Page 68 of Heartflame

Then my hand brushed against something different. Metal. Smooth and cool beneath the grime.

I pulled it free from a rotting wooden box, coughing as dust erupted around me. It was a small vial, ornate and sealed with wax. My heart began to race as I wiped away the accumulated filth and held it up to the weak light filtering through the high window.

The liquid inside shimmered with an opalescent glow.

My breath caught. I knew this. I’d seen my mother make this exact potion countless times. Magical Accelerant. On its own, it was completely useless. But when it came to potion making, it was practically a required ingredient for any good apothecary. It had the ability to take the magical property of any potion and increase it tenfold with just a few drops. In most cases it was used sparingly because it was a costly potion to make. Not to mention, it could have disastrous side effects. Too much in a healing potion might create cell growth out of control or simple herbal potions might become so strong that they kill the drinker.

I rooted around in the crate, looking for more vials that might be stored. There was nothing in the first box, so I moved to the second. After ten minutes I was sweaty, dirty, and covered in grime from head to toe, but I hadn’t found another potion. This was the only one, seemingly lost to time.

I held the vial up to the light, turning it slowly in my hands. The potion inside caught the weak rays of sun filtering through that grimy window and threw them back in fractured rainbows. My mind was already racing through possibilities, calculations, dangerous ideas that would have made my mother pale if she could see me thinking them.

I could make something. Not just any potion, but something that might actually do some damage. Something that could give me a fighting chance.

The problem was, I needed ingredients. I couldn’t just work with what was in this storage room. I needed the right components, the right base, the right⁠—

My eyes landed on the corner of the room where there was an old decorative pot that had been long forgotten. That would probably make an okay vessel to brew in. The pot was ceramic, old enough that I worried it might crack if I subjected it to too much heat. But it would have to do.

Next, I needed a heat source. I couldn’t exactly ask for a stove down here in this forgotten basement. But as I looked around the storage room more carefully, I noticed something I’d overlooked before. There were old oil lamps spilling out of one of the boxes, their wicks still intact despite the years of abandonment. Not ideal, but fire was fire. I could work with that.

The real challenge was the ingredients. I closed my eyes and tried to think like a potion maker, tried to channel everything my mother had taught me about improvisation in the apothecary. What did I have access to down here?

I knelt down in the corner where the mushrooms were growing out of the rotting boxes. My mother had shown me once how certain fungi could be used to amplify magical effects. These were common, probably toxic to humans, but that wasn’t necessarily a problem if I knew what I was doing. I carefully harvested several of the larger specimens, setting them aside on a relatively clean crate.

Then I turned my attention to the mold. The storage room was absolutely coated in it, green and black patches covering nearly every surface. Mold was dangerous in potions. Most apprentices were taught to avoid it at all costs because it could spoil hard work in an instant. But mold also had its own magical properties. It was patient, easily spread, and persistent with a toxic edge. It could be distilled down to create a treatment for curses and magical maladies, but unfiltered, it did exactly the opposite.

I found a piece of cloth in one of the crates and scraped together as much of the mold as I could, trying not to think too hard about what I was doing. This was insane. This was possibly the most reckless thing I’d ever attempted.

But Aeron was upstairs, chained and suffering. And I was tired of being weak.

I set about arranging my supplies on the cleanest crate I could find. The mushrooms, the mold, the vial of Magical Accelerant, and several other odds and ends I’d scavenged. There were old leather straps that had some residual magic, though I couldn’t identify it, a handful of dried herbs that had somehow survived in a sealed tin, and even a dead rat I found in the corner that was already partially mummified with strange mushrooms curling out of its skeleton.

My hands trembled as I prepared the pot, positioning it carefully on an old piece of metal I’d salvaged. I used one of the oil lamps to create a small but steady flame beneath it. The heat rose quickly, and I added water from a basin I found that still had moisture collected in its depths.

As the water began to warm, I started adding my ingredients one by one. The mushrooms first, crushed between my palms. Then the mold, scraped carefully into the pot where it dissolved into the water like ink spreading through parchment. The smell that rose from the pot was absolutely foul. It was earthy and rotten and wrong in a way that made my stomach turn. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and kept stirring with an old pewter spoon I’d found amongst the utensils.

The dead rat was next. I tried not to think about where it had come from or how long it had been lying in this basement as I dropped it into the bubbling mixture. The mushrooms growing from its skeleton dissolved almost immediately, their spores clouding the water with a sickly purple hue.

I added the dried herbs last, watching as they unfurled in the heat, releasing their essence into the concoction. The smell intensified to the point where the shirt didn’t help anymore. My eyes watered as I stirred, my stomach churning with each rotation of the spoon.

This was poison. Real poison. Not the kind my mother made for medicinal purposes, but something designed to hurt, to corrupt, to destroy.

I thought of the Purity Front witches who’d thrown me down here. Of Morgana and her white mask and her casual cruelty. Of Aeron chained to that floor, his golden eyes burning with helpless rage.

This was for them. It wouldn’t affect the undead, but the living would definitely not enjoy it.

The liquid in the pot had taken on a murky greenish-black color, and I could see small wisps of vapor rising from its surface. It needed to simmer, needed time for the components to fully merge. I adjusted the oil lamp, trying to keep the heat steady without letting it boil over.

While I waited, I searched through the remaining crates for anything else that might be useful. More vials, preferably. Something I could pour this poison into so it didn’t just splash uselessly when I threw it. But the storage room seemed determined to deny me even that small mercy. I found nothing but more dust and decay.

Then my fingers brushed against glass.

I pulled out a bottle from beneath a tangle of rotted fabric. It was small, maybe the size of my thumb, with a cork stopper still firmly in place. The glass was thick and dark, designed to protect whatever had been stored inside from light. Carefully, I worked the cork free. It crumbled slightly in my hands, ancient and brittle, but the seal had held. The bottle was empty.

Perfect.

I waited what felt like hours for the potion to finish brewing, though it was probably only thirty minutes or so. The concoction in the pot had thickened slightly, becoming almost syrupy. The smell had changed too, becoming less putrid and more distinctly earthy. But there was also an acrid, electric quality to it now that made my skin prickle.

Using another piece of cloth as a makeshift filter, I carefully poured the poison into my small bottle. It flowed like liquid shadow, dark and viscous. I corked it immediately, sealing in the fumes that tried to escape.