NOVEL WEB Chapter 14: Introduction to Alchemy
The Dragon War was the end of the sorcerers' hold on the title of mage. The best of them went mad, and the wizards had to scramble to take them down. They succeeded in defeating the Arch Mages among their ranks, and swore to keep the dragons from creating more.
-Tallen Elmheart, On Mages
—
Kole woke to a high-pitched whine. Groggily he groped around the desk his face rested on until he found the source and silenced it. The previous morning had highlighted one major flaw in his plan to sleep in the library—which had through the day solidified itself in his mind as the obvious course of action. There were no windows on the section he decided to squat in, so unless he invested in something to wake himself up, it was unlikely he would make his classes on time.
Thinking of classes, Kole leapt to his feet and quickly threw his supplies into his bag before turning invisible and running out. As far as Kole could tell, no one took count of people entering and leaving the library, but if he left early in the morning every day, someone would catch on.
The bursar had given him a packet with this class schedule that he’d looked at briefly before losing himself in study. His first class would be alchemy, over in the crafting quarter. He had little idea where he was going, but the school had ample signage to see him to his destination.
While the Dahn lay in the center of the campus, four ’L’ shaped buildings surrounded it making a square and outlining the campus green. The crafting college took up the northeastern corner, and its green filled with gardens of alchemical value. Like the central tower, the crafting building had a mix of small classrooms, lecture halls, libraries, and offices. It was one of the larger lecture halls that he was headed for his “Introduction to Alchemy Class”
To Kole’s surprise, he was on time, and the hall was only half-filled when he found a seat in the middle of the room. Some diligent students liked to sit in the front of the class to gain some sort of perceived advantage, but the way Kole saw it, that was dumb.
In the front, it was difficult to read the whole board. Sitting there also set the bar high for the professor’s expectations of you. Slackers didn’t sit in the front, only the exceptional and the suck-ups. Kole had no illusions about his own skill in alchemy, and he knew if he sat in the first row he’d be seen as the latter of the two. No, if one wanted to impress a teacher, all one had to do was be impressive. And if one wasn’t impressive and didn’t want to suck up, it was best to blend in.
The room filled shortly after Kole sat and right at nine o’clock, a familiar diminutive figure walked in.
Professor Nimblefore!
Without addressing the class, he approached the wall with the blackboard and pulled open a drawer. The drawer was not in fact a drawer, but an elevated walkway that pressed into the wall for the more vertically challenged races of Kaltis. Once the steps were all out, he climbed up and wrote his name on the board and underlined it.
‘PROFESSOR DONGLEFORE’
Kole decided it would be in his best interest to write this particular name down.
“Good Morning class,” came the gnome’s high-pitched yet dignified voice. “You may be asking yourself ’Why is the head of the college teaching an introductory course.’ I could lie to you and say I value each and every student and want to ensure you all start with a strong foundation, but that would be both a disservice to your original professor—and an easily provable lie. Your scheduled professor had an adverse reaction to a new potion she’d been developing and won’t be able to teach for some time. I have agreed to fill in for her.”
Murmurs broke out throughout the class.
“Now, I will not have it thought that Professor Cowlin was lax in her technique or methods. Adverse reactions are common when at the forefront of alchemy, and even the most prepared can still suffer injury. Let that be a lesson to you all. Many would count temporary paralysis as a lucky outcome. Which, incidentally, is a great segue into this course. This class is titled Introduction to Alchemy, known amongst my apprentices as ’Alchemy for Adventurers’. This is a required course for any who wish to enroll in the adventurer program, and is little good for anyone else.”
Kole looked around the massive room at all his fellow aspirant adventurers. He hadn’t realized the track was that popular.
“As adventurers, you will interact with alchemy outside the supervision of an alchemist. You may be tempted to mix separate potions against the advisement of a certified alchemist. This class will teach you why that is a terrible idea. That large book is a list of all the terrible results of the uneducated dabbling in things beyond their understanding.”
He pointed to a book on the desk, “book” being a very generous term for the massive stack of paper.
“This year we will touch on a large number of topics, hopefully giving you enough understanding to realize how little you know. You will not learn to brew potions, you will not learn to transmute material. You will learn how to safely consume potions, to handle the adverse reactions that your less educated adventuring peers may suffer, and how to harvest alchemical ingredients you find in the field without completely destroying them.”
This speech, which Kole felt was meant to douse hope, made Kole feel much better about the class. He had little interest in alchemy and feared he’d be forced to learn the craft. The curriculum outlined seemed to be something actually helpful for him and his own pursuits.
The remainder of the class saw Donglefore reading some particularly gruesome accounts from the tome Pains and Deaths Recorded, 32nd Abridged Edition. Before dismissing the class, they were assigned to create a list of three potions for use in an adventuring kit that had the least adverse reactions to one another.
The professor dismissed them and informed them future lectures would be handled by his apprentices, as “he didn’t have time to babysit.” Kole was a little disappointed at that, he liked his attitude and thought he’d be an interesting teacher.
Kole had a few hours free before his next class and decided to spend it back in the library.
While he’d arrived early for his first class, he wasn’t so lucky for his second. He’d gotten a bit carried away in his studies and was five minutes late to his history lecture. Running down the hall, he slammed into the lecture hall door, bouncing off with a resounding thud as he realized that the door pulled open.
Red with embarrassment he pulled the door open to see a sea of faces staring at him.
Don’t turn invisible.
Eyes downcast he moved to the nearest seat.
“As I was saying,” the wizened voice of the graying orc spoke from the front of the room. “It is commonly said that history is written by the winners. I choose rather to believe that history is written by the survivors. Sometimes in history, there are no victors. In this course, we will be looking at the pre-Flood history of Basin. We will primarily examine the orcish and dwarven accounts but will also reference some of the records of the lost civilizations of the region.”
“While only orcs and dwarves dwelled on Basin by the time it was settled by the Flood-displaced denizens of Kaltis, the history of the world is long, and it is littered with civilizations lost to time.”
The rest of the class was a brief overview of Basin history that Kole was already familiar with. The class was dismissed, and no mention of his tardiness was made. He’d heard that orcs weren't exactly ’big on rules’ but he vowed not to test his luck any further.
***
After completing his two classes for the day, Kole went looking for Amara, but his tracking device led him to the crafting building, and he gave up, assuming her busy. He spent the remainder of the night back in his secret corner of the library. When he returned to his improvised room, he was met with a surprise.
He rounded the corner to the aisle he’d made his home when he heard a rustling noise. Instinctively he turned invisible, chastising himself for the futility of the effort while a glowing orb hovered over his shoulder. On his desk, rummaging through his pack of provisions, sat a rather large rat.
“Scram!” Kole shouted, but the rat only tilted its head inquisitively at the disembodied voice.
He bent over picked up his pillow from his sleeping roll and tossed it at the rodent. Just before the fluffy projectile struck, the creature vanished and the pillow bounced off the desk, taking the remains of the rat’s meal with it.
“What in the world...”
A moment later, the rat reappeared from the spot it’d vanished from, and jumped off the desk, onto the bookshelf, vanishing behind the rows of books.
Kole went to his food and salvaged what he could. The rat he'd found must have been a straggler because most of his food had been eaten, every bag and container destroyed as the rats had tried to get at the contents.
“I guess I need a better solution.”
But, that was a problem for tomorrow’s Kole. Tonight’s Kole had some work to do. Hungry as he might be, it wouldn’t be the first time he ignored the pangs as he worked late into the night.