Act 2: Potions

Act 2:
Potions

 

HE WHO DOES NOT WORK, neither shall he eat.

Before I knew it, I was an official employee of the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora. At first it felt a bit presumptuous making my hobby into a job, but thinking back on it, I definitely made the right choice.

It seemed my recruitment had been a bit hush-hush, because on my first day, Johan, the head researcher, gathered everyone around to inform them that I had been hired.

At Johan’s urging, I greeted my new coworkers. “My name is Sei, and starting today, I’ll be working here with you all. I look forward to our collaboration.”

For some reason, everyone looked flabbergasted. Even though I was acquainted with most of the researchers already, the news seemed to hit them like a bolt from the blue. As a result, my greeting fell kind of flat. There was an audible pause before a wave of murmurs broke out through the room.

“I suppose, in the meantime, we’ll put…Jude in charge of you,” Johan said in a slightly raised voice that suppressed the whispers.

“Huh? Me?” Jude asked in surprise.

I was honestly relieved that the person I was most closely acquainted with would be the one in charge of my training. Back in Japan, there were plenty of times when I had to work with someone I didn’t know all that well, so if I had to, I was sure I’d be able to stick it out here, too—but it’s so much better to get to work with someone you already know, especially one you get along with well. I bet Johan took that into consideration when he assigned Jude to me.

“I’m looking forward to collaborating with you.” I gave my formal greeting to Jude again.

“Me too.” Jude might have been surprised, but his smile seemed genuine when he said that.

With that, he began walking me through the research institute’s business. As one might glean from its name, the institute’s main subject of research was medicinal flora, as well as potions. Also, as I noted, the benefits of the herbs were about the same as the ones found in my original world, so when I described what I knew from my time back in Japan, Jude was impressed.

“You sure know a lot already,” he said.

Apparently, the knowledge I had acquired pursuing my hobby was equivalent to the information imparted in upper-level courses at the Royal Academy, which was where the nobility attended school.

In general, noble children attended the academy from the age of thirteen until they turned fifteen, at which point they were considered adults. Upper-level courses were for those who continued to study until they were eighteen years old. While he was there, Jude had studied pharmaceuticals and medicinal flora. All in all, it seemed like the world I came from was far more advanced in its knowledge of the natural sciences and the like.

Speaking of Jude, his research area of expertise was, of all things, potions. Potions! That trademark item of RPGs.

Potions in this world could either be drunk or smeared on wounds. My impulse was to assume they were similar to the medicines from back home, but it turned out they were quite a bit different—they worked instantaneously.

Just how fast did they work? The second I got my first accidental cut in this world, I dabbed a drop of potion on it. Between one heartbeat and the next, my cut vanished. No matter that I had been warned, I was shocked.

Though, I think Jude was more shocked when I immediately grabbed a blade to cut my fingertip again. I just wanted to know more about the effectiveness of potions! It was only a little cut, too, but he panicked, and later he seemed actually mad.

The rest of my first day consisted of him showing me around the facilities and describing the work they did in each location. The next day, Jude finally showed me how to brew potions—not just because that was his field of research, but because I was champing at the bit to learn more about this strange substance that was so unlike anything in my world. I had made up my mind that I wanted to research potions with him.

“All right, let’s get started,” he said.

And just like that, Jude set about concocting a potion with practiced hands. He started by adding a careful selection of herbs to a pot, along with some water. Then he boiled it all together while continuously imbuing it with his magical power. At last, the potion was finished.

Potions were divided into grades—low, medium, and high—which were partially determined by ingredients. However, you couldn’t brew a high-grade potion just by following a specific recipe. To achieve such potency, subtle magical manipulations were required. In the end, the potential quality of a potion was determined by the maker’s Production skill level.

Additionally, the ingredients for high-grade potions cost a great deal on their own. Between the exorbitant cost and the fact that only a few people alive could actually produce them, high-grade potions were sold at a price that would make anyone think twice before using them. Not that most people had to worry about such things, seeing as only royalty and titled nobility could afford to buy them anyway. You definitely couldn’t find these potions for sale at a typical apothecary.

But let me return to one small detail involved in the process of making potions—one you might have wondered about when I seemed to skip over it, earlier. To make a potion, it was necessary to boil the ingredients while imbuing the whole with magical power. That’s right. Magical power.

Initially, I was shocked when Jude mentioned that part. I mean, potions were one thing, but there was absolutely no way there was any such thing as magic in my world.

“How do you ‘imbue’ something with magical power?” I asked Jude during his demonstration.

“Huh?” The question barely made sense to him.

This world was, in a word, magical, and magical power, MP for short, was required for using magic. Furthermore, there was a variety of magic known as Practical Magic that just about anyone could use. That meant magical power was a concept familiar even to the youngest children of this world.

First potions, now magic. Everything I learned made this new world sound more and more like it had been born of a fantastical video game, but no—this was my concrete reality.

“Wait, you’ve never used magic before?” Jude asked.

“Right.”

“Not even Practical Magic?”

“Nope.”

Even commoners could use Practical Magic, so Jude was utterly bewildered. However, since potions couldn’t be made without magic, Jude was going to have to give me a whole lecture on how to use it if I was ever going to follow in his footsteps.

“All right, it’s finished,” Jude said when he had wrapped up his demonstration.

“Wow!”

He filtered the boiled contents and then poured them into a slender vial. The completed potion was a delicate, translucent pink liquid. It was the simplest low-grade HP potion possible to make. Jude chose it for the demonstration partly because the key herbs grew right outside in the institute’s garden and were therefore easy to acquire.

“I can hardly believe it’s possible to make these,” I said.

“Low-quality HP potions are actually pretty easy to produce.”

“But you have to use magic for it to work, right?”

“Yeah, but like I said, it’s not that complicated.”

“Really? Well, I still think it’s amazing.”

“Y-you do?”

The more I thought about it, the more excited I was to see something that should exist only in fantasy, but I was making Jude bashful. The cheeks of his handsome face turned a slight pink to match the potion in my hand. They were a sight to behold as well.

After Jude’s demonstration, he segued into the promised lesson on magic.

The first step was to feel out the magic power within oneself. As someone who came from a thoroughly unmagical world, this was no mean feat.

Since Practical Magic, which was largely invoked with simple chants, was accessible to anyone in this world, people often simply weren’t conscious of their own magical power. However, a heightened awareness was required in order to concoct potions or call upon other types of magic.

At first, Jude walked me through various techniques for feeling the magic within myself, but no matter what he tried, I felt as magical as a doorknob. That was when he assisted me with the method used at the Royal Academy, which required me to place my hands in his.

“Okay, here we go.” Jude held up his palms towards me.

I did as he instructed and placed my palms on top of his. His hands were bigger than mine and roughened from his work with earth, loam, and the like. They were, without question, a man’s hands. Wherever we touched—the pads of his fingers, the flat of his palm—his temperature was just the slightest bit higher than mine. It made me self-conscious, since this kind of intimacy was a bit out of the ordinary.

Stop, stop. Don’t lose your cool over this. This is for work. For work!

As I was struggling to keep my feelings in check, Jude interrupted my thoughts. “Okay, here we go.”

And there—that was when I finally felt something. A gentle heat, or force, or something like that, steadily transferring into my right palm as Jude channeled his magic into it. Even harder to describe was the feeling that, after he started channeling, something moved inside of me, almost like it was being washed away. That was my magical power.

The magic Jude fed into my right hand didn’t emerge from my left—instead, it circulated throughout my body like blood.

I supposed that, the second I was summoned here, I stopped being an earthling. The magic I could now feel flowing through me definitely didn’t qualify as earthling stuff.

“It feels like there’s something moving through me, like a pulse,” I said.

“Really? You can feel it already? That’s your magical power.” Jude seemed a bit startled, but he smiled all the same.

Apparently, even using the Royal Academy’s method, it took most people about a week to be able to grasp the feel of their magic. Yet here I was, somehow able to sense mine the second he channeled the tiniest smidgen of magic into me.

“You’ve got talent,” Jude chuckled.

Even after Jude broke the channel, I was able to feel that flow of magic within me. That meant we could move right on to actual magic manipulation, which ended up going so smoothly that Jude was startled all over again.

“Wow. I didn’t think I’d be done with the lecture so quickly.”

“I’m sure it’s because you’ve been such a patient teacher. Thank you very much,” I smiled.

His cheeks flushed as he got all bashful again. But it was the truth—everything Jude said about magic just clicked for me.

While in that good mood, he moved on to start teaching me Practical Magic as well, saying that it just didn’t make sense for me not to have it at my beck and call.

 

***

 

Though it hadn’t been long since my summoning, Jude and I had grown quite close. With him, I felt as though I could say anything that popped into my head. Even so, as he was a longtime researcher at the institute, I tried to treat him like I would any senior at a company I worked for. Still, Jude insisted I not act all stuffy with him, since we were practically the same age.

Armed with his teaching, I focused on brewing low-grade HP potions. I wanted to raise my Production skill level so that I might one day be able to make the high-grade variety. Plus, I found I enjoyed the process of leveling up via single-minded focus on the same specific task. Even at a young age, I loved games with grinding challenges, and I would become completely absorbed in completionist pursuits.

Fortunately, the low-grade HP potions weren’t wasted—we used them for research.

That was how it came to be that the first person to notice something amiss wasn’t Jude but another researcher.

“Sei,” he called for my attention from a few desks away.

“Yes, what is it?” I turned, and he beckoned me over. I didn’t know what to expect as I joined him.

Once I was at his desk, he pointed at the low-grade HP potion sitting on it. “Did you make this?”

“Um…yes, that looks like one of mine.”

We marked the vials so we could tell who brewed what, just in case someone needed to trace an effect back to the person who had created it. The vial he pointed at did indeed have my mark on it.

“Did you do anything different when you made it?” he asked.

“No, not in particular. Is something wrong?”

“Hmm. I don’t know exactly why, but the effects of your batches have been unusual.”

This researcher was developing a brand-new recipe for a potion that would enhance the effectiveness of other potions. While using one of the institute-made potions for his experiments, he noticed the outcome was distinctly different from when he used a store-bought version. On further examination, he found that while some institute-made potions had the same effects as the store-bought ones, others did not. At length, he discovered it was actually only my potions that were so different—and in fact, more effective.

When I told the researcher I hadn’t done anything other than follow the exact recipe Jude taught me, he was dubious to say the least. But I was positive I hadn’t added any other ingredients or done anything different.

“And this is really a low-grade HP potion?” the researcher pressed.

“I believe so. Or it’s whatever Jude taught me it is.”

“I see. Then perhaps I should ask him about this.” The researcher called Jude over as well and explained the apparent anomaly. I listened attentively, hoping I would have a sudden epiphany, but I didn’t have any new insights.

“You’re sure you only taught her the standard recipe for a low-grade HP potion?” the researcher asked Jude.

“Definitely. I don’t even know another way to make it.”

“Hm. I suppose the next step would be to get her potion appraised.”

“That should sort this out right away, yes.”

Because they couldn’t figure out where things had gone awry, they submitted the potion I made for an official analysis. A short while later, the researcher came back to us with the results.

To my shock, whoever appraised my potion confirmed that for some reason, it was quite a bit different from the low-grade potions available in stores. Specifically, it was about fifty percent more effective.

“Your potions really do have unusual properties,” Jude murmured while examining one of my vials in his hands.

We had submitted several more of my samples for appraisal, and it seemed every single one of them was rated more effective than anything on the market.

“But all I did was brew them the way you taught me,” I insisted.

“Well, that pink color means it’s definitely a low-grade HP potion. I wonder why it’s different.”

“Maybe I’m just super good at brewing?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure that’s our answer. What’s your Pharmaceuticals skill level right now?”

“Let me check. Stats.”

Saying “Stats” made a semi-transparent window pop up that only the spellcaster could see. It was a Practical Magic spell, one Jude had taught me to check my current skill levels. This ability to constantly monitor my level was one of the reasons I became engrossed in increasing my Production skill. The dopamine rush of seeing all my numbers increase inadvertently spurred me on toward maxing out my skills.

 

Sei Takanashi – Level 55/Saint

HP: 4,867/4,867

MP: 6,057/6,067

Battle Skills

Holy Magic: Level ∞

Production Skills

Pharmaceuticals: Level 8

 

“I’m at Level 8 now,” I confirmed after checking my Stats.

Jude tilted his head to the side, humming thoughtfully as he did. “You can’t make mid-grade potions at Level 8.”

“Well, does it really matter? It’s not like the things I’m brewing are less effective.”

“Of course it matters. This is a huge difference; we can’t just chalk it up to a calculation error. It’s our job to figure out this sort of thing!”

Jude was getting worked up, so it was no use trying to brush it off. I had no choice but to put a pause on my other work and go along with his investigation.

“I use the same type and amount of ingredients as everyone else,” I said. “And I follow the same steps. I suppose the only difference is the person making it.”

“Yeah…” Jude looked contemplative.

“Do you think there might be something strange about my magic…?”

“Or is it that you imbue your potions with more magic than usual?”

“Hm. I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think I do.”

“Honestly, from what I can tell while watching you work, I don’t think you do, either.”

For a potion to become more potent, it was generally necessary to add more herbs, up the amount of magic used, or alter the ratio of ingredients. However, within the bounds of the standard recipe, even these adjustments wouldn’t lead to an efficacy increase of more than a few percent. They certainly wouldn’t explain a whole fifty percent.

The process itself was also too simple to introduce any real variation. At most, you might be able to imbue boiling water with magic before adding the herbs. The usual procedure, where magic was added during the boiling process, had been deemed the most efficient, but it didn’t have any effect on potency.

Jude and I made sure to test all these hypotheses nevertheless, making several additional potions with as many variations as we could think of.

“Magical power has an elemental component, right? Could that have made an impact?” I asked.

“I don’t really think so.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“If there were an effect, we would see a difference in potency when a potion is made by someone without Magic skills.”

Among Battle skills were Magic skills, which included a variety of elemental types. Practical Magic wasn’t counted among those skills, and in order to differentiate, people with Battle skills in Magic were called mages. I thought the magic of someone with such skills might naturally have certain elemental attributes, but Jude made it sound like that wasn’t the case.

“Maybe you’re adding something other than your magic?” Jude offered.

“Something like what?”

“Hmm, I’m not really sure myself.” He took a long hard look at my hands and then chuckled. Between that and his expression, I knew he was just joking. Lately, he had started cracking wise like this more often, even while we were in the middle of other discussions. He sighed. “But why in the world is this happening to your potions?”

We were back to square one.

“Well, I guess all we can do is keep testing it,” I said. “Like you said, it’s our job to find out the reason, right?”

“Ha ha! Yeah, I suppose I did.”

Even with those discouraging initial roadblocks, Jude and I continued to brew potions under increasingly imaginative conditions. That was how I spent my peaceful days in the research institute.

 

***

 

“Stats.”

 

Sei Takanashi – Level 55/Saint

HP: 4,867/4,867

MP: 5,867/6,067

Battle Skills

Holy Magic: Level ∞

Production Skills

Pharmaceuticals: Level 21

 

In the three months since my summoning, I had brought my Pharmaceuticals skill up to Level 21 just by making potions. The grade of your work went up every ten levels, so I could now make high-grade HP potions. But I still messed up a lot, and because high-grade potions required the use of a large quantity of rare herbs, I wasn’t authorized to brew them on my own. I’d only made three since I passed Level 20.

However, there were vanishingly few people who could make high-grade potions, so it was an accomplishment in itself that I was able to. Apparently, until I arrived, no one at the research institute had the ability. Before, whenever they needed those potions for research, they had to make an order from somewhere else. Now that I was able to produce them at the institute, everyone was tremendously pleased about all the time and funds we were bound to save.

I was happy to help. After all, in order to level up your Pharmaceuticals skill, you needed to make more potions. Typically, the number of potions you could make in a day was limited, since you had to expend MP (you know, magical power) to do it, and you would eventually run out. Therefore, it inevitably took a considerable amount of time to level up. But me?

“Yet again, you’ve managed to brew a remarkable number of potions today,” Jude said.

“I have?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty unusual to be able to produce more than ten mid-grade potions in a single day.”

We took a moment to look at my long, long line of mid-grade HP potions neatly arranged in the storage cabinet. Just like my low-grade brews, they were uniformly fifty percent more effective than potions of any other origin.

According to our head researcher, Johan, my strange ability might even lead my mid-grade potions to be more effective than the high-grade variety.

Jude and I were still working day and night to try and find the reason for my abnormal creations. Even now, we didn’t have a clue, so we were starting to ask other researchers to inspect my potions, hoping they would find something we overlooked. We asked different people to analyze different specific elements, such as my brewing process, or the outcomes themselves. All the while, I continued to make potions and only potions. All day, every day.

One afternoon, just as I was finishing the last of about 150 low-grade potions I’d made that day, Jude approached me. “Wait, you’re still making those?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

That was when I finally learned there was an average number of potions anyone could make in a given day, which I supposed made sense, what with the finite MP problem. Not to mention, the amount of magic needed to properly imbue a potion increased with its grade. On average, medics, who specialized in brewing, could make one hundred low-grade potions or about ten mid-grade potions a day. Researchers averaged a bit fewer.

It was true that potion production made my MP decrease, but it was by such a negligible amount that I didn’t really think about it.

When I said as much, Jude pondered whether I was actually imbuing my potions or not, but when I checked my Stats, my MP was indeed decreasing. Besides, if I didn’t imbue them with magic, I just wound up with boiled herb soup.

Ultimately, Johan instructed me to prioritize research that would hone my abilities, so I wandered back over to making potions like usual. Buuut…it seemed I got a bit carried away. I ended up brewing more potions than we were able to use in research, so we wound up with a not insubstantial surplus.

We now had such an ample stock that we could make a tidy sum if we sold them at market. Unfortunately, since my potions were all fifty percent more effective than the regular sort, I was told we might create some problems if we tried to sell them all. We were stuck with the overstock.

“Oof. You made a ton again today. Johan’s going to be mad.”

“Once I get into the groove, I keep forgetting to count how many I’ve already made,” I apologized. This was a teensy white lie. My goal was to reach a high enough level that I could start producing high-grade HP potions without any restrictions, and for that, well, I needed to make more potions.

This ambition might have already caused some problems. Just the other day, Johan complained we were running low on herbs since I kept using up what we harvested from the garden.

I didn’t like getting yelled at, so I came up with the brilliant idea to hide today’s extra supply in my room. However, right when I snuck over to take some of the day’s new potions out of the storage cabinet, the door to the institute flung open with a bang.

When I turned, I saw a soldier breathing heavily.

“Where’s the head researcher?” the soldier shouted as he staggered into the research institute.

I wordlessly pointed toward Johan’s office and the man pelted toward it.

What in the world?

A few moments later, Johan and the soldier rushed right back out.

“We have an emergency. Gather all the recovery potions—every last one.” Johan, who always wore an unflappable smile on his face, looked shaken as he gave the order.

“What happened?” asked a researcher standing nearby.

“The Knights of the Third Order just returned from the Ghoshe Forest. They were attacked by a salamander. Many were injured, and they don’t have enough healing supplies.”

The Third Order had been dispatched to the forest west of the capital on a monster-slaying expedition. Apparently, they had sustained terrible damage and were now in need of our help.

With a clash and clatter, everyone emptied their drawers and shelves of potions, depositing their supplies on the desk nearest to the entrance. Jude and I brought armfuls from the storage cabinet as well.

“You have this many?!” The soldier couldn’t help staring at the steadily growing sea of vials on the desk.

Well, we have kind of been stockpiling them recently.

Once we emptied the cabinet, I remembered the high-grade HP potions hidden in my room and dashed off to get those, too. When I returned, it looked like our work area had been scraped clean of its stores, and the next job was to load up the cart waiting outside the door.

“Some of you go with them.” At Johan’s instruction, the researchers closest to the door clambered into the cart.

High-grade potions in hand, I jumped into the cart as well. The horse set off at a brisk pace, and then there was nothing to do but wait. I asked Jude, who was beside me, “So there was a dragon in the Ghoshe Forest?”

“A dragon? No, nothing like that.”

“But isn’t a salamander a fiery sort of dragon?”

“Huh? Not quite. A salamander is just a fire-breathing lizard.”

Wasn’t that more or less the same thing? I couldn’t get the image of a great flaming dragon out of my head. “I just can’t believe a lizard could cause that much damage.”

“Well, it’s a pretty big lizard. It’s also incredibly fast. It may not be a genuine dragon, but it’s still a high-ranking monster.”

“I see.” With Jude’s description, my mental image of a salamander changed into something like a ten-meter Komodo dragon.

In either case, since this creature could breathe fire and move at high speed, I was absolutely confident that if I ever had to stand off against one…I would freeze on the spot and give up all hope of surviving.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how terrifying it was for the knights to have to fight such a powerful monster. At last, the cart drew to a halt in front of a building at a far corner of the royal palace grounds.

A battlefield awaited us inside.

“How awful…” I murmured.

Jude was silent.

Normally, this was a reception room, but now it was filled with the grievously injured lying on the ground while doctors and nurses rushed between them. The groans of the salamander’s wounded victims filled the air.

From the grim cacophony, I heard a doctor shout, “Are those potions here yet?!”

Until this moment, I had been so carefree about living in the palace, then the institute, and with my meticulous potion-making. Now, my mind just stopped and I became rooted to the spot, stupefied by the horror.

Johan, who had led us in, clapped his hands. “Distribute the potions! You two, over there! Jude and Sei, hand them out on that side.”

“Yes, sir!” we said in unison.

I scooped up an armful of potions and began passing them to the doctors. They were stationed by the most severely wounded, and the second I handed over a vial, they administered the contents to their patients.

On account of the shortage, the doctors began with distributing low-grade HP potions to the severely wounded. The injured knights would have been able to make complete recoveries with mid-grade HP potions, but without enough of those on hand, the doctors knew something was better than nothing. For now, they had to stabilize those on the brink of death.

“What in the world?!” a doctor cried out in surprise.

She had just applied a potion to her patient, whose skin had been shredded by the salamander’s claws and whose breath was haggard. Yet now her patient’s wounds had completely vanished. Their eyes flew open as their pain evaporated, and they gingerly checked their body. Every single scratch was gone; even the color had returned to their face.

“That was a low-grade potion, wasn’t it…?” The doctor held up the empty vial to inspect it.

It was admittedly difficult to discern the grade of a potion once you had already used it up. I knew what was going on, but I kept it to myself. The doctor had indeed used a low-grade HP potion, but it wasn’t just any brew—it was one I had made. In other words, it was fifty percent more effective and therefore behaved more like a mid-grade potion.

I scurried away to dole out more potions before the doctor could ask me anything further. As I went, I heard other doctors and nurses voice their bewilderment, but I did my best to keep my head down.

Right now, I was focused on getting my potions into the hands of those who needed them.

“Do we have any high-grade HP potions?” someone called from the back of the room.

I looked in the direction of the voice to find a huddle of doctors and knights.

Were they the ones who called out just now?

I still had a mid-grade potion, so I hurried to bring it over. As I got closer, I heard more of their nervous debate.

“This will be a challenge even with a high-grade potion. Isn’t there anyone who can use Healing Magic?”

“Even if they could, they’d have to be at least Level 4.”

“What about the Saint? Can’t she use Level 4 Healing Magic?”

“Prince Kyle forbade us from subjecting the Saint to such horrible sights,” an official apologized.

“What? That’s absurd!” snapped a knight.

By Kyle, they meant the rude, redheaded crown prince who looked like he’d go bald in the future.

I admit, the wounds of the grievously injured were gruesome to behold without anything to censor them. I had a relative tolerance for the sight from watching slasher movies, but the scene was by no means easy to look at. I did my best to avert my eyes as I passed out my potions. Sweet little Aira, though, would most likely have fainted upon seeing something like this.

The knight who lashed out at the official was undoubtedly a friend of the patient in dire need. I couldn’t tell the severity of their wounds because of the crowd, but they were clearly in an awful state if even a high-grade HP potion wouldn’t guarantee their recovery.

Once I was close, I realized Johan was among the gathered. When he noticed me, he said, “Sei! Do we have any high-grade HP potions?”

“If you do, then please, give it to the knight commander!”

When I turned in the direction of the person who had spoken, doctors and nurses burst into a flurry of movement.

It seemed the patient’s condition had taken a sudden turn for the worse. I pushed my way through the crowd to reach them.

As I drew closer, I discovered the upper-right half of the patient’s body was scorched to a crisp. He was covered in deep gashes as well, including one so broad that it was surely a miracle he was still alive. His ragged breathing began to weaken.

“Step aside!” I pushed past a doctor to get a closer look at the injured man. He clearly didn’t have many more breaths left in this world. I swiftly extracted one of the high-grade HP potions I had stuffed in my apron pocket, popped out the cork, and brought it to his lips.

“Drink!” I pleaded.

Slowly but surely, his blackened lips parted, and he gulped it down. Everyone, the doctors, nurses, knights, and officials, watched with bated breath.

I don’t know how long it took—time sort of stopped for me somewhere—but once the patient finished the whole vial, his head fell back on his pillow. There, bit by bit, his charred black skin peeled and flaked away, revealing perfectly whole and healed skin beneath. His breathing eased and didn’t stop, like I had feared—instead, he fell into a gentle sleep.

I sighed with relief from the stress of it all, and cheers broke out around me.