Brewing Bad Ch. 101-102

Ch. 101 - Dead or Alive

As Lucas staggered from the wreckage and through the smokey haze, he almost ruined his whole escape plan by running into someone. He’d been so busy using his very limited level of focus to watch where he stepped so he didn’t leave behind footprints that he almost ran right into the first person on the scene, an elf in war paint.

Wait, that’s not an elf, he realized after a moment. It's a man dressed up to look like one. What in the… 

The near miss and the strange observation stunned him just enough that, for a moment, he lost concentration and faded into view. Lucas cursed silently as he fixed the mistake instantly. It was enough to make the man whirl around. He’d obviously caught a glimpse of Lucas out of the corner of his eye. Still, when he saw no one standing there, he was confused for just long enough to worry before he headed toward the carriage. 

That stressful moment did nothing for the pounding in his head, and even as someone else came toward the burning wreckage, Lucas watched the second man for a moment and was sure that he looked familiar. Before he could decide where he’d seen him before, the need to get further away overpowered him, and he staggered toward the treeline on the opposite side of the road. 

He wanted to linger to get more information about what had happened. He wanted to know who these people were and why they were trying to kill him. He wanted to know a lot of things, but more than any of that, he wanted to keep breathing more. 

“What the hell was that,” one of the men yelled at the other. “I told you a small explosion! We don’t want to kill the bastard. We need him alive!” 

“Relax, man, just relax, he ain’t here!” the other one said. The sound of wood being shifted or kicked rang out loudly after that, but Lucas was more worried about staying upright and invisible to turn around and see what they were doing. His adrenalin was fading, and his consciousness was going out right along with it. 

Fuckers must have given me a concussion, he decided, as his center of balance started to lean hard to his right. 

As soon as he got behind a thick fur tree, he let go of the spell, which helped a little, but that was only so he could pull out a healing potion. What he found in his bag was mostly just broken glass, though. He cut his hand and cursed but ignored it as he pulled out one remaining potion at a time while his would-be kidnappers continued to talk in the background. 

“I’m telling you, if this is a decoy, then they know,” one of the voices insisted. “They already know, and they’re just testing us!”

“The Boss ain’t gonna be happy about this,” the other answered. 

“We should get out of here,” the first one said. 

“We can’t go until we lay out the bodies like we planned,” the second one insisted. “We can’t have none of this pointing back to us!”

There were the sounds of other people, too, but Lucas couldn’t quite make them out. 

While they argued, Lucas tossed aside his strength flask his agility flask, and he was about to toss away his stink bomb before he thought better of it and very gingerly set that down. If it went off, it would give him away for sure. The last intact potion in the bag was a healing tincture, and he drank both doses of that greedily. It made him feel better immediately, but not so much better that he thought standing was a good idea. 

Lucas stayed right where he was, burying his legs with pine needles to hide himself a little more while he listened to the sound of whatever it was these bozos were doing. At first, he was pretty sure they were dragging bodies around. After that, they fired a few arrows off at random into trees. One of them hit a tree not twenty feet from him, allowing him to see that it did in fact look like elven fletching, even if it was hard to get them in focus. 

After that, they fled into the forest from wherever they’d come, leaving him to lay there. What Lucas wanted to do more than anything them beat the shit out of them and get some answers. There were only half a dozen of them, and he thought he could probably take them. 

“They don’t look so tough,” he told himself as he willed himself to stand. “Especially not that second guy. He looked a little soft and…”

That was when Lucas remembered where he’d seen him. When he’d desperately been holding back a heart-seeking dagger with a book. 

“That was the fucking mage!” he said, louder than he meant to, as he realized what happened. “Mother bitch!”

That invigorated him for a moment, but it also took all the wind out of his sails. As bad as he wanted that man dead, there was no way he was hunting a mage that could tear down whole buildings. Not when he felt like this. 

That was his last coherent thought before exhaustion took him. He was still bleeding from somewhere. He could see it in the bloody snow around him, but he wasn’t sure where, and at this moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

Lucas didn’t wake up until it was almost dark. That was when someone in proper armor and the Prince's livery nudged him with his toe. 

“I found one over here,” the man yelled. “He’s still breathing, too!”

Lucas wanted to ask him which side he was on, but his mouth was too dry, and no words would come out. Instead, he looked past him, noting that snowflakes were falling from the sky now. They had been for a while, he supposed. The blood was gone now, and he was half buried in a blanket of freshly fallen snow. 

Lucas stayed conscious long enough to be loaded onto a stretcher and into a wagon, though he faded in and out the whole time. After that, things were more sporadic. Another healing potion was shoved in his mouth at some point, and he woke whenever the wagon hit a bad rut. After that, he only remembered looking out the window and seeing Blackgate rising up ahead of them at a turn in the road. 

It wasn’t until he was in his bed that he finally awoke with a start and full clarity as a priestess stood above him, mumbling a prayer that was too quiet to hear. Even if he couldn’t hear it, though, he could certainly feel it. His skin was glowing as magic swirled around him.

The healing potions he’d drunk had done him some good, but compared to this, they might as well have been shots of tequila. This was something else, and when it was over, she bowed and left the room, leaving Lucas with only a glowering gnome sitting on the side of his bed. 

“I didn’t do it,” Lucas said, yawning as he slumped back into bed. 

“Didn’t do what?” Heisenburgle asked. 

“Whatever it was. Why ever they wanted this. I didn’t do it,” he answered. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he was lucky to have survived it without ending up in some new hellhole. 

“Annoying as you can be, I doubt very much that you did anything to upset the elves,” the gnome said, “But this only underscores the point that they know we’re getting close and—”

“Elves didn’t do this,” Lucas interrupted. “They were playing cowboys and indians, that’s all. It was men that did this.”

“You took a pretty bad blow to the head, Lucas, so I’m not surprised that you don’t remember, but the scene of the attack is very clear,” Heisenburgle explained. “There were arrows, bodies, and what looks to have been at least one fireball spell; you’re lucky to be alive.”

“How bad was I hurt, exactly?” Lucas asked. 

“Three broken ribs, what was probably a broken arm, a mild case of frostbite,” the gnome said in a remarkably clinical manner, “and, of course, the skull fracture.”

“Skull fracture?” he asked, reaching up to the side of his head, where he found only dried blood.

“Yes,” the gnome agreed. “You got off light compared to the other men in the carriage. The two guards in the back with you died in the explosion, and the driver and his guard were both killed by the elves. Truthfully, I’m surprised you survived at all. How did you manage to get away in your current condition?” 

“They weren’t elves,” Lucas repeated again. “I saw them. Two of them, at least, from my hiding place. One of them was dressed like an elf and wearing warpaint, but the other one… he was a mage that almost hunted me down once before. Back before I got tangled up with the Whisperers.”

“A mage? Dressed up as an elf? Why?” Heisenburgle blurted out. Lucas could tell that the gnome didn’t believe him. “The mage guild doesn’t seem a likely choice to cross the Prince. Elves, on the other hand…”

“Will you drop the elf shit already?” Lucas sighed, too tired to fight. “This is politics. Whisperers probably, or maybe the Prince, or—”

He felt whole but utterly exhausted by whatever the priestess had done to fix him. As much as he enjoyed the experience, he preferred to stick to potions. At least he understood those or thought he did. 

“The Prince has not ordered your removal,” Heisenburgle said with enough conviction that it put Lucas’s mind at ease. “If he had, I would know. No, you are vital to his plans regarding Skylara for the foreseeable future. He will be greatly disturbed to hear about this unfortunate incident.”

“Well, you let me know what he says,” Lucas nodded. “For now, I feel like maybe I should nap.”

“You’ll have the chance to tell him yourself,” Heisenburgle retorted. “Skylara is coming to a ball this weekend, and she’s requested your presence.”

“I’m not sure I’m up to dancing right about now,” Lucas answered with a shake of his head.

“And I’m not sure you understand your place in all of this yet,” the gnome responded. “When I request that you do something, that’s one thing; I might have you beaten for your insolence or imprisoned. I lack the authority to execute you. When the Prince makes a request of you, it's only your life on the line, but when it’s Skylara… well, as long as she holds the kingdom hostage, you will do whatever she asks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lucas said, “We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. For now, I’d have your men search the wreckage of that carriage again and see what they can find about who really did this.”

The gnome looked like he wanted to continue arguing, but instead, he just nodded and left. That made Lucas more concerned about the state he’d been brought here in than the man’s description of his injuries. He wasn’t the type to leave an argument without the last word, so he must really believe that Lucas needed his rest. 

That night, his dreams were troubled and stormy. He dreamed that he was searching for herbs in the snow, but every time he found one, it burst into flames. Still, he kept trying, and when he came home with only a basket full of ashes, he sought out Danaria to explain what had happened, only to find her corpse shredded by hobgoblins.

It was terrifying, and he woke with a start to find morning light streaming in through the window.  

Ch. 102 - One Step Closer

The horror of the dream woke him, but that wasn’t the message he came away with. “The Moonflower,” he said to himself as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. It was probably toast, along with everything else he’d packed. He didn’t need dreams to tell him that, but if there was more to it, he wasn’t sure. 

Lucas got out of bed and dressed with some difficulty. He was whole, and nothing hurt, but he was still clumsy and lethargic. Still, he made his way downstairs to the dining room, where he shoveled the remains of breakfast down his throat in such a hurry that he barely tasted it. 

Then, pocketing a few sandwiches wrapped in napkins as they started serving lunch to a few of the guards who were coming off watch, he made his way to Heisenburgle’s water laboratory. 

While it wasn’t the closest of the man’s labs, there was no way that Lucas was taking the stairs up to the air lab or the way down to the earth lab. In his current condition, he felt like the water lab would do just fine. 

They all have the same shit anyway; it doesn’t matter, he told himself as he made his way down the hallway. 

Guards watched him, as they always did, but no one tried to stop him. So, he didn’t run into any snags until he actually got to the lab and found that it wasn’t there. 

“Mother bitch,” Lucas cursed. “Molars (beastman), Molars (orc), Moondust, Mountain soil, but no damn moon flower.” 

In the end, he tried every shelf in case it was tucked away somewhere because of some bullshit elemental polarity. He spent the better part of an hour looking but had no luck finding what he was looking for. Eventually, he was to decide whether he wanted to go downstairs and try his luck there, but he decided against it. It was easier to believe that the gnome just hadn’t gathered any. 

“The bastard probably thinks it's a weed, not a reagent,” he told himself as he made his way back to his room to get a warmer cloak. 

Once he was dressed for it, Lucas went to the stables and had the boy in charge of him prepare a horse. “Y-yes, sir,” the lad said, hopping to it. Lucas wasn’t looking forward to riding, but he definitely wasn’t up for walking. While he waited, a pair of guards eventually approached him. 

“Are you planning on going somewhere, sir?” one of them asked. “Alone, after what just happened?”

“Do I look stupid to you?” Lucas laughed. “I’m sure I’m never going anywhere alone ever again. I was going to grab some guards at the gate, but you’re welcome to come with me instead. The more, the merrier.”

They looked at each other and then back to him. The second guard then said, “Master Heisenburgle didn’t tell us that you could leave the grounds.”

“Well did he say I couldn’t leave the grounds,” Lucas asked with only a moderate amount of irritation. 

“No, but—” the first one started to answer. 

“Well then, I’m glad that’s settled. Come on, you’re both going with me on a little herb-hunting expedition.”

The two of them didn’t argue with him after that, but that was mostly because the stable boy brought him a saddled horse, and he immediately hopped on and acted like he was going to ride off at any moment. That got both of them into gear, giving him a moment to try out his magical herb-hunting power again. 

Part of him wanted to buy the other one with his last point because it had a longer range and let him seek out something specific. He didn’t do that, though, because he had no idea when he’d get another point. So, Lucas saved it and instead started eliminating extraneous dots from the map that had formed in his mind. 

He ignored the giant cluster of dots that existed inside the fortress, and instead, he eliminated every common herb, root, and mineral, one at a time, from the surrounding forest. By the time he was done and his escorts were ready to depart, the forest was completely blank once more, and he’d be able to see if anything less common popped up immediately. 

The three of them rode to the gate, and though Lucas got another strange look, no one tried to stop him. Once they were outside, he asked his babysitters, “Which way would have the marshiest, swampiest ground when all of this thaws out?” 

The two conferred for a bit, and after a short debate, they agreed that the answer was left. So, they went left, immediately off the trail, and into the hill. There weren’t many trees directly around the walls of Blackgate, but less than half a mile outside of it, they started to pick up. Before they’d gone a mile, the thick pine trees and skeletal, dormant deciduous trees made it nearly impossible for the three of them to ride abreast as they wove their way deeper. 

Along the way, Lucas gathered a few things he hadn’t seen before, like black acorns, duskweaver web, and motes of true ice. The last one he’d gathered before, but he hadn’t had the chance to actually experiment with it before all of this. 

Black Acorns: +1 endurance, -1 poison. Makes any potion brewed with this ingredient bitter. 

Duskweaver Web: +2 agility, +2 poison. Potions brewed with this ingredient make the imbiber significantly more stealthy for the duration. 

The only warning sign he found in that time was troll shit, but he didn’t decide to take any of that with him. He just made a note not to stay out in these woods after dark. Still, after more than an hour, he didn’t find what he was looking for. 

An icy white flower in the middle of a frozen pond in the middle of winter was an awfully long shot to find again. He knew that. That didn’t change his determination to do it. It might be the answer he was looking for, but it was a question he wanted to dig deeper into. Plus, it pissed him off that whoever had tried to kill him had destroyed it in the crossfire. 

No, not kill me, he corrected himself. Kidnap me and take me God knew where to do, God knew what to. 

Lucas’s gut said that it was a plan of the Whisperers and that Lord Parin had finally made his move, but he was trying not to make a final judgment on that until they had more evidence. That wasn’t just because it would make him want to kill the man who might one day be his brother-in-law, either. It was because if he focused on the obvious, he might miss the real enemy. It’s not like I haven’t made a few in the last year. 

They stayed out there for two hours and then four, without any real results. As his stops got more infrequent, they began asking more and more often if they asked if this was where they turned around. It got to the point where Lucas almost said yes just so they would stop asking. That was when he saw it. 

“I found you, you little bitch,” he said to himself as he wheeled his horse around and headed toward the dot.

At first, it was just a little dot at the very edge of his map, but as soon as he highlighted it and saw that it was what he was looking for, Lucas kicked his mount into a faster canter and made his way deeper into the woods while the two guards that were with him struggled to keep up. 

In the spring or summer, he was sure this forest would have been claustrophobic enough that he wouldn’t have come this far without a machete. This time of year, though, he could see well enough that ambushes seemed unlikely, even after the hobgoblin attack he’d endured so recently, so he went straight there and was soon rewarded with the sight of a frozen-over pond. 

This, at least, he rode all the way around, not trusting any ice to the weight of his horse. When he got to the narrowest part of the thing, he dismounted and carefully walked across the ice. When he reached the blossom, he plucked it at the ground level since the ground was frozen and then walked back to his horse to secure it in his saddlebags. 

“Alright, now we can go back,” he said to the guards who were waiting for him. 

“Finally,” one muttered. 

The other one stayed silent a while longer while they headed back, but eventually, he said, “I gotta ask, how did you know that flower was out here? We were told you didn’t know any magic.”

Lucas stiffened, but that didn’t stop him from lying smoothly. “I didn’t. I’m just glad it was.”

“But you said—” the other man started to say. 

“Ohhhh,” Lucas said, pretending to finally put it all together. “When I said little bitch, I wasn’t talking about the flower, I was talking about the streambed. Once I found it, I knew a pond wouldn’t be too far away. That’s all. Just lucked out.”

The guard nodded and seemed to believe him, but Lucas was still on edge all the way back. They reached the gate well before sunset with no harm done, and Lucas took a short name before dinner, but as soon as he was done eating and met up with Heisenburgle, there was hell to pay. 

“By the gods, you will be the death of me,” the gnome muttered. “Less than 24 hours, elves tried to kill you, and then, just like that, you went into the woods alone for what? Weeds and rubbish? What were you thinking?”

“I told you they weren’t elves,” Lucas sighed. “Anyway—”

“Perhaps you want to be a pincushion?” Heisenburgle mused. “Perhaps you want those savages to peel your skin off slowly as punishment for stepping on their goddess’s toes?”

Lucas shook his head. “Okay, mom. I’ll be more careful in the future, but I found what I was looking for, and that’s what matters.”

“And what is this supposed to be?” the gnome asked, straightening his glasses. “A water lily? Am I supposed to be impressed? I have no need for a potion of water breathing or—”

“We’re going to cook tonight, and we're going to use this instead of the sour dwarf berries,” Lucas said confidently. “I don’t know for sure that this is going to do what I need it to do, but it’s the first ingredient I found in a while that might yet work.”

“Suit yourself,” the gnome answered with a shrug. “I thought you’d need a few more days to start, but preparing a few more batches of strong Blue for our patron is a fine present to bring to the ball.”

“Oh, about that,” Lucas said. “That little ambush? Wrecked my clothes. If you want me going anywhere fancy, we’re going to have to send a letter to my tailor like ASAP.”

Heisenburgle sighed. “You. Always problems with you.”

The gnome continued to rant about what a pain in the ass Lucas was for a long while after that, but he ignored it. If anything, listening to Heisenburgle complain was almost comforting after everything else he’d been through lately. Instead of talking back or getting annoyed, Lucas just started setting everything up. He had a pretty good feeling about tonight. One way or another, he was going to learn something and answer a few questions.