decision to screw me over has been made based on bad information, and you know if I was allowed to investigate this one small aspect, then you know your whole case would fall apart,” Lucas said with as much bravado as he could muster. 

It wasn’t just about the point, he realized. It was about the way that the elven Goddess made them accept the terms before she made it. That was definitely the right way to deal with these angels as far as he was concerned. The only people in the whole universe who loved pointless rules as much as Thrzealwick were these guys, as far as he was concerned. 

“We are bound by the law,” Darius said simply, retracting his hand. “If you have a case to make, then make it.”

“Well, for starters, I shouldn’t be level one, but then Thrzealwick, over here, already knows that don’t you, Thraz,” Lucas said, pointing at the Gnomish God.

“Why, I haven’t the faintest idea of what you are talking about!” the gnome declared. “I realigned your soul exactly as I promised my dear Lwyn I would.”

“Yeah, well, that’s like moving the headstones of a cemetery but leaving the bodies behind and declaring that you moved the whole thing, isn’t it?” Lucas asked. 

“I’m sure I don’t have the faintest idea of what that’s supposed to mean,” Thrzealwick shot back, crossing his arms and turning away from Lucas. 

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand either, Mister Sharpe. Perhaps you could try again?” Lwyn suggested. 

“What I’m saying is that he did a half-assed job,” Lucas sighed. “The only reason I’m level one is because your damn talent system thing didn't count any of the potions I actually made! I’ve made hundreds of healing potions and—”

“And not a single one according to the sacred recipes!” the Alchemical God interrupted. 

“Yeah, but it doesn’t matter!” Lucas shot back. “You agreed to let me try my chemistry on for size, so all of my chemistry efforts should count, especially since they’re about to drag me back to Earth and wipe my memory clean.”

Before the Gnomish God could answer, Lwyn asked, “Is this true, Thrzealwick? That hardly seems like a fair way to interpret a boon that you agreed to give. It’s not as if you don’t have all the records of what he’s done. Just run them again and see how his new talent reinterprets his old experiences.”

“Must I?” Thrzealwick asked wearily, but even as he asked the question and looked at the Elven Goddess' face, he was already surrendering. 

“Fine,” he grumbled, “but processing years' worth of experience in a single instant… It might hurt a bit.”

Yeah, but only because your bitch ass is going to make sure that it’s painful, as F— Lucas thought, only barely managing to hide his annoyance from the petty God. He never finished the thought because as soon as his life started replaying before his eyes, thinking was impossible. 

Instead of thinking he was on a high-speed highlight, real, absorbing years worth of experience from the moment he’d fallen into his grave all the way to now. He was too busy reliving every last moment, both good and bad, to process anything else.  

He relived his apprenticeship to a drunken apothecary and all the shunning that came with residing in a body that everyone rightly believed belonged to a dead man. He was forced to recall his miserable trip to Lordanin and the way he’d been betrayed not once but twice. Then, he was hit by the high-speed hustling of the last year. That happened so fast that he had trouble keeping track, and every near-death experience he had wracked his body with phantom pain. 

Amidst all that noise, though, was a constant, steady toll of chimes as little pop-up boxes flashed and faded away. Every time he made a potion, gathered an herb, or prepared a reagent, another one appeared, and his experience bar slowly filled up. Well, slow was relative. 

Even doing his old boss’s bitch work, he was still level two and halfway to level three by the time the old man kicked the bucket. After he got to the big city, though, and joined up with the Blind, he started cranking out batches of his first real version of Blue, it only sped up. 

By the time he and the boys had the cider house up and running and were cranking out Blue for the Knights and the Nobles and healing potions to bribe the masses, it was moving up continuously. Level three, level four, and level five all passed within a couple of months of each other, and he was right on the verge of level six when the owlbear laid him on death's door for half a season.

His life paused then, and he was forced to deal with his recovery, which wasn’t a picnic either, but it had its bright spots. Once he was back at the house, he was reminded of all the little kindnesses Danaria had done for him in that dark time, which made him surprised he hadn’t fallen in love with her sooner.  

After that, everything else that happened at Blackgate happened in the blink of an eye. Though that period of his life only had a couple of major injuries, he was bombarded with boxes from all the potions he made, techniques he perfected, and books he read. It was like a tiny fireworks show, and when the ride stopped suddenly at the moment of the potion of greater communion, he staggered and almost fell from the sudden bout of vertigo, but Lucas stayed standing. 

“Don’t mind me,” he muttered. “I’ve had a bit too much to think.”

“Did you get the result you wanted?” the angel asked blandly enough that Lucas was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“I did,” Lucas agreed, “And all eight of my levels say you can’t have me yet.” As he spoke, he gave them the middle finger and willed his character sheet into existence. He had no idea if he could do that when he was alive again, but up here, it was a pretty fair bet, and he was unsurprised to see it when it faded into view beside him.

Name: Lucas Sharpe Class: Magical Chemist   Level: 8

Agility: 13 Endurance: 9 Appearance 7
Intelligence: 14 Strength: 11 Soul: 9

Health: 100% Mana: 100%

Status Effect: Dead

Imbued Equipment: None

You have unspent points. Please use them to increase your ability scores or gain feats/perks.

Neither of them said or did anything for several seconds as they studied it. Then, after some silent agreement, they turned and they started walking out of Lwyn’s throne room. 

The guards finally relaxed then, moving back to their previous spots as if nothing had happened, and Lucas turned around to face the other Gods with a grin a mile wide. “Well, I guess I’ve been living in accordance with my talent for my whole life after all,” he said to the Gnomish God. 

Thrzealwick didn’t respond. If anything, he seemed unhappier than the angels had. He ignored Lucas entirely and turned to face Lwyn. “If that is all, my lady, I will take my leave and return to my laboratory. I have done all that you asked.”

As soon as she nodded, he was already fizzling into smoke, and he waited until the last moment of existence to toss Lucas a sour look. I’m not sure that I like the God of Alchemy being pissed off at me since I am, in fact, an alchemist now, for real, Lucas told himself. Well, a chemist, at least, but I think that’s pretty much an inferior version of the same thing in this Asshole’s Head. 

There was nothing he could do about it, though, and the feeling was pretty mutual. So, instead, he turned to face Lwyn, where he bowed deeply and sincerely. Her smile widened slightly at that.

“I knew you were a clever one,” she said. “You didn’t even need a hint.”

“How did you know that—” He started to ask. 

“Because they paid me a visit after you and I had tea,” she interrupted. “They made their intentions very clear, and I decided that they couldn’t have you just yet, so I decided this was the best way to prevent it.”

“And Thrzealwick was part of the whole setup?” Lucas asked, confused. 

“He had no idea what my aim was, and if he had, he would not have assisted you, or even me, for that matter,” she clarified, grinning wickedly. “You saw him. He tried to sabotage you until the last and needed to be shamed to do the right thing.”

“He did,” Lucas agreed, growing increasingly concerned about the Machiavellian nature of this Goddess. She was not to be fucked with. 

“So then, why did you help me?” he asked, as he slowly put the pieces together. This clearly wasn’t a woman who did things out of the Goodness of her own heart. 

“Because after this, you will be in a position to help me,” she said, a bit too kindly for him to truly believe her. 

“Look, I wasn’t planning to give the dragon what she wants anyway,” Lucas said, “I was just going to string her along like the Prince wanted and get back to my own business.”

“Of that, I am well aware. I rummaged around in your soul for a bit before Thrzealwick got here,” she agreed. “And using the Water of Life to ween addicts off your Blue is a fine notion. Really, I find no fault with your plans whatsoever. I am just suggesting that things will not always go according to plan.”

“Why? Is that some prophecy?” he asked. 

“Oh, heavens no,” she laughed. “It is simply the truth. The best way to ensure that something never happens is to plan for it to and then watch the universe disappoint you.”

It was a bit of a jaded viewpoint, but Lucas couldn’t say he necessarily disagreed. Before he could formulate a response, though, she continued. 

“I’m just saying that there will be a time when your plan falls apart, and when that happens, one of my handmaidens will come to you with a request,” she said, her smile growing colder.

“But it won’t be a request,” Lucas guessed. 

She nodded at that but didn’t answer directly. Instead, she asked. “I am the Goddess of many things, Mr. Sharpe. Tell me, did you look up what any of those things might be before you put yourself so completely under my power?”

“I, uhm,” Lucas answered. “Elves, and I don’t know, beauty.”

“Oh, that’s very sweet,” she purred with a smile that bordered on embarrassment, but he was willing to bet it was as fake as every smile she’d given that Gnomish prick earlier in the day. “But that is one of the Human Goddesses, Nyphara. I am the Goddess of Elves, Nature, Magic, and Intrigue. Fortunately for people like you, I only want to make the world a better place.”

Lucas wasn’t entirely sure he believed that, but he made a note to do a little more research on her and all the other Gods and Goddesses as soon as he got back to his body. 

“So, what is it I have to do to help you make the world a better place?” he asked, trying to hide his growing unease. 

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “That’s the fun part. There are a thousand ways that a ship can go off course, and someday, you will help me right it. You have to. You owe me.

She hesitated just long enough for those words to sink in before she added, "But, if I had to guess, though, I would say that it’s going to be sometime after Skylara finally passes.”

“She’s going to die?” Lucas asked. 

“She has to,” Lwyn answered, “or eventually the world is doomed.”

Ch. 119 - A Bumpy Ride

Lucas looked at her for a long moment in confusion before he asked, “Ummm… Excuse me? Is that some sort of prophecy or something?”

“Nothing of the sort,” the Goddess said, “And hardly a problem you need to worry about. It's simple ecology. Dragons are a part of nature, but they rarely grow so old and powerful as to displace nature.”

“Displace nature?” he asked, momentarily imagining the dragon as some kind of high-pressure front on a weather map, swirling just off the coast like some tropical storm. “I don’t follow.”

“And you wouldn’t,” she agreed. “Not unless I spent a lot of time explaining it to you. Now is not the time for such things, though. Your soul will need to return to your body soon or not at all.”

“You can’t just throw something out there like that and then say never mind. That’s fucked up,” Lucas said. As much as the Goddess’ words scared him, Skylara scared him more. She was at least on his side to some small degree. The dragoness, on the other hand, was on no one’s side but her own, and the more time Lucas spent with her, the more that weighed on him. 

“Well, then I shall give you one final thought to consider, and then you must be away,” she answered with an inscrutable smile. “You King’s son, just like his father before him, and his father before him, uses the dragoness as a very expensive shield… no, an umbrella, to keep away the downpour of other forces that they would otherwise have to do their part to purge and keep under control. Lordanin grows fat and rich while the rest of the world suffers. What is it you think happens to all of those orcs and goblins that grow and churn in the hinterlands? Do you think they just fade away?”

Lucas wanted to answer, but before he could, she made a dismissive gesture, and he felt himself being almost dragged back to the door he’d entered from. He tried to resist it, but it was a painful sensation, and as he looked down, he could see a silver thread extending from his solar plexus and back to the door. 

“I wouldn’t do that, Lucas,” the Goddess called after him as he began to ungracefully take his leave. “Remember, those potions only work once for each person. If you ever try one again, I’ll keep your soul forever!”

The eagerness in her voice then made Lucas wonder if she really had ever been on his side. He didn’t think about that long, though, as he followed the thread back out of the palace.   If he kept up the pace, there was no pain, but no matter how fast he moved, there was never any slack or elasticity. The thing just kept reeling up inside him. 

That was weird, but it didn’t bother him, at least until he got to the broad stairs he’d climbed up to gain entry. By then, the pace the thread demanded of him bordered on punishing, but he didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. Instead, he just pushed past the people who were moving up it even as he jogged down the things at a breakneck pace. 

“Excuse me! Pardon me! Coming through!” he yelled, basking in their scowls of disapproval. The elves clearly didn’t like a non-elf here, but acting like a bull in a china shop added extra venom to those looks. He didn’t take that part personally. That wasn’t his fault. It was Lwyn’s fault. He hadn’t triggered whatever this was. He couldn’t even do anything to stop it. 

Instead, he was being drawn like a fish on a hook toward the plaza he’d first started in. Specifically, he was being drawn toward a faintly glowing archway. It was only when he was almost there and running at a breakneck pace that he noticed the two angels were still standing there. 

“Enjoy your limited reprieve,” Darius said as Lucas ran past him, “Whether it takes a year or a century, you will die, and when you do, I’ll be back to retrieve you.”

“I enjoy these little chats!” Lucas called out breathlessly, giving them both the finger as he ran past the two of them, hoping this wasn’t a trap. “Let’s make sure to do this again soon. How’s Nevuary work for you?”

Before either of them could answer, though, he was already taking a running leap into the glowing rift that awaited him. It looked a little intimidating, but he couldn’t exactly slow down to investigate it first, and there was no way he was chilling while his parole officer was loitering around, looking for an excuse to grab him. He’d played that game before. 

Instead, he went in head first, and it was only as the darkness began to dissolve him he felt that might have been a mistake. He immediately started feeling cold and slow. Then, the aching started. It felt a little like an overdose or what he imagined death might feel like. There was a sense of weight and a dull, full-body ache, along with the certainty that there was nothing he could do about it. 

It was only with that revelation that he realized that was exactly what this was. He was dead. No, he was in his body, and it was dead. That was a hell of a thing to figure out, and Lucas shuddered in revulsion. Still, he forced himself to breathe. At least, he tried to. It was harder than he thought it would be. His flesh was cold, and his heart was still, so it refused to respond to him. 

Don’t let me go out like a bitch, man, he thought to himself, imagining the hard time that angel asshole would give him if he died again right after he flipped them off. That gave him the strength to try again, and this time, his dead flesh offered up a gasping, shuddering breath that wracked his whole body with painful coughing. 

That coughing was the best thing that ever happened to him, though, and Lucas embraced it, it wracked his body, and his heart grudgingly began to beat once more. The vomiting followed almost right after that, but Lucas had prepared for that and spewed up the thick, vicious poison that he’d willingly drunk earlier into the bronze chamber pot. When it was all done, several minutes later, he felt positively horrible, but even more than that, he was happy to be alive. 

When there was nothing left in his stomach, he wiped his face and then flopped down on his bed. “I am never, ever, dying again,” he told himself. “Never. That shit sucks.”

Part of him knew now was the time he should investigate his system and see just what had changed, but he couldn’t be fucked. As far as he could tell, almost no time at all had passed during whatever all that was. He would have called it a dream if he didn’t have the empty bottle and the full chamber pot. 

The dreams that followed after, though, had much the same character as his out-of-body experience, or whatever it was. 

Lucas didn’t even try to get out of bed for lunch or dinner, and when the servants found him passed out and half dead to the world, they sent for the healers immediately. Lucas didn’t remember much of that. Remembering anything when you were running a fever was hard. He recalled the taste of a very expensive healing potion and something about bed rest, though he couldn’t recall if the doctor had told Heisenburgle that he must let Lucas sleep for a week or for the rest of his life. It was a coin flip. 

Lucas didn’t care. When he was asked questions, he simply nodded and told everyone he’d be fine or that he was feeling better, even though he wasn’t. He lacked the processing power or the strength for any more than that. Being dead, even for a few minutes, is pretty hard on the body, he decided. I guess that’s why Lwyn sent me away so forcefully. 

He had plenty of time to wonder if he would have managed to recover if he’d been away for one more minute, though. It haunted his dreams for days as he worked his way up from broth to solid food once more. 

On day five, he was sitting up and feeding himself for the first time since he’d done all of this when Heisenburgle paid him an uncharacteristic daytime visit. The gnome didn’t beat around the bush even a little. He just said, “I find the timing of all of this highly suspect. I don’t believe you are sick.”

“You don’t?” Lucas asked, taken aback. The very last thing he wanted to do was to admit any part of what he’d done, but he might be forced to do just that. 

“No,” the gnome explained, “The timing, right after you finally triumph in your project, is just too suspect. I believe you were poisoned. By saboteurs working in league with the elves.”

Lucas opened his mouth to discount that, but the alchemist talked right over him. “I know that you said that when you were attacked, elves were not involved, but surely now that you’ve created Lwynthenll, you can see that—”

“Why is it always elves with you?” Lucas asked. “Why is it never the dwarves or the Prince or—”

“If the Prince wanted you dead, he would simply have to ask me to do it. There is no need to go around me and my authority over this facility,” Heisenburgle said coolly. “As to the dwarves, they have no interest in alchemy. They occasionally try to spy on some of the advanced metallurgical techniques I am pursuing for the Hyperquadabulator, but that has nothing to do with the Lwynthenll. Now that we have a narcotic leash for our dragoness, it will very likely be mothballed. ”

Lucas ignored all of that nonsense and refocused on the gnome's main point. He definitely had been poisoned, and he needed to come up with a good excuse for that, but he could do without the paranoia. Indeed, as the gnome talked about his plans to round up the kitchen staff and begin a very forceful questioning routine to find the source, he noped right out of there. 

“What if,” Lucas said, interrupting Heisenburgle’s deranged rant with as much strength as he could muster. “What if I was poisoned, and it was… and this will blow your mind... It was no one's fault?”

“No, you aren’t making any sense at all!” the gnome complained. 

“You’re the master alchemist,” Lucas said, "figure it out." 

“This puzzle is not a job for an alchemist but a spymaster. Fortunately, I also happen to be—”

“Heisenburgle, seriously, stop,” Lucas sighed. “I’m too weak for this shit. I don’t believe, for a second, someone pointed my eggs. I think that maybe I underestimated this potion of yours and might have dosed myself by accident. That’s all.”

“Really?” Heisenburgle asked. “How?”

Lucas had no idea how, but in that moment, he did what he did best and lied his ass off. He explained how they really didn’t have enough ventilation for that kind of catalytic reaction. When the gnome seemed skeptical of that, Lucas suggested that he might have dripped some on his hands or touched some residue while cleaning the glassware. The gnome had less trouble accepting those options. 

“What if there really is a traitor in the kitchens, though?” Heisenburgle repeated. Surely, you don’t just expect me to ignore that possibility. 

“Please do not start any witch hunts until I’m feeling good enough to check out of this dump,” Lucas answered with a shake of his head. “If you do anything like what you suggested earlier, there will be a lot more than one poisoner on the loose. You can’t treat people that way.”