As it turned out, finding things other than hot water to treat illnesses really was harder than it sounded. At least when one was surrounded by pre-industrial medicine. Emma tried a lot of different things, and grew increasingly frustrated at each failure. By the time she stumbled onto even the first of her two mandatory ingredients an hour had already passed, and her shoulder was starting to kill.
Strips of cloth for the solid component. It was a stupid thing for her to overlook bandages of all things, but, in Emma’s defence, they hadn’t worked the first time. She’d had to boil them in separate water and then let them dry out to sterilise them before they had any effect on her budding potion. The effect in question was to turn it slightly blue.
“Perfect!” Larry exclaimed. “Now you just need one other thing, a liquid, and you’ve got yourself a bare-bones healing potion.”
Bare bones. Emma was starting to really hate magic.
Try as she might, it wasn’t until Aexilica returned and found Emma looking somewhat disheveled over her boiling pot that she was actually able to finish the thing.
“What are you doing?” The other woman asked, sounding less curious and more…Concerned.
“Making a potion.” Emma distractedly grunted. “To heal me, apparently, ask Larry.”
Aexilica did, and he quickly, and smugly, explained the basics of said potion-making. He was barely done talking when Aexilica piped up again.
“Oh, then you’ll want some agave sap.”
Emma blinked up at her, and Aexilica wordlessly reached into one of the room’s pots and withdrew a tub of some thick, gluey-looking stuff which she dropped a few strings of into the boiling water. The change was almost instant, bluish tint now shifting to a more cyan. Emma stared at it.
“We use it to treat wounds.” Aexilica replied. “Don’t waste it, it’s sort of expensive.”
“Why are you giving me some then?” Emma frowned.
“Because,” Aexilica sighed, “If this healing potion of yours works, then it’ll be worth the test.”
Ah, of course. Emma turned back to the stuff and started stirring, stopping when she figured she’d done about enough rather than at any time in particular and then carefully pouring some of the liquid out into a cup. She waited for it to cool, then drank.
It was not the most pleasant thing she’d drunk, and she’d once drunk from a puddle. The taste was at once bitter and sour, the texture sludgy and thin. And yet within moments if imbibing it, she felt better.
Not pleasant better, mind. Her shoulder flared up like someone had pumped a needle-full of molten lead into it, but the pain was a good kind. Purifying, it felt. Like a near-scalding bath after a work out. Not that Emma had ever worked out more than the once.
The ache continued for a good long while, and soon Emma felt a similar sensation with it. Popping, grinding. It was, she realised, the sensation of her own bones moving around under the skin and muscle. Fascinating, and fascinatingly disconcerting. It lasted her only a minute or two, the burning pain only another hour. Then it subsided.
She flexed her arm, winced. It still hurt. Less than before, but if she tried to force full mobility the pain was right there to tell her otherwise.
“Your potion didn’t work.” Emma frowned at Larry, who frowned right back.
“First of all, it was your potion. Secondly, yes it did. You’re already moving your arm better. You had a broken bone, you wanted that fixed instantly?”
Put like that, Emma’s expectation felt somewhat silly.
She got to brewing a second potion, which Aexilica was only slightly more reluctant to permit the use of more sap for after seeing the difference already made to Emma’s shoulder. Another twenty minutes of work—some vague instinct guided Emma on the timing of her boil and mix— and she had another dose prepared. She drank it fast.
The second time wasn’t quite so intense, maybe because there wasn’t as much left for her body to do. Emma felt the burning again, duller, and didn’t experience anything close to the grinding of bones knitting back together. By the time it was done though…
Her shoulder was fine. With that taken care of, Emma’s newest concerns hit her quickly.
“Why did I need to do this with a potion?” She asked.
Larry seemed to have anticipated the question, because he was near-instant in answering it.
“I don’t know, some things are just easier with different kinds of magic. Potions are good for applying an effect to a living thing, and their creation lets you stretch your powers beyond their current limits.”Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“So could I make, like, explosive potions?”
Larry stared at her like she was a dog humping his leg, or stump as it were.
“Okay,” Emma continued, “Then what else can I make?”
“Things that affect you.” Larry told her. “Directly, I mean. Healing was one thing. You can make things that enhance or weaken a body–- the drinker’s that is— or apply some magical effect to it. Untethered tend to use them to compensate for being so…You know. Squishy.”
Emma thought about that, thought about Aexilica hauling one hundred kilos of warrior and armour over one shoulder as if it weighed nothing.
“Compensate by making potions that boost physical abilities?” She asked, hopefully. Larry grinned.
“Exactly that. But of course they’re not nearly as cool as blowing things up, are they? So—”
“—Fine, fine. You were right. Now explain, King Richard.” She snapped. Larry’s smugness was a more aggravating sensation than her shifting bones.
And he did. It turned out, the methods didn’t vary much from potion to potion. But the specifics couldn’t have been more different.
“I need a solid and a liquid…” Emma noted, pacing now as she thought.
“—And a base.” Larry added helpfully.
“...And they all need to be related to…Strength.” She chewed a lip, suddenly missing her cool explosion practice.
What was related to strength? Emma found this one a much broader, more infuriating question. Strength wasn’t anything as direct as healing. It could mean a thousand different things. Physical strength, though, was easier, somewhat at least. Muscle, that came to mind quite quickly. Muscle, size and…Hair. Body hair, masculinity. Men were big and angry and unpredictable, and they were strong above all else.
“Testosterone.” Emma blurted out, then realised what she was saying. Larry, apparently seemed to realise as well.
“Well, there’s not a lot of options for buying T in this kind of world. I suppose you’ll need to—”
“—I’m not drinking cum.” She cut in, lip curling with disgust. “Fuck, what else is there?”
“I told you, it depends on the person. You need to be the one who thinks of this because you’re the one making the potions.”
Emma swore again, and got back to pacing. She really, really hated this kind of magic.
Eventually, and with a bit of input from Aexilica of all people, she had some more ideas. None of them were pleasant. Emma exercised. She ran laps, did jumping-jacks, and managed approximately sixty percent of a push-up. Then she scraped the sweat from her body into a cloth, and wrung it into a pot. Then she repeated the process. Then she did it again.
Sweat. Gained from working out, accompanied by strained, growing muscles. The stuff of strength. She almost puked just at the thought.
“What else?” Larry pressed, as Emma finally collected enough of the repulsive liquid to have a suitable base.
“I…Fuck, I don’t know?” Emma blanched at the very thought of doing more.
“Come on.” He pressed. “It’s either this or…Lose another fight.”
That sobered her. If one emotion was stronger than disgust, it was fear. Intellectual fear, that was, a reluctance to feel phantom pains and sensations. This was all fake.
Emma’s ruminations were interrupted only by a great thud, drawing her eyes across the room to where Aexilica had just dropped down a large mound of fabric onto another table. It was, she recognised after a moment, the woman’s armour. Or what was left of it. However brief, their melee against that Sculd woman had not been kind to it.
But where life gave abuse, it gave excitement for those with a humiliation fetish. Emma had an idea as she looked at the tattered equipment.
“Can I have a piece of your armour?” She asked, hopefully.
Aexilica seemed to realise what she was getting at fast, confusion spreading across her faster rather than slower for the knowledge.
“You can’t drink armor.” She frowned.
“I totally can.” Emma grinned. “I’m a wizard and stuff, give.” She held her hand out expectantly, and tried not to be offended when Aexilica turned to Larry for confirmation.
“The process of making a potion tends to leave whatever you put in non-toxic and edible.” He explained, though even he seemed somewhat uncertain as he did. Oh he of little faith. Aexilica caved eventually, fortunately, and Emma got her bit of padded fabric.
Harder than she’d have expected, stiff and rigid. Maybe it’d been treated with something, probably made it better against blunt force. Well, now it was wizard food. She dumped it in and stirred.
Sure enough, the collected sweat changed colour. This time to a deep, bubbly red. Emma was glad the stuff wasn’t actually boiling like her previous base had, the smell might’ve actually killed her.
Of course, there was one last ingredient. A liquid. Fortunately that one came a bit easier than the solid. Emma pricked her finger and let a few drops of blood trickle in. A change came immediately, and barely.
“You need more than that.” Larry noted. She scowled.
“The amounts are changing every time.” Emma complained. “Why is that?”
“Magic.” He smugly explained. Emma pricked another finger, letting a few more drops of ichor plunge in and…Watching as they did nothing.
“Oh for the Gods’ sake.” Aexilica sighed, raising her arm and carefully nicking it open near the elbow. Emma watched a stream of blood drop down into the mix, tapering off only after a few long seconds had passed. By then, the colour had changed.
It was pinkish, now, and coiling around nice and magically. There really wasn’t that much of it. Emma had asked about that as she made the base, and Larry had assured her that different volumes worked for different potions. Making more typically just left the creator with more drinking to get the same effects. It made her head hurt, really, the thousand casual ways this violated everything else she knew about the world.
But she’d gotten enough of a handle on it to make this at least.
“And this will make me stronger?” She asked, hopefully. Larry considered that.
“Were you thinking of strength when you picked the armour?”
Emma pondered it. “...Combat.” She admitted. “But, like, strength helps with that, right?”
Larry paused. “It—”
—”Varies from person to person.” Emma said, overlapping her words with his. “God fucking damnit, Larry, did I just make something useless?”
“It’s your fault if you did.” He snapped. “Your associations, your magic. If you want to test the potion out ahead of time, be my guest.”
Emma eyed the bubbling concoction. Boiling water, sap and linen had tasted like liquefied asshole. What would sweat, blood and mangled armour do to her tastebuds?
More concerningly, what would supplying the blood for another dose do to Aexilica?
She had no choice, Emma decided. Besides, she could make another healing potion to replenish any blood loss. She thought. With one motion she snatched the pot up and deposited its contents down her gullet, then spent the next few seconds of her life exerting all the willpower she had–- magical or otherwise— to not regurgitating it all back up over the wall. She shouldn’t have bothered imagining its foul taste, the effort hadn’t brought her even close to prepared for it.
Nor had it prepared her for the results.