Brewing Bad Ch. 110-111

Ch. 110 - The Morning After (Part 2)

“Oh?” the Prince said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll listen to your request, but I can’t promise you anything. I consider justice in this matter to be quite a gift already.”

A backhanded, self-centered one, certainly, Lucas agreed, mentally. The Prince was doing this because his interests were being threatened, not Lucas had almost lost his life. That was plain to everyone, but backtalk would not help with what he was going to ask for next. 

“When I do this to Adin, he’s not likely to do me any favors ever again,” Lucas started, “Which is fine, but there is one favor I do need from him, and the only person besides him that can give it to me is you.”

“Oh? After Danaria’s hand already?” the Prince asked, with a smile that was more amusement than predatory, for the first time since Lucas had made his acquaintance. “Straight from the Dragoness’ bed chambers, and you’re already looking for a young, pretty thing of your own. I’m listening.”

Lucas flushed in annoyance at that. He considered explaining just how little there was between him and Lady Skylara, but he knew that such answers would only get him in trouble. So, instead, he said, “There’s business, and then there’s pleasure. I’ve been working a lot for you lately, and I’d like something nice to come home to when all this is done.”

“No doubt,” The Prince agreed, “And I’m sure her family name doesn’t weigh into things at all?”

“It doesn’t,” Lucas answered truthfully. “She’s a sweet girl, and she deserves a good life. Her brother can keep the title for all I care. Even if he kicks the habit, I expect he’ll still be broke in the next few years anyway.”

“I’ll grant you this,” the Prince said, “But not yet. Not until your work is done and Skylara has grown tired of you and found a new toy to warm her bed. I do not wish to create a love triangle with such dire consequences. Your current lover can be very… possessive.”

Lucas wasn’t about to argue that point. He was still too busy wrestling with the awkwardness of having to ask another man permission to marry his woman in the first place. While all that brewed inside his skull, the Prince continued. “Propose to her if you like, but it will be another year at least before anything official happens.”

“Do you really think it's going to take that long to solve the dragon problem?” Lucas asked, not particularly pleased by the answer.

“Solve?” the Prince laughed. “This isn’t a solvable problem. A year is how long it will take to lose interest in you. Fortunately, she will need you to keep making her drug of choice, so she’s unlikely to kill you when she tosses you aside like so many of her other lovers, but she is a problem that will be with us for the foreseeable future. With any luck, my grandchildren’s grandchildren will still be wrestling with these issues centuries from now.”

“But I thought the point of Blackgate was to—” Lucas started to protest. 

“The point of Blackgate is to create contingencies and possibilities,” the Prince interrupted. “It is to give brilliant minds like Heisenburgle’s the resources they need should the worst befall us. Make no mistake here. The dragon is costly but much less costly than the army, which would need to be paid for in the event she withdraws her protection. Should she ever fall, the Orc tribes on the east and the Northmen would certainly test us with regularity to see what treasure might be lying around for the taking.”

“So the best case is that she sticks around, but she takes the lion's share of her payment in Blue, forever?” he asked, slightly confused by that answer. 

“Just so,” the Prince agreed. “Gods willing, she would be happy with that arrangement until the day of judgment arrives.”

Lucas wanted to ask more questions on the topic, not entirely certain he understood the Prince’s stance. Surely, he can’t think that staying in the clutches of such a capricious woman is a good idea in perpetuity, he wondered. The Prince wouldn’t allow him to revisit the topic, though, as he moved on to other things, and when the topic of Adin came back up, Lucas lost interest in what they'd been discussing before entirely. 

“As to your future brother-in-law, I believe he’s on the south balcony this time of day, soaking up the sun,” the Prince explained. “Deliver the bad news and order him to meet me here so I may express my displeasure personally, then meet Heisenburgle at the stables. Our business here is concluded.”

Even as the Prince finished speaking to him, he turned away from Lucas and went back to looking at the ledgers in front of him. Something about the potion the gnome had him turned him into a completely cold-blooded autist, and at times, the man lost even basic civility. When he got like that, he was just rushing from agenda item to agenda item. 

Lucas didn’t complain. Disinterest was better than malice, especially when the man was deep into some Machiavellian bullshit. 

Instead of saying anything at all, he bowed and left the office. Outside, he conferred briefly with Heisenburgle, though in such a public place, the gnome wouldn’t say anything substantive about anything. “I’ll expect you in twenty minutes,” he said disapprovingly to Lucas. “No more. So go and handle your petty personal business, and then we can be off to other, more important things!”

Lucas watched him waddle off and found Adin preciously where the Prince had said he would be. How he’d accomplished such a neat trick, Lucas had no idea, but the man clearly had things going on in his head that Lucas only barely understood. That just made him want to get that recipe out of Heisenburgle that much more, but that was an issue to work on later. 

For now, Lucas just walked up to Adin, where he was chatting with a few of his peers, and said, “Excuse me, I’m going to need to borrow the Viscount for a moment, gentlemen. My apologies.”

Adin tried to introduce him, but before he could, Lucas was already dragging him away to the far side of the balcony for the modicum of privacy it provided. 

“Easy now, friend,” Adin laughed, struggling weakly in his grip. “If you whisk me away like a lover, people will talk.”

“I’m not concerned about what people say about me,” Lucas answered with a shrug. “I came here to deliver a message to you. One that I don’t think you’re going to want anyone else to hear.”

“Oh? And what’s that?” the man said, smiling just a little too widely for it to be genuine. 

“I know what you did to me. Well, what you tried to do,” Lucas said. 

“Do you know?” Adin answered with a forced laugh, “And what’s it I’m meant to have done this time?”

“You tried to murder me,” Lucas answered dismissively. “Personally, I think the people that organized the thing only wanted to kidnap me, but you decided to up the ante a little bit. Those details don't matter at this point. The Prince will sort all of that out.”

“T-the Prince?” Adin stammered. “There’s no need to get a man like him involved in such baseless rumors. You have no evidence that I—”

“The mage involved already rolled on the whole operation,” Lucas interrupted, practically gloating. “He gave up everyone and told us about the bomb. The Prince is the one who found him. All it took was a couple of messengers, and it was done. Easy to do when I actually saw the guy that tried to do me like that, you know.”

Adin paled visibly then. “The Prince knows? Well, even if that is true, there’s no evidence that I—”

“Is your argument going to be that your butler put the bomb in my luggage, or perhaps your sister?” Lucas laughed. “Because no one is going to buy a story like that.”

“Well, you hire a lot of unsavory people,” Adin said, grasping at straws, perhaps one of them—”

Hura’gh would certainly murder me for enough money. The man is shady as shit, but the difference between you and him is that he’d do it with an axe in my chest, not a knife in the back,” Lucas countered. “The other hireling, maybe, but they aren’t allowed inside the main house, and I doubt any of the maids were in on it. No. It was all you, and there’s no way out of it. All you can do now is accept your punishment like a man.”

“Punishment?” Adin squeaked before clearing his throat and trying again. “Punishment. What does his Majesty have in mind?”

“He’s decided to be generous,” Lucas said, allowing the scrawny noble in front of him to breathe a visible sigh of relief before he hit him with the knockout blow. “He’s going to let you cool your heels in the country at some villa for as long as it takes for you to get clean.”

“Clean?! Is that all?” the man answered, trying to play it off even as his forehead broke out in a cold sweat. 

“That’s all,” Lucas agreed, turning to walk away. “I’m sure you’ve got this.”

“W-wait,” Adin stammered, making Lucas pause. “Is there anything I could do to make you intercede on my behalf? You’re very important to the Prince’s plans. Anyone can see that. Perhaps if I were to grant you Danaria’s hand or help you get a title in your own right, you could help him find a more conventional slap on the wrist to help me see the error of my ways.”

Lucas knew that he should leave here, but part of him was enjoying this moment too much. There was no way he could just walk away from this moment without twisting the knife a little more. That urge doubled at Adin’s last words, though.

“That’s a very kind offer,” Lucas said, pretending to weigh it. “You really will trade her for just about anything, won’t you?”

“W-well, it's clear that you like her, and she certainly fancies you. So I thought…”

“Two things,” Lucas said, angrily shoving two raised fingers in the Viscount’s face. “The first is that I don’t need your permission to marry Denaria. I—”

“Our father is dead,” Adin interrupted, “So the law requires that her guardian arrange—”

Lucas resisted the urge to slap the man, but only barely. “The Prince has given me her hand already, dumbshit. The second is that the only reason you get to keep breathing is that the Prince wouldn’t allow me to murder you. Apparently, such a move would upset your wife’s family. So, I picked the worst possible punishment I could think of: rehab. A week or two from now, you’ll be begging for death, though, so this is pretty much the opposite of mercy. ”

For once, Adin had nothing to say. So, with a look of horror, Lucas turned and left the man to his fate. As soon as Lucas started to walk away, Adin’s wife brushed past him and hissed, “What did you do?”

“I just told him what his punishment will be for his botched assassination attempt,” Lucas shot back. “You should watch out. You try that shit again, it might be you in the box next time.”

She looked like she was about to say something else, but Lucas ignored her and kept walking. Though normally he would have been happy to leave her as deflated as he’d left her husband, getting in a public pissing match with Arissa Torvin would go very much against what the Prince wanted, in spirit, if not in letter, and Lucas had no desire to get on the man’s bad side. He just wanted to help him solve his dragon problem and then retire to Meadowin and raise a family or something peaceful like that.

Ch. 111 - A Revelation

The ride back to Blackgate was as dull as the ride to it, and Lucas spent much of the time staring out the window and wishing someone would attack him with a bomb for a second time. He didn’t actually want to get blown up, of course, though it might have been preferable to Heisenburgle’s preening. 

The gnome went on at length about how grateful the Prince was for their service and how well things were proceeding. Lucas largely tuned all of that out, answering with nonanswers now and then as appropriate. It wasn’t until Heisenburgle complimented Lucas on his tact and the way he handled the situation with Lady Skylara that he had to fake a cough to cover his snort of derision. 

“I mean it,” the gnome insisted. “Three meetings, and she hasn’t grown bored with you or murdered you for some slight. That’s longer than her last two pets.”

While Heisenburgle was the very last person to compliment him on tact or diplomacy, those words still sent a chill down Lucas’ spine. 

“What, seriously?” Lucas asked. “I feel like maybe I haven’t been getting the whole picture here.”

“Well, if you knew the whole picture at the beginning, you would have been too timid and bored her, I think,” the gnome answered, stroking his beard. “As things are now, though, I thought a sprinkle of danger and a dash or two of caution might well keep you breathing. It's one thing to catch her attention, but another thing to keep it.”

Lucas had been ready to explain that it wasn’t even him she wanted and that she only wanted him for his drugs, like half the women he’d banged on Earth. However, suddenly he was overcome by Heisenburgle’s shitty attitude instead. 

“A sprinkle? A dash?” Lucas shot back, growing more annoyed. “This is my life here, not another potion recipe, man.”

“All things in life are alchemy when it comes down to it,” Heisenburgle said with a self-assured nod. “Social interaction behaves as regularly and reliably as any potion recipe. They also happen to be nearly as volatile. I find the metaphor to be quite apt, and hope to write a chapter about it in my memoirs.”

Lucas rolled his eyes at that. “Well, if that’s the case, then why can’t the Prince keep scaly britches happy? Why are people dying to try to keep her entertained?”

“Who says those deaths are just the sort of reagent that’s required in a potion that’s been simmering this long,” the gnome answered with a creepy smile. “Why, many potions, and most healing potions, have the vital fluids of at least one creature in them…”

Not the way I make them, Lucas thought with a sigh. He could see Heisenburgle’s point. On some level, he might have even agreed with it if he wasn’t the one with skin in the game. 

“A sprinkle and a dash aren’t even precise measurements!” Lucas complained finally. “Would it kill you to use drams or grams or whatever?”

“Imprecise?” the gnome answered. “Excuse me? A sprinkle is exactly half a dash, and a dash is one-third of a pinch. These are very precise measurements. If you don't understand that, then I may well have discovered the problem with your alchemy.”

The man seemed entirely resistant to the idea of using ingredients by weight, though Lucas could hardly blame him on some level. In a world without precision instruments, a weight was barely a step or two above a guess. Still, he argued with the alchemist enough to get him riled up about it. 

Then, after that, Lucas let Heisenburgle rant about the sanctity of the current measuring system and rhapsodize philosophically about healing potions and how they were a metaphor for all life or some shit. However, his mind was elsewhere for the rest of the ride. 

Mostly, he still felt dirty for kissing Skylara, and that weighed on him even though he’d done everything in his power to avoid finding out what dragon pussy was like. Everyone else seemed to assume he’d fucked her. Hell, she’d probably hinted as much just to feast on the gossip she so enjoyed, but even so, Lucas felt like he’d gone too far, even if he did what he had to do. 

He tried not to dwell on it, but the thought nipped at his heels the rest of the day, and no amount of studying the system or trying to read one of the books Heisenburgle had recommended to deepen his knowledge. None of that was really helpful. So, instead, he eventually sat down and wrote Danaria a letter. There was nothing in it that mattered. 

He didn’t mention his near-death experience or the fact that Prince had given him permission to marry her eventually. He certainly didn’t confess that he’d been unfaithful in even the smallest way. 

He didn’t talk about anything negative. Instead, he just told her that he missed her and how nice their visit had been. He even drew up a little sketch of the garden he’d been planning for the home he’d suggested on his last visit. 

They were little things, and after he’d finished it, sealed it, and dropped it off to Heisenburgle, he felt much more grounded. He knew what he had to do. He had to do whatever it took to make her happy and healthy. 

That almost certainly meant that the Potion of Greater Communion was at the top of his list if it wasn’t already. He had a Goddess and a Dragon of incredible power waiting on him to make breakthroughs there, which meant he had a gnome and a prince looking over his shoulder until he did, and there was no way that Danaria would ever be truly happy until he was out of the Blue business. 

And that ain’t happening until I get the product they want and teach Heisenburgle how to make it, he thought wearily. 

When he dropped off the letter with the gnome, he gave him a few more books to read and told Lucas, “We’ll start again tomorrow night. Too many of my other projects are behind. So, I must attend to them, and you are not yet on a proper sleep schedule.”

The gnome offered him another potion of wakefulness, but Lucas hastily declined. He wasn’t getting hooked on uppers or downers in this life. Just the contact high he’d gotten from smelling too much secondhand Blue was enough to smell weird. He wasn’t going down that road. Certainly not after the fate he’d inflicted on Adin. 

Lucas made some attempts to get back on the night schedule that the gnome preferred. Lucas even watched him from the windows on the second story as the gnome trudged between a few of the outbuildings that were mostly blacksmiths and glassblowers and other messy endeavors that weren’t fit to be connected to the main building. 

He still had no idea what Heisenburgle was working on out there, but no matter how often he tried to hint only to follow up with the fact that he really couldn’t talk about it, Lucas didn’t take the bait. There were apparently some advanced armor projects and the hyperquadsomething-or-other. Lucas didn’t really care. If they weren’t going to help him make his blue any faster and get him back home where he belonged, he wasn’t interested. 

Lucas woke up a little before noon the following day. He spent the time between then and when Heisenburgle would expect him in his air laboratory racking his brain for what could be, almost like a Moon Blossom that wasn’t a Moon Blossom. He read books looking for plants with similar properties and elemental balances, and he examined the reagents on the shelf, looking for catalysts that looked similar. He even asked Heisenbugle about it while the man was setting up his own apparatus. 

“Other catalysts native to the Greenwood?” the gnome repeated the question as he rubbed his chin. “Yes, I suppose I could think of a few, but first, I’ve got to get this set up. Moon set is in thirty minutes, you see.”

Lucas set up his own workstation to make some Blue. Then, when that was done, he pretended to wait patiently, but eventually, after he got tired of watching the gnome fuck it up, he started to help him. His rig to capture starlight was growing ever more elaborate but ultimately boiled down to ever more curved mirrors, all pointing to a specific point in the nearly clear liquid at its focal point. 

As they did so, the fluid began to glow noticeably, but just like before, Lucas knew that when it was covered or the sun rose, the reaction would cease. There was a criticality involved that the gnome simply wasn’t reaching. 

Lucas’s eyes drifted down to the man’s tome and saw the ingredients for the Distilled Starlight he was working on. Then he looked a bit further down and looked at the recipe for distilled sunlight. 

“Wouldn’t capturing sunlight be easier?” he asked, idly turning the page. “There’s a lot more of it, you know. Just get a magnifying glass and—”

“Gah!” the gnome said, throwing up his hands. “You can be so aggravating, young man! Not only is sunlight completely antithetical to the research I'm doing, but there are heat problems to consider in such a brew. These things are not interchangeable!”

As he spoke, Lucas wasn’t really listening. On the next page was a brief discussion about Distilled Moonlight, and one specific word caught his attention. Catalyst. Starlight was an enhancer, and sunlight was a purifier, but moonlight, apparently, was a catalyst, which just so happened to be what he was looking for. 

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. That one word was enough to make him realize what it was the Goddess had been hinting at. 

“You’re so close,” she whispered in his memory. “One ingredient is just a bit off…”

Lucas looked from Heisenburgle’s starlight apparatus to his blue setup and back again as he finally put it all together, only distantly aware that the gnome was still talking. The man hadn’t managed to manage to distill starlight in any permanent way, but on moonless nights, he’d succeeded for a time. He just hadn’t managed to quite achieve critical mass. 

Distilled Starlight (minor): Poison -5, amplifies the effect of most potions when added in moderation.

Distilled Moonlight, he decided finally. That’s what I fucking need. 

The gnome apparently agreed, if for entirely different reasons. When Lucas started paying attention to his long-winded speech about how it was the easiest of the three celestial solvents to create. “That’s only by comparison to the others, though. Making the tinctures necessary for the initial stages would be a challenge to even an experienced alchemist. And you, my friend,” he chuckled. “Are no serious—”

“Okay, fine,” Lucas said, using the taunt to pivot to what he wanted. “You wanna see me make your moon juice. No problem.”

“Oh?” the gnome answered, his eyes flashing with mischief. “How interesting. Well, I will do you the favor of getting you a manual with an easier formulation and placing the relevant workshops at your disposal. Perhaps Hobskin’s treatise would suffice, but I warn you, I’ll offer you no assistance beyond that. Not until you admit defeat.”

The gnome looked at him evilly then, and Lucas wondered what exactly it was he’d gotten himself into. Still, he wasn’t about to show any weakness in front of the egomaniac. “No problem, one batch of lunar catalyst coming right up!” he boasted.