Chapter 87 – Everything but the kitchen sink

A/N: Last chapter before the holidays, the next will be either Sunday the 28th or Monday the 29th, depending what unexpected familial obligations arise and the following will likely be later in the week, entirely dependent on activities, and in what state they leave me in, on NYE.

Like I said last time, Happy/Merry whateveryoucelebrate!

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Kori’s exaltation reverberated through the chamber, her echo returning to her like a physical force that drove her enthusiasm from her lithe form. Because nothing echoed quite like an empty stone chamber. Sure, there were a few things present, a waist high metal table and a stool that would slide under it, a couple of crates stacked in a corner, and a pair of low shelves that made the space seem even emptier for their lack of contents, otherwise the room was simply four bare stone walls, a floor and an overly high ceiling.

She wasn’t sure which betrayal stung more presently, the dashing of her hopes of spending the day trying out all her new implements in various acts of creation, or the raucous laughter she heard coming from the room behind her that seemed to treat those shattered hopes as a joke.

She turned sharply to face the pair of Elders that approached behind with the intent to express her rage, but all that she managed to eek out as the tears began to stream was a weak, “But… but… my lab!”

Bolst’s expression went from a scowl, which had been directed solely at Har after losing yet another bet with him, to one of vindication. “Hah! Now you know how I fel…” He did not manage to complete the sentence before Har had his hand wrapped around the old trapper’s muzzle.

“Quiet you, we finally agreed to let the mages seal the thing in stone and move it, don’t make me insist on a test run.” Har gave him a harsh look before removing his hand and Bolst immediately began rubbing the spots where the trader’s claws had left an imprint on his scales. “Besides, I know full well there aren’t any of the stable flasks she made left to do such a test, so let’s see you explain that to Ortik.”

The trapper looked like he had some retort, but a hard stare from Har had him reconsider.

“Kori, I think you may have misunderstood today’s purpose.” Har began softly, trying to comfort the disappointed youngling. “That may have been our fault for not discussing things clearly.” He elbowed Bolst, trying to get him to show a little contrition as well.

Bolst rolled his eyes at his counterpart before turning back to Kori with at least a modicum of sympathy. “He’s right, I can see you were expecting to walk in and make something, I know I’d be disappointed if I finally got back into my lab and found it empty…” He gave a shudder at the very thought of it. “The next four days, since I’m next on the schedule as your mentor, will be getting everything unpacked and set up before we can get down to the fun part.”

Har once again took over. “We’re here to help you get things the way you want them to be.” He placed a strong emphasis on it being to her design while eying Bolst, this was likely not the first time they’d reminded him of the fact. “Of course, Bolst here will have opinions, many of them, on how he’d set things up and I’m certain that will be helpful to get started, but this is your space so it should be done to your needs.”

The explanation mollified Kori’s dismay to a point and she could acknowledge that they were probably right. If she’d simply walked in and everything had been ready to go, then would it have really been her lab?

She gave a quick sniffle while trying to wipe away the stray tear that had made its way across her scales. “Oh… I guess that makes sense… I should have thought of that.”  

With a relieved sigh, Har pointed towards the other entrance to the room, the one that led to the as of yet unexplored chamber. “There’s more furniture in there, we should probably start by getting everything moved in and figuring out how you want the space arranged.”

When Kori opened the other door, she quickly noticed that there was an identical handle on the outer door to the one she’d entered through, which she happily confirmed opened unhindered from the inside.

When she looked questioningly to Bolst he gave her a quick smirk before explaining. “Neither are the original, it’s buried in the lab in a cabinet somewhere. Was easy enough to remake though. It’s actually just a modified arming mechanism from one of my traps.” He leaned in and smiled even wider, showing his sharp teeth before whispering. “Except these ones don’t stab you with poison spikes when you mess with the decoy pins.”

Kori gulped as she suddenly realized just how dangerous playing with her newest Skill might be.

When she turned her attention back to the room she was entering, she found it to be significantly less organized than the state of the other storage area. Rather than neatly stacked boxes all ready for their contents to be discovered, she found tables stacked upon each other, stools piled under or on top of them, several cabinets stacked against each other blocking each from having their contents inspected, and in the middle of it all a stone basin nearly a meter to a side sitting there looking like it weighed more than the rest of the things combined. She wasn’t even certain if that last one could fit through the door.

When Har saw her tilt her head quizzically at the basin trying to figure out why it was there he grimaced. “Ah… that. We ran into a slight problem with the basin. Namely, drainage…” He shook his head before continuing. “We failed to account for the issue of the slimes… Anywhere you could drain the water, they could gain entry…”

Bolst chimed in to explain the temporary solution. “For now, you’ll need to use the basin here for your water, it has a rune ready to supply what you need and wastewater will be collected in a bucket, the warrior guarding the passage outside will help you dump it in the old quarry until we can come up with something better.”

As they explained the situation, all Kori could see within her mind was a gloopy aqua slime bubbling up from the drain of the basin and slithering out onto the floor to lay in wait for her unsuspecting foot. She shivered at the thought and knew for a fact that she wasn’t going to be able to get any sleep in her new den away from home any time soon.

Seeing her rising anxiety, Har tried to assuage her fears. “You needn’t worry, the warrior on duty outside has been sleeping in one of the chambers for weeks without incident. You’ll never be left entirely by yourself down here.”

She wasn’t sure if the fact that the Elder’s felt there was a need for a guard to be set at the quarry entrance was a comfort or a cause for even more worry. It was unlikely that their presence was intended to keep things out after all.

Instead of worrying about what might or might not attempt to enter her newest sleeping quarters while she slept, something she was definitely not concerned about after being reassured that it was not a threat. Not in the least. Kori tried to refocus on the water itself and rummaged through the papers in her satchel.

“I actually had some thoughts on the water, I made notes!” She enthusiastically presented the page to Bolst, perhaps a little over-enthusiastically as though trying not just to simply change the subject aloud, but also the one occupying her thoughts. “Imelda, the herbalist on the surface I did some experiments with, she talked about how everything that goes into a remedy can affect the outcome, so I wanted to break down every ingredient and see what might make a difference. So, I wanted to try to make the tincture with rune condensed water, then with the same but boiled for at least ten minutes, then with water from the deep lakes, and then…”

Her explanation rattled on, all the while they moved tables, cabinets, stools, and everything else except the large basin, into the room. Well, the adults moved most of those things, Kori ‘helped’, by ferrying stools and smaller items and directing where she wanted things. Unsurprisingly Har’s eyes had glazed over and he’d tuned out her ramblings about temperatures, steeping times, mixing vessels and all the other details that he couldn’t wrap his head around carrying enough significance to warrant such attention. Bolst on the other hand listened with rapt attention, giving her pointers or suggesting additional approaches to test, all the while trying not to influence her choices.

He himself had done many of the tests that she was suggesting, but his experiments were based on his desire to effect victims, not patients. He didn’t want to share his findings and have it taint her results.

The more they discussed testing and settled on the layout of the new lab, the more he became disappointed that their first experience working together had turned out so badly. He was certain that they could do great, though his definition of great probably leaned more towards what others would call terrifying, things together.

In the end they settled on a layout that was fairly reminiscent of Bolst’s space, three separated working areas in the outer corners with a row of cabinets separating them from each other and space for staging materials and apparatus in the middle of the room, the intent being one for medicinal and one for less than medicinal work and the last for experimentation.

Once the work areas were furnished, the next step was the opening of boxes, and more boxes, and more boxes. They contained everything from an abundance of glassware and the stands to hold them, which soon populated the numerous cabinets, metal clamps that had their ends wrapped in leather to grip the glassware, multiple types of mortar and pestle, and a near endless stream of other implements and accoutrements.

She was excited to see that there was even a pair of mana fueled heaters, like what Imelda had used to heat her tea. They had much more consistent temperatures than a fire would, or even a fire rune that was dependant on factors like age and quality of the inscription ingredients. She was really curious as to how the tools actually worked, but aside from comments about enchanters and mana conductive metals, no one could really explain it so far.

There were more than a few items that Kori couldn’t glean the purpose of, like why would she need long rods of glass, or what the small brass tube with a sliding handle was supposed to be. When she played with the last one, she found that sliding the handle caused air to be ejected from a thick protruding pin on the end.

“Uhh… Har… what’s this?”

“Hm?” He looked up from the manifest he was using to verify the contents of a crate. “Oh, that’s new. Apparently called a syringe? Or was it ciringe? No, I think it was the first one.”

The talk of new toys of course caught Bolst’s attention as well and he moved over to inspect the device. “Interesting, what’s it for?”

“Something about extracting liquid from one vessel to deposit a measured amount somewhere else?” I’m not really sure.” He shrugged, not really understanding the point of the thing much himself. “One of the traveling merchants picked it up from the capital, it came in on a ship from Ithen. Sold it as a healer’s tool for cheap, mostly because no one knew what to make of it, so I figured why not.” When he looked up and saw the pleading look in the trapper’s eyes he just sighed, “Yes… I got one for you too.”

Neither Kori nor Bolst knew what they might use the contraption for, but both of them shared the widest grin at the thought of getting a new toy.

When the last of the boxes marked as containing equipment in the manifest were broken down, there were much fewer crates remaining that contained ingredients than Kori had hoped to see. Looking through what was listed though, she could find everything that she needed to make any of her known suspensions, but not much in the way of anything new.

She supposed that made some sense, there was no reason to stock anything that might turn out to be useless.

Har knew well enough what was going through her mind when she looked back and forth between the remaining crates and the manifest. “Ortik has a load of material from the Circle for you too.” He then gave a hard look at Bolst, “And I’m certain that Bolst here will share some of his supplies for you to experiment with if you ask nicely.” All he received was a non-committal grunt in response.

While they were done with most of the unpacking and initial setup, Kori was certain that there would be much shuffling and rearranging to come. There was also the matter of the final corner, the one between the two doors. This last area was actually one of contention, Kori wanted to place a writing desk and bookshelf in the space, while the Elders believed that she should keep such things in a separate room in case of accidents. In the end, Kori insisted that she wanted her references to be on hand so that she could access them without interrupting workflow.

This was also a point that brought great happiness for Kori. Har had indeed bought her blank journals. Three new leather-bound tomes awaited her additions as well as a stack of papers for work notes and a cabinet that was intended to be used to organise the loose pages. For a moment it was hard to determine what excited her more, having access to so much writing material or getting to work experimenting and finding new concoctions to make. But only for a very brief moment, then she settled, once again, firmly on the latter.

When it was revealed that one of the crates in the other room did indeed contain the blank books, the first thing Kori did was look to Bolst with big wide pleading eyes and ask “Can I make a copy of your book of poisons?” Well, the first first thing she did was do a little wiggly dance of excitement, then she asked her question.

Her eyes widened even more when he unexpectedly answered her with a smug, “Which one?”

“You have more than one?!” Kori asked excitedly.

Bolst could only chuckle at her antics. “Of course. I have one for toxic plants, you probably have most of those in your own already though, then there’s the one for poisonous animals, and a separate one for venomous, and then I’ve got one that Har here brought back from the surface, professionally scribed and everything, that covers toxic compounds and minerals.” He seemed a bit boastful about the last one, it was probably the least useful out of the bunch, but he cherished it none the less.

“I wouldn’t try copying that last one, Kori.” Har warned, surprising both of them. “The scrivener’s guild takes unauthorized copying very seriously.” He took on a grave tone to emphasise the importance of what he said next. “They’re a member of the Royal Ithenian Academy of Arts, and you really don’t want to mess with them.”