It took an additional two days for Norman to completely convert the remaining Jorik blood into the magical powder. The process wasn’t difficult, just very time-consuming. Norman didn’t mind. He just listened to music while he occasionally smoked some of his remaining stash from Charise. Now that he didn’t have to sell it off, he could actually enjoy it.

That wasn’t all he did during this time though. One of Norman’s major concerns was someone finding out what was in his potion. That worry had always been in the back of his mind but it was a minor concern when it was only the Guild purchasing the stuff.

If they somehow found out, he would probably get a pretty thorough beating but they wouldn’t kill him for it. Well, probably not. Now that a criminal element was involved, that probably not turned into probably would. Norman would like to avoid dying if at all possible.

He just needed to come up with a different recipe that worked just as well. Which was a problem since his first potion was pure happenstance.

Norman racked his brain trying to think back on when he first created the substance. The details were hazy in his mind due to time and excessive drug use. The potion certainly wasn’t his first attempt at making something. He certainly didn’t have a goal in mind during its creation.

He just kept throwing things together until something eventually worked. Norman didn’t want to go through that process again remembering how his failed attempts had left him extremely ill. But Norman had noticed something after his out-of-body experience with the accidental ingestion of the Jorik blood.

When he last made a supply of his potion, every ingredient felt right. He hadn’t really noticed the feeling at first but he felt it again when performing the ritual on the man. It just felt right.

To verify he wasn’t tripping balls, he went to his notebook, and the one spell he knew worked. The feeling returned, but it wasn’t quite the same. He didn’t get the, it just feels right feeling, more along the lines of it would work but wasn’t complete somehow. Norman put that aside for future testing.

How could he possibly know that a set of random sigils and geometric patterns would work with what he was attempting?

Not that the feelings were always correct. His new spell to relive the last moments of a creature’s life was a good example. He had been hoping to read their minds, not relive their death but it was sort of the same thing. Also, he didn’t need the sigil pattern at all, it only allowed him to experience everything they felt. The magic powder did the rest. So while the feeling told him a spell might work, it didn’t specify what it would do.

Norman flipped open his notebook to a blank page and wrote ‘INTENT’ at the top and circled it. He wasn’t certain yet, but this seemed to be the biggest factor in how his form of magic worked. For all he knew, this is how all magic worked but he hadn’t been able to study much magic. And those that were capable of basic magic were rather secretive of their methods.

He flipped to the page that held his recipe. It wasn’t much to look at, really.

Milk

Honey

Beer(Alcohol)

Clover

Salt

Water

Special Ingredient

He never bothered to write down the amounts of the ingredients as it didn’t seem to have much effect on the overall process, but he hadn’t spent long testing this theory. The same went for the actual steps to prepare it. Essentially he just tossed everything into a pot and boiled it for like half an hour or until it changed consistency and color. An alchemist or chemist might be able to come up with a more efficient mix but Norman figured it was good enough.

Once everything was mixed together and heated, it changed color. Norman had no clue why the mixture changed color to a dark violet so he just chose to ignore that bit of weird magical fuckery.

The new mixture Norman came up with was essentially the same. While he needed to change and improve the potion to justify his reason for changing it, Norman still needed the ingredients to be easy to come by. With that in mind, Norman went around the house and gathered anything he remotely thought would work and stuck it on the table for testing. That had been a good idea as it turned out. A few things triggered his new sense and he set those aside.

Surprisingly the recipe didn’t change a whole lot. Milk was changed out for Heavy whipping cream. Norman wasn’t even sure why he had that and it was expired but it didn’t seem to matter.

Beer or any generic alcohol was swapped out for a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Then of course the magic powder replaced the special ingredient he had used before. It did make Norman wonder if his old ingredient had a bit of magic in it that made it work.

Out of all the ingredients, honey was the hardest to come by. Luckily there was a honey farm outside of town. The family that ran the little farm still lived out there and charged a king’s ransom for a bottle but it had been worth it.

Norman squeezed a generous dollop of the warmed honey into the pot as it boiled. The large metal kettle could hold enough to fill forty bottles normally but Norman only had it a quarter full. As this was a test batch, he didn’t want to waste a bunch of ingredients. Next into the bubbling mixture of water, heavy cream, and honey was the clover.

The clover was freshly picked straight from his backyard. The weed grew everywhere so wasn’t exactly hard to come by. The mixture immediately turned a light shade of green as the plant released its chlorophyll. Norman thought it looked a lot like bile, thankfully it still smelled rather nice. Next in was a pinch of salt.

The original idea Norman had when putting this recipe together was something that would assist the body's ability to recover. Essentially a hangover cure. The salt was the electrolyte in this mixture. As for why the clover, Norman had figured plants were good for the body and clover was lucky, or at least four leaf clovers were. He had been suffering from a serious hangover when he came up with it and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Turns out finding an actual four-leaf clover was not as easy as he thought so he had just tossed a handful of regular clovers at that first attempt. It worked and his intuition said to keep using the ingredient so he did.

Again, he figured it came down to intent, at least somewhat. It was probably why the random assortment of ingredients worked. Milk for calcium, Honey, and alcohol for the antibacterial properties and ability to kill off germs. Water and salt help restore the body's supply of nutrients. And the clover for a bit of luck.

Last but not least, the special ingredient wasn’t really meant to do anything but the ‘magic’ within kicked the potion into high gear.

At least that’s the way Norman thought everything worked. Of course, he could be completely wrong about the whole thing.

The last thing Norman added while the mixture cooked was the alcohol. He didn’t want it cooking off or the fumes igniting, especially since he was using rubbing alcohol instead of just beer or any old liquor.

Norman turned off the heat on the stove and let the mixture begin to cool. He waited for the temperature to go below scalding before he took a tiny pinch of the magic powder and sprinkled it into the sickly green-looking liquid and gave it a stir.

The powder dissolved into the liquid leaving behind a vibrant blue trail as Norman stirred. Norman continued to stir the mixture until the entire thing was an electric blue that reflected light like a disco ball. There was a momentary flash as the entire surface of the mixture reflected the light. Norman had to blink away the after image, but when he could see again, the once vibrant blue mixture had turned pitch black.

Norman was momentarily confused by that. He had been expecting the same dark purple and wasn’t sure the color change was a good thing or a bad thing. He would need to test the substance to find out for sure. But with the magic powder mixed in, Norman didn’t want to test it himself, not after what happened last time.

He would have to find and trap an animal to test it on. Norman wasn’t looking forward to that.

***

Norman set the hissing and pissed-off raccoon into the old red wagon. The animal kept trying to bite him through the cage.

“Dude, chill out. I’ll release you once I’m done.” The calming words did little to pacify the angry animal’s ire though. It just kept hissing and trying to paw open the flap on the cage.

Norman had made sure to tie it down this time. The first raccoon he caught had managed to get the door open and it was pissed. That raccoon ended up chasing Norman around the abandoned yard for a few minutes before it finally dashed off, seemingly satisfied with its revenge. Norman’s only defense at the time was a kitchen knife tied to the end of a broom handle.

His attempts at skewering the angry beast were laughable. He had immediately missed the angry raccoon, stabbing the weapon into the ground instead and leaving him unarmed except for a stream of vitriol he screamed at the damn thing as it chased him around. Unable to pull the weapon free of the ground, he had been forced to just avoid it, kicking at the raccoon to keep the angry creature at bay until it finally left.

When Norman retrieved his cobbled-together weapon, the knife remained stuck in the ground. After prying the knife out and tying it back to the handle, he reset the trap.

Norman looked at his newest captured test subject, then at his weapon, and swore. He hadn’t taken into account the tiny openings in the cage. The openings were too small to fit the knife through. He was forced to untie the kitchen knife and tie his tiny folding knife in its place. The knife looked ridiculous attached to the end of a broom handle but Norman wasn’t getting his hand anywhere near that cage.

“Sorry, I gotta do this.” Norman shoved the handle into the cage but missed. The raccoon avoided the knife and grabbed the handle, biting at it.

“Let go, dammit.”

Norman shook the cage and the animal, finally getting his weapon back. While he had missed in his attempt to stab it, the raccoon had injured itself by clawing and biting at the end of the pole.

“Whatever, that'll work.”

Norman retrieved one of the bottles of his new potion and unscrewed the top. He brought it over to the cage. Norman knew you didn’t have to actually drink the potion for it to work, it just had to get on the wound. It wouldn’t be as effective though. He dumped the entire bottle on the raccoon and moved away as it angrily bit at the cage.

After a moment, the creature paused in its wild attempts to get free, seemingly confused for a moment. Norman took this time to get closer and examine the wounds it had caused to itself. He couldn’t see any more wounds, it worked.

Norman was about to celebrate when the raccoon started forming massive tumors all over its body and screeching wildly. Norman fell back from the cage, landing on his ass.

The raccoon began to double, then triple in size as tumors started growing on tumors until its bulk filled the entire cage and the thin metal walls started bowing out and groaning dangerously.

Norman was able to scramble away from the cart and cage moments before the raccoon let out one final shriek followed by a wet pop.

Norman looked back to see the cage had burst apart but not before the raccoon. He sighed and got up off the ground. He walked over to the new bike that he had stolen from a different neighbor and reached into the basket at the front. It contained his notebook along with the potions he had brought with him.

Opening the page to the new potion recipe, he wrote ‘Failure?’

Norman wasn’t ready to give up just yet on this new recipe. There could be any number of factors that caused it to fail. The size of the animal, the amount of potion used, or any number of other factors. Heck, maybe it just wasn’t compatible with non-humans. He hadn’t ever tried his first potion on animals. He had always been the only test subject until he incorporated the special ingredient, then he just fed it to the physical classers. In hindsight that probably hadn’t been the best idea, but it had worked.

He closed the notebook and set it back in the basket. Norman did have an idea on how to get test subjects but it was morally questionable at best. He would sleep on it and see how he felt. As for now, he decided to pack up and head home, after he hosed the blood out of the wagon first.