Going out with a bang
1343 Words
Twenty minutes later, the whole shelf had been emptied, and Alkahest was feeling bitter. As bitter as someone who’d decided to hold back on reading a series until the rest was written, only to return and find the author on hiatus.
All these books were rubbish!
“The king got scammed?”
“Perhaps. If you read anything in these, please, focus on forgetting it as soon as possible.”
The advice the books gave was boiled down to; try harder, stir firmer, pour more magic in, and don’t be afraid of failure. Either nonsense, or something so simple it wasn’t worth saying.
“I might’ve been called to a distant land. A desolate one devoid of knowledge and wisdom.”
“You speak really dramatically don’t you.”
“Lilly, imagine that you dedicated your life to making cakes, to producing them in the most exquisite detail, perfecting the taste, consistency, with all your heart…. Now imagine that you opened a cookbook and turned to the recipe page, and all it said was to stir the mixture before placing it in the oven.”
“…You’re making me really hungry.”
“More than anything there’s an over-emphasis on magic here. It’s like the cookbook saying ‘if your cake isn’t good enough, then just add more sugar. Making it sweeter doesn’t automatically improve the recipe.”
“It does… sorta. Can you alchemy me a cake?”
“Have you ever heard the phrase, give a girl cake for a day and she demand more cake, teach a girl to make cake and she’ll go on a diet?”
“No? I don’t get it?”
Alkahest frowned. The assistants he created had always found his witticisms funny. Perhaps this girl’s sense of humour was skewed. “Open the supply cabinets please.”
“M’kay…. Nothing in there looks tasty though.”
Alkahest ignored her and surveyed the ingredients. They were what one might call, premium reagents. That is to say only marginally more effective than certain alternatives, but elevated to fame by the power of skilled merchants.
“So, the king got scammed?”
“I think I can… you can, work with this. We’ll first make our way to my workshop, but we’ll need a map and after that a file and a saw.”
Lilly tilted her head.
“I think there’s a map in the library. But where’s your workshop?”
“I will show you when we find the map- Let us be swift.”
Lilly proved to be adept at avoiding people inside the castle, having grown up with apparently a good deal of free reign within it. On Alkahest’s part, he found that walls weren’t really an impediment to him. Though phasing into them made him uncomfortable.
“Tell me, Lilly, is there a reason that it’s the maids and not the guards trying to bring you to the prince?”
“Uhhh?”
“Let me rephrase that, is everyone looking for you?”
“Nnnno? I think the prince doesn’t want the king to know, at least, that’s what the maids were whispering.”
“Ah.” Alkahest felt his stomach churn. Not that he had one. While it was better that she wasn’t being hunted per-se, the chill he felt earlier had increased in intensity. He absolutely couldn’t let her stay here, or they’d be in peril! How bad would the penalty clause be? He should’ve read the contract more seriously!
“But, ghost teacher should be fine though?”
“Alkahest. My name is Alkahest. And if something happens, I’ll be in more danger than you.”
“Something is?”
“Something….. that you don’t need to know.”
The library was, not to put too fine a point on it, small.
“This is more a state-room. Where’s the map?”
“Books are expensive. Well, the prime minister always complains about rising paper prices. So I guess it’s paper that’s expensive?”
“The prime minister?”
“His office has a passage behind the fireplace. I like listening there. He gets annoyed lots though. I heard him complaining about the prince buying scented soaps for lots of gold, so that’s why I was trying to make some. Also, since the prince didn’t want the king to know, I thought if I could tell the chamberlain that I could do alchemy, he’d tell the minister, who’d mention it to the king- and the prince wouldn’t bother me.”
Lilly opened the map while she spoke and then looked back at Alkahest, before choking back a scream. Alkahests jaw had dropped, it was literally touching the floor. Her reaction snapped him out of his daze and his form resolidified into its previous dignified appearance.
“You… You do not take after your ancestor. He was the biggest i***t I knew.”
“Rude! You are a rude ghost!”
“Don’t speak Ill of the dead.”
“You do.”
“I’m also dead, it’s allowed.”
Alkahest vaguely realised, that in less than an hour, he’d conversed more than he would in several months in the times before his death. Studying the map, he wondered if he was an instinctive lone wolf, and then dismissed the notion. He had constructs to work with him after all. What did they say? ‘One makes company where they find it?’
“Alkahest teacher, that’s, really really sad. Please don’t give up on life.” Tears were forming in the corners of her eyes.
“Being pitied by a child in your situation just rubs salt in the wound- ah, here we are.”
The map was a ring bound file, filled with broad sheafs of vellum. An index at the front covered the regions on each page- not that it was much help as Lilly leafed through and finally stopped at a mountainous region with a broad wide lake in the centre of a forest.
“Halve Mountain. Though this map is incorrect. A lake, in the middle of Estin’s forest?”
“It’s not called that though. That’rakasen s melt mountain. And that’s the Dryads Arbour, and the lake is Lake Downfall…. Are you sure this is the right place?”
“The mountains are right, just let me think.” Alkahest cast his mind back. His last experiment, he’d been destabilising materials and observing how they naturally transformed and- He’d used some of, yes that same damn crystal Ruel brought him that day. It eventually turned into a stone so dark, it lacked anything other than a silhouette, like a hole in the world. When he’d attempted to test its properties, the surface began bubbling. The rock boiled while still solid, he’d pulled the lever for the blast shields. The world went white.
“Alkahest. I don’t think you could survive that by improving your body. Also, the map makes sense now. Also we’ll have to go somewhere else.”
“My facility was sturdy, the other wings probably-”
Lilly took one of Alkahests ghostly hands and patted it.
“Don’t worry, we’ll visit it someday and make a, a nice grave for you.”
“…Lets just go back to the lab, I’ll think of another idea.”
- Writer
