The Potion

The Age of Creluan (C.A.) Year 530

Castle of Oda

Seventh Kingdom of Ard

The Alchemist hunched over a wooden workbench set in a damp, dark chamber of gray stone in a castle. The chamber was lit by sconces holding flickering, blue flames, permeating the space with a ghostly light. Upon shelves that lined the walls of the room, wood peeling from age and use, lay various shaped and sized glass bottles and jars, holding gold and silver and crimson liquids, dustings of rust colored iron or sky colored copper, or round metallic, silver balls of mercury. Various instruments and contraptions, odd in shape, lay scattered about on the uneven floor or wooden work benches. Rolled parchment lay cluttered beside ink bottles and feather quills. Sharp scents, a remnant of the various alchemy ingredients, mingled, bitter like sage, sweet like strawberries, sterile like a hospital ward. Silence hung thick in the air, interrupted only by the occasional echoes of footsteps passing through the hallway without. 

            The Alchemist was past youth, but had not yet reached middle years. He had small, sharp eyes set in a round face, framed by a thin mustache and tangled, unkept hair, both dark in shade. Hunched over an odd, curved, glass contraption, he held a quill in his mouth, his brows furrowed in deep concentration. Almost there. He thought.

            The glass contraption he worked upon was a curved tube like a swan’s neck, with a circular opening facing the air, and two small openings besides like those on a flute. The two openings were attached to glass vials, one containing clear, clean water and the other small round silver beads. The far end of the swan shaped glass tube held a large, glass, round-bottom flask, where a bluish, boiling liquid was slowly pooling, growing. The contraption was set over a small fire, and the glass glowed orange.

            Almost there.

            Excitement tinged the young Alchemists veins. With this, his King could win the war. That bluish potion pooling into the round bottom flask, dripping down the swan neck sides like blood, was the key. With this potion, King Adad of the Seventh Kingdom of Ard could power his Machine of Doom. All those of other Kingdoms of Ard, men and women of lesser status, would finally know their place. Those sneer-worthy people of dirty blood would have to bow to King Adad and the Seventh Kingdom of Ard, otherwise known as the nation of Ayrsya - the greatest, most glorious, best of the seven Kingdoms of the Land of Ard.

            A glimmer of fervor entered the Alchemists eyes as he dreamed of the glory of his people, and the role he would play in it. For centuries, they would remember his name- the name of the Alchemist of King Adad, who created the potion that won the War.

C.A. Year 533

The Land of Dying Soldiers

Fourth Kingdom of Ard.

To the Major General, Ramir Montroig

            I will keep my words brief. A horror has come upon us: The Seventh Kingdom has a new, deadly weapon –Their Mages release it, and it comes at us as a bluish gas. When the gas comes into contact with our soldiers, their skin boils and bloody, blistering welts appear. More, it chokes the soldier. He cannot breathe. He dies like he were drowning. Though the enemy introduced it less than a fortnight past, several hundreds of soldiers have succumbed to it. The Healers on the battlefront hospital are baffled. Our Mages neither understand it. Our Alchemists are hurriedly working to learn its workings. Healer Ignasio recommends masks as a precaution, though he is hesitant to dare hope it will work. I implore you to send aide to the front. We are in dire need.

Signed,

First Lieutenant

Alexandre Emel Caldes.

C.A. Year 535

Hall of Peace

Seven Kingdoms Center Circle

Transcript by Hung Lan.

Transcript begins.
Queen An-Min Tien of the First Kingdom approaches the podium centered in a great colosseum. The Queens Guard, wearing the Royal Livery, line the great arc of the colosseum. People of all the Lands of Ard stand row after row, eagerly anticipating the Queen’s speech.

            Today, my friends, we celebrate a great victory. The Long war is over. For long years, brothers and sisters have fought, maimed, and killed fellow brothers and sisters of Ard. For long years we have faced the evils of the human heart, struggled against the evils of our own hearts. We have fought against the evils of the human mind. The human mind, brilliant, clever, cunning, capable of great good, but capable of great harm. This we have seen, the War machines on the battle fronts, some of our enemies making, some, I regret, of our own. Much blood has been shed, many lives ended, by this evil. Even the Land of Ard has not escaped it. Fields of green, rolling hills now barren landscapes of ash. It would have been easier to dismiss Hope a fool’s dream.  

            But Hope is not a dream only for fools. Hope did not abandon us. Yes, long years we have fought, we have bleed, we have died. Why did we do so?

            We fought for Hope. We fought for the Peace of the Lands of Ard. We fought for the Freedom and Justice for all the Peoples who live with it. We fought to stand here now, and proclaim, with ringing voices, these words ‘Justice prevailed’!

A great applause erupts from the crowded rows. 

Transcript ends .

C.A. Year 547

City of Markis

Fifth Kingdom of Ard

            Rafael kneaded the dough in the dark kitchen, lit only by faint pre-dawn light and a single lantern. He was a small, round man of the early-middle years with dark, curly hair. The kitchen held two wood-fire ovens of clay, a long wooden table, and three doors – one leading to the storefront, one to the alley, and the smallest one to a pantry, where laid sacks of flour and sugar. Many iron pots, clay bowls, and ladles hung from ceiling beams.

            A surge of shouts from the alley, followed by the crack of a whip, made Rafael wince. Another of the poor and hungry trying to steal from his storage. The whip would have been the hired guards doing. Rafael disliked them. Big, beefy men with little eyes and smaller brains, they were more thugs than guards. Still, it was a necessity now-a-days. The War only a little more than a decade past, had left many crop lands ruined. Followed by an increase in the population, the city where Rafael lived had surged in size from refugees whose cities were ash, or soldiers returning home to awaiting lovers - left too little food for too many people. Flour prices had, too, increased astronomically. As such, Rafael had been forced to nearly double the prices of his baked goods. Any less, and he would have to close shop.

            Too little food. Inflation. Too many people in too small a space. The growing unease, the restless rumbling of the masses, was not a surprise. It felt too much like the nights before a coming battle. Rafael remembered those only too well - waiting in the barracks, unable to sleep, stirring bodies, whispers.

            Rafael placed the dough aside, and limped over to the pantry.  His left leg had never been the same since the Long War. He had been one of the lucky ones, injured by Mages’ shrapnel in his second battle, he had remained three months in the Healers care in the Wards. By the time the Healer cleared him for duty, the Long War was over. Only two battles did he fight in, but the nightmares plagued him. His elder brother, Dario, though, was not as lucky. He lost his right hand all together, and, when the war ended, lost himself to the taverns with other veterans who wished only to forget in the whiskey what they had seen. Dario had died three years ago to Whiskey’s Slow Death, as it was called, leaving Rafael to care for his widowed wife and four young children.

            As dawn turned to morning, the shouting in the streets grew louder. Not just in the alley behind Rafael’s bakery. The city’s restless rumbling, a buzz like those of angry bees, saturated every street and corner. The Long War. Now Famine.

            Rafael sighed as he limped over to tend the fire in the ovens, and then on to open shop for the day.

C.A Year 593

Land of Rolling Hills

Second Kingdom of Ard

            The farmer sat before the Mage who spoke in the middle of the pavilion. The farmer, called Mahnisha by his friends, had a square, textured face with a large, bent nose and larger ears like those of a bat. The Pavilion he sat in was large, a white cloth erected on nine poles, eight which made a square, and the ninth center fold. Woven, colorful rugs of wool and many sizes blanketed the earth as a floor. Outside the pavilion lay rolling hills of an ashy gray complex beneath a pink dawn. The Hills once held many acres of farming land, growing rye and corn and wheat. Now those endless fields were only littered with the bones of growing thing, ashy, flakey stalks which disintegrated like a moth’s wing when touched by a breeze.

            Beside Mahnisha, listening as he did to the Mage’s speech, sat like-wise gaunt faced and emaciated men and women in the simple attire of farmers and crop-tenders. The Mage wore a blue robe embroidered with silver, and small bells lined the hems, so each step was accompanied by a tinkle like that of a fairy’s laugh. His hood was down, and his face was that of an older, handsome man. In his hand he held a glass bottle with a bluish liquid.

            The Mage droned on and on. Farmer Mahnisha did not care for the Mage’s words. He wished the man would finish his long-winded speech. The history and beginnings of the blue liquid that the Mage held up Mahnisha cared not for. His only thought was for his empty belly. If the blue potion would help the crops grow, so be it. What did it matter who made it and for what purpose when one was close to starvation?

            Suddenly, Prashant, a narrow faced man with a long nose and chin, lashed out, interrupting the Mage’s monotoned, memorized speech. “None of us won’t be puttin’ that poison in our crops, no we won’t. You think to trick us? We’re more clever than you Magic Folk. We know what that is. And we won’t have nuthin to do with it, we won’t.”

            Several of the emaciated Crop-growers nodded their heads, slowly, as if Prashant’s words were wisdom from the saints. Mahnisha grounded his teeth. His empty stomach hurt. If someone was to cause trouble, it would be Prashant. He wished the man’s wife would sew his lips together almost as much as he wished the Mage would finish his speech and be done with it.

            Hira, a small, thin woman who sat two rows behind Prashant, shouted, “Keep your mouth shut, Prash. Stick to what you know, which is growin’ wheat and rye, and let the Magic Folk do what they know.”

            The Mage cleared his throat, intending to continue his monologue, but Prashant shouted, “The Magic Folk work with the Alchemists, and them I don’t trust, and you shouldn’t neither, Hira. They made that potion there to kill us all.”

            “No, no.” The Mage finally protested, his voice had gone high and squeaky. “You are mistaken, my good sir. This potion, while I cannot deny has an ugly past, has been modified by the Alchemists Ziemowit and Alfonso, of the third and fourth kingdoms. All the kingdoms are in a dire circumstance. The Famine grows day by day. This potion will assist in the growing of wheat and rye by…”

            Farmer Mahnisha sighed, rubbing his large nose. The Mage had begun a detailed explanation of the how’s and why’s of the potion’s workings. He didn’t really care much for it. Chandra did. Eyes eager, she sat rod straight as a corn stalk. She was a bright young woman – much sharper than the weeds for brains Prashant- and Mahnisha always thought it a shame her parents hadn’t sent her to the Academy. But hands were needed for farming.

            “He’s lyin’” Prashant yelled, interrupting once more, his narrow, emaciated face turning purple. “That potion there killed my grandda, it did, when my da was just a boy and he was fightin in the War. It came on him, and my grandma, workin’ with a Healer in the Hospital ward, saw ‘em come in covered in welts like he’d been stung by a hundred wasps, and chockin’ like he’d fallen face first dead drunk in a puddle. She was there when he died. She saw it kill ‘em.”

            Murmurs of disquiet ran through the seated farmers. Mahnisha scowled. It was likely true a potion killed Prashant’s grandda. A potion killed his own great-grandda in the War, too. Still, why couldn’t the man stay quiet? Why couldn’t the man listen to Chandra, who was trying with great concern to show him the logic of the Mage’s reasoning. If they didn’t trust this Mage and their King and their King’s advisors, if they didn’t trust their own Chandra, who seemed to understand what the Mage was sayin’, and if they didn’t use the potion on the crops, as the Mage was asking of them, then they and their children and their grandchildren would all die of hunger.

            He frowned at his bony arms and legs. Middle aged as he was, if he were well-fed, they should have been strong limbs like trunks of cottonwood trees. Instead, they were as thin as reeds in a playa.

            The Mage strained to re-establish order. Mahnisha remained quiet, too weary to join the clamor of discontent. Worn thin and tired, the farmer desperately hoped this potion would work as the Mage claimed it would.

C.A. Year 629

Bluffs of Morherian

Sixth Kingdom of Ard

            The two girls played in the fields by the cottage. One was of dark skin and hair, and the other fair. An old man, gray of hair with brown, leathery skin, sat on the cottage’s porch, watching the girls play. Besides the wild grassland the girls played in were many-fold fields of wheat, gold in the setting sun. Behind the cottage, facing North, lay long, jagged cliffs that ran down and down to meet a turbulent, gray sea.

            Pate, the old man, watched the young girls tumble in the fields. He listened to the waves crashing against rock wall, like a giant’s pounding fist. It was a peaceful day.

            Only Pate and his two girls, grandchildren of his deceased son, lived on these lonely shores. Pate preferred it that way. He was old and tired and had seen too much. The golden fields were peaceful, though, as was the sea.

            As he sat on the porch, watching the girls play, he thought through the years of his life.

            A breeze shifted, bringing with it the scent of salt, and the golden fields rippled within it like the ocean’s tide. One of the girls tripped and fell, scrapping her knee and elbow against the hard dirt. The other exclaimed, concerned, but the girl laughed, a sound of pure happiness, of contentment to be in the sun, to feel the wind on one’s face, to breathe in the salty sea-air, and to live.

            The past weighed heavy upon the old man’s shoulders.  How could it not? In his veins, he carried the blood of men and women who sought to conquer the world through violence and oppression, and also the blood of men and women who fought for freedom. His bones remembered the bones of men and women who turned away those in need, and the bones of men and women who gave all they had until nothing remained. In his blood and in his bones lived both.            

            But one of the children was reaching a hand to help the other up. The past did not weigh on their shoulders as it did his. He lived his best to make sure it stayed that way. Why should those young children carry his regrets? They would find, in time, regrets of their own. But they would also reach out a hand to help those in need. And perhaps, just perhaps, they would create a better world.