When he walked back inside the cider house, the last thing Lucas expected was for Denaria to follow, but that’s exactly what she did. He’d been so busy being pissed off at her brother that he very nearly slammed the door in the door in the poor woman’s face as she walked in behind him. 

“Is there something I can do for you, Denaria?” he asked, keeping any trace of annoyance out of his voice. 

It wasn’t her he needed to be pissed at. She hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t her fault that her brother had told her enough that it might get her into trouble if she casually mentioned it to one of her friends, and it made it back to the wrong people. 

“I just… all the sciences fascinate me, arcane or otherwise,” she said with a smile. “I thought I might watch and learn something, at least until Gerwin rings the bell for supper.”

“It’s just that…” he started to say. He had a dozen reasons why letting her stay was a bad idea: poisonous substances, filthy conditions, dangerous knowledge, and, of course, the most toxic thing of all: him. Still, something about her disappointed look when he was about to tell her to scram made his words shrivel up and die. 

“Fine,” he shot back instead, “But don’t get too close to anything hot, and watch out for the fumes.”

This caused her face to light up with glee, but he ignored it as best he could and started setting out the ingredients for today’s brew. Goblin bile, witch grass blossoms, wizened gnome caps, blue esper vine sap, and, of course, dwarf berries. He had to process the goblin livers to get the bile, of course, but he wasn’t about to do that with a woman in the room, so he set that pot aside and focused on the more normal ingredients. 

As soon as he put the purple witch grass blossoms into his mortar and pestle, he was peppered with questions. If it was Adin asking, he would have told him to fuck off, but with his sister, that was a more difficult proposition. She was just so sweet in earnest that eventually, he found himself answering and giving her a little lesson in basic alchemy. 

After a couple minutes he even had her crushing the blossoms in his mortar and pestle while he explained the reason behind each step. “To really unlock the uhm, magic… of an ingredient, you have to pulverize as much as possible before you add it to other things,” he explained, pointing to the flask of pale view vine sap. “Processing ingredients makes them useable, and then after that, you do other things to sort of… get them where you want them, I guess you could say. Fine-tune it, you know?”

“I was always taught that the magic was created when the ingredients were mixed together with one another, is that not so?” she asked, pausing her grinding to give him a perplexed look. 

“I mean, yes and no,” Lucas answered. “Every ingredient has the magic in it already, but most of them don’t exactly have a lot. Like the blossoms you are pulverizing have some mana restorative abilities, but not a lot. The same is true for this sap, but if you mix them together…”

“Then you get a mana potion!?” she asked excitedly. 

“Well, kinda…” he nodded as he did the quick math in his head. “These two ingredients would probably give you lesser mana restoration, but it might kill you too, so best not to try.”

“Kill me?” she asked. “Why would it kill me? I thought mana potions were perfectly safe.”

“Well, they are when done right,” Lucas agreed. “But most strong ingredients in any potion are poisonous, and pretty much everything that gives mana is. You have to leach that poison out before you can process it.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” agreed. 

Lucas went to the still, and took the spirits that had been slowly dripping into the small barrel that served as its reservoir and examined them. They weren’t the best, in the world, but they’d do just fine for this. 

Rough Common Spirits (weak): Purifying agent. Remove 50% of the negative effects of a single reagent. 

He sniffed it experimentally, noting the harsh smell that was probably more suitable as an engine degreaser than used for medical purposes, but he knew better than to taste it. This shit wasn’t poisonous, but it might as well be if you had more than a couple glasses. 

Lucas made Denaria stand back as he scraped the mortar clean, deglazed it with the grain alcohol, and poured the whole mixture into a beaker because it was a messy process. “You don’t want to stain your dress,” he told her, remembering how he’d already gotten it dirty. 

“That’s very sweet of you,” she smiled, “But I rather think a dress this purple would look lovely, don’t you think?”

Lucas looked from her dress to the flask, and back again. It was a lovely shade of deep violet, that was probably perfect for a royal garment, but he’d never really noticed it before until she pointed it out. 

“I mean, we could try that sometime if you want, Denaria, but…” As he turned back to face her mid-conversation, he found her standing closer to him again. 

She’d shown this habit more than once, but with her standing close enough to him that he could smell her floral perfume over the sour smell of saturated witch grass blossom solution, he suddenly realized something even more obvious that had alluded him up until now: she was waiting for him to make a move. 

The realization hit him like a slap in the face, and he was shocked that he hadn’t noticed it before. It was hardly the first time he’d been in this exact scenario before, after all. Rich girls were somehow drawn to drug dealers, even before they got hooked on shit like this. Lucas didn’t know exactly what that was the case. 

He’d never understood it on Earth either, but he’d seen it enough times that he experienced a wave of déjà vu. That was his cue to get back to work, and he turned away to focus once more on making sure his flask didn’t overboil as it started to reach proper heat. 

“Hey, ummm, so what is it you think we’re doing back here?” Lucas asked her after a moment of awkward silence where he tried to put that weirdness behind them. 

“What do you mean?” she asked sweetly. “You’re making potions with my brother and your other friends to help repair the finances of our noble house and raise the funds to clear your name.”

That’s at least half true, he thought, noting just how self-serving her brother’s explanation had been. At least she hadn’t mentioned drugs or illegal activity. 

“Right,” he agreed. “Mostly true, but like - you understand that this is a secret, right? You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“Oh, of course,” she nodded vigorously. “As long as they’re still looking for my brother, his presence is keeping the rest of you in grave danger. Well, that and the Alchemists' guild. I don’t suppose they take very kindly to you selling unofficial potions and undermining their monopoly.”

“Exactly,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief at just how much her guesses were off the mark. At least she didn’t think he was a drug dealer. She thought he was an outlaw, and that was fine. “Those greedy bastards would love to keep charging so much for these things that no one can afford them, but we can sell ‘em for a lot less under the table.”

“You’re so generous, Lucas,” she said with a smile that melted his heart just enough to keep him from laughing. No one had called him generous in a long time. Certainly not after they’d seen his rap sheet. 

“Well, where I’m from, medicine was way too expensive,” he said, setting up the strainer so he could separate the herbs and the solution. “Making a profit is fine, but the shit’s gotta be affordable, you know?”

“Where is that exactly?” she asked. “Where you’re from, I mean.”

“Oh, umm… it’s a little kingdom called Idaho, and it’s a long way away from here. You wouldn’t have heard of it,” he mumbled as he picked up his tongs and grasped the glass flask. 

Painfully aware of her gaze, he carefully tipped the hot container and poured the boiling fluid through the wire strainer, separating the poison from the rest of the useful ingredients. What was once unprocessed witch grass blossom had now become purified witch grass blossom pulp and vaguely purple poison that might have made a fine ink or dye if he didn’t have other plans for it. 

Witch Grass Blossoms (Processed): Mana 4, Poison 1, intelligence 1.

Witch Grass Blossom Dregs: Poison 2

“Now I just need to do this a couple more times with some other ingredients, and before you know it - we’ll have a few mana potions we can sell for a dragon or two,” Lucas said, holding up the violet slime.

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “After that—”

“What’s wonderful?” Hura’gh asked thickly, stepping through the door with Adin. His voice hinted that he wasn’t a hundred percent yet, but if he was moving around after only like twenty minutes, he was going to be fine, and that’s all that mattered to Lucas. 

“I was just explaining to our hostess how mana potions are made,” Lucas said, glad to change to subject. He stood up and walked over the half-orc, slapping him on the shoulder. “But wonderful is the fact that you’re still breathin’ man. You had us scared. How do you feel?”

“Like you should have brought an antidote potion with you into the Greenwood,” the half-orc said in a tone that might have been anger. He stood there glaring at Lucas for a moment, and just when he thought that Hura’gh might rip his head off, the big guy reached down and wrapped Lucas in a bearhug that threatened to crush his rib cage.

For a moment, he was too stunned to do more than struggle to breathe, but when Hura’gh released Lucas, he smiled his toothy grin and said, “But you saved my life despite your incomitance, so I will forgive you.”

“It was nothing,” Lucas answered, a little touched by the unexpected gesture. “I was just—”

“My life is not nothing,” Hura’gh growled, “And you have saved it twice. This is a debt I will honor Lucas Sharpe.”

Lucas could since another monologue on the warriors of the plains, but before that could happen, he said, “Alright, everyone is safe, and Denaria got her first alchemy lesson, but I have shit to do - these goblin livers aren’t going to keep all day, so everyone is going to have to clear the building so I can make the bl… potions, okay? Everyone out!”

For a moment, the three of them looked at him, but finally, they relented and, one at a time, left the cider house, leaving him in peace. Adin was the first one to leave, and his hungry gaze told Lucas all he needed to know about how excited he was about his next concoction. After he and Hura’gh left, Denaria shook his hand with her small, warm hands, letting him feel just how soft the skin of a woman who’d never had to work a day in her life was before she left him to the real work that lay ahead.