The Shadows of the Four Realms [BOOK TWO]

CHAPTER 16 - Of an Alchemist

He chuckled, embarrassedly, "Neither am I."

She waited for an explanation, her kind, gray eyes caught the gleam of Orbs of Dusk overhead and Nova sighed. He couldn't lie to her.

After he narrated the entire incident, about the ravens and graveyard, he felt lighter than before, having talked it out with someone. However, her once pleasant face was now scandalized. Eyes wide, the strands of her designed white hair seemed to shiver just like the crow's feet near her eyes.

"You travel alone across the Realms?" she breathed in a high-pitched chord. "Do you not dread for your life, Your Majesty-a graveyard of all places-I cannot just-but-the Throne bless us all-how did this happen-you have the portal-"

Sudden pain reverberated in his flesh from the injuries while she struggled with stringing a sentence together.

"C-Could you please send all other workers out for a while, miss?"

She obliged, clapping her hands and he didn't see the rest, for his energy was replenishing fast. There was nothing more he wanted than to find a chair and rest his trembling feet; he could feel stickiness dripping under his overcoat's sleeves. And so, shamelessly he pulled himself up on the table while the room slightly swayed or he did and pulled the sleeve of his right arm up, torn by talons.

Miss Joanna gasped aloud, her hands flying to her mouth.

In an instant, she had moved near him, with cotton balls fetched out in practiced motion from a drawer, and a vial of translucent liquid which he knew to be the Draught of Unfeeling. He didn't need to be told, to clench his fist tight as she pressed the wet cotton on his lower arm and dragged it down, cleaning the blood, numbing the pain. With her other palm flattened over his injury she let out her gentle healing magic. The effect was instant.

They remained silent as she worked, cleaning his blood and patching his wound. Nova distracted himself from the sting of the potions she applied and looked around.

Long platforms of gray marble stone held massive cauldrons and pewters, some bubbling and some covered, leather-bound books of alchemy and healing, mortars and pestles, crystals and herbs, vials and bowls, of every size and color. The carnivorous plant, Nepenthes, hanging from the high roof was busy munching on the insects with its flap opening and shutting, noiselessly. Bulbous bluish leaves of String of Pearls, bursting with water, looked ripe enough to be squeezed into a steaming potion. The scales of a snake were kept to dry on a table beside a far window, alongside powdered milk of... some other creature. The grayish-brown lightweight logs of Royal Paulownia, a rare prized plant, were placed neatly by the furnace freshly chopped. Heavens, he loved it all!

The trainees at Terraskee's school in his consignment would long leave the workrooms after the elementor's session, but he'd stay back. Sleeves rolled up, his old golden curl dangling over his eyes, forcing him to blow a wind and push the nuisance back, which had no purpose whatsoever other than making him seem fashionable. An adze to smoothen the surface of the logs. A hand-saw moving back and forth in measured movements in his hands. A drawknife to cut precise lengths of the wood depending on the drug or potion it was meant for. Grinding a pestle to crush a root in practiced motion, adding it in a potion based on the current shade of the boiling liquid, praying for it not to blow on his face and ruin his jacket.

The exhilarating feeling of creating something out of ingredients with properties and composition so distinguishing from each other, overpowered the foul smells, the mess, the splinters of wood and scraps of herbs. Nova's brother had been proficient in everything, every branch of Mind Sorcery, of Dark Sorcery, of inventing spells and charms, but not Alchemy... which required meticulous patience.