The Alchemist's Apprentice

In the 233rd year of the Algean calendar, I died.  For what it was worth, it had been a sudden death. I even knew what I did wrong, and the inability to record both my mistake and the method to remedy it vexed me to no end. But, if nothing else, I’d always been an individual who favoured discovery above all else. Time passed. I was vaguely aware something was preventing me from disbursing. The possibility that my unfulfilled desires might lead me back to the material world as some sort of vengeful wraith crossed my now incorporeal mind. Naturally I dismissed it immediately.  In the void I pondered, formulating hypothesis and theories, each now impossible to test, but interesting enough to stimulate my mind. Eventually, I felt regret. Although I’d always been the first to admit my mistakes, my arrogance had cost me dearly. I had made weapons, artifacts, elixirs, trinkets- a myriad of objects of wonder. I had performed countless experiments, filled with discovery and failure. But I’d never bothered to turn those benefits inwards, and so my frail body had died in an entirely preventable fashion from a relatively minor mishap. A fool, by any measure.  I might’ve truly lost my reason in time- but I felt a pull. A tug on my soul that forcefully dragged me from the void and back into the world of light and the living.  I manifested as a pale spectre, a silvery spirit that would no doubt catch the breath of any who saw it- “AAaaaaaaaa! A ghost! I was making soap but it turned into a ghost- wa was it the fat?! I’m sorry pig-spirit, I won’t boil the rest of your fat!” A girl in a robe several sizes too big for her, brandished her stirring stick like a spear. For the first time in my new existence, a headache began to form. Somehow. “I just wwwwanted something to sell! How did it turn out like thiiiiiis.” Worse, I recognised this girl… in a manner of speaking. The fierce eyes, a certain aura that must surely be hereditary. I had no doubt who she was descended from.  Until now I’d forgotten that commitment, buried the memory deep, but it resurfaced now, bobbing on a tide of emotion.  “Haaaaaa-“ I sighed soft as a breeze and then resigned myself to my fate,  “Little girl-“  “I’m not little!”  “…. Girl.”  “I have a name!” “Most people do. I will give you another eventually, but for now young lady-“ She drew the stirring stick from the cauldron and brandished it like a spear, her earlier panic vanishing like a lie- “You’re suspicious! Incredibly suspicious! Super Ultra, I’m not even scared of you suspicious! Taste Juusssstiiccee!” Unbelievably, I began to feel a sense of danger from the stick. A certain pale aura forming on it, a spark of light.  Somehow, I knew, that if things continued this way, I was going to die prematurely. Again. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m not a bad ghost! I came to help!” The stick stopped mid swing, and she glared, daring me to continue. “I am here to fulfil an agreement made long ago-“ she raised the stick threateningly and I hurried my explanation along to the key point, “I’m here to teach you alchemy!”