The Newt and Demon

“I have a hangover,” Tresk said, rolling out of bed the next morning.

Theo could actually feel it through their link. He could sense the headache, and feel her sore muscles, so he simply cut the connection off. “I told you to take it easy,” he said, shaking his head, “but you just had to jump off the roof of that building into that barrel of booze.”

“But I made the jump,” Tresk said, snapping her fingers. “And it was a damn good jump, wasn’t it?”

“It was a very impressive jump, especially the way you drank your way out of the barrel,” Theo said, nodding in agreement. He sniffed at the air, smelling the scent of something greasy cooking downstairs. “It seems as though Sarisa is looking out for you.”

“Food,” Tresk groaned, crawling along the ground. “Greasy food. I need it.”

Theo watched an amusement, Tresk crawled her way out of the room and then down the stairs. She dragged herself into a chair and slammed her forehead into the table. He descended the stairs with amusement and took his seat. A few moments later, Sarisa and Rowan served them plates piled high with greasy sausages and bacon. The alchemist picked at his food as his companion shoveled it down her gullet.

“Are you going to be up for scouting the ocean dungeon today, Tresk?” Theo asked.

“Once my head stops pounding, I’ll be fine to do it. But don’t get your hopes up. That dungeon sucks, even if we have the tower built around it.”

The tower they had built was effectively a watertight system that allowed access to the dungeon, but that didn’t make going into the dungeon itself any less harrowing. The reports he had received said that the interior was its own ocean. Completing that dungeon was more about not drowning rather than killing monsters. From what Theo had heard, there were some dungeons that were more puzzle than fighting challenge, but they hadn’t thoroughly scouted the interior of this dungeon yet, so it could have been anything. Negative dungeons had a way of changing.

But Theo had his eye set on different tasks today. With his new method of infusing potions with properties, he had quite a few he wanted to test. He had also harvested enough blubber from Frank to cover the town, and the properties seemed promising. He was particularly interested in the Defense property. Although we had to admit that the hurricane property was just as tempting.

It might have taken Trask a while, but she was eventually back to her old self. She perked up after some hair of the dog as some watered wine. The greasy food also did some work for her roiling gut. Her task today was an unenviable one. She had to do scouting missions in the ocean dungeon and planned to stop by the shop to grab the potions required to survive.

“One of you two gets an easy day today,” Theo said, patting Sarisa and Rowan on the shoulder at the same time. “Who wants to stand around the place where the Hills dungeon was to look for anything weird?”

Rowan raised his hand. “Not me. I had a weird dream that Frank ate me.”

“Did you sleep in the manor last night?” Sarisa asked.

“Yeah, I slept in that manner,” Rowan said, folding his arms. “Why?”

“Because when you sleep in the manor, you can control your dreams, you idiot.”

“What you’re saying is that I’m just torturing myself?” Rowan asked with a scoff. That’s exactly what was happening. “I think you should go watch the dungeon, sister.”

Sarisa shrugged, slapping her brother on the back before heading out. It wouldn’t be a hard job, and Theo didn’t foresee any problems with it, but he still couldn’t shake the strange feeling he got about the dungeon. It felt as though something more should have happened than the collapse. The dungeon’s destruction made little sense to him, but then again he wasn’t an expert on dungeons. He normally left that to Xol’sa, who thought everything was fine. Now the man was busy reuniting with his people, so perhaps Theo was the next best expert.

“You understand you can control your dreams when you sleep in here, right?” Theo asked, leveling his gaze at Rowan.

“The heart wants what it wants,” Rowan said.

“So, your deepest desire is to be eaten by a giant whale monster?” Theo asked, nodding. “That’s fine. How about you just get into the shadows and we’ll go brew some potions?”

“I brought a book this time,” Rowan said, holding up a book.

“That’s nice,” Theo said, patting him on the head. Rowan vanished into the shadows shortly after that.

Now that Theo and Salire had a better handle on the new form of alchemy, she was pumping out more potions than ever. Theo entered the lab and breathed in the scent of brewing health potions. She had been kind enough to leave a few stills empty for him to use, which was always appreciated. And, as always, there was another strange person working the store downstairs, but there hardly seemed to be a need for anyone of skill. Most of the patrons were locals, almost always adventurers.

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“I’ll be testing a new reagent today,” Theo said, cleaning out the three stills that had been left for him. He withdrew a chunk of the blubber from his inventory and held it out for her to see.

“Ew, why does it stink so much?” Salire asked, pinching her nose.

“Yeah, now that I think about it, the whole thing stank. We were just worried about not dying, so I don’t think anyone noticed it at the time…”

“Right, I heard about your harrowing adventure,” Salire said, smiling softly. “That sounded a lot more dangerous than I had expected.”

“Alright, well, we figured out how to nuke the dungeon, so further excursions should be a lot easier,” Theo said. “Anyway, which property do you think would be the best to try first?”

He read the properties off to her, as she had yet to discover them herself. It took her a bit, but of course Salire was interested in seeing what the hurricane property would do. So they would brew Hurricane, Barricade, and Defense. The Blubber property sounded too much like the fluff property, and nobody liked potions that altered their skin.

Theo got to work on the potions, finding the blubber easy enough to work with. When he ran it through his crushing artifice, it gummed up pretty badly, but he had enough of the material not to worry about it, and simply cleaned the devices after each use. He added the right amount of enchanted water, and ensured the iron was fresh on the impurity extraction part of the artifice, and set them to work.

It would take most of the day for the devices to run fully, but he could get enough of the refined essence to test what potion each would make by midday.

“Would you mind watching these for me?” Theo asked. “Just trying to fix his stills. I’ll be back by midday, but I wanted to check on the elves and the dungeon.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Salire said, waving him away. “I shouldn’t be expecting anything crazy, should I?”

“Just keep the extractor fan on, and they should be fine. I’ve noticed that reagents that stink more always put off more vapors. Maybe crack a window while you’re at it.”

“Alright,” Salire said with a shrug, “just leave me with the stinky blubber. I don’t mind.”

Theo smiled as he headed out from the lab. It didn’t smell that bad, and they had smelled far worse. He made his way through the city, making note of the space elves that walked around. He wasn’t sure if they’d be able to offer each of them jobs, but he was sure somebody would put them to work. The alchemist thought the problem with the end of the world would be the devaluation of money. If the coins would become useless at the end of the world, he was certain people wouldn’t use them for trade. But if the business and market section of the city were anything to go by, that was completely false.

The people of this world still love their money. They use it for everything and always seem to want more. Theo completely did not understand it, but he wouldn’t question it. Even the space elves that had been locked in the void were now searching for jobs that paid. And they would use that money to buy stuff they needed to survive. Perhaps this was thanks to his own upbringing on a broken Earth, but he doubted he would ever understand it and just accepted it as a fact. This world was used to things collapsing around them only to be rebuilt months later.

There’s a whole purpose to the seed core system. Civilizations could crumble to the ground and be rebuilt in a few months if there were enough people with the right classes and the right seed cores. This cycle had continued for too long, and Theo preferred not to think too much about it. It was going to end soon enough anyway. After he was satisfied that the elves were settling in, he stopped by the harbor to check on the ocean dungeon. As expected, there were quite a few adventurers there, taking turns going down the tower and visiting the dungeon. Early reports were appearing in the administration interface. It looked better than he had expected. The nightmare hellscape on the other side wasn’t as hostile as the Hills dungeon.

After wandering around for a while, Theo returned to the lab. The flasks had collected enough essence for him to brew a few potions. And of course he wanted to start with the Hurricane property. Salire stopped what she was doing to come over and see what the result would be. The essence itself was a cloudy blue mixture, and when he introduced it into the vial, the reaction was violent. He plugged the stopper into the top to keep the swirling mixture from escaping. A small cloud appeared overhead and it began raining in the lab.

Salire cursed, running around to summon tarps from her inventory. She covered the equipment and open containers as the rain came down. Theo opened the door to the stairway, allowing water to pour down to the first floor.

He rushed downstairs and nodded to the person running the shop today. “Could you sweep the water out the front?”

The half-ogre grabbed a broom with a grunt and obeyed, opening the front door and sweeping the water out.

“Thanks,” Theo said, rushing back upstairs. The reaction of the potion was mostly done, and the contents of the vial had settled down to an opaque swirling mix of blue and white.

“That was unexpected,” Salire said, watching as the cloud dispersed above.

“Hurricane in a bottle, maybe,” Theo said, scooping the potion up for inspection.

[Hurricane Potion]

[Potion]

Epic

Created by: Theo Spencer

Purity: 85%

Imbibing this potion creates a powerful cyclone of air. If the effect is allowed to continue, it will eventually generate a hurricane above the drinker. The storm will proceed in a random direction. Strength and duration depend on the purity of this potion.

Effect:

Summon a hurricane.

“That isn’t useful,” Theo said, frowning down at the potion.

Salire leaned in to inspect it, clapping a hand over her mouth. “Absolutely not. Throw it away.”

Theo couldn’t help but laugh at the potion. It wasn’t absolutely devastating like some other potions he had crafted, but summoning a hurricane was something else. Once again, the extra property on a reagent had generated a powerful effect. Useless, but powerful.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the logic of these potions,” Theo said, switching the still off. He took the flask into his inventory, intending to destroy it later. “I’d rather not have this one available in the lab.”

“Could we move on to the next one?” Salire asked. “I’d rather not think about the hurricane in a bottle anymore.”

“Right… Good idea,” Theo said, clearing his throat. “No hurricane potions.

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