Brewing Bad Ch. 116-117

Ch. 116 - Science?!

Slowly, a page at a time came back together. The thousand individual people he knew slowly reformed chapters called friends and enemies, respectively, though there were some people that were in both. After that, food became meals, and places became cities and maps that connected other villages and cities together. Slowly, he remembered that he was an alchemist who also happened to be a drug dealer and the false cousin of the beautiful Danaria Parin. He also happened to be in love with her, as it turned out, which was something he hadn't even suspected before now.

It was like coming out of anesthesia, and he was as surprised as anyone as each piece fell into place. He was dead, but that wasn’t the first time he’d died. He’d been poisoned, but it wasn’t the first time for that, either. Lucas, which turned out to be his name, had led a very interesting life, and the twists and turns kept him on the edge of his seat as he slowly recongealed from a cloud of related facts to the outline of a character to something resembling himself again. 

“A thousand pardons, my lady,” the God of Alchemy said as he hastily pulled Lucas back together. “I was just too excited by the sequence of events you described, and I simply sought to find the relevant information. No harm has been done. Once I’ve finished my examination, he’ll be as good as new!”

“He’d better be,” the woman answered with an imperious note. “He’s going to go on to discover great things. I can feel it.” Part of him knew that she was saying it that way to provoke the God of Alchemy, but he was still too blurry to understand what she hoped to achieve with that. 

Lucas wasn’t sure that was true. He was close enough to himself again to be pissed off at the way he’d almost been dispersed into nothingness by accident, but even if all the parts that made him who he was had been reincorporated, he still felt pretty off his game. Well, most of him had been put back together, he corrected himself. 

As his body became solid enough that he could move again, he saw that a few literal pages that were meant to be pieces of him were still missing because they were floating in front of Thrzaelwick while he browsed pieces of Lucas’s mind at his leisure. 

“Hmmm, I see,” the gnome said to himself, lost in thought, as he reviewed a large scroll that seemed to make up the sum total of Luca’s knowledge of alchemy. He was pretty fuzzy on what that was until the gnome finally released it, and it vanished, refilling Lucas’s mind with all the information that he’d lost.

“I have found the problem,” the gnome explained triumphantly. “His talent is broken. It turns out that your Mister Sharpe’s soul isn’t even from our world, so it is the wrong shape to fit the alchemy talent that his body was born with.”

“I agree,” Lwyn answered. “So I was rather hoping that—”

“So all we need to do is take out this science stuff and bend a few things and…” as the gnome talked, Lucas could feel himself starting to bend out of shape. Without any warning, whole sections of knowledge about the world he’d lived in before and the way he was used to thinking about things started to wink out. 

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing? I—” Lucas protested, but weakly. It was hard to do more than that when his mind was being turned inside out. 

Both of them were stopped cold when Lwyn yelled, “Thrzaelwick! Put his soul back just the way you found it right this instant!”

“But it’s not trouble at all,” the Alchemy God insisted. “Just a few little changes and—”

“Now!” Her voice was raised, but she was not screaming. Still, it sounded like the peel of thunder more than any human voice he’d ever heard. 

“As you wish, my darling,” the gnome said, not entirely able to keep his annoyance out of his voice this time. Thrzaelwick snapped his fingers, and suddenly, just like that, Lucas was himself again, and he was pissed. 

“What in the fuck is the big idea, buddy?” Lucas snarled. At that moment, he didn’t care if he got turned into a toad or lobotomized. He was still going to kill this tiny wire-haired bastard. “That’s my brain, and those are my memories. You can’t just—”

“The lovely Lwyn asked me to make sure her recipe was not stolen by any cretin that could guess what to mix together enough times,” the Gnomish God shot back defensively. “It would be a simple thing to turn you into a proper alchemist, and your life would be better off for it!”

“She said no such thing!” Lucas spat, giving real thought to drop-kicking the little bastard. “She told you that I had done the impossible, so you…”

“Sought to undo it, that’s correct,” the gnome agreed. “Impossible things are impossible for a reason. It should be impossible to guess the ingredients of forbidden recipes, to distill multiple batches of Celestial Solvent in a single night, and to make more than eight different kinds of healing potions!”

The gnome seemed ready to throw down and would almost certainly have smote Lucas to nothing were it not for Lwyn’s timely intervention. “Actually,” the goddess told the gnome, “I want just the opposite. I want to create a… a lab rat, you might say.”

“A lab rat?!” Lucas and Thrzaelwick both of them said together as they turned to face her. 

“Indeed,” she smiled, winsomely. “If you think about it, Thrzaelwick, it would be doing you a favor. All those recipes you always want to try, but never have the time to perfect? Mister Sharpe here could provide you endless inspiration, giving you more time to focus on refinement…”

“He could,” the gnome agreed grudgingly. “But this science and chemistry of his is nothing but an inferior form of alchemy. He’d be diluting the very meaning of the word!”

Now I see what she meant when she said that the boon wasn’t hers to give, Lucas thought to himself as he watched the conversation unwind before him. 

Lucas saw what it was she was doing, and decided to stay well out of this. The Gnomish God and the Elvish Goddess clearly had a Hephaestus-Aphrodite thing going on here, and if she wanted to leverage that to help him get what he wanted, then more power to her.

“It is, I agree wholeheartedly,” she said with a very serious expression. “But it’s also the opportunity for a unique experiment. When is the next time we are likely to get another science user in our world? I’m not suggesting that you adopt his inferior, what did you call it? Chemistry? Wholeheartedly, but if you optimized his talent so it worked with the soul he had, then he might lead your endless research in new directions.”

“I see,” the gnome answered bitterly. “It is an experiment that could be easily done, true, but what if it causes more harm than good? It certainly seems to have so far.”

“Uhmmm, if I may, Your, aaah, Illustriousness,” Lucas finally interjected. “I think if you look at the numbers, you’ll see my off-brand healing potions have saved far more lives than my Blue has taken. I’m not sure if it’s actually—”

“There have been seventeen overdoses as a result of your unauthorized and poisonous concoctions,” the gnome proclaimed. “That doesn’t include all the other deaths related to crime, vendetta, and—”

“How many lives have his potions saved?” Lwyn asked. “I’m curious.”

“178,” the gnome said sourly. 

“On balance, that seems quite positive to me,” she responded with a smile, making the gnome’s frown deepen further until it seemed like it was carved into his cheeks. 

“You, or at least the body you inhabit, have been given a talent by the Gods themselves,” he said, turning to face Lucas. “You understand that, don’t you? Do have any evidence whatsoever that if I gave into my dear Lwyn, sincere, selfless request, that you would do more than make more powerful drugs with it?”

“I’m actually trying to get out of the drug business,” Lucas said. “It’s a long story with the Prince and a Dragon, but if you—”

“I will not accept protestations of innocence!” Thrzaelwick. “I require real tangible proof that doing this thing has a chance of making the world a better place.”

“Well,” Lucas responded after a moment. “What about the healing potions I’ve distributed to the poor and the cosmetics I’m—”

“Cosmetics?!” the gnome interrupted. “Pah! I—”

For a moment, Lucas thought he was cooked. God reacted almost exactly as Heisenburgle might have. Fortunately, the elven Goddess intervened again. “Now, Thrzaelwick, are you saying that beauty does no good in the world? The right dress or the right perfume can do just as much as a fertility potion in many cases. Is it really your place to judge how he uses his gifts to help others, so long as he helps them?”

Thrzaelwick was obviously conflicted as he stood there, hopelessly at odds with himself. On the one hand, it was clear he didn’t want to help Lucas. On the other, though, it was obvious that he felt a desperate need to say yes to everything that the beautiful Goddess asked of him.”

“Very well,” he said finally. “We will consider this an experiment in the merits of your chaotic science magic and my alchemy.”

Lucas felt his soul starting to twist again as the God of Alchemy waggled a few of his fingers. This time, though, Lucas didn’t feel like parts of himself were slipping away. He felt like his world was expanding. It was like this whole time. He’d been wearing an outfit that was a bit too tight. He didn’t realize how uncomfortable he was in his own skin until the gnome let it out a few inches. Suddenly, he could breathe, and more than that, the damn system he’d been having such trouble with suddenly made sense on an almost intuitive level. 

He still had questions, of course. He had loads of questions. He’d probably have to spend days looking through all the damn screens to find what he was looking for, but this was a start. Now, he knew why the alchemy of the world was so backward: it had been designed that way by a single person with very particular tastes. Now that his Alchemy setup resembled Chemistry more than anything he’d been forced to deal with up to this point as his knowledge was wired up directly to his magic as it always should have been.

“Wow,” was all he could manage to say. 

Lucas wanted to thank the gnome. He really was grateful for this, but he was too stunned by how different everything felt now that his soul fit into the world the right way. 

The gnome started to lecture him about the changes he should expect, and Lwyn descended from her throne to thank the gnome. As she did so, the tension in the room changed. Guards that had been standing still this whole time were suddenly moving, and Lucas wasn’t sure why. 

That was when the angels strolled into the room. Lucas immediately recognized one of them as that asshole, Darius, and for the first time, he saw a look of surprise and concern flit across Lwyn’s lovely features. They were gone in an instant, though, as she turned toward her guests. 

“Gentlemen, I’m right in the midst of something,” she declared as the guards around her throne suddenly dropped into a guarded stance at some unspoken signal and moved to surround the three of them. “SO I am afraid you will have to wait until I’ve finished returning Mister Sharpe to his own body. Once that’s done, we can—”

“Impossible!” The second angel yelled, spreading his wings wider as he spoke. “That soul does not belong to your world. He must return to us at once!”

Ch. 117 - Jurisdictional Matters

“Can we all just please calm down,” Darius said, infuriatingly calm as always. “There are rules in place for exactly these sorts of jurisdictional matters.”

“There are, but I do not recognize your authority,” Lwyn said coolly. “This man is not a valid death that you can collect on. He is a unique supplicant and a person of significant interest. You will have to return when he dies a natural, final death.”

Lucas was amused by her sudden change. She was obviously no great fan of Thrzaelwick, but she’d humored him for the better part of an hour. That sort of treatment had left Lucas with the belief that she could endure nearly anything with pleasant passivity, but apparently, that was not the case. 

“Your radiance, you might find it interesting to split hairs, but Lucas Sharpe belongs to us, as does his rehabilitation,” as the angels approached Lucas to the extent that the armored cordon would allow it, they appeared to look right through him the way Thrzaelwick had several times already. Although Lucas did not feel himself unravel under their gaze, he knew that they were reading more into him than he would ever want them to. 

“From what I can see, it’s clear he’s made absolutely no attempt to change,” Darius said with a shake of his head. “Even with all that time we spent together discussing the root of his problems, he’s still poisoning the lives of others with narcotics.”

“If you don’t see any other changes in that soul since he’s arrived in our world, then perhaps he should never be returned to your care,” the elven Goddess snapped, emphasizing that last word acidly. “Return to your realm, and leave us to ours.”

“We will,” the other angel agreed, “As soon as we have our charge. Though you might think we’d consider a single soul to be worth the notice of the entire host, we will not hesitate to call them should we need to do so.”

At those words, the line of armed and armored elven spirits leveled their weapons at the angels and snapped their shields together. As they did that, the angels’ clothing started to shimmer, transforming from business casual into silvery breastplates. 

A moment ago, Darius had been holding a pen and a clipboard, but as Lucas watched, those mundane implements transformed into a sword and shield. An epic knockdown, drag-out fight was getting ready to happen right here, and for some reason, he felt pretty bad about that.

“Woah, woah, woah!” he yelled, raising his hands. To him, it looked like the angles would get slaughtered, but he didn’t even want those assholes’ blood on his hands at this point. “Can we all just calm the fuck down, please?”

“Certainly,” Darius said, his face now hidden behind a full helm that had come from nowhere. “Simply surrender yourself to us, and we will not have to summon the thousands of angels necessary to reduce this tree to a stump.”

Lwyn stood then, and her eyes crackled with fury. “You think to threaten me in my home! What would ten thousand angels be against a million elves with bows, let alone ten thousand archmages? I will annihilate any force you send. I could send my armies to your heaven and burn—”

“Yo! Thraz!” Lucas said, “They mentioned rules before. What are the rules to handle this situation before it becomes a bloodbath?”

“Ah, yes, rules!” the gnome cried out. He was apparently so eager to avoid what was about to happen next that he was suddenly holding a thick, leather-bound tome that was titled Interworld Conflict Protocols that he'd conjured from nothing. “Let’s see, translocated soul disputes and jurisdictional conflicts, where is that again…”

As the gnome looked up the rules, everyone else stood there frozen, two seconds from conflict. While they did that, Lucas hazarded a glance at Lwyn. She stared murder at him for a moment but quickly regained her composure and offered him the smallest of smiles.

I hope that means she’s not going to murder me for talking over her, he thought with only a little desperation. 

She’d been pretty patient with him so far, but in their last encounter, she’d mentioned how easy it would be to snuff out a mortal soul, and Thrzaelwick had almost killed him once with sheer overeagerness to understand how he’d unraveled so many alchemical secrets so quickly. He was definitely out of his depth here, but there wasn’t really shit he could do about it.  

When the Gnomish God finally got to the correct section, he began to read it aloud. “Transubstantiated souls shall belong to the world that they have migrated to for the length of their lives, natural or unnatural, at which time—”

“Which he has,” the second angel interrupted. 

The God of Alchemy gave him an annoyed look but continued reading. “At which time their lives shall be evaluated, and they may be returned two criteria: they are not likely to be resurrected in cases where such magic exists and—”

“But he is about to be resurrected,” Lwyn protested. “He—”

“My lady,” Thrzealwick said with the utmost deference. “This next bit will explain it if you would just allow me a moment to finish.”

Through all of this, Lucas and Darius stood there facing each other calmly, waiting to get to the bottom of this riddle. Lucas didn’t believe the angel was a bad guy or anything. He was just a prick that didn’t know how to live and let live. His companion seemed far more bloodthirsty, and Lwyn, well, Lucas was pretty sure she just didn’t like having her toes stepped on, though with this anger, he wouldn’t be surprised if there was more to whatever this was in her eyes. 

“At which time their lives shall be evaluated, and they may be returned two criteria: they are not likely to be resurrected in cases where such magic exists, and that they have made substantial contributions to the world they are currently located in, such that it would irrevocably change events if they were withdrawn,” the Gnomish God continued. “If the soul in question is deemed unlikely to be returned to life, they may be returned to their realm of origin. If they are likely to be returned to life, then that opportunity may only be overlooked if they are deemed unimportant.”

The words were humbling to Lucas but not as humbling as everything that followed. Though the two sides backed away from bloodshed by a matter of inches, they spent the next twenty minutes arguing how important or unimportant Lucas was. 

Lwyn argued that he was of paramount importance both because he was currently the fulcrum by which the fate of an entire human nation would be decided, and because of his achievements in coming here at all. “No human has ever arrived at my court before in this manner,” she insisted. “That’s historic. Only a handful of non-elves has ever made it this far, and most of those were half-elves.”

Wait, the Goddess of Elves doesn’t consider half-elves to be elves? He thought. That’s fucked up! 

While Lucas had not been the kindest to the elves of his new world, it was because they’d been pricks to him, not because he was racist or a specialist or whatever the fuck this was. Still, she was on his side, so he said nothing. 

“While that may well be the case,” Darius argued, “Your world uses levels for these things, does it not?”

“It does,” Lwyn conceded grudgingly, obviously aware of where this was going, even if Lucas was groping in the dark a few steps behind her.

His angel minder nodded and said, “Alright. So then it should be easy enough to solve. If Lucas is a high enough level to be important, then we should be able to check that and solve this right away. Exactly what level is our escaped soul?”

Lwyn didn’t answer. She just glared for a long moment before she said, “I’m not sure if we can quantify all of one man’s achievements, not even someone as simple as a human with a single number.”

She then proceeded to explain to everyone how the numbers only applied to a very narrow range of their experience and measured specific traits and destinies. She explained how any number of heroic figures were low-level when they saved the world. It was then that the God of Alchemy betrayed Lucas. 

“Lwyn, my dearest Goddess, you know I would do anything for you, but in this, I disagree,” Thrzaelwick said with a shake of his head. “This soul is only level one. “While it is fair to say that low-level souls can be important, it’s impossible to say a soul at level one can ever be important. It's an indication that he’s utterly failed to embrace his destiny in any meaningful way.”

Apparently, the angels agreed with that argument because they sheathed their flaming sword, which disappeared as soon as they were placed in their scabbards. Then Darius said, “I think that is well put. Perhaps if he were a few levels higher, then we could find our way to agreeing with your point of view, but as it stands, it’s an open-and-shut case, even according to your own allies.”

The angel’s armor melted away as he started to walk toward the enemy soldiers, who had relaxed their posture only slightly. “You would never have agreed with the rules should they have turned against you,” Lwyn proclaimed as her guards stood aside and let the angels approach Lucas. 

“That’s hurtful,” the second angel said, “We are bound to uphold the laws of the universe in all ways and in all things.”

Lucas stood there for a long moment, paralyzed. Is she really going to give me up? He wondered. Is this how I go out? He was still asking himself that question when he noticed that she was giving him a meaningful look. Her face still looked frustrated, but her eyes twinkled with mischief. 

Me? He asked himself. What is it I’m supposed to do about all of this? Until now, he’d stayed out of it. He’d thought that these two gods had his back, but now, what was he supposed to do, run? He didn’t exactly see another corpse to take a swan dive into. 

As Darius reached for him, he tried hard to think about this. His level was the question at hand. Is there something I can do about that? He asked himself. It didn’t seem very likely, but he couldn’t figure out any other reason why she was giving him that look. 

When Darius reached for him, he said, “Wait, there’s one thing that none of you pricks are considering.” He wasn’t sure what that was, but he was stalling for time and grasping at straws here. 

“Oh? And what’s that?” Darius asked with a look of mild amusement. He probably expected Lucas to run again, but he already knew that there was no point.  

Why was he even level one? Well, that was easy. It was because he didn’t experience from anything but doing alchemy, and his talent or system or whatever the fuck it was didn’t recognize what he was doing as real alchemy because it deviated too far from the sensibilities of Heisenburgle, Thrzealwick, and every other stuck up alchemist that thought there was only one way to do something.

If they’d counted all the actual alchemy I did instead of the handful of the recipes I read and the handful of orthodox potions I happened to make, then there’s no way I’d be… His thoughts trailed off as he figured out what it was she was apparently hinting at. 

“All of you have based your decision on something that I’ve been short-changed by,” Lucas explained, “and I demand a recount.”