Day 12

I burped loudly and patted my completely fine belly as I rested against the wall, still chained to it. My mouth was slightly open as I felt the urge to puke. Dinking so much animal blood was simply put disgusting and revolting.

“Mum … the key.” I said once more,  looking at Mary who stood just outside the white circle, the key of my chains in her hand.

“And how do I make sure that it is you who just spoke to me?” I tilted my head in amusement. If she was trying to make fun of me, then it was a good joke.

“Statistically speaking, there is a zero percent chance I will kill you.” I said.

“Okay, that convinced me.” She threw the key towards me and I caught it out of the air. The chains rattled as I freed myself from them one after another. It was great to be free again after all these days of forced imprisonment.

Happy that it was finally over, I stood up and directly clothed myself with the attire Mary brought me. I didn’t have to look indecent as I stepped out of the hidden chamber after all.

“Do you have the other stuff?” I asked as I pushed the door open and exited the room.

“You are really excited for this aren’t you?”

“Yes! I really cannot wait to spread my depravity even during the day. I wonder what I should do first …” Mary looked at me strangely and swiftly put the little glass bottle with my blood away. I laughed loudly at her reaction and shook my head. “Oh, don’t worry. I will play the well behaved Lucy White during the day.”

“Okay … you should take a bath first if you really intend on doing so.” The stench of my own blood followed me wherever I went and I wanted to get rid of it as well, badly so. But I was also burning to create these magical sunglasses.

A few minutes later, we met outside again, carrying one item after another into the garden. The heaviest one was undoubtedly the large cauldron I heaved in the middle of a small plaza.

“So, how is this supposed to work?” Mary asked, putting two sacks on the ground while I fished out the letter I got from Aska.

“I don’t know myself … just throw it in there?” I grabbed the iron powder and filled the cauldron with it. I didn’t expect much, maybe a magical glowing or so, but that nothing happed bummed me out a bit. This was my first application of anything magical, I wanted it to be grandiose, not completely boring.

Even as I mixed the quartz sand into the cauldron and stirred it with a wooden stick, I couldn’t see anything magical happening.

“Hmm, are we doing something wrong?” I sighed, read the letter backwards, turned it around and tried to find any hidden message, even held it in front of a lamp all with the same result. There was no such thing as a hidden message.

“This isn’t typical alchemy, so maybe … I don’t know.” I answered and stepped back from the cauldron as Mary opened the glass bottle and let the blood flow into the cauldron. “Or it is a stupid, godly joke I´m too mortal to understand.” I said and threw the paperweight into the mix.

“Let´s hope it isn’t.” Mary said and poured fine glass shards out of a larger bag.

“Where did you get the holy window from?” I asked, a bit curious.

“Hmm… let´s say the believers now have to pray in a cold church.” I smiled brightly at her answer.

“Ouch.” I said and poured one of Markus´ self-made alcohol that miraculously survived the fire into the mix. It spread perfectly over the glass shards and mixed with my blood, but otherwise … somehow I got the feeling I was making a fool out of myself here. Alchemy was supposed to turn everything into gold on the highest level and we were just throwing stuff in a sophisticated pot.

“Maybe we have to heat it? Meh, it´s not written in the recipe. Aska always hates it when I add stuff to his food that didn’t belong there originally.” I commented and pointed towards the cauldron. “Mary, if you could step into the pot.”

“What?”

“Throw something you love into the cauldron … wait, I have to throw you in there?”

“Uhm … I´m honoured you feel like this, but … I don’t want to get turned into sunglasses?” I laughed loudly as I turned around and swiftly sprinted back underground. My pillow still laid in the corner of the room where I pushed it on the fourth day. Glad to have made it, I picked it up and ran back. Even as I was already close to the cauldron, I still sprinted towards it, only to jump a metre in front of it and threw the pillow downwards into the cauldron. I landed smoothly on the other side and held my arms in the air. Then, I lifted up the bottom of my dress and curtsied in every direction.

“Thank you … thank you. You seriously don’t have to applaud so much. I know my jump was a masterpiece, but eleven out of ten points … the haters wouldn’t accept it.” I said and imagined myself to be in a stadium, full of amazed people that were watching athletics.

“You are way too full of yourself.” Mary said, quite amused.

“It´s hard not to be if you are so amazing as I am. Look, I can even do a handstand.” I jumped up, twirled around in the air and landed on my hands again, only to regret my choice of clothing. My dress fell down, blocked my vision and was generally quite uncomfortable to make a handstand with. I leaned forward, rolled on the floor and stood up afterwards swiftly.

“… mistakes were made …” I ran past a chuckling Mary again and changed clothes. Now, clad in the leather armour I used to wear in the army from time to time, I made a handstand once more, albeit in a less flashy way. On my hands, I walked towards the cauldron until I was close in front of it.

“Where did you get the shoe from?” I asked out of curiosity as Mary was pulling a really bad smelling shoe out of a bag. They were quite worn and even had a few holes here and there. She held it as far away from her as possible as she walked over to me and I shifted my weight a bit to the left to lift up my right hand.

“I got it from a beggar.” She said.

“You stole it?” I asked and giggled loudly.

“No?! I changed them for a new pair.” She answered indignantly.

“That´s what they all say.” I noted and held my breath as she handed me the shoe over. It seriously was a bit too much. I was this close to throwing the shoe into the cauldron as I stopped, rolled my eyes and started to wriggle my legs with great difficulty. More than once, I nearly fell over and had to stop moving my legs for several seconds to regain my balance. “Wow, this is harder than I imagined.”

“It´s definitely way harder than it looks as well.” Mary said in amazement.

“Ten out of ten points?” I asked as I wriggled my legs again and hurried to throw the shoe inside the cauldron. It landed perfectly in the middle of the mix. As fast as I could, I pushed myself backwards, landed on my knees and stood up swiftly.

“Well, that’s a bit disappointing.” Even though I wriggled my legs like crazy, there was still nothing magical going on. The shoe stayed an old shoe, the alcohol still rested on the bottom of the cauldron and my blood still did nothing.

“So it was a joke?” She asked dejectedly.

“Poss-“ I stopped peaking as the cauldron started to shake a bit as if it was driven by an invisible force. “I don’t think so…” I said and moved closer to Mary. The cauldron started to jump around wildly, even though none of the contents left it. Even the shoe stayed on top of the pile we created, peeking out over the edge constantly, but never jumping out of it.

Mary and I walked backwards, me in the front and she directly behind me, and although she was quite a bit taller than me, I suppose I made a pretty good shield.

“We should run.” Mary said as the cauldron started to heat up as it was flung around through the air by an invisible hand. I nodded swiftly, turned around and started running away, Mary in front of me. I looked backwards the whole time as the cauldron swung around a centre point in the air, a few metres above the middle of the small plaza. It glowed in an ominous red and cracked in a few places. Out of these openings, a blinding yellow light left the cauldron. With each passing second, the cauldron glowed redder, formed more cracks and was flung around even more.

As the cauldron started smashing into the ground repeatedly and it started to glow like the sun, I knew it was going to end soon. As gently as possible, I pushed Mary forwards so that she fell onto a soft patch of grass. I followed her shortly afterwards and just as I pressed all the air out of her lungs with my body weight, the cauldron exploded behind us.

The cauldron itself was turned into a bunch of shrapnel that flew everywhere, accompanied by a bunch of sharp holy shards. Luckily for us, we were already quite far away and thus, these shrapnel lost most of their velocity already.

I rolled off Mary afterwards confirmed she wasn’t hit by anything. Then, I laid down in the soft grass and laughed wildly.

“I love alchemy!” I exclaimed and sat upright. The cauldron was gone, replaced by a lump of molten metal and glass that simply laid on the plaza. Miraculously, the shoe stuck in it with its tip, but was otherwise completely undamaged, at least if one ignored the holes that it had since the very beginning.

Mary turned around as well and rubbed her face for a bit until she sat upright. Her reaction was a lot more concerned as she would have to explain the mess to the servants … again. Without any fear, I stood up and scooted over to the lump of metal. There was nothing out of the ordinary with this slightly holy mess, except for the old shoe.

More than a bit disgusted, I placed one foot on the metal near the shoe and started pulling on the sole. It didn’t move one bit, but to my surprise, I felt something hard inside the shoe.

“Seriously, Aska?” I said and looked away as I grabbed into the shoe and retrieved the object. It was, unsurprisingly, sunglasses. Ordinary, pitch-black sunglasses with an equally black frame. I held it far away from me and then went to the bag where Mary retrieved the alcohol from. Luckily, there was another bottle inside and I directly put it to great use by emptying it above my hand and the sunglasses. Satisfied by the results, I walked back to Mary who still sat in the grass and laid down right next to her.

As I inspected the sunglasses fully, I noticed they were pretty light, but also not very durable. They were normal glasses in that regard as I could bend the frame quite easily. I doubted I could use these to fight under the sun in the first place as I was quite weakened during the day, even when I was secluded in a dark room and I doubted these sunglasses would change this.

“Hey Mary … thank you.” I handed her the sunglasses as she also seemed to be quite interested in it and looked at the beautiful stars.

“For what?” She asked bewildered.

“That’s a secret.” I giggled slightly and closed my eyes, felt the wind on my skin and stretched my arms.

“Okay? Could you pay me back though?” She asked swiftly.

“Sure.” I said without a second doubt. Her help and her concern during the days in the hidden room were much appreciated.

“Great … take a bath, you stink.” I turned towards her, only capable of saying a single thing:

“Oof.”