Brewing Bad Ch. 160-161

Ch. 160 - Dialing it In

While it only took a day to gather the ingredients, it took Lucas a week to make something worth testing, because in its natural state, the Wyrm’s bane leaves were really only poisonous when they were burned. Then, they created a choking, acrid gas that made his eyes water, even if it seemed to only be deadly toward reptiles. 

Noxious mixture of Cold Blooded Fumigation(1 use): Create 30 cubic feet of choking smoke for 10 seconds. Poison 4 (choking), twice as effective on reptiles. 

The first time he made it, the concoction exploded violently, and they had to spend the rest of the evening airing out the lab to get rid of the foul smoke. It was nasty stuff, and Heisenburgle gave him hell for days about that. 

While he had no doubt that an entire forest of such things burning might trouble even a dragon, he doubted that a smoke bomb or two made from the thick waxy leaves would do much, even in her human form. So, he dug deeper, and after isolating and concentrating the reagent into a liquid, and eventually a paste that resembled a sort of dark green chocolate, he no longer feared the tendency of its leaves to smoke and smolder under the heat of his magical burners. After that, he started to mix it with other poisonous compounds with ever-increasing success. 

At first, he tried mixing that concentrate with things it was compatible with, but those produced nothing useful. It was only when he tried mixing it with things that were decidedly incompatible that he had real results. 

Hydra saliva was an ingredient he’d used before, early on in his quest to make a stronger batch of Blue. Lucas felt kind of dumb about that, since he now knew the real secret was to uncover the formula he’d been dancing around the edge of. Still, with a poison rating of fourteen, the stuff was toxic, so despite a lack of compatibility, he mixed it with the Wyrmbane concentrate, and the result was decent. 

Wyrmbane Acid Mixture(5 doses): 9 poison (corrosive). Incompatible, unstable mixture, 12 hours remaining until complete breakdown. Twice as effective on reptiles. 

While it wasn’t as poisonous as the hydra saliva, it no longer needed to be inhaled, which, when you considered the bonuses involved, made it that much better. Still, even after tweaking these numbers higher with Empowered Alchemy, Lucas was sure he could do better. 

They didn’t have any Dragons to test their poison on. So, Heisenburgle wanted to inject it in some water lizards he’d had captured for just such a purpose, but Lucas wanted to minimize the whole animal testing thing as much as possible. “Just give me some time, man,” he insisted. “I want something that will put them out of their misery, not just fuck ‘em up, alright?”

The water lizards were the biggest reptiles in the area. Somewhat larger than crocodiles, they were like some vestigial dragon missing link, and they weighed nearly as much as a cow. Lucas didn’t like the look of them, but apparently they were captured regularly for reasons related to both meat and entertainment. 

“We won't be able to eat these after you taint the meat,” the gnome answered with a shrug, “But that’s usually what happens after a gladiator defeats them in an exhibition fight. Dinner and a show all in one.” Heisenburgle seemed disappointed as he explained that, but his glee left Lucas wondering whether vegetarians might be right about a couple of things, and instead of focusing on testing, he focused on the toxicity of incompatible reactions.

Normally, such reactions were undesirable. Normally, he didn’t want to burn out all the interesting traits a reagent might have, but this wasn’t a normal potion. This was something that he wanted to be utterly, completely fatal, so creating ugly, incompatible mixtures was exactly the right direction to take.

The main downside at first seemed to be how unstable they were. He’d seen that in plenty of failed potions before, too. It was hardly a new side effect, still, for every mixture that turned into an unusable separation of glop and oily sheens, he found a few that gelled better, and better, he found that he could vary the temperature for some of the more troublesome recipes. 

Slowly, Lucas went through various ingredients, looking for both ingredients that were fatal and ingredients that would stabilize the fatal poison he managed to concoct. It was a challenging compromise that took a lot of experimentation and a lot of scrubbing to clean the fouled glassware after he’d finished, but one step at a time, he made progress. 

First, he tried hydra blood. It wasn’t as poisonous as hydra saliva or hydra venom, but it was still nasty stuff he needed to open the windows for. That was Lucas’ first real breakthrough, because, after four failed batches of toxic mixtures, he figured out the right balance to make something that didn’t come apart immediately. 

Hydrabane Mixture(1 dose): 8 poison (corrosive). Incompatible, unstable mixture, 9 hours remaining until complete breakdown. Three times as effective on hydras.

 With Empowered Alchemy and 12% of his mana, he was able to increase its potency to 4x and duration to 18 hours. That might just be long enough, Lucas decided, imagining himself spending half the night making the ugly brown tar on the eve of his fight with the dragoness. 

Heisenburgle, though, was less satisfied. “Why in tarnfabulation are you making hydra poison? No matter how much she acts like it, the woman ain’t a snake!”

Lucas was certainly aware of that, and only shook his head. “I’m using what I got. You said to lay off the dragon blood until I need it, and well… I need it. Almost.”

“Your talent says this will kill a hydra?” he asked more quietly. “How can you be sure? What’s the dose?”

“Dose it a good question,” Lucas answered with a shrug. “But it’s twice as poisonous as troll blood and nearly three times as deadly as hydra saliva, so I think it will kill any hydra dead without much trouble.”

“That would be useful if we had a test subject, but there aren’t many swamps between here and Silvanar that have the beasts,” the gnome mused. “No matter. You can start again, but this time on the water lizard blood. If your experiments bear out there... well, then we can experiment with the good stuff.”

Dragon blood was expensive, and like wine, it only went up in cost as its vintage got older. This was because of its rarity, of course, but also its utility. It was used in no less than one of the forbidden elixirs, three mana potions, and nearly every potion of fire resistance. Alchemists prized the stuff, and dragons were not fond of giving it up. So, Lucas could forgive Heisenburgle for him not wanting to waste the stuff, even if he had several types on tap scattered throughout his various laboratories. 

Red Dragon Blood (young): Poison 3 (burning), mana 3 (ancient), soul 1 (ancient), +30% to fire-related potions. 

Blue Dragon Blood (juvenile): Poison 4 (freezing), mana 5 (ancient), soul 2 (ancient), agility -1 (frozen), +30% to ice-related potions. 

Black Dragon Blood (adult): Poison 7 (toxic), mana 8 (ancient), soul 4 (ancient), endurance -2 (sickly), strength 1 (tainted), +30% to poison-related potions. 

Lucas wasn’t sure if the color would matter, but the age obviously did. Still, for now, he satisfied himself with experiments on species of lizard that were easier to explore, and began applying all the work he’d done with hydras to water lizards. Only, almost as soon as she started that, he finally got the letter he’d been waiting for from Skylara, and he knew it wasn’t going to be good news when he saw it was written in a male hand. 

‘Dear Mr. Parin, I regret to inform you that my interest in you has gone as cold as your bed must be without me. I’ve taken other lovers, and simply cannot be bothered to waste any more time on a two-timing cad like yourself. I am not one of the Prince’s floozies, and even if I were for sale, I assure you, you could not afford me. Please kindly stick to your labs so that I shall never have to think of you again. Good day.’

When he showed the missive to Heisenburgle, the gnome was frantic, but this was about what Lucas expected. In his limited experience, the bigger the prima donna, the more she loved drama. “It will be fine,” Lucas told him. “She just wants to be chased. I just need to do it without seeming desperate.”

The plus side to that meant that he wouldn’t have to write any love notes to her for a while. Unfortunately, it also meant he’d have to start going to dances again so he could be seen by the woman, and they could “accidentally” run into each other. 

So, after Lucas told Heisenburgle to keep him apprised of the Kingdom’s social calendar, he got back to work. Even as complicated and messy as it was to try to force blood and poison to coagulate it just the right way, it was still worlds easier than handling women. This time, the process only took half as long as it had with the hydra, and only two days and twelve batches of poison later, he had something he thought was pretty good.

This time, because they’d mentioned it, he added just a splash of troll blood to a few of the batches. Though Lucas didn’t really like the way the stuff throbbed and writhed like it was trying to put itself back together despite its toxic environment, it dramatically increased the stuff’s longevity. Unfortunately, that came at the cost of reducing its poison multiplier back to being only twice as effective.

“It’s always one trade-off or another, isn’t it?” Lucas sighed to himself as he compared the two recipes to try to decide which one he liked more.

If he could just make a stable potion instead of just trying to make something as broken and toxic as he could, then he could focus on refining it, but as it was, all he could do was choose between a series of ugly trade-offs. Eventually, he chose stability, though, and pumped it up with a third of his mana bar, just so he could see how much it actually weakened over time. 

While he didn’t know when he’d get his chance to assassinate Skylara, he knew it would be a narrow window, and given her sense of smell, he didn’t really like the idea of brewing incredibly toxic potions together the night before. She was sure to sense something was off about that. 

Ch. 161 - Dialing it In (part 2)

While Lucas dialed in his poison for testing purposes, Heizenburgle was doing the same thing with the weapons that would one day deploy the toxic stuff. While the lance seemed the more likely of the two to succeed, he was also working on a sword, too. 

He’d even ordered a small quantity of mithril for the tips and the cutting edge. Despite its cost, he was convinced that was the only way to pierce her hide, no matter how strong Lucas made himself. 

Lucas only saw that development in staggered snapshots. While the gnome liked to tell him that things were going smoothly whenever he asked, Lucas could tell from the man’s singed whiskers that he was lying. 

Still, he didn’t actually get to see the firelance, and the gnome had very uncreatively called it until the first test, which was done in the large barn that Lucas sparred in away from prying eyes. The thing looked exactly like you’d expect a heavy jousting lance to look. The only obvious differences were the hole in the tip and the flintlock mechanism hidden under the thing's guard, just above the handle. 

The thing was heavy enough that Lucas would need a strength-boosting potion to lift it one-handed, but that, at least, wouldn’t be a problem. When Heisenburgle ignited the thing without a payload, the lance of fire that licked out was almost thirty feet past the tip of the weapon. 

“That's a god-damn flamethrower,” Lucas said, standing well clear of the thing in case it exploded. Fire wouldn’t be much good against Skylara, but he decided it would be good for the after-party. 

While they waited for the thing to cool so they could reload it for an attempt with some lake slime that they expected to closely approximate the final consistency of the poison that Lucas was making, Heisenburgle mocked the unfamiliar term. “Nothing was thrown at all!” he declared. “Better a flame sprayer, or a dragon spear!”

“Dragon spear?” Lucas laughed. “You should hardly be calling anyone out for their naming choices.”

“And why not?” Heisenburgle asked, pulling himself to his full, diminutive height.

“Two words,” Lucas chuckled. “Fire. Sword.”

“And what’s wrong with fire sword?” the gnome asked as Lucas started to laugh a second time. “What? What?! It's a perfectly adequate name! It describes what the weapon does very distinctly!”

“Okay,” Lucas countered. “Then what are you calling the new version you’re making for me? Poison sword?”

The gnome’s reddening face told him he’d struck a nerve. “And what’s wrong with poison sword?”

This time, Lucas was swept away by his laughter, and he couldn’t talk for more than a minute, while Heisenburgle kept demanding to know what was so funny. 

“What about the lance?” Lucas finally managed to gasp. “Is it a poison lance or a fire lance?”

“I’m done with this conversation!” the gnome spat, turning back to his men and ordering them to begin reloading the thing now that it had cooled. 

It was a complicated process. It involved wadding in the tip to hold in their poison goo stand in, and then a layer of waxed paper to protect the Lucas’ knock-off fire dust from getting wet. After that, there was a complicated latching mechanism to put the whole thing back together involving three bolts. It took twenty minutes, and every step in the process made it clear they wouldn’t be reloading shit in the heat of battle. This was a single-use weapon. 

Still, Lucas was optimistic, at least until it exploded. One second they were ready to shoot slime across the barn doors to measure velocity, and the next, the entire powder chamber blew outwards, making the entire guard bell of their weapon explode violently, injuring the man who had pulled the trigger pretty severely. 

While the assistant screamed, Lucas and Heisenburgle rushed forward. For a moment, Lucas was almost touched that the wizened old gnome had a soft spot hidden away. Then he realized that the gnome was more concerned about the damage that his weapon had sustained than the man who had been wounded by it. That annoyed him, but now was not the time or place to express that. Instead, he focused on the bleeding man, giving him the strongest healing potion that he had to stop the bleeding.

Lucas actually went one step further than that, and in the hour that followed, he did his very best to reattach the fingers that had been blown off in the explosion. He had no idea if that would work or not, but despite how grotesque it was, he did his best. 

By the time he was done, Lucas had managed to attach both of the fingers the man had lost and set the other knees that had broken. He had no idea if it would hold, but he’d slathered enough healing salve on there to cure a couple of lepers, so he gave him good odds. 

When Lucas joined Heisenburgle in his office when it was all done, the gnome gave him an endless explanation of back pressure and viscosity, but he didn’t say a word about the injured man. 

“He’s fine, by the way,” Lucas volunteered. “He might even be able to write his name after the splints come off.”

“Doubtful,” the gnome said, “I only hire illiterates, so they can’t smuggle my secrets out in code or—”

“Do you hear yourself?” Lucas blurted out. “A man almost died.”

“A man was maimed, and he will be compensated for it,” Heisenburgle answered, distracted. “He is not at issue here. What is it that we may need to consider—”

“Bullshit,” Lucas yelled. “It’s absolutely the issue. The next person to lose a hand could be you, or me, or…”

“When you are under the effects of your durability potion, I do not believe the explosion we witnessed would have harmed you,” the gnome corrected him. “What matters is that even if we thin down your poison, the added resistance of the dragon’s flesh could make this whole plan a failure.”

Lucas was fuming, but he decided not to argue about the humanity, or lack thereof, present in this situation with someone who wasn’t even human himself. Instead, he just vowed to make their next crash test dummy a strong potion of endurance before they repeated the test, and said, “It’s fine. I saw it. The studs weren’t damaged. Just the backplate and the bolts.”

“Yes,” the gnome agreed. “The fasteners are to blame, but even if I replace them, who is to say they won't fail again?”

“They might,” Lucas agreed. “Just make them bigger, or some washers or something.”

“What good would washing do?” the gnome asked, looking up at him in confusion.

“Not washing,” Lucas yelled. “Washers. To spread the force out.”

While he didn’t know shit about engineering, he apparently knew one thing that the gnome didn’t, and after yelling back and forth about it for a few minutes, he finally made a sketch to get his point across that Heisenburgle seemed very taken with. 

Lucas didn’t care. He was kind of over it and spent the next couple of days working half-heartedly on his water lizard poison before he pronounced it done. He also visited the wounded man once a day until he verified that he’d keep all of his fingers, which warmed Lucas’ cold, dead heart just a little bit.

Just before their second test, Lucas gave the man who was scheduled to do the deed a potion that would increase his endurance by ten for a few minutes. Fortunately, he didn’t need it. This time, the back didn’t blow out. That was the good news. The bad news was that the charge was insufficient, and only partially expelled the poison, which meant that most of Lucas’ efforts would be wasted. 

“It’s fine,” Heisenburgle assured him. “This is progress.”

Unfortunately, this time he couldn’t hang around and give the gnome a hard time about his weapon or his naming schemes. Lucas had to bite the bullet and go to a dance. 

Now that they were getting closer to weapons that might have a prayer of killing her, they actually needed to lure her onto the field of battle. Truthfully, he would rather fight her than seduce her, but in this, at least he didn’t have a choice. Really, he would have worn one of his cosmetics if he’d thought to make a batch, just to tempt the woman that much more. 

Cologne would probably be just the thing, he thought to himself as he rode to the event, making a note to do that when he got back. 

So, with Hesienburgle’s blessing, he went off to dance the night away, and honestly, Skylara was the least awful part of the whole night because he barely saw her from so far away. The fact that she was only ever across the room probably meant that she was actively avoiding him, but the fact that she never so much as looked in his direction once made him sure of it. 

This behavior was largely expected and left him free to spend time with junkies that were looking to score, and women who’d heard he was important, dangerous or both. By the end of the night, he had quite the entourage, but that just made him miss Danaria all the more. 

Lucas was enough of a dirtbag to spend the whole night drinking and smiling as he missed her, but not so much of a dirtbag as to actually enjoy any of it. He even made nice with the Prince on more than one occasion, and politely endured several offers to have some company in bed that night. 

He humored the woman, but he didn’t accept. That was as much because he would never betray Danaria, and he had no desire to see the Lady Skylara rip them into bloody chunks. No matter what she said about him, he was certain that remained the fate of any woman that he showed more than a passing interest in. By the end of the night, after she’d drunk half a cellar full of wine herself, Lucas could feel her eyes upon him. 

He even considered approaching her, but that would have caused a scene. It’s enough to be seen this first night, he decided, letting her linger in the background like a malevolent spirit, which was pretty much what exes were, and she certainly considered herself to be his ex something.  

Lucas returned to Black Gate later that night, but only because he worried that if he stayed in the castle, she would appear in whatever room he slept in, demanding make-up sex. Even though he thought the odds of that were very low, he had no desire to risk them.

He sighed as his carriage left Lordanin, and he had to wave the city goodbye again. It’s not like we have the weapons to kill her today after today’s debacle, he thought bitterly.