Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 25

Chapter 25: 

The next hour was a bit of a blur. With Cocobusi at the helm, Muur found herself teleporting back to the Quicksands on the wings of the aetheric shard network then led into the same merchant strip as the one she’d walked with Kofle not long ago.

But this time, she was being led through it with exactly no dithering or hesitation by a man on a mission rather than a friend trying to figure out what was best for her. Cocobusi knew exactly what he wanted.

He was also relatively well known, it seemed, if the number of merchants involved in alchemical matters that greeted him as ‘Master Cocobusi’ were any indication. He was polite but firm in his dealings, and always introduced her as ‘the guild’s newest gopher’ when people asked about Muur specifically. 

“Certain people, if they believe they can have my ear through you, will be absolutely infuriating to deal with.” He’d told her by way of an explanation.

In barely under an hour, he’d found her something that could only be called a brick shithouse of an alembic. The thing was far, far less advanced than his own, being unable to hot swap parts and sections to adapt to the recipe at hand, meaning that it required genuine thought and planning in order to chart the concoction’s path through its insides. But it was an ‘Ironwork’ original, and quote: ‘Dreamed up by adventurers, for adventurers and brought into the world by the premiere magitech providers of Eorzea’. It also had a lifetime warranty, which included various things such as ‘mechanical failures following use as a deadly bludgeoning against irate wildlife’.

It also cost over 250.000 gil.

Which Cocobusi paid without even blinking, simply reaching into his bag and pulling out a heavy purse, filled to bursting with coin, “Here, for your perusal.”

“No need fer tha’ Master,” The merchant said with a laugh as they took the purse, “We know you to be good with yer coin. If there’s any issue, we’ll just send a runner yer way.” Thanking him, the alchemist had his ‘gopher’ grab the alembic and quickly departed from the stall.

Three more transactions later, the pair was back at the guild’s entrance, “I hope you recall where the laboratory we borrowed is?”

“Yep.” Muur said with a bob of her horned head. She may be kind of dogshit at street names, but keeping a mental map of places she walked through was second nature.

“Good, I’ll be taking over the Guildmaster in regards to petitions, so I will not be able to provide assistance,” He told her, “Find your way back to that laboratory, and I will have the necessary reagents for the Ethers delivered to you post haste.”

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Midway through the process of deploying her alembic in accordance with the instructions packaged with it, Muur was momentarily interrupted by a group of three clerks knocking at her door. In their arms were three crates containing the ingredients, crystals and glass she’d need for the commission of thirty Ethers – and a four batch margin of error. The trio quickly dropped their cargo off before departing and leaving her to her work.

When all was said and done, between that small bout of shopping, puzzling out how to assemble the mess of tubes that was the alembic and running it through a thorough cleaning process, an hour and a half had ran from her. Leaving only four and a half hours to prepare her batch of Ethers.

No pressure, right?

She didn’t let herself fall prey to anxiety and jump right to making the first batch. Instead, she organized her ingredients, laying down neat rows of mistletoe berries, imp wings, water bottles and mistletoe leaves. Next to each line, a trio of empty bottles, with their labels already applied if not written on yet.

This way she could just move sequentially through each batch instead of breaking her workflow by having to fetch and measure every time.

Then, and only then, did she begin the alchemy.

The first seven batches of Ethers went by her in a blur. Grind, cut, break, sew, grind, cut, break, sew. While they were maybe not perfect, owing to having to adjust to her own alembic’s quirks, her aetheric sense told her that they were well within the tolerance for commercial Ethers.

The eighth was where things started to get a bit dicier. She’d spent well over two hours on her ethermaking now, and her attention was starting to slip minutely. Not enough to cause issues, but she had to catch herself during the step of breaking of the bones when one began cracking in multiple spots. Thankfully with a bit of quick thinking and elbow grease she kept the number of breaks to four.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t where trouble stopped, and her tenth batch ended in disaster when her needlework broke and the pouch holding the broken wingbones burst open. She was left with a white speckled, sludgy, sticky black mess that she had to clean out.

Thankfully, with over two hours left, she was free to take her time and completely scrub down her workstation. Needless to say, after that little accident, she took her time making sure that the last batch wouldn’t explode a second time, leaving her with thirty Ethers, as requested.

Also her slumped on a stool on the side of the workshop, groaning as she recovered from that mental marathon. It hadn’t been physically intensive in the least, there was enough time between the steps that her fingers weren’t sore or anything of the sort, but the recipe was demanding enough of finesse and quick timing that her brain felt like cauliflower soup swirling inside her skull.

Now that she was done, all that was left was delivering all these to… they never actually told her who to deliver these to, did they?

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“Can I help ye?” Remembering that a ‘quartermaster’ had been mentioned more than once, Muur went out in search of them. A few rounds of asking around and one meandering corridor later, she was staring up at a roegadyn standing behind a desk.

“I have an order of thirty Ethers, but nobody told me where to deliver it.” The lizard wizard explained from behind the wooden crate she’d loaded them into, hay and a wooden grid making sure the bottles played nice with each other. 

“Thirty Ethers?” The ochre coloured man parroted back, “I don't believe we have any such orders– do you have the commission slip?”

“...Fuck, I will have to talk with Guildmaster Severain about that.” Muur groaned, not at all wanting to bother the poor man. Or suffer for it, either. “It was meant for the EAC, if that helps?” Whoever that was.

“The East Aldenard Company?” Now the man was looking at her suspiciously, “We did have a commission from them, but it was taken by–”

“Her,” Sweeping into the room like a specter, the Guildmaster placed a slip of paper on the desk, “There was a clerical error somewhere that prevented her from fulfilling the order until now. Isn’t that right?”

The roegadyn blinked at his boss, then looked down at Muur - who gave a jaunty wave with her tail - then back at his boss, “Indeed, and just in time for the Ethers to be collected as well,” Nodding like it all made perfect sense, he patted his counter, “If you don’t mind, put your crate there so I can examine the contents. Wouldn’t want anything subpar to be delivered, now would we?”

“Of course!” Muur said confidently, doing as ordered, “I haven’t learned the notation system the Guild uses yet, so I kept the labels simple and to the point.”

“The fact you label things at all makes you more diligent than half the Guild already,” The Quartermaster grumbled as he pulled the bottles one by one. His grumblings turned into an appreciative hum when it became clear all of them shared the same golden hue, “Color’s good at least.” 

Bending behind the desk, he pulled out a contraption made from metal arms and crystals. Dropping it on the desk, he quickly placed each bottle of Ether on the base for a few seconds, the crystals glowing for a few moments each time, “Looks like they are all on par with the Guild’s quality standards. Normally, I’d ask for your name so I can record the commission as completed. But… paperwork troubles I’d wager?”

“Quite,” Severain declared curtly before spinning on his heels and moving out of the room, “with me, apprentice. There are still forms that need filling and filing.”

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As soon as Muur joined him outside, the Guildmaster gave her a clipboard, “Sign here, there and there on each page,” His tone was clipped and bored as he led her through the Guild’s insides, “If you’ve no signatures, your initials in Eorzean script will do well enough. In any case, as a new member of the Guild you are entitled to a few perks… Before I mention them, please tell me you’ve cleaned the laboratory that you’ve used?”

“That should go without saying and the more I hear about the expectations my coworkers set, the more concerned I become.” Muur drawled out as she speed-read through the paperwork, signing it in sensible latin cursive instead of Eorzea’s fucked up inbred cousin of an alphabet. 

“Most of them are… tolerable. The issue comes from the fact Eorzea was rocked by devastation, losing us many talented tradesmen and fieldsmen. Replacing the fieldsmen was easy enough, the swelling of the Miner’s Guild is evidence enough. But there is quite simply a dearth of men and women capable of utilising the resulting glut of resources,” Taking a right, Severain guided her to the stairs and quickly climbed down to the guild’s lowest floor, “Therefore, we tradesguilds have been… incentivised to relax our recruitment standards, which will no doubt lead to a revitalisation of the realm!” Muur could taste the sarcasm that dripped from his words. It was a bitter, angry flavour, “–Or so some in power are convinced. Syndicate members and their bootlickers are not earning the wealth that they thought that they would, therefore they force ‘progress’ onto others… Loathe as I am to say it, it’s actually worked wonders.”

“The law of large numbers, I suppose.” The lizard woman sighed as she handed back the clipboard, done with the reading and signing, “Let’s hope it is just a temporary surge where everyone will shape up or drop out, rather than the people’s perceptions of the Guild change permanently for the worse. Then we’d be locked into garbage in, garbage out.”

Taking the clipboard, Severain paused to take his time in flipping through it. Without much else to do, Muur looked around, for a place that was supposed to be as prestigious as the alchemical guild, the walls were quite bare. There was only the barest of the usual Ul’dahn colorful embellishments, interestingly the main source of light weren’t torches, but wall mounted crystals that cast a warm orange glow, “Quite. If you wish to learn more about the overall situation, I’m sure your fellows at the order of Nald’thal would love nothing more than to tell you. But I personally doubt this surge will end anytime soon. However, while it has forced us to relax our recruitment, the edict has said nothing regarding retention. Which I’ve taken full advantage of so far…” Apparently finished with his read, he tucked the board under his arm and pulled out a coin-shaped pin, “Everything is in order, it seems. Here, your mark of membership,” He negligently dropped it in Muur’s hands before stopping in front of a door, “As you can see, it is stamped with our guild’s symbol on the front and is blank on the back. Please have a goldsmith engrave it with your name, what you do with it afterwards I do not care, but a majority of clients will ask for it to be presented to ensure that the wares you are producing are up to the guild’s standard.”

“Will do. Now, let me get out of your hair.” Muur said as she tucked away the token. She had no interest in keeping the Guildmaster from his projects, God knew that she’d be spitting lightning if she got even a tenth of the interruptions the poor man was getting.

“I’d be glad if you held yourself to this,” He told her noncommittally before opening the door, “In any case, regarding ensuring only individuals with a modicum of talents are allowed to remain within the guild, I have implemented a system. Muur’Zagas Himaa, meet Alchemist Lalaladee,” Behind the door was a pristine room. Every shelf kept rigorously clean and ordered. Every pile of paper on the desk at which a bewildered lalafell sat was perfect with not one sheet out of place. Every book in the bookshelf behind her was ordered by subject, and then by size, “Alchemist Lalaladee, meet Muur’Zagas Himaa. Your new apprentice.”

“Wha–!?” The woman shot up to try and speak, but Severain was already leaving.

“I trust you to handle the explanations regarding the Guild’s workings, the nature of her apprenticeship and the expectations laid upon her,” He was already halfway through closing the door when he turned back to give them some parting words, “Have a pleasant evening.”