The door to our apothecary closed, shutting out the noise of Knot Klage but locking us in with the weight of what we had just discovered. Kaelen, our 'patient zero', was a biological time bomb. And we had just volunteered to be the bomb disposal squad.
"Frost-Poppy and a Demacian Crystal Heart," Morgana murmured, more to herself than to me, the worry in her voice as palpable as the scent of herbs in our shop. "Two items from opposing worlds. As difficult to find as honesty in a politician."
"Difficulty is just a logistical variable," I retorted, already unrolling a clean scroll on our table. "And we have a resource. One with access, motivation, and a chronic health problem that depends on our goodwill."
She looked at me. "You want to go back there. Ask her."
"Of course," I replied, beginning to list the properties I would need to extract from each ingredient. "We are not going to ask. We are going to make a formal request. It's the next step in our 'partnership'. A test. If she truly wants a solution, she will provide the tools. If she hesitates, we will know her intentions are otherwise."
The next day, we sent a message via a legion courier, a small favour Decius owed us, requesting another audience with Lady Vorth, citing 'significant progress and the need for specific alchemical components'. The reply was almost immediate. A carriage was waiting for us at dusk.
We returned to that garden of poisons. This time, the atmosphere was not one of a test, but of a tense business meeting.
Lady Vorth listened in silence as I presented our theory, omitting, of course, the exact origin of the plague, maintaining her fragile fiction of 'rival houses'. I described the nature of the 'Ash Seed', its catalytic function, its reproduction through spores. I spoke with the authority of a Master Alchemist from Shénvara, using arcane jargon I knew would both impress and confuse her in equal measure.
And then, I made my move.
"To create an antidote that doesn't destroy the host," I explained, "we must force a war within his body. A stasis agent to paralyse the Seeds, and a purification agent to eradicate them." I met her gaze. "We need the Static Pollen of the Freljordian Frost-Poppy. And we need an uncut Demacian Crystal Heart, purified by a Luminsinger."
She was silent. A thin smile that did not reach her eyes touched her lips. "You ask for the frost of the Ice Matriarch and the heart of Demacian light. You ask for fire and water. You ask for items that nations would go to war to obtain."
"We are asking for the necessary ingredients to solve your problem," I corrected. "If your house does not have the reach to acquire them, we need to know. We will have to seek other methods. Or, perhaps, other… patrons. I've heard House Esendi has a keen interest in transmutational magic…"
The veiled threat worked like a perfectly executed command rune. "You will have your ingredients," she said, her voice sharp. "But know this, little alchemist: if you fail, the price I paid for them will be the first instalment of the debt I shall collect from your hides."
In less than twenty-four hours, a dark wooden box, sealed with lead and containment runes, was delivered to our door. Inside, wrapped in enchanted silk, were our impossible ingredients.
What followed were three days and nights of work that pushed my child's body to the absolute limit of exhaustion. Our apothecary became a laboratory. Morgana was crucial. Her task was to be the stabiliser. She wove a containment field around my refining furnace, her shadow magic acting like velvet, calming the volatile energy of the Frost-Pollen and insulating the pure, intolerant energy of the crystal, preventing the two from annihilating each other.
My job was the alchemy. The Crystal Heart was ground to powder using sonic vibrations, a trick I learned from the soul-smiths in Drangleic. The Pollen was distilled using my own magic, a process that required perfect control to extract the stasis property without releasing its latent poison.
The fusion was the real danger. The moment I combined the two, the cauldron began to vibrate violently, emitting a blinding light—a war between the crystal's pure order and the pollen's entropic silence.
"It's unstable! It's going to blow!" Morgana shouted, reinforcing the barrier, sweat beading on her brow.
I knew. I felt the chain reaction beginning on a molecular level. The mixture wasn't fusing; it was annihilating itself. More ingredients would only add more fuel to the fire. I needed something to force the bond, a catalyst that could stabilise both order and chaos. There was no time to think. Only to act.
I closed my eyes. I ignored the heat and light. I extended my hands over the bubbling cauldron and did something I hadn't attempted in centuries in such a young body. Instead of channelling my energy into a spell or a strike, I deconstructed it. I separated the flow of energy into its most basic components: structure (Yin) and energy (Yang). With my left hand, I projected the pure intent of order and stability (Yin), forcing the crystal's molecules to hold their form. With my right, I projected the energy of controlled transformation (Yang), persuading the volatile pollen to surrender its essence of stasis without disintegrating.
For one agonising moment, I became the bridge between the two warring elements. I felt my own small reservoir of magic and Qi being drained at an alarming rate. My child's body trembled with the strain, and a trickle of blood ran from my nose from the pressure. I was imposing my will, my millennia of cultivation experience, upon an alchemical reaction that was on the brink of exploding.
The light dimmed. The sound ceased. The cauldron stopped shaking. Exhausted, I fell to my knees, gasping. Morgana rushed to my side.
"You did it," she whispered, awestruck.
Exhausted but triumphant, I retrieved it with a pair of silver tongs. The Silver Serpent Pill. It had worked. And the price was only a little blood and nearly all the magical energy I had.
The healing ritual on Kaelen was as violent as I had predicted, not a battle of forces, but a forced rewriting of the very fabric of his being. I gave him the pill. He swallowed it, his eyes filled with a resigned terror.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then his body began to tremble, the veins in his arms standing out. He didn't scream; a low, agonised groan was forced from his clenched lips. The Silver Serpent Pill was at work.
I watched the process through my Qi perception, and what I saw left me dumbfounded. The pill's energy wasn't attacking the Ash Seeds. It was merging with them. The serpentine silver light wasn't fighting the feverish embers in his blood; it was enveloping them, connecting to them, and introducing a new set of instructions.
It was one computer virus fighting another. The pill was my correction patch.
At the climax of the process, Kaelen's body was wracked by one last, powerful convulsion. His veins, which had previously glowed with a hungry, black light, now pulsed with a steady silver light for a moment. An immense power, no longer chaotic but controlled, surged through his body. He opened his eyes, which shone with pure silver energy, and then the light receded, like a falling tide. He collapsed onto the bed, unconscious.
When the shaking stopped, his grey, cracked skin began to heal, the colour returning to his face. The rot hadn't just retreated; it was being reversed. He wasn't just healed. He was… enhanced.
"What… what did you do?" Morgana whispered.
"I fixed it," I replied, exhausted but with a gleam of triumph. "The Ash Seeds are no longer consuming him. They are still there. But now, instead of devouring his energy, they refine it. They make his channelling of magic more efficient, more potent." I looked at the sleeping mage. "He is not just cured. When he wakes, he will be stronger than ever before."
The prototype had not just worked; it had exceeded expectations. The Ash Seed was a failed Shuriman weapon, an imperfect draft of its true purpose: to create super-mages, to enhance their battle-casters to a new echelon of power. Where its old master alchemists had failed, creating an unstable plague, I had created a stable catalyst. I didn't just have the cure; I had the finished version of their project.
I had a method. Elegant, repeatable, and, in the wrong hands, capable of turning an infantry mage into an elite weapon. In an empire built on the insatiable pursuit of power, I held in my hands something more valuable and dangerous than any True Ice or Void relic. I had a formula for creating power. And I was the only person in the world who knew it.