Disgruntled, Eunny wandered along the path through the greenhouse complex, eventually ducking into an empty Trunk when the constant drizzle grew to a downpour. She could always haul in some more bags of the water-retention amendment the elective was using. The spellwork to keep even moisture levels was fragile, and had a tendency to break down if it didn’t like the precise ratios of imbued amendments or arcane work the students were testing.
Alongside the elective, Eunny had her own tray for an allotment of the same seeds the course used. Better to learn with the same materials, she told Ollas, since if she’d been an actual student she’d have lacked the prerequisites to even get through the door. It would be hard enough trying to mimic the students’ work without trying to devise a new experiment.
Even at the small scale of a single elective, the sheer volume at which they trialed seeds with abandon was astounding to her. Ollas hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there’d be a lot of failures and false starts. The students planted flat after flat, only to have their seeds sprout and die. In the beginning, the whole sad cycle happened within the same day. It had taken nearly two weeks before the seedlings started to last overnight. Another four days before they’d finally struck a promising mix that achieved faster, stable budding.
Reaching for the Trunk’s wheelbarrow, Eunny paused as her eye caught on a new tray in the greenhouse’s second antechamber. She went inside, crouching down beneath the rows of overflow plants and cuttings. A big philodendron had been scooted to the side to make space for a small tray only large enough to hold a pair of starter pots. Each held a small clump, no more than two or three stems of a nondescript, grass-like plant.
A flare in the back of Eunny’s mind was followed by a flurry of twitches in her eye. She swore, jerking back from the low shelf, and stood, leaning against the upper rack for support. Why would those things be in here?
Ollas’s mumbling to himself about having planted the overgrown patch on purpose, of needing to check…something. Innocent sounding words, but an irrational sense of dread settled in the pit of her stomach as she stared at the freshly propagated plants.
A knock on the antechamber’s door drew her attention. Zhenya stood on the other side, visible through the window dominating the upper half of the door.
“Hey, Eunny,” Zhenya called, her voice muffled by the glass. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, just…headache.” Understatement.
Grateful for an excuse to escape, Eunny went into the greenhouse’s main room, where Zhenya had gathered small bags of different amendments and other materials into a stack of flat trays.
“What’s all this for?” Eunny asked, reaching out to steady a piece of burlap Zhenya had tried to balance atop her load.
“The elective,” Zhenya said. “Trying to prolong the corruption in the soil samples.”
“Not something you hear every day, even at Sylveren.”
It remained a mystery to the world how the Eyllic Empire had crafted its poison with so singular a purpose as to only cause destruction in the kingdom of Rhell. It seeped ever downward from where it had first been unleashed at Rhell’s northeastern border, unrelenting in its pursuit of the magical wellspring in the capital city. Outward spread occurred more from measures taken trying to slow its progress than the poison naturally sprawling out. But once contaminated soil was taken down into the Valley—the only region willing to allow such a thing—it was quickly rendered inert. Whether it was the natural protection of the Valley itself, through the grace of its own wellspring or the lingering presence of its divine aspect, the Child, or something innate in the magical engineering of the poison, it didn’t take hold beyond Rhell. Through careful handling and prodigious use of enchanted enclosures, mages at Sylveren were able to maintain the blight in soil samples brought to the university for testing, but even those went sterile within weeks.
A new wrinkle for the elective arose when a shipment of soil from one of the Rhellian containment zones arrived completely inert. Despite having more concentrated levels of poison in the areas where restoration efforts had succeeded in curbing the spread, the poison rendered itself useless as soon as it entered the Valley. Great for border security, but a problem for Ollas and Rai’s class and their baby seedlings.
Eunny took half of the load, throwing up an elbow to block Zhenya when she tried to reclaim it. “Hush. You’re not going to be able to see over the top of this.”
Zhenya relented with a smile. “Thanks.” She rifled through a drawer, pulling out a few more random bottles before leading the way back to the Sapling, the mid-level greenhouse. “You don’t need to stay. I just wanted to say hi.”
“It’s no trouble. Unless you want me to leave you alone,” Eunny said, helping to unpack Zhenya’s haul.
“Not at all. How are you liking grovetending?” Zhenya asked as she drew an ink bottle toward her and pulled a dip pen from her pocket. “I don’t get to be in the lab as much as I’d hoped for the elective.”
“You’re already in there or class or the library often enough.” Eunny let her eyes travel across the tidy rows of the students’ trays lining one antechamber. “The gardening stuff is fine, but I don’t think I’ve found my second calling.”
She watched as Zhenya summoned a spot of golden-white light to the tip of her index finger and touched her pen’s nib. A faint glow surrounded the point as she gave it a gentle swirl in the ink.
“This probably wasn’t the best introduction,” Zhenya said as she began to inscribe runes on an empty glass jug’s blank label. “Blended Growing is fun, or maybe Augmentation in Food Safety. That one keeps you on your toes with all the things catching fire or exploding. Can be smelly, though.”
Eunny hummed in consideration. “What’s this for?”
“Sealing enchantments. We’re trying different methods of creating a biome for transporting the containment zone soil here.”
“Ink works like that?”
Zhenya shrugged. “Within reason, we hope. If you want significant long-term storage, you’re going to want real frost charms and collaborative work, but the contaminated soil was too reactive to the heavier duty spells. Ollas is looking better,” she added, eyes on her work.
“Yea,” Eunny agreed, a melancholic sigh rising from her chest. Goddess break, that feeling again. She forced a smile. “He’s moving along pretty well. Pretty soon, he won’t need me at all.”
“We can’t convince you to stay?” Zhen glanced sideways at her. “It’s nice having you up here.”
Eunny’s smile was no longer forced, but the melancholy remained, only changing in tenor. “You’re not rid of me just yet.”
But her usefulness was running short. Eunny had always known it would, that helping Ollas was never meant to last more than a few weeks. She hadn’t considered that she’d ever want to stay, though, and the prospect was growing ever so tempting.
