My prediction about what the exam would be, turned out to be correct, because we were all given large containers with various ingredients inside. They were separated and only partially prepared with several of them in their own divided area to signify their importance. They were marked with their names as well.

“You have what you have in front of you.” Greta said with a stern voice. “Most of you should know what potions are viable with what you have in those containers. I want you to try your best to recreate one of those potions.”

“You're kidding!” A young man's voice exclaimed.

“You are advanced potions students. Some of you are even graduating this year.” Greta said and looked at her niece. “We don't expect perfection, or in some cases...” Her eyes went to me, because she knew I had no experience with the ingredients in front of me. “...a viable or usable potion.”

“This exam is the worst!” The same male voice said.

“Just do what you can and you will be marked fairly.” Greta said to everyone. “This is to gauge your ability to adapt, remember important facts, and to possibly brew necessary potions in an emergency or if you lose the recipe.”

Jinelle caught her breath and I guessed that she realized what the potion was.

“You have been granted an extra hour after the scheduled end time, just in case you need it.” Greta said and sat down beside Pavinca at the desk. “Good luck everyone.”

Pavinca gave me an encouraging smile and a slight nod.

I understood that I was to do my best with what I had in front of me, so I quickly wrote out the ingredients and added the properties of the ones I could remember. I didn't have a lot of experience with these ingredients, so I only remembered most of them. The others I could guess at, considering their groupings, then remembered my own advice.

Some of the ingredients could have been added to mess up the recipe and a student's expectations, so I had to work with what I had. I had a fantastic memory, thanks to all of my experiences, and went over inside my head the recipes we had studied last night and this morning. That line of thinking took me right to having sex with everyone and the pained sounds from three of them.

My mind went right to the potion that eased pain like my healing magic did last night. The recipe formed in my head and I knew what to do and how to brew it. I glanced at the clock and saw that Greta was right. I would need most of that extra hour to have a usable pain relief potion by the end of the exam.

I wasn't going to be happy with that, though.

No, I was going to do something that was going to shock her. She knew I was an expert potion maker and yet didn't give me the proper review instructions or any reading material. I would show her that I didn't need them and she would understand exactly how much she had messed up with me. I quickly went over my list of ingredients and compared them to several of the other recipes from last night, then I paused.

No, these won't work. She won't be surprised if I make a potion she knows. I thought and then smiled as I recalled several of the recipes that I hadn't converted yet to the Gulf Kingdom standard. I raised my hand and Greta stood.

“Yes, Lord Drake?”

“I need more paper to write on and another pot to cook in, please.” I said in as sweet of a voice as I could, just to unnerve her. It worked, because she flinched at the tone.

“You need to use what's in front of you.” Greta said, her voice sad.

“I'll give him some extra paper, since it shouldn't affect brewing whatever potion he's chosen.” Pavinca said and grabbed a handful to bring over to me. “We don't want you asking him what he needs them for. You're biased enough as it is.”

Greta sighed and sat back down.

Pavinca came over to me and held the papers out to me without speaking.

“Thank you, Director Chasma.” I said and accepted the papers with a slightly bow. I didn't touch her hand or shared magic with her.

Pavinca nodded and went back to her desk with a slightly disappointed look on her face.

Now it's time for the real work to begin. I thought and wrote out the old recipe I had discovered in my old potions book I kept from the Hag. It was complicated and also easy, if you had the right ingredients. I didn't have them; but, I did know the proper conversions and equivalents.

After replacing the original ingredients on another sheet with current ingredients that had the same properties, I went through the recipe and removed any redundant ingredients and brewing steps. This took me another sheet to properly rework the brewing steps to achieve the best results, then I compared the reworked recipe with the ingredient list I had made for the ingredients I had right there.

I almost laughed out loud when they almost perfectly matched what I had without having to use any of the ingredients I wasn't sure of. After one more recipe rewriting to fix the slightly off ingredients, I set out to distill several of the ingredients to condense them.

This did not go unnoticed by either the students around me or the two women watching over us. No one knew what I was doing until I had refined three different ingredients and prepared them separately. Of course, knowing what I was doing was a lot different than knowing why, especially since none of the recipes taught in the class had needed distilled ingredients.

“Eyes on your own work!” Pavinca said loudly and that surprised a few of the students enough to make them go back to their own potions.

I held in my laugh again, because Greta had nearly jumped out of her chair at Pavinca's shout. She had been concentrating on me and my potion while she ignored everyone else.

I continued my work and set everything up properly, with all of my ingredients ready, then I started to brew. I was a master at this and my movements had both flair and purpose. I had wanted to give Greta a show and I made sure to do that. I would pour a liquid from a foot above the pot, I would lob chopped ingredients halfway across the workbench to land perfectly in the potion without a splash, and then would gently sprinkle in the leafy ingredients as if it was a fine spice.

Needless to say, Greta was enraptured, despite Pavinca's many elbow pokes and whispered admonishments.

I couldn't stop my smile as I discreetly added my catalyst and infused my magic into the potion, set the cooking pot to a very high heat to bring the potion to a very boisterous boil, and stepped away to a safe distance. Nearly everyone in the room looked over at the loud bubbling potion and watched as both small and large bubbles rose out of the pot and popped, dropping their liquid back into it.

“Lord Drake, you are endangering your fellow students by distracting them.” Pavinca warned me.

“My apologies. It should be over in three... two... one.” I said and a large bubble, nearly the entire size of the top of the pot, rose up and looked completely clear. It actually showed a perfect reflection of the room we were in. A second later, a loud popping sound cut through the silence and the liquid making up the bubble dropped back into the pot.

I cut the heat immediately by pulling the potion from the fire. Rather than waiting for the natural cooling process, which would take most of the day because of the boiling technique, I used my cooling spell to suck the excessive heat from it. The potion changed colors from a mirror-like surface to a deep silver, then I stirred it with a clean utensil. The deep silver changed to a bright silver that almost glowed.

“There, it's done.” I said and looked at the single vial provided as I quickly rolled up all of my papers and tucked them into my bandoleer. “I need six crates of empty vials, please.”

“WHAT?” Nearly everyone in the room said at the same time, including Greta and Pavinca.

“They can only hold a single dose, which is a small amount of this potion.” I said as an explanation and then ladled out a tiny bit into the vial and held it up. It was only one sixth full. “It has to be exact or you can get poisoned and quite sick.”

“What is it?” Greta asked as she stood up.

“Don't answer that, Lord Drake.” Pavinca said and walked over to the door to ask for someone to bring in more cases of empty vials. “It's our job to figure it out.”

I didn't say anything until a hand cart with six cases of vials was left by my workbench. “What if you've never seen it before or used it? How would you figure it out?”

That made everyone gasp, even the guys.

Pavinca and Greta stared at me with wide eyes and didn't answer, so I spent the next twenty minutes filling vials with single doses. When I was done, there was one vial unused because I had the testing one on the workbench already. I cast lock on the crates and felt it settle into the vials as well. No one was going to open them except me.

I held up the single dose vial and looked at Pavinca. “Do I pass this in now or do I have to wait for the scheduled time to end?”

Both Pavinca and Greta looked at the clock and were surprised that there was over an hour and a half left of the regular exam time, not counting the extra hour Greta had scheduled.

“I'll get you a chair.” Pavinca said and went to the door again. She came back a minute later with a chair and I sat down on it. Her eyes went to my hand and the vial with a minuscule amount of silver substance in it. “Dammit, I have to check.”

I chuckled as she took it from my hand and she went back to the desk at the front of the room. I knew they wouldn't figure it out, not with the changes I had made to the recipe, and trying to extract my catalyst to break it down wouldn't work, either.

I sat there and waited, doing nothing but watching Pavinca and Greta argue in whispers and casting spells at the vial. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it before and had no clue what it did or what it could be used for. Of course, they were also working on the false assumption that because I had used most of the available ingredients, that it was close to, or a stronger variant of, one of the potions brewed in class.

The normal exam time came to an end and Pavinca and Greta had to stop their testing to go to each student and examine their potions and their progress. Nearly half of the students filled a vial for testing and were provided chairs to sit in for the remaining hour of the time extension.

No one was surprised when the two women had easily discerned the potions created, or failed to be created in two cases, and each were marked down on a piece of paper to be properly judged later. They went back to examining mine and I could see that they were unable to pull it apart or even figure out what it did. Greta even left to get a mouse to test it on, which made me laugh when the mouse squeaked for a minute straight after receiving a single drop. Nothing else happened to it, though.

The extended exam time came to an end and Pavinca and Greta went back to work gathering up the samples from the other students and assessing their work and progress. Everything was recorded and documented and brought back to the desk at the front of the room. The samples were placed into a crate and marked with the names of the students and a number, which was added to the assessment sheets.

“All right.” Pavinca said as she stood. “Thank you all for doing your best. We should have the results ready in a few days.”

“We have to wait until the start of next week?” A young woman asked.

“I'm sure that if we only had a few of you to get through, it would happen sooner.” Greta said. “You all did a lot of work and it's going to take time to give you all a proper assessment and not just the rush we had to do today.”

“Oh.” The young woman said.

“We also have to test the potions for their viability.” Pavinca said. “Don't worry if you need the information for the weekend to give to your family. Give your name to Greta and she will make a note to try and do yours first.”

A bunch of people's hands went up and she laughed.

“No, only necessary families qualify.” Pavinca said and looked at Jinelle. “Anyone with potions backgrounds get priority.”

Most of the hands went down and only a few were left.

“Come up and give us your names and we'll try to have them done before the weekend.” Greta said and Jinelle was one of the first to give her full name and who to contact. No one was surprised that she asked them to tell Lady Marks first and not her mother.

I didn't bother trying to get them to work on mine. I knew they couldn't fathom what I did or what I had made, thanks to how I did it and making a show of it.

Gella came over to my side and smiled widely at me. “My lord.”

I could see that she was trying very hard to not laugh. “Go ahead. I did it like that on purpose.”

Gella let her restraint go and burst out laughing as she leaned against me. She almost had tears in her eyes as she laughed and laughed. The other students gave us odd looks and some even laughed themselves as they left.

“I'm not even going to ask what's so funny.” Jinelle said as she came over to us. “That was quite the display, Lord Drake.”

“That was the point.” I said and her eyebrows raised, then she laughed softly.

“I see.” Jinelle said and nodded to Gella, who was calming down. “There are some battles that even a sworn sword cannot fight for you.”

Gella nodded enthusiastically. “I know! It was hilarious! I could never do that and pull it off!”

I nodded as well. “I needed to make sure that Greta... Mage Marks... knew that she was in the wrong for how she treated me on my return to her class.”

Jinelle looked a little sad at my correction. “My aunt isn't the best with dealing with things like this.” She said. “When you were taken, she lost a lot of her will to live her life. She changed and... not really for the better.”

“She didn't seem to be that different.” Gella said.

“She has a good front, the same as my grandmother and mother. They don't let a lot of their emotions out when they can help it.”

“She tried to repress it when I saved her from being murdered.” I said and Jinelle let out a startled sound. “She didn't tell you that her old boss tried to have her killed?”

Jinelle shook her head.

“After that, I gave her a medallion to protect her and to repel men if she chose.”

“She's used that a few times.” Jinelle said with a sigh. “She's become a very desirable woman with the Mages Guild being gone and all of their political pressure removed.”

“Your grandmother again?” I asked and Jinelle shook her head.

“Greta doesn't have to provide an heir for the family, thanks to my mother having me.” Jinelle said and looked at me. “She's free to choose whoever she wants... and she doesn't want to.”

I knew what she meant. “No, I won't be tied up and restrained with a contract. I'll destroy everything if it ever happens again.” I said and she looked a little sick. “Mage Marks knows this.”

“Oh. That explains it.” Jinelle said.

“Explains what?” I asked.

“She's hurting you in retaliation for hurting her feelings.” Gella said, understanding it right away. “You won't marry her and she desperately wanted you to, now that you're miraculously alive and back. Since she can't have you, she's fighting her instincts to help you by running only a short distance away.”

I looked over at the woman leaning close to Pavinca as they examined my potion some more. “I could take that easily, since I am used to people ignoring me. It's the fact that she's hurting my chances and delaying my attempts at helping my people that bothers me.”

Jinelle touched my arm. “Lord Drake, don't hold it against her. She's just vulnerable and scared.”

“So is everyone else.” I said and put my hands on the handle of the hand cart. “Let's go, Gella.”

“Yes, my lord.” Gella said and took up her guard position and walked ahead to open the door for me.

“Lord Drake!” Pavinca's voice shouted when I reached the door.

I stopped walking and turned to look at her.

Pavinca strode across the room with Greta beside her. “It's against our normal protocol for me to ask what you made; but, since we haven't seen it before and can't figure out what it does, I would like to look at your scrap papers.”

“No.” I said and both she and Greta looked surprised. “I won't give you the recipe.”

“That's not... Lord Drake, we can't assess your brewing technique properly if we don't know what you did.”

I smiled slightly and pointed at Greta. “She watched me the entire time and knows exactly what I did to brew it. Ask her, or better yet, give her the potion and then ask her.”

Jinelle gasped at my words and both Greta and Pavinca's face showed surprise.

“It's a recall potion to give you perfect memory recall?” Greta asked.

I shook my head. “Is it against protocol for me to offer what the potion is?”

Pavinca opened her mouth to answer and Greta touched her arm. She sighed and looked at me. “No.”

“It's a truth serum I call 'Absolute Truth'. One dose and you cannot tell a lie for half an hour.”

Pavinca's face lost all of its color and her mouth dropped open.

Greta put a hand on her heart and started breathing heavily as if she ran a great distance.

Jinelle swayed slightly and looked like she was going to faint.

Gella just laughed and laughed.