Chương 17: Of Flasks and Flashbacks

There it was, just as he'd hoped. It was resting in one corner, covered in dust and the detritus of the foul bugs that had occupied this place before Merlyn had turned them into scraps of gore and shell. It was just a pile of equipment, but it represented something huge in Elias' ability to put a dent in this new world that he'd found himself in.

"Find what you were looking for in there?" Fiona called from the doorway.

"Oh yeah, I found it alright," he called back.

"Just give me a few minutes, would you?"

"Take all the time you need, buddy. I'm still trying to make up my mind about this next skill point." He wanted to jump for joy, but he restrained himself as only a man of science could. Instead, he cleared his throat and leaned in. An alchemy bench. Here it was at last. A humble assortment of flasks, of the type one might have found in any rudimentary lab. The Erlenmeyer, the Florence, the Volumetric. Elias delighted in the different glass shapes, recalling them all from his life's work.

Standing here and looking at this accoutrement of science brought back a stirring of all sorts of memories. Memories that seemed to take him.

Thirty-five-year-old Elias Thorne sat swiveling on a bench in a very loud and very busy doctor's office. He was full of nervous energy, watching the nurses walk through on their way here and there. It was a busy place, and he had plenty of reason to feel nervous. To distract himself, he played guessing games about the other strangers in the waiting room, as he sometimes did when out in public. There was one nurse he liked in particular, with black hair and deeply tanned skin.

Seeing her pass once in a while helped put his mind at ease. If only slightly. He wondered absently about her life, what she might do when she wasn't here. What were her hobbies? Did she have a dog?

"Mr. Thorne," said a stern, male voice. It interrupted his fantasy so completely he had to blink a few times to focus on the man speaking to him. Elias looked up and saw a tall fellow with a white coat. Dr. Smith, it read on the lapel. The man seemed to have gone to great lengths to be as nondescript as possible, with a clean-shaven face and very spartan frames for his glasses.

"If you'd follow me." Elias started feeling even more nervous about halfway down the corridor. What doctor brought patients out of the waiting room themselves, instead of sending someone? But that wasn't the only reason this Dr. Smith put him ill at ease. Even with a background in the sciences, something about doctors had always made Elias nervous. And he knew that whatever had called him here, it was likely not very good news.

When Elias finally did enter the office and saw his father sitting there in the patient chair, his anxiety ratcheted up another few degrees.

"Pops?" he said. The old man blinked his bright blue eyes.

"They got you, too?" he asked.

"God no."

"Where are your glasses?" Elias demanded.

"What happened?"

"Have a seat," the doctor said, gesturing him to another chair. Elias did as he'd been told, though he did feel like this bedside manner was a bit on the rough side. Elias' father became very still and very quiet, his eyes darting from wall to wall. It seemed he wouldn't say anything else. The old man looked around at the clean, sterile walls of the room as if he was searching for something he'd misplaced. Like he was also wondering what strange set of circumstances had brought him here.

"I'm Dr. Smith, as you probably gathered from my name tag here. I specialize in—""OK. What's going on?" The doctor sighed. That was when Elias realized it must be even worse than he'd imagined.

"I understand your father was a war hero of some kind. Is that true?" Elias paused, holding his breath. He was waiting for something, certain that this was the point where his father would proudly interject. Would say the type of thing he usually said. Something about how the real heroes were buried in Arlington. But he said nothing.

"Yes," was all Elias could manage to squeak out.

"He served with distinction. Two tours. It was a long time ago. But we are all very proud. But that's not all he is. He's also a man of science, and a fine chess player." You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. Elias smiled, but no one else did. The doc cleared his throat, looking suddenly very uncomfortable.

"There was … an incident today. At the grocery store on Burgundy Street." Elias could feel something tighten inside him. Like a type of vise grip on his heart.

"What happened? Is everything alright?"

"Your father … have you noticed anything different about him lately?" Elias thought hard about it, immediately realizing that he, in fact, had been noticing a multitude of changes in the old man over the last month or so. Confusion. Distraction. Less time spent fiddling with his flasks and his chemicals. Moments where he seemed to panic over shadows in the corners of the room. The leery eyes he would make at the new mailman, Postman Kim.

Times when he'd find his father sitting at the kitchen table, late at night, with no lights on and not so much as a glass of milk in front of him. Just that blank stare. The same stare he wore now, in fact. That damned empty stare. The doctor seemed to gather the answer to his question without the need for these details. The gist must have been plain from Elias' expression.

"Well, the good news is, this is a field I happen to specialize in," said the doctor.

"Degenerative diseases of the brain, you see." He seemed much more pleased about it than appropriate. That particular string of words sent a chill running up Elias' spine. Maybe he'd already known in his heart, but he didn't want to hear it from the smug man in his white coat. It seemed too cruel, somehow. Elias' father was a brilliant man. A scholar. A hero.

A man of such daring and competence that the idea he could become subject to the same laws of atrophy as everyone else—it was too preposterous to even discuss. And then came the MRI images. The doctor flipped his monitor around so that both of them could see.

"If you'd just direct your attention here," said the doctor, pointing at a brain image on his screen.

The memories of Elias' old life seemed to fade just as fast as they'd come. Here he was, staring down at this dusty alchemy bench in this darkened hovel in the middle of an unknowable jungle. His spirit wolf was rooting around in the remains of giant bugs.

"I can do this," he said, quietly to himself.

"I can make the best move on the board." Here was an arena where he had great stores of confidence. He reached out and began to fiddle with all of the instrumentation on the alchemy bench, finding it even more natural than he might have anticipated. There was something quite comforting in the heft of the flasks, in the small fire he got started beneath a cauldron with the flint and steel provided. He could hear Fiona stepping into the room now, kicking aside the bug remains and humming a tune to herself.

"You want to hear my new song?" she asked. She suddenly sounded very chipper, and Elias couldn't help but find it a tad contagious.

"Sure. That might be helpful while I work," he said.

"What does it do?" Without any further warning Fiona began to shriek like a banshee with a hernia. It was one of the most discordant, off-putting tunes that Elias had ever heard, like the soundtrack to an eighties slasher flick turned up to eleven. He grasped at his ears. It was certainly a rude reaction, but he couldn't quite help himself. Fiona's eyes filled with mischievous glee. The bug corpses, which were liberally spread out around the alchemy shop, reacted to the song as well.

It seemed they began to rapidly decompose. There was no other way to describe it. Several of them desiccated like grapes left out in the sun. Others made disturbing, squishy noises before curling up into fragments of their former selves.

"OK, OK! I get the gist!" Elias shouted. He still had his hands over his ears and was nearly hunched over from the sound of it. She stopped. There was a smile on her face that was barely holding in the laughter.

"Not a fan?" she snickered.

"That's alright. I doubt it will ever make the charts, but it is going to come in really useful if we get swarmed again. Just wait and see."

"I can hear that," he said, smiling back at her. He was unable to help himself, even if he worried that his ears might have started to bleed. He turned back to the bench, though he could hear her crunching the desiccated bugs underfoot as she approached him.

"What have you got here that is so fascinating?" she asked.

"It is an alchemy bench. I've been looking for one. My crafting skill tree is in alchemy, not sure if I mentioned that before."

"Explains a lot," she said, with her nose turned upwards.

"You're not going to blow us up by any chance, are you?"

"Well … blowing things up is actually kind of the plan," he replied, stoking the fire a little bit and preparing some of the ingredients in his pack: namely, the charge lichen.

"I need oil," he said.

"You wouldn't happen to have any, would you?"

"Umm …" she said, "No. But, if I'm not mistaken, almost every living thing produces oil of some kind. It is just a matter of extracting it."

"Can you do a thing like that?" he asked her over his shoulder.

"I would think that would be a job for an alchemist. My crafting line is inscribing. I haven't even used it yet. Not entirely sure what it does, if I'm being honest." Elias rubbed his chin. Merlyn had already found himself a clean spot under the alchemy bench and curled up. He was snoring and seemed to be battling more monsters in his dreams, judging by the way his front two paws clawed at the air.

"Bring us one of those roaches, would you?" She didn't seem terribly fond of the idea, by the look on her face.

"The ones you didn't dry out with that horrible song." She shrugged, unenthusiastically making her way towards the juiciest pile of bug corpses. She plucked up a particularly moist one and slung it over onto Elias' alchemy table where it landed with an upsetting squish. Her intuition seemed to be correct. The dead bug was already oozing a kind of oil. Elias found himself prodding the corpse, letting some of that oil ooze into one of the flasks.

You have unlocked a new hidden Alchemist perk - Oil Processing - Can derive different oils from the corpses of dead enemies. #"Well, that is certainly useful. Alright, I think we are in business now," he said to Fiona, who seemed to have taken off outside for some fresh air. He couldn't say he blamed her. At least Merlyn didn't seem to mind much. Elias spent some time playing around, before he focused in on the two recipes he knew he could complete at the moment. The first, a basic bomb.

With quick movements he combined the bug oil with the charge lichen and slowly stirred it for a few moments in one of the flasks. Once it began to bubble, he drained it into a vial with some bits of stone he found scattered around, smiling in satisfaction. # You have crafted a basic bomb # He rubbed his hands together. It finally felt like he was cooking with gas.