Chương 10: The... witchiest?

We stood in front of a door, red and rectangular, old like the rest in this house.

"Clem, this is the door to your basement," I said.

"I've been down there a dozen times."

"Not in this one, you haven't," Clem sang in a sing-song voice, opening the door, then closing it, then opening and closing it two more times. Then something changed. My hair stood on end as the air filled with the biting smell of chemicals and oils.

"There we go. Welcome to the basement between basements." The door opened one final time and I goggled at the sprawling workshop underground. Simmering cauldrons were set next to a DIY distillery next to powertools, collections of kitchenware, and bundles of wood. Sacks of yellow grass and some sort of flower bud were stacked in one corner. A set of five smoothiemakers sat abandoned on top of a cutaway of a tree stump five times as wide as it was tall.

A pair of gnomes looked at us from where they were stirring a number of smaller cauldrons, beards stained in greens and yellows. My mouth hit the floor, arms going slack. The gnomes stared for a brief moment before going back to work.

"You… what? You had this down here all this time and I didn't even — what? How?" This wasn't just a little potion making operation, this was a whole factory floor!

"My parents are very good at keeping the family business strictly within the family," she said.

"You're part of magic society now, so I'm sure they won't mind me giving you a peek."

"What about me?" Akira pointed at himself. Clem pursed her lips.

"I'm sure indiscretion is preferable over allowing you to liquify. And I'm pretty certain I gave enough signals that I'm not exactly normal?"

"I thought you were just really into edibles," he muttered.

"And roleplay." Okay, this was getting a bit too spicy for me.

"Clem, what do you need for an antidote?"

"Oh, ten milliliters of moth tears, some mandragora extract, and blue spirit grass. Just some normal things. Oh snap, we're all out of moth tears."

"Ah. Of course." I watched her rummage through cupboards filled with assorted bottles, jugs, and tupperware boxes filled with the oddest plants. Most were dried up in one piece, gnarled roots and spiky fruits sitting next to red pickled pickles and a jar of blueberries. One of them grew an eye and blinked at me. I quickly turned around and looked decidedly anywhere else.

"So, you're a witch."

"That's what I said, yes."

"And that means you do… witchy stuff?"

"I don't curse people or turn them into frogs," she said in a deadpan voice.

"Not that I even could. Learning spells takes sacrifice. I've barely got a single cantrip down after practicing it for three years."

"Is it because you're lazy?" I asked.

"... n-no." Akira leaned in towards me.

"It totally is." Meanwhile, all I had to do was get an essence from dead mimics and suddenly I had magic. I looked around.

"You're selling these things in the System Shop, I assume?"

"Eh, we prefer to deal in person. The shop takes a ridiculous cut for alchemical products and— hold up." She whirled around to face me, blonde curls whipping my chest.

"You're a Custodian."

"Yes?"

"You can buy things in the shop, right?"

"... theoretically? I'm kinda broke. I have, like, four soulcoins left." Clem clicked her tongue.

"Moth tears cost six per thimble." She chewed her nails. Akira grabbed her hand and gently rescued the abused fingernails from her vicious nibbling. It would've been cuter if the act didn't leave a string of goo arcing between their hands.

"If it is my fate to die by slimefication," he asked in a stoic voice, "could you at least record it for science?"

"You're not going to die, you'll just become more viscous," she mumbled.

"Would you still be my boyfriend if that happened?"

"I think anyone would reconsider their relationship if their partner turned them into a slime," Akira muttered.

"Would you still be my girlfriend if I was a blob of slime?" Clem groaned and grabbed a purple potion from a rack of finished goods next to a couple of bone-white machines made of… white bones. Dang, they had an industrial mixer and an autoclave in here too. High tech stuff. Clem practically pushed a potion into my hands. It was pink and syrupy, with little bubbles resting in the liquid. On a closer look, the bubbles were heart-shaped.

"Sam, I need you to sell this in the shop and then buy the ingredients I need from the profits."

"I sure can try. What is it?"

"Lover's potion derivative. Personal project of mine. It basically connects everyone who sips from it on a sensory level, inducing a sort-of temporary gestalt-state."

"Well. That is. Yup. That is something."

"I make them in my free time and I like to share it with the gnomes when we have a long work day ahead of us, but I also sell them as "love" potions to all kinds of people. If they happen to be the kind who would spike someone's drink, then Boom, suddenly the victim knows exactly who did it, as well as when, how, and why."

"... or, hear me out, you could just sell it to lovers. Y'know, as the name implies." Clem blinked at me, her mouth opening and closing. She turned to regard the potion with an intensely furrowed brow. I decided not to question her thought process and instead opened up a vendor account on the System Shop before putting the potion in. It was maybe three cups of liquid, and it didn't have a combat application, so it was worth, what, ten soulcoins?

The moment I put it up for that amount I was inundated with requests to buy it in my head.

"Ow, ow, ow! System, mute that damn ping sound." Clem gave me a questioning look. I took it out, then put it up for thirty. This time, the first ping came after half a minute. <<Still up for sale? >>"The price doesn't include VAT, or whatever this place has, but yes, it is," I typed and didn't bother raising the price any more. Akira was on somewhat of a time limit after all. With a sudden plop, the potion disappeared and I was thirty soulcoins richer. Damn, potions were profitable stuff.

"There goes a month of work and a year's allowance," Clem muttered as she mixed the other ingredients.

"If only I had time for a part-time job." I bought the things Clem asked for and after a few minutes, they arrived. My bestie measured the rations carefully before holding the vial over a lab burner for a few seconds until it turned clear. Then she turned to me.

"Yes?"

"I need your blood." She made pretty doe eyes at me.

"Please? It's for a good cause." Well, if you're asking this nicely… I sucked at the cut on my thumb after it was all done. She only needed a few drops, though I still wasn't clear why exactly she needed mine specifically. She placed the bottle in an ice bath that had appeared next to an electrical socket and wiped her brow.

"Alright. Now we wait for it to cool and then Akira gets to be human again." Despite saying it with conviction, Clem looked hella nervous. Akira just gave her an encouraging thumbs up. He was sitting in a claw-footed tub so we didn't lose any more of his bits.

"Sweet," he said, turning ever more viscous.

"I'm already looking forward to all the human activities I so dearly missed. Like leg day, or going to work, or filing taxes. Man, on second thought, maybe being a slime isn't so bad."

"You're surprisingly chill for being half a puddle," I commented.

"Honestly? I'm terrified, but what can I do? I do math and physics, she's the expert on when physics break." He shrugged.

"I'll find a way to pay her back for not warning me later. She's not the reason you have extra arms too, is she?" I batted one that was trying to pet one of the gnomes away.

"They're mostly self-inflicted."

"Good." There was an odd lull in the conversation.

"So what exactly is in the stuff I'm about to drink?" Clem lit up at that.

"Well, Mandragora extract is a key binder in stamina potions, awareness potions, potions of healing, sleep, arousal, and pretty much everything we manufacture. Blue spirit grass is a mental stimulant. Custodian blood is magically charged up the wazoo, so I put that in for an extra kick. And moth tears, well… it turns out our national defense budget also includes a sizable portion reserved for high-quality invisibility potions. My parents always use whatever we have to make those since they sell immediately.

That's why we didn't have any in stock." The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Invisibility potions." This time it was my turn to give her a deadpan stare.

"You sell invisibility potions to the US army."

"And the navy, and the airforce. Both like to mix it with their fighter jet lacquer to reduce their radar signature." For a moment, I imagined some poor technician watching his fighter jet turn partially invisible after forgetting to dilute the stuff. It was funny to imagine, but threw up a whole bunch of questions, such as how much interplay was there between The Society and the US government, or any mundane government really?

How many people had known that stuff like magical potions was real and couldn't tell because of one magical contract or another? There was definitely some interplay between secret and mundane worlds considering how information had to have been controlled extensively and meticulously for years, decades even to keep things a secret. And among all the things I'd seen so far, I was sure that you didn't need magic for that, just a control over trusted media, and a well-funded disinformation department.

You don't even have to do that much ever since deepfakes became actually good. After all, nobody could reasonably say any one bigfoot video was more real than any artificially generated one. Furthermore, what did a real video of bigfoot matter to the public when you could get a bunch of influencers to debunk it within days, and real experts within weeks? Most people don't bother to delve into anything that doesn't interest them beyond the headline; there were simply too many headlines out there.

By their nature, it only took a few words to obfuscate, edit, and write the new truth for people to skim, accept, and move on with their life. Still though. The amount of people who knew the secret was frightening. And the secret was frightening too. Magic was an unknown. It had dangerous applications. If I got a few dozen levels I'm pretty sure that I would become legitimately superhuman. I could do a lot of damage just by accidentally running into someone soft, squishy, and by comparison very, very breakable.

"So, how come nobody who is, say, a botanist, ever noticed these plants have all these unnatural characteristics?" I asked. Clem hummed, lifting the potion out of its ice bath, testing its temperature, then quickly retracting her finger and putting it back.

"An example: Cats hate it when unexpected objects appear in their periphery. They are hunters, they despise surprises. The natural predators of vampires are creatures made of geometric shapes, which is why crosses and other simple symbols cause the rabid ones distress. To the human mind, nothing is more terrifying than the unknown. As a defense mechanism, we each generate a model of how we perceive the world in our head, an inaccurate, but in-itself consistent one. The model is known, the model is safety.

And anything that threatens that model gets ignored, explained away ninety-nine percent of the time. The lights in the sky could be a seven-dimensional being attempting to lure people in high places towards a deadly dimensional fold. Or it could just be a UFO, an experimental army drone, a plane, or a balloon with blinking lights someone put up there as a prank. There are always easier, safer explanations. That is reason one.

""And reason two is because all botanists are witches?" I hedged. Clem smirked.

"No, don't be silly. Officially, there are no witches in the natural sciences. No, the second reason is this: The plants aren't by themselves magical, but they do interact with one of the core tenets of magic. That is the tenet of sacrifice." I sat down on a nearby stool, listening with rapt attention. This was getting interesting.

"All magic gains power when an object's intrinsic ability to exist in a certain way is restricted. Restriction doesn't create power, it frees power. A fireball, created after ISO 2035 standards, can fly for 120 feet and detonates with the force of 1 kilo of composition B explosives.

If you make your own fireball while following the exact blueprint, but limit it to only be able to fly 60 feet, some of the energy that could have been used for the other 60ft can be made to go into the explosive force, even if there is no real physical link between what fuels the one and what fuels the other. We call this a sacrifice of potential, though a sacrifice is just one type of restriction. That is why I asked for your blood, Sam.

Since Custodian magic infuses their bodies, the potential in every part becomes more tangible. Even though the potential uses of normal human blood are… dubious at best, sacrificing — aka restricting — the potential magic within Custodian blood allows me to boost any potion I make." I stared at Clem as the implications bounced the inside of my cranium.

"You're going to ask me for regular plasma donations, aren't you?"

"Only if you accept potions as payment," she said in a singsong voice.

"Deal."I leaned over to Akira.

"Your girlfriend's a genius, and she's got good business sense." He just grinned, proud as can be. I turned back to Clem.

"So, er, let's say you wanted to cover an entire city in a dome-shaped barrier."

"—which is a pretty insane, if you think about it. An entire city? The theoretical thaumatic cost is insane."

"Yes. Theoretically. Practically, if you'd want to make a barrier, you can make it stronger by making it one-way?" Clem nodded.

"And if you add exceptions to that restriction?"

"I mean, theoretically you could make a pretty hefty barrier that only blocks a single person from exiting it. I'm pretty sure some jails do that for their magically dangerous guests. Honestly, there are a million ways to make a barrier stronger or weaker. Exceptions and weak spots are both a favorite when crafting those." Weakspots?

"Like a giant, obvious generator sitting right outside one?"

"Or a single person who, if you were to remove them, would collapse the entire barrier. Bonus points if they're also a generator."

"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense." In an odd, twisted way. Custodians are the weak spots that make the creektin barrier-dome possible. It was the only logical conclusion. Even if any one of us got unceremoniously removed by a mimic, we'd be back soon enough to feed off of their power, which in turn fueled us and the barrier together. While we were at constant risk, we also boasted the largest concentration of firepower outside of a US military base. And to charge the dome for its original purpose, we have to get inside.

And we can't get out until we finish our business, or the barrier breaks. There's probably a way to get us and any present civilians out while we're busy charging the dome. Custodians couldn't be expected to blow themselves and everyone else up just to guarantee no containment break, right? Maybe we are. Maybe something worse happens if the barrier does fail. New task: Don't die at the same time as everyone else. Also, get some extra lives.

"I don't know how to feel about all this," I muttered.

"Lost? Surprised? Confusion is also quite prevalent when introducing yourself to the unknown." Clem shrugged.

"It's a lot to swallow." The two gnomes who were stirring a pot wiped their hands on their aprons and hopped off to eat a candy bar. My stomach grumbled. Right, it was almost time for lunch. Man, I kinda was looking forward to the brownies.

"So, Miss Wonka, do you pay your gnomes or is this one of those 'they love working' or 'they just get food' situations?" I whispered to Clem, who just looked at me with a face of affront.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Let me guess: Snacks and soulcoins?"

"And real dollars," Clem chirped.

"Buying mundane crap for soulcoins is such a waste."

"I suppose." It was incredibly convenient, though, even if I had to pay a whole soulcoin to teleport a bag of chips into my hands.

"Say, are there real souls in these coins?"

"Who knows?" Clem said.

"I'm a witch, not a philosopher." We left it at that. The potion was cool enough to drink when Clem poured it into Akira's mostly-intact mouth. His insides bubbled and fizzed like mentos in coke. The air filled with the sounds of bones cracking and snapping back into place. Then he was whole. He stepped out of the claw-footed tub looking squeaky clean and smelling of lavender.

"My beard is gone," he said after trying to scratch it.

"My hair!" Solidification side effects may include: hair loss.

"Welcome back to the land of solids, Mister Clean," I said and got an offended expression as a reward.

"Is everything back to normal?" Clem asked as she nearly stumbled over her own feet to check on him.

"I'm sorry, really! I'll make up for it, I swear." She got on her tippy toes and whispered something into his ears that got him to shut up.

"Really? That much?" She whispered some more.

"Two. Yes, the pink ones." I politely extricated myself from their little exchange of favors before I caught even more salacious tidbits. I always thought that I was too weird to ever get involved in a serious romance, but after watching Clem and Akira, maybe even someone like me had a chance. A second chance. After what happened with Becca and I… Ugh. Don't go there. Not now. I opened the red door and was immediately met with the scruffy face of a gnome.

"Mo!" he said, holding out his hand in greeting. It was the gnome I'd helped earlier. The patch was still visible underneath his shirt and his hat was still bent. He was alone, but not empty-handed. There was a backpack sitting right behind him, one with extra straps and cupholders. It was sized for a human, a rather tall, four-armed human.

"For me?" He stepped to the side, twiddling his thumbs as I took it in. It was sleek black, mixing designs and materials both modern and archaic. Some of the stuff was leather, other was a silky-soft cloth. The backside was rounded and hardened with organic plates that nonetheless were surprisingly light. And the way the four pairs of straps were slightly designed to look like chitinous limbs… Yep, it was a spider backpack. It was beautiful.

"I love it," I said, noticing the pincushion he was wearing like a small wristwatch.

"Did you make this?" He kicked the ground sheepishly.

"I—wait. You can understand me." The gnome looked up. He made a so-so gesture.

"Thank you so much. This is great." It was. I was running out of space to put all the extra magazines and stuff. I'd just been stuffing them in pockets and buying more whenever they fell out. The gnome deserved the biggest, most careful hug possible, given his injuries. They wouldn't worsen for now, but since the gnomes evidently didn't have any way to actually treat him once the bandaid did come off, that meant that I needed to help him, somehow. Maybe I could transport him in the backpack.

With the way he was staring at it, maybe he had the same idea.

"Alright, time to fit all my magazines and stuff in here and—" The backpack was full with gnomes. They stared up at me with big, round eyes. I dropped the backpack and they spilled out in a tide, a full ten tumbling out before the thing was empty. No way they all fit in there, which meant… I pushed my hand inside up to the shoulder. It's bigger on the inside. By far. I cackled with glee. This was going to fit so many impulsive purchases.

I had about ten seconds to appreciate it before I noticed that the gnomes had collectively fished out the sheet of brownies and were already making off with a dozen pieces.

"Agh, no! Those aren't for you, you snack goblins!" They dispersed like rats when I came running at them. The tray looked barren, over half of the pieces missing. Akira would probably appreciate a couple after this stressful morning, and Clem didn't have a breakfast that counted yet, which left me with about three pieces. My stomach grumbled again, louder this time. Maybe if I cut them diagonally I can get away with more pieces without upsetting them?

Halfway through my ingenious plan, Akira and Clem came back up, practically fused at the hip and giggling and poking each other. Akira looked at the gnome following me with a raised eyebrow. But evidently there were more important things in the room.

"Oh, you made some brownies? Sweet." He took the biggest piece and took a big bite.

"... Clem, these have weed in them."

"Only the left side!" she said and damn, was that my left, or hers? We had a second breakfast. Clem set the table for three, then noticed the one gnome conspicuously standing on a chair, and gave him a fourth plate.

"New friend?" Clem asked. I nodded. Akira gestured towards the gnome.

"He smells like hot earth and fresh wood. Does he have a name?"

"He does, probably. I just haven't asked him yet." I turned to squint at him.

"What's your name, buddy?"

"Mo!" said the gnome.

"Guess it's Moe." There was a pause as Akira stirred his coffee clockwise, then counterclockwise in the exact same way that Clem was stirring hers.

"What's the matter, Sam?" Clem and Akira said simultaneously.

"Cat got your tongue?" I squinted at them both.

"You guys drank the lovers' potion, didn't you—""N-no! I mean — I mean, you mean — I, we… hey, uh, did you put those up?" Akira and Clem said, pointing with their spoons out between the blinds at the front lawn.

"Don't distract me now, these are critical, juicy deets—" My face froze as I looked outside. Slowly I turned to Akira and Clem.

"Those are a lot of SOP signs."