“I spent my younger years being angry at him,” he shrugged. “It changed nothing. Besides, I have only five more years to serve now. But you had a different question when you approached me, Master, I suppose?”
“Oh! Right!” He glanced at the distant clock tower again. “I’m almost late for my Alchemical Basics class. You wouldn’t happen to know how to get there?”
The old man nodded and described the way. Only after thanking him and sprinting off, did Kraghtol realize he hadn’t asked the servant for his name. It was a lot to take in, and he wasn’t so sure he liked this part of the city life.
He arrived just in time not to be the last one to enter the classroom, but most desks were already occupied.
Mrs. Hawke, the teacher, turned out to be an older woman of at least 60 years of age. She might have been beautiful once, but the years clearly had not been kind to her, and her face had a constantly sour look to it. Including Kraghtol, there were a good dozen students, across a wide range of ages. Most were humans around his age, in their early to mid-twenties. But some of them were older men and women, who had probably saved money for a longer time in order to afford the alchemists’ school. There were also two elves, and one dwarf Kraghtol had trouble determining the age of, but judging by his beard, he, too, wasn’t among the younger ones.
The last students entered the room and took positions at one of the sturdy wooden work desks, which had seen more than one generation of aspiring alchemists already. The room itself was clean and practical. Most parts were made of stone, and large windows with operable glass panes supplied a generous amount of daylight. On some desks, Kraghtol could see blackened spots of burning, even though they had been cleaned thoroughly after whatever accident had happened there — no doubt by the same servants he had already seen. Finally, the teacher looked around and cleared her throat.
“Good morning. As I announced last time, today, you will put the theory I taught you into practice. I hope you have been listening carefully, because you will need everything in order to create your first alchemical mixture. However…”
She locked her gaze onto Kraghtol. “Since we have a new student joining the course today, Mr. Krasen of Caemdir, I will give you the opportunity to reiterate what you have learned one more time. So, if you didn’t pay attention before, I suggest you do so now. Any volunteers?”
Nobody seemed all too eager to put themselves on the spot. Instead, Kraghtol felt lots of curious looks directed at him. Finally, a young man, perhaps a few years older than himself, with a wheat-blond ponytail and a slight arrogant sneer on his finely chiseled features, spoke up. He was about as tall as Kraghtol was currently, perhaps even a few centimeters taller.
“Well, since apparently we won’t be able to start our lesson until somebody does it, I will.”
Mrs. Hawke nodded in silent approval, and the young man went on. He spoke in a haughty tone and with a voice so melodic it made Kraghtol wonder if he had been trained as a singer.
“The world comprises four elements: fire, earth, water and air. Every substance has a certain affinity for one of those elements. Creating an alchemical potion is done simply by combining materials connected to the fitting elements, mixing them together and finally binding them with Activator, which is a rare and valuable substance produced by the guild.”
Kraghtol listened carefully to the annoying sing-song of the other student’s voice, but this sounded almost ridiculously easy. That was all?
He couldn’t help but notice how good-looking the man speaking was. It was obvioushehad no trouble paying the tuition fee. He and his small peer group huddled together, wearing finer, more elegant clothes than everyone else in the room. His clean skin possessed a noble paleness, and his face looked marble-carved. He was no doubt attractive, very much so even, but the moment he had spoken, Kraghtol was sure that he didn’t like him. His voice was dripping with condescension, and the sneer of superiority didn’t leave his face, not even when the teacher shook her head.
“Thank you, Mr. el Greylune, but this was not even half of what we have discussed. If you had tried to putthattheory to the test, you would have created a useless mixture at best. So perhaps you should be thankful for Mr. Krasen’s appearance that saved you from this humiliation.”
She sighed, not exuding even an ounce of enthusiasm.
“What Mr. el Greylune forgot to mention is that you don’t just throw together random substances. If you were to create a recipe, you would need to contemplate the intended effect, and choose the materials carefully to mimic the elemental composition of the effect as closely as possible. But not only substances carry elemental affinities, but actions do as well. Heating the mixture, for example, adds fire affinity, while cooling it shifts the mixture towards water, and so on. For these very reasons, writing new recipes is a task for the masters of our craft, not novices. In this course, we will focus on brewing potions from existing recipes only.”
Her voice was flat and conveyed neither spite nor joy.
“The most important part in creating a potion, however, is the Activation, which is considerably more than ‘binding the components together’. During Activation, you prime the mixture with the intended effect, which requires two things. First, a dose of Activator, which Mr. el Greylune summarized correctly, and an act of willpower, with which you will imprint the effect onto the mixture. The elemental affinity makes it easier to do so, but do not think of it aseasy. Without thorough preparation, it would be downright impossible, but with a good recipe and flawless execution, this feat becomes only ‘very hard’. Good recipes contain mental aids and mnemonics that might help you in the Activation process, as well.”
She looked around the room again. “Do you have questions?”
There were none. That was certainly more complicated than the young noble’s — Kraghtol recognized the ‘el’ in his name, even though there were no nobles around Mistpine — version, but if heunderstood correctly, all he had to do today was to follow a recipe to the letter.
The noble, however, did not seem happy about the exposure, and shot Kraghtol a venomous look, as if he alone was responsible for his wrong answers.
Since it was a novice class, only about half the students were already literate enough to read the recipe and thus had to form groups to work together. Mrs. Hawke watched the proceedings with a distant expression, making it more than clear she would have preferred to be somewhere else now. While Kraghtol had no trouble reading the instructions, he had to stay consistent in his lies and teamed up with one of the Elven students, who looked as lost as Kraghtol was feeling and introduced herself as ‘Aniriel of the wandering sky’.
Except for lecturer Holen Merress, Kraghtol had never met an elf before, and Aniriel was fascinating. She was rather elegant and delicate, and her long silver hair was almost white. Her ears pointed back, and her eyes were slanted and of a silvery color, like her hair. Kraghtol had no trouble imagining men finding her attractive, but he was more fascinated by the way she moved and talked. It didn’t seem like she was ever fully awake, and sometimes, she stopped whatever she was doing for unnerving long amounts of time, as if she was pondering some deeper meaning that remained hidden to the rest of the world.
The recipe for mixing a glowing potion didn’t seem complicated, although it was surprisingly convoluted when Aniriel read it to him in her silky voice.
“Heat a quarter liter of sunflower seed oil in a polished copper bowl until it is simmering and hissing. Grind twenty-eight firefly husks intoa fine powder and mix it with 40 grams of sunmoss, dried and crushed. Add the dry mixture to the boiling oil, and stir the concoction three times counter-clockwise with a spoon made of birch wood. Now, concentrate on your goal: a warm golden glow, like sunshine on a late summer afternoon. Imagine the light and heat, and put that image into your creation. Now, add a pinch of Activator while focusing your will on this very goal and let the mixture cool. Your final product should be a thick and golden paste, emitting a warm and steady glow.”
Kraghtol nodded along, trying to memorize everything, but after she finished, he asked, “Do you really think it matters how many times we stir? Or what material the spoon is made of?”
She blinked slowly and thought about it for a moment. It seemed hard for her to focus on the mundane enough to process the question, as if her thoughts were preoccupied with higher concepts all the time. It was starting to annoy him — the question had been simple enough — but before he could get carried away by the negative feeling, he stopped. Judging her like that because of the way she was, only minutes after meeting her, didn’t feel very fair.
Suddenly, Kraghtol’s eyes widened as the pieces fell together. She wasn’t just a human with pointy ears, but a whole different kind of person altogether. She was anelf! And that meant she thought like one, and not like a human. If she was any indication, the Elven mind had trouble concentrating on the practical aspects of life enough to make it seem strange and alien to the human onlooker.
And if that was true… Kraghtol wanted nothing more than to share his epiphany withsomeone, preferably Merrick, and it bothered him to no end that he would have to keep this realization to himself. If thatwas true, then perhaps with him it was just the same story. His foster father had admonished him countless times — in his own gentle way — to pay more attention when teaching him, and Kraghtol had never understood how he was supposed to do that with all the storms of chaos in his head. Merrick had never said so, but Kraghtol had always assumed it was because he was just bad at learning, stupid even. He had never considered that it might just have been part of who he was, the same Orcish part that gave him his green skin and his fey-cursed tusks. When he had changed into a human, not just his face and his body had changed, like he had expected. Hismindhad become humanlike as well, making him think like an ordinary human, so nobody would notice anything out of the ordinary.
