Richter grabbed some cold meat from the feast area and washed it down with a cup of fruit juice. His people greeted him, but he spent only a few minutes sitting before he was on the move again. His next stop was the Dragon’s Cauldron. Randolphus had been given the task of letting Tabia know about the upcoming battle.
The dark-skinned elf had come back from her Trial as a Professed Alchemist. She had started creating health, mana and stamina potions every day, but she had also been working on several “experiments.” When Richter had asked what they were, she had just smiled coyly and said that she didn’t want to “spoil the surprise.” The coyness was so out of character for the former mercenary that Richter had let the matter drop. In the days since, she had spent almost all of her time in the Dragon’s Cauldron. Strange smells and colored gases could be seen escaping the glass building at all hours of the day and night. Some of the gardeners had complained, but since no real damage was being done, Richter let it go. He just hoped that she had something ready that would help. The chaos seed wasn’t disappointed.
Walking into the Cauldron, he was struck again by how strange the inside of the building was. “Strange” actually wasn’t the right word, Richter realized. “Unexpected” fit much better. The Land was analogous to medieval times in many ways, but it was not a perfect analogy. In some ways, the magic and technology of The Land went beyond what was available on Earth. The inside of the Dragon’s Cauldron looked like a high-tech chemistry lab rather than a darkened apothecary’s den. Glass beakers and eye droppers were everywhere. There was even a shower in one corner, supplied by a type of magical plumbing.
Tabia was slowly titrating a cloudy, yellow solution into a small beaker of clear liquid. When each drop fell into the beaker, a red bloom of smoke rose from the surface for a moment. Amazingly, each bloom of smoke formed a figure before dissipating. Despite the urgency of the day, Richter decided just to watch for a few moments. Every few seconds another drop fell, and the figure grew more distinct. After a few minutes, Richter saw that it had four legs and a tail. Ten minutes after that, the smoke formed a perfectly detailed red fox. It bared its teeth at Tabia, then slowly dissolved. Its red color leached into the liquid which began to bubble. The chaos seed’s eyes grew slightly wide as the liquid became even more turbulent.
Quickly, but smoothly, she picked the beaker up and moved over to a waiting tray. There were indentations in the tray, three across and five deep, like an egg carton. Sparkling powder was in each tray. With surprise, Richter realized it was powdered crystal. Looking at it, he guessed that about five measures of the precious ingredient were sitting there on the tray. It was worth several gold. Despite his instinctual twinge at seeing such wealth being used all at once, he decided to hold his peace and trust his Alchemist.
The potion was bubbling hard now. The reaction was getting so violent that Tabia was forced to hold the beaker in both hands. She began to pour the solution onto the prepared crystal. With a sure hand, she poured a dollop into each indentation, not spilling a drop. Each measure of potion interacted with the crystal, first dissolving it, then precipitating. By the time that she was done pouring the potion, all fifteen piles of powdered crystal had been covered.
“What is that?” he finally asked.
Tabia looked at him in surprise. His sprite boots apparently made him quiet enough that she hadn’t heard him even with her acute, elven hearing. Either that or she had simply been distracted by the dangerous alchemy she was engaged in. Either way, she was not happy. Her elvish oath roughly translated to, ‘By the cancerous sphincter of disease-ridden drow!”
“My lord!” she continued. “You should not sneak up on me!” She took a deep breath and centered herself, “As you are already here, however, please help. Open that cabinet.”
She indicated a glass cabinet that was built into the structure of the Core building. “This one?” he asked. She nodded her head vigorously and then looked at the tray in her hands. The powder-solution mixtures were starting to rise like bread, forming fifteen red bubbles. Apparently, time was a factor. He quickly opened the glass cabinet, or tried to. It had a latch lock that took a few seconds to figure out.
“My lord!” she said, drawing out the second syllable to urge him to move faster. He finally got the door open and she placed the tray inside. She slammed the door shut and latched it with a sigh of relief. The bubbles had already risen to twice the depth of the indentations.
“What the hell is that?” Richter asked. She was looking at the reaction in fascination.
“What?” she asked with a blank and innocent expression. “Oh, that?” she asked again, pointing to the cubby.
“You know goddamn well ‘that!’” Richter snapped. “Why do I get the feeling that we both almost died?”
She grinned, “That, my lord, is red foxfire. It is a form of solid alchemy that I have been working on for the last two weeks since I achieved my Profession! The main ingredient, crimson daidenroot, is actually fairly common in the lands around the village.”
“That’s great, Tabia. You still haven’t told me what it does.”
“Oh. I would have thought that was obvious, Lord Richter. It explodes.”
Richter looked at her. Then he cocked his head and looked at her. She just kept smiling. “Explodes?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling broader. After another few moments of looking at each other, she said, “I thought it might be useful if you could get it near some enemies.”
A small smirk started forming on Richter’s face as well. He looked at the tray through the door of the glass cabinet, “And what is the cabinet for? Is it a zero-oxygen area required to finish the reaction? Or maybe an oven of some kind?”
She shook her head, “No. Nothing else is required. The alchemy is simply maturing on its own now.”
“Then why did we have to put it in the cubby?” Richter asked, still smiling.
“That is simply a safety precaution, my lord. In case one of the alchemies proved unstable. The detonation would trigger a cascade of explosions in the other fourteen solutions that could turn us both into red mist.”
Richter’s smile slipped.
Tabia kept talking, her tone academic. “This is actually the fourth time I’ve done this particular reaction. I do not know the exact formula you see. I have been using the Cauldron’s ability to experiment with the local resources.”