ROUGH DRAFT - Coye 6.4 (Patreon)

Even though Tiph had chugged a mood stabilizing potion as she left the Guild, poisonous rage still coursed through her veins with every step of her expensive adventuring boots. She marched through the alleys of Cransmere, ignoring the gutter trash she typically associated and sold product to as they greeted her before recognizing that she was in one of her moods. She had to get to her shed, it was the only place where she could work out the things she was feeling.

She undoes her magical locks and slammed the door behind her, dramatically ripping off her coat and tussling her hair. "That stupid, drugged up little bitch," she said, so mad she couldn't even see the irony. "How dare he? Seriously?"

Tiph was having a bad day. Things started off promising, she and her party were planning to pick out a quest and go on an adventure together now that Britni was sobered up. Things might pick up again once they got away from this shitty town and a certain someone in particular.

Then, came the drama. It was entertaining at first and Tiph couldn't help but join in and make fun of the easy target. She didn't have some grand moral reason for hating Dorothy like Britni did, it just made her feel better about herself to pick on someone she saw as below her. But now Britni was telling her to ease up on Dorothy all of a sudden like she hadn't just spent the last year mercilessly fucking with that stupid bitch.

Was Coye really so fucking special that he could make Britni into a good girl? No, Tiph tightened her fists. Coye wasn't special at all and now it seemed like she was the only person in town who knew that. Everyone else was dancing to his tune.

Tiph went over to a large corkboard she used for her planning. One huge project was dominating the center of the board while four smaller ones were just starting to grow on the corners. Her main focus these last couple days was to try and develop something that would make Britni want to quit drinking of her own accord, but the problem with that was Britni could detect most anything Tiph tried slipping into her drinks. Not that she regularly made a habit of drugging her friend, but this wasn't the first time Britni's drinking problem.

In a delirious frenzy, Tiph started ripping all of her progress and all of her diagrams, transmutation circle illustrations and vigorous notations off of the board, along with her four other pet projects as well. In the center of her room was a cauldron of acid. Tiph rarely needed the use of something so powerful, but she was planning to use it to extract something from a rare mineral in the near future and had prepared ahead of time. She dumped all of her notes into the acid and watched them dissolve in a matter of seconds.

None of that was important now. She'd been resisting her impulse to return to old ways for a few days now and the call was too great. She looked at the now blank corkboard and visualized potential. In front of the board was a desk full of journals, parchment, and magical pens as expensive as they were stylish. As Tiph preferred to work while standing, the desk was high enough for her to write on without a chair. She started doing so immediately, sketching a quick illustration of Coye that was relatively accurate save for the fact that he was rendered like an exaggerated buffoon with his tongue sticking out.

Tiph tacked this on to the center of the board- establishing her target. A wicked smile played across her puffy, purple lips. Old impulses were coming back. She was really doing this.

Then, Tiph realized she was really doing this and the smile faded. This wasn't right. She hated Coye, but did he really deserve the same treatment she gave to Perlshaw's worst men? Definitely not, and that was even before considering how this might affect Britni.

"Fucking damn it," she pulled her hair and went over to a shelf containing bottles upon bottles of her most used creations. She'd already taken something earlier to calm her down, but maybe there was something else she could try? Maybe this, or that? She rifled through them despite knowing the answer.

Nothing she'd ever made could calm her or make her a better person. This was just who she was. Self-destructive, lashing out at anyone who mildly annoyed her, risking her few stable relationships just for some petty vengeance...

Mindlessly rebelling for the sake of it. She felt the sting of a fierce hand striking her cheek, a pain that didn't dull no matter how many years it had been since she last felt it. Tiph gritted her teeth as she thought of him and everything he'd said to her. She hated him with greater passion than she hated anyone else, save for herself for proving him right.

Tiph still didn't believe people could change who they were, least of all herself. Why not embrace it?

She thought again of the fight between Coye and Auguris. That boy was never anything special. It was amusing to find out he was just like her- strung out on a substance to escape from his personal flaws- a druggie. So why did things play out the way that they did? Everyone loved him now, and he was the star of the entire Guild now apparently.

She couldn't imagine showing up there day after day and seeing people idolize him for his false persona, and Tiph knew it was only going to get worse unless someone unmasked him for the fraud he was.

"You think you're so much better than me...? I'll fucking show you...!!"

Tiph scanned her potion shelf for a second time, now knowing exactly what she needed. She didn't need something that could chill her out or make her nicer person, she needed the opposite. Something to fuel the toxicity and make her even crueler.

Her hands wrapped around a single glass bottle stored at the back of her top shelf containing a purplish red liquid. One of her most potent creations in all her years of experimentation, a substance that heightens the drinker's mind into a state of negativity and amplifies their creativity at the same time.

It's name was Ultibitch, and Tiph only ever took it when she needed to get shit done. Now was such a time. She uncorked the top as a swirling red vapor plumed out of it. Tiph pressed the potion to her lips and questioned her intentions one last time before doing what she always did and making the wrong decision.

It went down hard, but the effects were immediate.

Her eyes shot open, her throat was on fire, and negativity flowed throughout her everything. Her heart sped up, her mind grinding away three times the normal speed as it filled with further toxicity. Tiph smiled wide and she became sure of one thing above all else- Coye needed to be brought down a peg, Britni or no Britni.

She'll get over it, especially when she realizes he's not as strong as she thinks he is.

Tiph turned her attention back to her desk and the board, seeing pathways form in her mind. She played out scenarios in her head and saw herself humiliating and exposing Coye to the world in a thousand different ways. Her hand wouldn't stop writing out ideas and jotting down schematics one after the other, and whenever one was finished, she would tack it on the board and move on to the next. It was hard to tell how much time passed because of how deeply Tiph wallowed in her altered state of mind, but when she was done, the board was doing well. She'd filled up over half of it but plenty still remained.

Tiph nervously bit at her thumb and tapped her foot on the ground as she stared at the empty spaces. This wasn't ideal. She didn't like to pursue anything before fully mapping out all potential possibilities and the fact was that she didn't know Coye as well as she would've liked. To truly drag him down to her level and break him, she needed to know more.

That meant...

Tiph looked at three sketches she'd made, one of Dorothy, one of being, and one of Suzette. She traced her fingertip along each of them and smiled. If she wants more info, those three are the best place to start. It'll be tough, especially with Byng, but it would be worth it in the end to see Coye knocked down from his high horse.

Just as she started to truly revel in the possibilities, Tiph began coming down from her high. Ultibitch was potent, incredibly so, but that came at a steep price. It left its user feeling lower than low when all of their anger and negativity dried up. In her soured state, she'd forgotten to prepare something to perk her up once she crashed and turned to scramble toward her shelf.

She tripped on her heels halfway there, knocking into one of her empty cauldrons and tumbling to her knees. Her face was heading straight towards the acid in the cauldron head of her. Tiph barely managed to stabilize herself and grab onto the rim before she tumbled over, her head spinning as she stared at the green glowing liquid below. She could see her face in it and because of her crash she hated the person she saw even more than she usually did.

Tiph carefully pulled herself away to her mattress, crawling along the floor so she didn't knock any thing else over. What an idiot she was. What would he say if he could see her right now? Just some druggie playing at being an alchemist, getting high on an unstable substance in her lab. She started laughing and couldn't stop.

She broken every rule he'd ever given her, and even that wasn't enough. She had to keep finding stupider and stupider things, it seemed.

She plopped down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling, ripping off her goggles and throwing them across the floor. "What the fuck is wrong with me?" She asked no one. She knew the answer.

In her defeated state, Tiph brought her gaze back up to the board and she wondered why she even bothered and went to all that trouble. She knew that destroying Coye wouldn't make her happy, just as destroying all those people who actually deserved it never did. It would just spread her misery like a poison, and that was all she was good for. Corroding, breaking things down to nothing.

She'd destroyed her life, her dreams, her family... It was a wonder she hadn't yet destroyed her friendship with Britni and the others, but that was surely going to change if she really went through with this. How did that old story go about the frog and the scorpion, again? Tiph laughed.

There was still time to change her plans. She needed to think about things more and to find out more info about Coye before she could really pursue this. Maybe between then and now she would change her ways and become the sort of person she was always expected to be?

"Yeah, right..." She muttered in defeat. "Only the elements are capable of change. People? People just stay the same..."

Tiph grabbed her pillow and placed it on top of her face, blocking off the light and embracing the comfort of wallowing in