The Gathering: The New Order of Merlin Book 1

60. Poison to common antidotes

       Elsa tipped the vial and swallowed it in one go. Heat ran down her throat and spread in her stomach. She doubled over. She could hear Jack and Snape saying something in the background, but the sound was drowned out by a ringing in her ears. All of her senses were screaming at her. An intense pain gripped her insides, and she fell to her knees.

Jack shoved something into her mouth. "Drink," he said urgently. "Drink, Elsa."

She swallowed the warm liquid and gagged.

"More," he insisted when she squirmed away from it.

Her insides were burning, and her mouth tasted like a sewer. He forced her to drink the rest of it, and she would have retched, but paralysis was taking hold. She laid down on the floor in a fetal position and breathed through her mouth as her body convulsed in pain. Jack kneeled next to her, smoothed the hair on her head while saying something, but she was too busy dying to listen.

There was no flash of memories as death drew near. It was only pain, a fire that obscured every thought, that grew larger within her, and consumed the world around her. She hoped the world burned with her. The world deserved it. The world was cruel.

Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the burning subsided and was replaced by a vile feeling, like her stomach was slowly being painted in the nasty potion she was forced to drink. She took a few shaky breaths and was glad that the convulsions were replaced by queasiness.

She shakily sat up, and Jack hugged her.

"Your potion is disgusting," she tried to chuckle, but it took too much effort.

He held her so tight, she felt as if her bones would break, but she needed it. She rested her forehead on his neck and took comfort in the coolness of his skin. The heat was going away but the foul aftertaste lingered on her tongue.

"I can't believe he gave you aconite," he whispered in her ear. "I wouldn't have let you drink it if I knew. I'm so sorry. This wasn't worth risking your life."

She squeezed him back in response in a gesture of assurance that he wasn't at fault. It was her decision to drink the poison. She could barely believe that it really happened and just moments ago, she was so close to death.

"This is all very touching," Snape said sarcastically. "I suppose it worked. Rather fast too. A normal antidote would have taken at least twenty minutes, by which time she would have been unconscious already."

Jack trembled in rage.

"Control your anger. He's testing your nerves," she whispered.

Jack released her and touched her face. "How are you feeling? Can you get up yet?"

"Yeah."

He helped her up, and she hung onto his arm for support, ready for this mess to be over. Meanwhile, Snape's face was expressionless as if nothing unusual had just happened, as if he didn't just nearly kill one of his students. They waited as he examined the potion in more detail and barely glanced at her to confirm that she was in fact cured.

"This will do," he declared in a bored voice. "You may practice your experimental humane methods in my class if you wish, assuming you accept the consequences of your likely failures. It would be most foolish to think that today's success is guaranteed to be repeated each time. I don't care what you worship. You will not get special treatment if your unorthodox methods fail. A fail is a fail."

"I understand, sir," Jack said through his teeth.

"I am most curious about where you learned these methods. Who was the author of that elixir book you spoke of?"