The Alchemist's Apprentice

Fully Automatic Alchemist

Fel had once faced a rampaging minotaur alone with nothing but a rock. Being carried by Lilly was about as thrilling as that day. To the few who saw her, they doubted their eyes, as a ginger cat streaked across the sky, faster than the swiftest eagle, disappearing into the horizon in the blink of an eye. 

And so in years to come a certain legend would be formed- but that is a story for another time.

In the present, Lilly overshot the city and had to circle around, slowing down and ultimately arriving at the gates. The cat in her arms yowled, so she hurriedly let her go and decided to wander into the city- right past the guards. 

Fel slowed down and snuck by under a carriage before catching up to the invisible girl by following her scent.

She found the girl at a crossroads looking lost- so a bit of yowling and tugging later and she’d used some of Fel’s money to rent a room at an inn nearby. 

Inside the small room, Fel shapeshifted back and dressed. 

Lilly, who’d turned away, spoke while facing the wall.

“Can’t you shift the clothes with you?”

“Mhm. Not really. Even keeping my collar the right size is twice as tiring as shifting without it, and underwear never properly fits when I change back.”

“Oh. Um, I don’t know this city, so-“

“Don’t you worry, I’ll lead you straight to the alchemy district!”

The innkeepers eye’s practically popped to see Fel leading the way out of the inn, but a grin flashed from Fel silenced him instantly.

The city was surrounded by high walls, bisected by a river and at its centre was an enormous tower.

However the alchemy district was the jewel of the city… sort of.

Lilly could not believe her eyes, the district had thick tendrils of purple smoke snaking through it and the passers by all wore masks or clasped handkerchiefs to their mouths. 

According to her glasses, local integrity was at 60%. Lilly felt as though she’d suddenly had a bomb thrust into her hands.

“Levy, why hasn’t bad stuff happened yet?”

“I thought you’d forgotten about us! It seems like one of the emergency URS- our Uninterrupted Reality Suppliers is keeping this region from experiencing the symptoms of degradation- but those are emergency systems. The longer it stays active, the greater the chance tears will occur on the edge of the stable region! Also, if the URS runs out of stockpiled Reality, then you can expect a cascade event!”

“Levy.”

“It’s already happening! You just can’t see it!”

While Lilly was communicating, Fel leaned down trying to catch what was talking back at her, ears twitching. She snapped back up when Lilly turned.

“Lady, you mentioned there were monster tears?”

“Oh, Yeah. Tough bast- fellas. It was a pain beating them up.”

“Things are bad. We need to fix the tower, and then make these alchemists stop being dumb.”

“Purple smoke bad?”

“Really bad.”

“Just so y’know, the alchemists own the tower. They don’t like people going in.”

“They don’t have a choice.”

“Ohhh, nice eyes. Fearless.” Lilly ignored Fel’s words and strode towards the alchemist’s tower without a shred of hesitation.

Fel grinned. She felt her new friend operated on the same wavelength as she did.  

Wallace Kahest was the head of Alkenhearth’s Alchemy association. Alkenhearth was a decent sized town, not much larger than those in the kingdom Lilly had come from, but more importantly, it had one of the great masters sacred towers. 

Once all alchemists had gathered to pay homage to the great master, forming the greatest collective of alchemical expertise the world had ever seen. Together all the alchemists of yore had ascended, leaving only such relics as the tower behind for mortals to puzzle out. Wallace fervently believed that one day, he might better understand the tower, it’s purpose and the sacred relics extracted for study from within. 

To that end he had worked from apprentice, to journeyman to master- and now he instructed scores of students on the secret art of Ablation Alchemy! Even the most talentless apprentice under his tutelage could produce the sacred purple smoke and pay tribute to the alchemists of yore. 

While he ruminated on his life’s successes, one of his deputies burst into his office.

“Sir! There’s a… Situation. Downstairs!”

Wallace did not let himself appear flustered. He simply opened the drawer to his desk, slipped on his magical items and primed them, before accompanying his deputy down to the second floor.

The first thing he noticed was the people stuck to the walls by clumps of hot-pink goop. 

The second thing he noticed was the scared journeyman scurrying about, dumping alchemical materials onto the preparation tables surrounding the guild’s pride and joy, the gigantic Relic Cauldron that rested on the first floor with it’s open mouth poking through the centre of the second.

The third thing he noticed was the furious looking little girl ordering his guild around as if she owned the place, and the lady behind her-

“Have you called the guards? What is she doing?”

“She says she’s here to fix the tower- and also, wanted to know who the uh, person, was who broke it.”

Wallace’s eye twitched. 

“Blasphemous nonsense- Show some backbone!”

He strode forwards, only for the girl to point a single finger at him.

“Speak up or I’ll make you shut up and stay out of my way!”

“Child. You tamper with forces you do not understand-“

“How can I not! They won’t shut up! Let me share some! You’re missing ALL THE PRIMARY FILTER VALVES! Every single redundant line is clogged and it’s like someone decided to turn everything that moves to in the opposite direction to where it should be! I have to fix this mess and either go get me some grade six treated brass rods or I will give you a time out!”

Wallace’s face turned a lovely shade of red and he was about to scream a rebuttal, when the girl pulled out an ornate key and thrust it into the air with a sound akin to shattering glass. In an instant the air warped and unfolded before her and she stepped inside the gap.

When she emerged, floating rods followed her in double file like a troop of soldiers escorting their lord and in her arms was equipment that even the guildmaster couldn’t recognize. 

Before his mental world had time to adjust to the rapid shift of paradigms, he was hit by a rib cracking force and found himself stuck to a wooden beam by a mass of hot-pink goop.

“Treated Brass Rods! Grade six! NOW!”

A journeyman scrambled to fulfill the order, as obedient as a puppet on a string, while the deputy sidled up to his boss.

“Uh, sir, the guards don’t want to intervene. They’re saying this is a dispute between alchemists.”

“Aaagh! Like hell it is! Mob her if you have-“

As if by magic, he found himself facing the orange haired lady.

“Fel! Who is she? What the hell are you doing here! Is this-“

“Wally. Shut up. If you try and mess with her, I will end you.” She lightly slapped him on the cheek.

“Fel! This is beyond a joke!”

“Do I look like I’m joking. Sit down, shut up, let the lady work.”

A burst of magic appeared from the cauldron at the centre of the guild and Lilly, who had been ferrying objects out of the spatial tear, motioned a journeyman over only to shove a stack of octagonal metal plates into his arms.

“Advanced cauldrons, attach these to the bottom! NOW!” Lilly started drawing in an open book and one after another, the rods that followed her began to rise up and draw complicated patterns mid-air. 

“Ingredients, into the cauldron, as I call them!”

The floating rods also descended into the depths of the large cauldron, stopping at different layers to execute independent patterns. Lilly pulled out a slim glass bottle and tapped it against the rim of the cauldron three times. At the moment of the third tap, the cauldron filled rapidly from the bottom, stopping half a meter below the rim. 

Cauldrons began floating down over the open-sided railings of the third floor, taking up position inverted above the rods drawing patterns in the air over the gigantic cauldron.

At Lilly’s direction, great stacks of ingredients were dumped into the cauldron. 

A thick white mist began to permeate the surface of the Relic cauldron and with a majestic gloop, globs of stuff began to fly from it’s mouth and into the smaller hovering cauldrons.

The deputy thought it looked rather like a parcel passing game- but with each pass from one receptacle to the next the shapes became more refined and distinct. The girl was somehow taking a complex recipe with multiple stages and splitting them up, forming a line of production. Every six seconds or so a shining pipe of alchemical brass would join the stack next to her feet. 

The astonishing thing was that she wasn’t actually controlling the process, it was running on it’s own, she was synthesizing something else in a smaller cauldron she’d rolled out of the void.

It was a quill. She then pulled out a stack of papers and set them down, the quill taking a life of it’s own and scribbling on the pages while the girl left to inspect the pipes. 

Somehow, in that moment, the fictional image of an alchemy master that the Deputy had in his mind had been overshadowed by this. He felt he’d glimpsed a hidden truth- the heart of alchemy wasn’t being so precise with your stirring that you could perform complex synthesis… True alchemy lay in the pursuit of automation!

Lilly went to shout and started coughing, before managing to clear her throat.

“Apprentices, here, now!”

She pointed at the pipes and then the papers the quill was scribing upon.

“Take these! Take a map! Go to the place marked on the map! Fit it into the empty slot and pull the lever into the open position! The open position is DOWN! Is that simple enough?”

There was no backtalk.

“… Journeymen. You and you! Where’s the stuff I asked for!”

“We don’t have it-“

“Aggh! That’s useless! Even if I fix everything else, that would still leave us running without the primary condenser.”

“But, can’t you just use ablat-“

Lilly winced as though someone had shouted in her face and made a rude gesture at the journeyman.

“Ablation isn’t free knucklehead! Either I need an intact ether catalyst or you find me a log of Silverwood!”

A journeyman raised his hand.

“Would bishop Torag’s Etheric Purification Crystal work? According to the guild’s history it was a gift of friendship to the church when we were established here.”

“Is it white, honeycombed and glowy?”

“Ye-“

“We’ll be needing that back. Somebody fetch it.”

Wallace finally found his voice. 

“Why are you in such a hurry! Surely this cannot be so urgent to cause such bedlam!” 

Lilly didn’t grace Wallace with an immediate answer, instead drawing in her book again and changing the configuration of the floating cauldrons, before instructing the journeymen to add the next stacks of ingredients. 

Finally she turned to him.

“If you don’t know what’s going on, stop pretending and shut up. If I knew how much time we had this wouldn’t be such a problem!”

Half an hour, then an hour passed- the alchemy apprentices were red faced and out of breath as they ran back and forth between the guild and the tower with parts, tools and stacks of paper instructions.

The mayor arrived and Fel quietly intervened to keep him from attracting Lilly’s wrath. 

Bishop Torag arrived, long ceremonial stave topped with the ‘Etheric Purification Crystal’ set in an ornately decorated casing covered in holy symbols.

The guildmaster saw the civic figures and wished to hide his face- he was in an unbearably undignified position and forced to watch as the guild he’d built up piece by piece was torn from his grasp by this mad, talented, incredible homewrecker. 

No, that wasn’t right. Her alchemy was astonishing, but it lacked the solemnity and dignity of their forebears. It was too utilitarian! Where was the… the… gravitas! The ceremony!

She was just making things! 

And Torag, the old goat just meekly surrendered the stave and let her break it to pieces! 

Lilly gazed at the ether catalyst and flinched.

The surrounds tensed up, in anticipation of shouted insults and orders, but this time she gave a pure and unblemished smile instead.

“It’s usable. Old man, they’re cheering and they want me to tell you something.”

She addressed Torag, calling down from the second floor balcony to the entrance of the guild.

“They say thanks for not F*ing it up, you saved us all.”

Without waiting for a reply she turned to the exhausted journeymen.

“This is the last push. We have one last big run of parts to make, and after that it’s all single unit stuff. I’ll get you all lists of ingredients, anything missing from here, find it somehow in the city. If it doesn’t exist, tell me and we’ll have to fudge it. While the apprentices catch up with the repairs, get me those ingredients! If we need more hands get them! We’re turning the tower back on!”

[Tag added: Leader]