VP | Ch. 8 - A First Taste of Alchemy

Careful to avoid Diabla’s many snapping piranha plants, Nara followed the demoness into her laboratory. It was a vast space – bigger than both the living room and foyer – with about as many cupboards, shelves and crates as could possibly fit, all without a speck of dust. It made Nara’s heart absolutely soar.

“I want to live here,” Nara mumbled, awe-inspired.

“Oh, let’s not rush into things now,” Diabla smirked. “You must make a girl a potion first.”

Her ingredients were meticulously sorted: dried roots and berries were stored in cool, dark containers; collected animal parts, like feathers and venom and talons, were enclosed in packets and potion bottles; minerals and crystals sat on shelves, spiky and glistening; and finally, what caught Nara’s eye most – glowing spheres of what had to be magic – were trapped in glass orbs and vials.

Nara’s hand wandered towards one such vial reflexively. The magic inside of it was pulsing bright red, like a bleeding blood moon.

Diabla swatted her hand, searing molten pain into Nara’s knuckles. “Don’t touch anything,” Diabla said chidingly, lowering her gaze. “I can be nice, but what I’m not is generous. These materials cost a pretty penny, and some of them are rarer than even a daybreaking vampire. So mind yourself, or I’ll trim your pretty ears off.”

Nara went pale, sufficiently chastened. “Won’t happen again.”

With a huff, Diabla beckoned her over to the center of the room. Bathed under the light of a dozen wax candles was a circular table. In the center of the table was a deep, wide cauldron, burnt black and smelling of a hundred things – a scent somewhere between chemical and ethereal, like gasoline dipped in lavender.

“This is my most treasured thing in the entire universe,” Diabla said, dragging her fingers around the central bowl. “My alchemy table. Her name is Lilith.”

“Lilith?” Nara narrowed her eyes, recognizing that name from some church sermon – or more likely, a Youtube video about a church sermon. Her family didn’t exactly have a local church to visit, seeing as they zipped through towns faster than migrating birds. “Like Adam’s first wife in the Old Testament?”

“Who is Adam?” Diabla scoffed. “Her name is Lilith like the Great Demoness of the Shadow Abyss. And before you insult me further with your questions, the Shadow Abyss is one of the five realms of the Demon Lord. This realm that we are in now, Kin’Dra, is not one of those realms. It is one of the many mortal realms.”

“Oh,” Nara said, then frowned. Demon Lord, she thought. Sounds creepy. “And I’m guessing you’re… from there? The Shadow Abyss?”

“What did I say about insulting me with questions?”

“I didn’t know that one was an insult,” Nara said, swallowing.

Diabla groaned. “Fine. You are a newblood after all. I’ll forgive your ignorance. Come, grab a stool and pull it over to Lilith. I’m feeling generous, so I’ll explain a few things that will keep you alive on this plane for longer than a fortnight.”

Nara did so obediently, and Diabla began. As she talked, she began to pour ingredients into the table’s central bowl – first some dragonfly wings, then a flake of silver, a few pink crystals, and half a bushel of roots called dreamwalkers.

“If you smoke one of these on an empty stomach,” she said, gesturing towards the dreamwalkers. “You can kiss your sanity goodbye. It sucks your soul into the Nether and tosses it around quite a bit – and it’s not a fun sort of jostling, either.”

Nara nodded, taking a mental note. So it’s like a highly-potent magic marijuana.

“Now then, Kin’dra. Ah. I remember when I first arrived here,” Diabla sighed wistfully. “Wrested from the Shadow Abyss by my twin brother onto this mortal plane. I hated it at first, the killing was no fun here. People are so much more delicate than demons. You can end them with a simple embrace if you’re not careful.”

“The… killing. Right,” Nara said slowly, her nerves prickling. “So you used to… kill people?”

Diabla just waved her hand. “Of course I did. I’m a demon. Like you vamps, we are designed to do just that. You should see all of the racial abilities I’ve been gifted – half of them are just different ways to melt your face off.”

Nara laughed nervously.

“Pass me a baby shroom?” Diabla asked, snapping her fingers. “Quick, time is of the essence.”

“Oh – um, of course.” Nara got to her feet quickly, looking towards the small garden section to her left. A baby shroom… that was one thing she did know; she had encountered one by the well back in Lopa Lopa. One of those giant flat-headed things. Luckily, it was hard to miss. She scooped one up from the soil easily.

Just as she was about to carry it over to Diabla, she noticed a few other intriguing plants sitting alongside it. Both had blooms – one, a thin and tall red thing like the mouth of a dragon, and the other had a flat, black, feathery hat.

I want to finish that quest, she thought. Maybe Diabla won’t notice…

Nara bit down on her lip. No, she wasn’t that stupid. It was obvious in how the room was meticulously organized – the demoness clearly took immense care of her ingredients. She probably checked every item twice a day, poured over each plant and root and elf ear as if they were her own children. She’d notice if something was gone.

It’s what Nara would do, too.

“What’s taking so long?” Diabla whined. “Did I not threaten you enough with the face-melting?”

“Ah, sorry, one second,” Nara said. I’ll find another way.

She carried the shroom over to Diabla.

“Good, good,” Diabla hummed. “Now throw it into Lilith.”

“Oh, right,” Nara said, mildly uncomfortable with the personification of the bowl. She took the mushroom and lowered it into the cauldron, letting it roll into the center with the other ingredients. It hit them with a plop, so far doing nothing to indicate any real alchemy.

“Magnificent. Now,” Diabla turned her head to face her for the first time in their whole conversation. Her eyes were blazing hotter than usual. “I felt you eyeing my nightshades. I saw your hand quivering just by their stem. Even after the warnings I gave you…”

Nara’s stomach dropped. Does she have eyes in the back of her head?

“I wasn’t going to take them, promise –”

“You’re a collector, aren’t you?” Diabla said, in a completely unexpected turn of phrase. “You’re like me. I see it now. That’s why you’re a vampire who doesn’t want to eat people. Killing doesn’t do it for you – it didn’t do it for me, either, not once I bathed in the virgin waters of collection. Of creation. I get it, I really do.”

She extended her hand towards the flowers Nara had refrained from picking before.

“Go, take them. I’ll allow one of each. A nightshade and a dragonbloom. They’re very common ingredients, easy to grow, non-poisonous, non-venomous – but they come in handy in many potions, including this one,” she hummed. “Do you know what we’re making right now, Nara?”

Nara swallowed, feeling a rush of unwarranted embarrassment. She didn’t like being in the dark – especially over something that academically fascinated her. “No.”

“And how would you? You’ve yet to sink your fangs into it,” Diabla said. “But, that’s fine. I promised you a lesson in potion making, and one you will receive. I’ll start by recounting the ingredients I’ve used so far –”

“Three wings of a dragonfly, ten flakes of silver, six pink crystals about a centimeter in diameter, half a bushel of dreamwalkers, and a whole baby shroom,” Nara said in a rush of words, repeating the list from memory without even a glance at the bowl. “So far.”

Diabla’s eyebrows rose.

“You’re quick.”

“I’m observant,” Nara said, biting her lip. “And I… like this kind of thing. A lot.”

“Hm. I like that,” Diabla said, the tips of her lips moving subtly upwards. “Perhaps I’ve found myself a worthy student. It is unlikely that anyone could keep up with me, even with training, but not impossible, I suppose. Now, go fetch your plants from my garden before I make you forage in the fields.”

Nara’s heart swelled at the half-compliment, and she jumped off the stool.

—

Basic Foraging | Quest Updated!

• Nightshade [1 / 1]

Basic Foraging | Quest Updated!

• Dragonbloom [1 / 1]

—

Quest Complete! Basic Foraging

• Collect ingredients by foraging (3/3)

Quest Rewards:

• 100 XP
• Alchemist’s Gloves

Nara closed out the notifications and put the nightshade and the dragonbloom in her inventory, which she found she could do by simply thinking ‘store’. It was very convenient – gone were the days of shoving seventy-pounds of crap in a backpack that was slowly ruining her shoulders and spine.

“I got these things called Alchemist’s Gloves,” Nara said, peeking into her inventory as she returned to her stool. Giving the item a glance, she equipped the gloves, which looked like the type of thing you might wear to a very prickly garden – brown and firm, with protective patches sewn over the fleshy parts of the palm.

Alchemist’s Gloves (Basic)

Armor Type: Light

+ Armor Rating: 0

+ Allows you to interact with a Alchemist’s Table without suffering magical damage

“Oh, wonderful. I thought I was going to have to loan you some,” Diabla said. “And I do hate lending people things. While I do tire of killing people these days, I can’t just let it slide when someone forgets to give me back my things.”

Nara smiled politely, her stomach silently turning with fear.

Diabla clapped her hands together.

“So,” she said. “Now for the fun part.”

The demoness snapped her fingers and a torrent of fire barreled out of the center of the cauldron. Nara yelped, the scalding heat bounding, unrestrained, out of the bowl and into the air around them; smoke billowed in waves throughout the chamber, painting the entire room in bleak yellow.

When Nara breathed in, her throat smoldered like hot lava. She felt like a firefighter who had dove straight into a burning house, unmasked, with no hose, no ladder, no exit. As the smoke filled her lungs, she coughed, hacking up nothing but ash and air.

“I’m – I’m choking,” she said, her voice as raspy as a burnt tire. “I’m going to die.”

“Oh,” Diabla said, rolling her eyes. “Right. You humanoids and your lungs. It’s tiresome.”

She snapped her fingers again, and the large windows surrounding the room snapped open. As if she’d been released from a gas chamber, Nara breathed like a newborn baby, salivating over every last gulp of fresh, forest air.

“T – thank you,” she stuttered, still halfway to gagging.

“You wouldn’t have died anyway,” Diabla shrugged. “You’re a vampire, in case you’ve forgotten. But I don’t get a kick from causing my assistants any undue suffering. It’s not my style. That’s more my brother’s thing.”

Nara’s eyes brightened. Despite the hacking cough that kept racketing out of her, and the million reasons to be deeply concerned at what Diabla had just said, she smiled, wide and toothy and excited beyond belief.

“Did you just say assistant?”

Diabla frowned. “Trial assistant,” she corrected, but Nara kept grinning nonetheless.