Stronger Together chapter 84 (Patreon)

I grinned proudly as I walked into the room I shared with Barb, who  was just now waking up. My bewitching redhead was sitting up in bed with  her hair a mess staring at the wall and blinking rapidly. I recognized  the look as that thing that happens when you wake up and your brain  isn't really working yet. I sometimes sat around for five or ten minutes  just spaced out until things finally clicked, though it happened pretty  rarely.

I  closed the door and walked up to her, waving a hand in her blankly  staring face. After a few more blinks her eyes moved to me. Blank Barb  was preferable to pissed off Barb so I wasn't too upset to find her  rebooting. I swooped in for a peck on the lips and my girlfriend wrapped  her arms around me, kissing me back mostly on reflex to start. I pulled  back and smiled at her. Her mostly hazy expression seemed to have  shifted mostly into actual waking and she gave a dopey tired smile.  "Well that was a nice wake up. What's the occasion?"

I  laughed and kissed her again. "Not that I need an excuse to kiss my  girlfriend but I just came in from training. I managed to get my defense  spell down. You want me to tell you how I did it or do you want to  figure out your own thing?" Barb was competitive as hell, and knowing  I'd beaten her to finishing this spell before her was bound to ignite  her stubborn streak. As expected her blue eyes flashed with fighting  spirit as the last of the sleep cleared from her face and she raised an  eyebrow at me in silent challenge.

Throwing  up my hands in mock surrender I laughed again "Ok, no need to get  annoyed. I'm sure you'll get it on your own. In the meantime what has  two thumbs and is going to get started on brewing potions?" I grinned  smugly and gave a double thumbs up, pointed at myself. "This guy!" Barb  rolled her eyes and turned away to get out of bed to get dressed, but  not before I caught the slight smile on her face. Competitive as she was  Barb loved a challenge and talking shit didn't bother her at all. I  knew she would relish the opportunity to match herself against another  caster, if not me than at least Cinder if she couldn't get it today.

Barb  finished dressing and turned around walking back over to give me  another peck. "I'm impressed you got it so fast but don't be too smug  about it, I haven't had a chance to even give it a try, maybe I'll  create my spell even faster. Besides we still need to see who has the  better defense after I do." She gave me a fierce grin "My shield will  kick your shields ass. Just you wait and see." She grabbed my face and  pulled me in for another, much harsher kiss and with that same fighting  grin slipped out of the room to go train.

I  smiled at the sound of her retreating footsteps before changing into  something a bit more dry to head down to Harry's room. My pants were  soaked at the ankles from shitty snow melt. Luckily I brought spare  shoes so after changing everything including my socks to something more  indoor friendly I took the hallway to my mentors door to knock and  hopefully not to wake the big wizard up. I didn't know if he went out  with the other wizards last night or if he'd been doing potions stuff  like he'd mentioned to Ebenezar.

Luckily  the door opened after one knock and my mentor didn't look much more  tired than usual. I took that to mean he was awake before I knocked. He  raised an eyebrow in question but rather than asking just shrugged and  waved me in, closing the door behind me. As expected there were several   large pots on various surfaces around the room, some emitting oddly  colored steam or smoke that vanished after drifting up more than a few  inches. I looked in the nearest one to see a neon green liquid that  swirled in odd stuttering patterns and looked up at Harry with a raised  eyebrow of my own.

The  wizard shrugged again "That one is a way finding potion. I used glow  stick liquid as a base since people use them to retrace their steps and  scout out new places. It should help us track down a specific location  if we get close enough. We can use it so we don't have to wander around  looking for the Skinwalkers lair before it's time. Anyway what brings  you here at why the fuck are any of us awake o clock, kid? I figured  you'd be curled up warm with your redhead, god knows the rest of us wish  we were so lucky."

I  grinned at the sullen man "She's up too now, though i was out of bed  first. But no, I'm here for this." I gestured at the make shift potion  work shop. "I finished up my defensive spell to River's satisfaction,  I'll keep practicing it a bit for the last week but I figured since I'm  good on training for today after the big burst of Aura use maybe you  could teach me something about mixing up these delightful little brews?"  I gestured at the nearest potion, the same way finding concoction he  told me about earlier.

Eyebrows  climbing into his hairline Harry blinked at me in stupefaction  "Seriously? You got a proper shield in one day? That's just absurd kid,  even for you. I trained for months on shielding. Man that Aura stuff is a  hell of a short cut, but I can't say it's not useful in this  situation." He eyed me critically, then sighed "But if River Shoulders  gave you the go ahead on it it's gotta be up to snuff. I guess there's  no harm in going over potion basics, I was going to show you all this  soon anyway."

I  was almost bouncing in place with excitement. I'd always been kind of a  crafting nerd. I was the guy who spent all his time mining in Runescape  and Blacksmithing in WoW. Being able to cast spells was cool, but being  able to make magic in a physical form was something I could perfect  visibly. I could become a grand master craftsman and make my stuff known  across the world like Svartalves. Harry led me over to the furthest pot  back an old dingy steel pot like they used for crawfish boils. It was  empty at the moment, so I assumed he put it out right before I got here  and was about to start something new.

He  gestured at the empty pot. "I was prepping a new brew when you knocked  obviously, so your timing is good. I can go over the process with you  step by step. I'm going to describe what potions are and how they're  made and what I want this one to do, and I'll let you try to come up  with a combination yourself. Keep in mind the ingredients are key in a  potion but the intent and magic used in it are just as vital. You won't  be brewing this yourself but I'll let you suggest ingredients and I'll  use them if they fit. Any questions so far?" He looked at me seriously  and I couldn't help but feel myself slump a bit at the knowledge that  knowing the ingredients wouldn't make me an instant potions master. I  shook my head anyway.

Harry  nodded and reached down into his bag to pull out a box full of jars.  Each jar had a small amount of some substance with a label on the side,  and some of the substances were very odd. Harry gestured at the jars.  "Now, potions are delicate, the more fitting the ingredients are to you  and the more inherent power and rarity they have the less magic you need  to put into them. A potion with terribly picked ingredients will need a  ton of magic and perfect intent to balance that. The ingredients needed  are very specific. One for each of the five senses one for the mind and  one for spirit as well as a liquid base. The potion we're making this  time is a Stoneskin brew which should be pretty easy for you to come up  with ingredients for. So give it a shot."

Stoneskin  was a pretty straightforward idea but I considered all the senses. I  stared down at the jars rifling through them. I frowned down at the pot.  "We can use mud as a base. Should work better than regular water. For  taste rock candy, for smell iron filings. Sandstone for touch, some  chain mail for sight. The sound of clashing metal for hearing. A dash of  powdered diamond for the mind and a picture of an armored knight for  the spirit?" I tried to keep everything either earthen or defensive and  if I couldn't do earth then I tried for metal. This was actually way  harder than I had expected and I wasn't sure I'd managed it properly.

Harry  grinned "That should work perfectly. Another aspect of potion making is  the less magic is needed to steer the brew the more powerful it is.  Magic that isn't needed to alter the final product is imbued into the  ingredients to strengthen their effects so the more perfectly you select  you ingredients the stronger your potion. Of course certain items are  also more significant and can hold more magic and it takes precision and  experience to properly imbue the magic with the right intent to merge  it into the mixture. I'm not bad at potions but there are masters who  can do some truly amazing things with brewing."

Harry  started working on the mixture. He used some mine dirt he had for the  mud, which he assured me would give it a bit more magical capacity for  the potion. Then he started adding in the ingredients. Most of them he  had on hand since I'd picked them from his stocks, we had to tear off  the cover of one of his spare books for the knight picture which was a  bit sad, but assured me it was an old throwaway he never read anymore  anyway. The rock candy he'd picked up in one of the ridiculous mountain  novelty stores all mountain towns seemed to have and everything else he  had in his jars.

He  didn't just dump everything in, he added the ingredients in a very  specific order, noting the significance to him and his magic as he did  so. Potion making was highly symbolic as well as being complex and  nuanced. A true potion master not only understood all the ingredients  and their magical absorption ability but how they related to his own  magic. An incredibly powerful and rare potion ingredient might not be as  good for one wizard as a slightly less rare one because of how it  interacted with his magic. It was an exceptionally complicated process  and I loved every second of it.

I  had to ask as we made it though "Some of this stuff has to be toxic,  won't ingesting it poison someone? I mean far be it from me to question  the master but drinking mud and diamond dust seems like a good way to  fuck up your digestion good." I scratched my head in embarrassment "I  didn't consider that when I was designing it because I got so wrapped up  in picking the right ingredients symbolically but I assume there's some  trick to it or you wouldn't have had all this stuff in your potion  supplies." I actually knew there was a trick to it because he'd drunk  more toxic stuff than this in the books but I'd always wondered how it  worked.

Harry  grinned "Well reasoned. Yeah, when you drink a potion the drinking is  just symbolic. It doesn't exactly flow down your throat and into your  stomach the magic carries the brew through every inch of your body to  produce the effect, it's why a potion of invisibility for instance turns  you completely invisible and not just your mouth and throat. It's also  why potions take effect instantly, they aren't like pills you have to  digest because you aren't really imbibing them as much as absorbing  them. Now, we need to save this one for the big fight mostly, but how  would you like to test a little bit of it once it's done? Have to make  sure it's working right after all."