Brewing Bad Ch. 2-5 (Patreon)

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Ch. 2 - Making Friends

Lucas was frog marched back to the scene of the crime where he found the medieval version of a paddy wagon parked in front of the tavern. The Captain looked at him briefly, but didn’t even bother talking to him.

He just nodded to the wagon, where Lucas’s pockets were emptied, and his belt was taken. Sadly, that included his pouches and his knife.

He didn’t complain, though. The last thing he wanted them to do was go through all that right here and confirm that he was the guy he was looking for. Instead, he looked around his cage, and he saw that he was in there with three other guys that all kinda looked like him. It wasn’t a flattering picture.

They all had his general height and build. Even in the dark he could see that the guards had gotten pretty close to the mark despite that fact that guy was a little too tall, and this one was a little too far to be him. The fact that all of them were wearing manacles only made that resemblance stronger.

The four of them sat there quietly, and didn’t do much more than exchange looks until the wagon started to trundle down the street. Anyone could guess that they were heading toward the castle, and looking at the wooden-barred wagon, he could see there were only a couple guards accompanying.

For a moment, he reached for the wire in the sole of his boot that he was pretty sure he could use to pick the manacles, but because there was no way he could do the door too without a dagger or something equally as sturdy, he forced himself to stop. Be cool, man, he cautioned himself.

That was the fear of what was happening, trying to get him to do something stupid. He couldn’t believe that tonight had played out like this when he was all but in the clear, but now that it had, he had to bide his time and wait for the proper moment. Like everything in life, good things came to those who kept their shit together.

In the end, he decided that the four of them were all different versions of him. There was real Lucas, homeless Lucas, shifty Lucas, and hardcore Lucas. The first three were self-explanatory, but the last one had been named because, unlike the three of them, he looked like he knew how to kick some ass. Whoever had locked them up had taken away his shield and his sword, but between his breastplate and his dented helmet, he looked like he’d seen some shit.

The only one to do much talking was Shifty. He tried to ask his fellow prisoners if they knew what the hell was going on, but Lucas just ignored them. Any answer he gave might tip them off that this was all his fault, and he wasn’t in the mood for another beat down.

Sadly, that was just what was waiting for them at the castle. The guard captain arrived only after his men had been given a few minutes to question them about the events at the Chimera’s Chalice, but Lucas insisted he’d been dragged out of the Drunken Donkey and had never set foot in a place half so fancy as the Chalice. Still, through it all, he rolled with the punches, and after it was done, and he was lying exhausted on the ground.

“One of you is involved with some very serious business,” the captain said with such haughtiness that Lucas had trouble keeping a straight face. “According to our sources, the culprit has invented a whole new sort of dread alchemy. Worse, not only are you poisoning our fair city with it but you have not paid your rightful taxes on this awful product! Speak up, admit your guilt, and we might be able to skip the confessor and dispense with justice directly.”

Hardcore Lucas had been knocked out cold during the tenderizing phase of the interrogation, so all he did was lay there, but the other three Lucases declared their innocence and begged for leniency. Lucas thought he did a pretty good job with that part; he’d lied to the cops plenty before, but when the guards brought out his satchel, his heart sank. Suddenly he was sure he was screwed.

At least, he was sure that he was until they pointed to the wrong guy. “He had this on him, sir,” the tall one said, looking to curry favor. “Or… well, it might have been that one.”

For a moment, Lucas dared not breathe as the guard pointed out the man on either side of him. The captain looked at the man with annoyance.

“You couldn’t have told me this earlier?” he asked as he looked through the pouch and came up with the tiny flask of blue that Lucas carried in case he needed to demonstrate his product to a new connect. “Very well. Take these two to our resident confessor and see who admits what first. Put these other two in the dungeon until we see if we get what we need from their friends.”

As they dragged Shifty and Homeless through the courtyard, they left Lucas and Hardcore there waiting for their turn. He couldn’t help but feel a little bad. They didn’t do anything wrong.

Well - if they looked like that they’d done plenty wrong in this life, he corrected himself, but they hadn’t been brewing any potions. That was for sure. Still, he wasn’t about to stick his neck out for them.

“Tonight’s your lucky night, gutter scum,” the Guard Captain said. “When one of those mutts confesses, you might get off with a few weeks of hard labor instead of spending a date with the confessor or the headman. Is that not merciful?”

The sheer entitlement and arrogance radiating off this man turned Lucas’s stomach, but he swallowed it down and forced himself to smile a bloody smile as he said, “Yes, my lord, thank you for the mercy you show to a poor peasant like me.”

That was enough to make the foul, well-coiffed man smile. It was also enough for Lucas to put his name on a list right there below Brog. He didn’t know how yet, but he was going to make both men pay.

After all, if their pet torturer had to work through two people, he probably had the rest of the night to come up with a plan. That was more than enough time when he was properly motivated, and right now, he was motivated as fuck.

The guard captain wandered off once his men returned, and Lucas was content to let them carry as much as drag him through the courtyard and toward the castle’s dungeon while his ribs ached and poorly bandaged right hand dripped blood. He could use the break.

Since his only choices of entertainment while he was dragged across the courtyard were the back of his eyelids, or whatever was on the ground beneath him, he chose to look at the well-trodden dirt and overgrown stone walls they passed by. Even here, he was surprised to see ingredients he could use if only he could make his way back to his hideout.

Thornroot (raw): Intelligence +3, dexterity -2

Red Creaper (raw): Poison 2, weak catalyst (alters the alignment of the lowest attribute in the current mixture.)

When they opened the door and revealed a set of stone steps that led deeper into the earth, the volume of Shifty’s screams increased, and Lucas found out real quick that the castle’s dungeon and its chamber of horrors were connected by one hall and that they were practically neighbors.

That door swinging wide was his cue. When it was fully open, he started struggling in their mailed grip once more. He wasn’t trying to escape, though. Even on his best day, he knew that wasn’t happening.

It was to look good for the other inmates. He knew how this worked better than most, and whoever it was he found down there, the last thing he wanted was to be locked in a room with someone that thought he was a little bitch.

“You know if you let me take you on one at a time, you wouldn’t have a chance, right?” he asked, flailing and squirming as he suddenly showed a little spine for the first time since the Chalice. “You don’t have to treat every occasion as an excuse for a gang—”

The only answer that the lead guard had for that was to bounce Lucas’s head off the wall hard enough to make him see stars before tossing him down and sending him tumbling down the narrow, winding staircase into the tiny cellblock below.

His manacles jangled and clattered with every bounce, making the whole thing sound worse than it really was. He might not be the best at throwing a punch, but he took one just fine and tucked and rolled with it the whole way down.

The torch-lit room consisted of only three cells, which wouldn’t have even qualified as a county lockup where he came from. Even so, by the time he was unsteadily rising to his feet, the two guards were already picking him back up.

“If I want to hear your opinion on anything, I’ll just drag you down to the confessor to see what you have to say between screams,” the taller guard threatened, “Until then, keep your mouth shut if you want to keep your teeth until we decide to take your head.”

“Yeah,” the other guard chimed in. “Hard to eat a last meal with nothing but broken teeth!”

Rather than focus on those grisly threats, he focused on what it was he could do here as he took the room in at a glance. Of the three cells, the one directly in front of him was empty, the one on his left held a single noble, and the one on his right was crammed half-full with several toughs.

No, he realized as his eyes adjusted to the dark. There weren’t several. There were only two. It was just that one of them was almost as big as Oogen. The crowded cell contained a dwarf happily smoking away on a pipe in the corner, and a giant of a man who had to have at least a little orc blood in him, based on the green tint to his skin.

The only way they got that dude down here was with magic, Lucas thought to himself. It would have taken ten guards to wrestle him down otherwise, and in this confined space, that was pretty much impossible.

There was no shame in it, of course. He’d been hit by a sleep spell before. It was harder to resist than any taser he’d ever been zapped with in his former life.

He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he just looked at the guard who was inches from beating him to death, smiled a bloody smile, and said, “Thank you very much, officer. I’m so pleased you got me my own room. That’s extremely thoughtful of you. Please deliver my thanks to his majesty for—”

This earned him another punch to the face that he expertly flinched from. It didn’t have much force behind it, though, because the guard was laughing. “You don’t have the coin for such comfort, knave. But look on the bright side; this is your chance to meet new people. Maybe you’ll finally make some friends as low as you!”

As he spoke, the second guard fetched the big bronze key from its peg at the bottom of the stairs and unlocked the already crowded cell; seconds later, Hardcore was forced inside, and then Lucas was shoved in on top of him.

That was fine. He might have begged for the pristine briar patch over yonder, but this was exactly where he wanted to end up.

Alone, he was trapped with only a single option tucked into his left boot, and the only place that would lead to was a relatively painless death.

While that was better than a date with the torturer, or inquisitor, or whatever it was they’d called the dude causing all the screaming, Lucas had a couple douche bags to kill, a fortune to make, and a pretty orc-blooded barmaid to apologize to. The only way he was going to make that happen was with a minor miracle.

Since he’d already used up all his bad luck today, he might as well cash those chips in because together with other people, well, they might be able to figure something out. In his book, a long shot was better than no shot at all.

As the four of them struggled to separate and make room in the corners of the cramped cell, the guards walked back up out of the cells and headed back up the stairs to the courtyard, laughing the whole way. “We drag any more scum out of the city's gutters today, and we’re going to need to hire more executioners for the weekend,” the short guard complained.

“That’s fine,” the tall guard answered. “The people love it when we put on a good show. Reminds them who’s in charge.”

Once they were gone and the door slammed shut, silence dominated for those first few uneasy seconds as the strangers regarded each other in the dim light of a single torch. Lucas was obviously at the bottom of the pecking order to start, but he was fine with that. He had his ways.

He had to work hard to intentionally suppress his smile when the dwarf took a long puff on his pipe and asked, “So, what are ye in for?”

Pipeweed (mid-grade): Euphoria 4, poison 3, strength 1, intelligence -1. Only effective when smoked.

“Well, that’s a long ass story,” Lucas said, leaning back against the wall to try to get comfortable as best he could as he studied his new roommates and the construction of his cell. “Let’s just say business was too good, and eventually, I was making so much money that the crown wanted its cut.”

The dwarf laughed at that. “Aye, I know just how that goes. Truly.”

As they spoke, Lucas studied their cage. The cell was a crude thing with rusting bands of iron riveted together rather than the clean steel bars he was used to.

There was no way the bit of wire that he’d stabbed into his boot would work on the thick door lock, but he worked it free just the same to get started on his manacles. Just because the door didn’t look especially escapable didn’t mean it wouldn’t be breakable if he could get Bruce Banner over there to play ball.

There were more than a few reagents, too, Lucas noted, though most of them were somewhere between useless and dangerous. Mold flourished in the corners, and beneath the sodden hay, they lined their cell floor, and roots peeked through the cracks in the ceiling.

Black Mold (raw): Poison 3, pain resistance 2, dexterity -1

Green Slime (raw): Poison 2, strength -1, dexterity -1

Widower’s Root (raw): Strength 2, endurance 1, poison 1

Everyone nodded along as he protested the unjustness of his arrest, and he quickly found out the gist of everyone’s stories. They were all small-time criminals who hadn’t really done anything worthy of a public execution, either. However, because of the rising crime here in Lordanin, the Prince had apparently decided to look like a big man, and he was going to make an example out of them.

That was almost certainly Lucas’s fault, ultimately, but he wasn’t about to point that out. Not when it was just the right time to play a trump card that should be able to get their attention.

“I… I’m not from around here,” Lucas said eventually, trying to up the stakes. “In fact, not long ago, I was a dead man, if you can believe it.”

“You’re a dead man now, lad,” the dwarf said. Everyone laughed at that, even Lucas.

“Yeah, for sure, but like, actually dead. Like I died and went to the afterlife dead. Like this isn’t even my real body dead,” he said, enjoying the shock.

Ch. 3 - Use What You Got

The questions came all at once after that. How did he die? How did he come back to life? What was the afterlife like?

It wasn’t the first time he’d told people this story, and he wouldn’t have bothered except for how well it seemed to work at getting people interested in him. It was easier to pretend to be a miracle worker after you’d already talked about a few miracles.

“How did I die?” he asked rhetorically. “Let’s call it an alchemical accident. I was mixing up a big batch of potions, and a sort of fireball spell went off when the city guards tried to arrest me.”

He wasn’t about to explain to them what a meth lab was or why that dumb fucking cop thought it was a good idea to use a taser in a room full of volatile chemicals and flammable gases. The fact that he’d died in a ball of fire had been true enough, though.

One second, he’d been whipping a big batch of the best crystal in Idaho, and the next, his door was being knocked down. It had been terrible timing because he’d been right in the middle of a cook, and before he could make a run for it, the whole world had caught on fire.

Lucas had thought it would hurt worse than it did, honestly. He’d been as surprised as anyone to wake up in a place that seemed more like the DMV than any heaven or hell he’d ever read about.

“Death is interesting,” he continued. “But the afterlife? Let’s just say that it’s a very boring place. They try to fix you, I guess you could say so that you will do better in your next life, but fuck that, right?”

“All that matters is that I’ve escaped worse jams than this and built myself up from nothing more than once already,” he said, flashing the men who were listening to his story a predatory smile. “So we’re getting out of this fucking pit, no problem. I mean, I am anyway because there’s no way I’m going back to heaven to take whatever punishment they want to dream up for what I did last time. The rest of you can come along if you want, though.”

He smiled wider, hoping he hadn’t laid on too think. “A man can never have enough friends, right?”

He still didn’t understand this damn world. Whoever had created it seemed to make it up as they went along. He had a what the locals called a minor gift when it came to alchemy, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were all sorts of minor gifts like his.

Maybe one percent of the people of Annorah had real-life, though, they had honest-to-god magic. They could heal kids instead of letting them die. They could use magic to make him confess or pull secrets from his brain.

That isn’t usually what happened. Instead of doing good deeds, the mages were usually off doing their own thing. That left the guards to use hot irons and rip out toenails and whatever else it was these guys did to get answers out of random guys they picked up from the street.

Honestly, he’d only interacted with wizards like the one in the Chalice a couple of times, and they gave him the creeps. They had crazy ass powers but they didn’t seem very concerned in using them for the good of everyone, and to this day he still wasn’t sure why.

He’d rather be in this hole amongst this motley little crew. Sure, they were pieces of shit just like he was, but at least they were honest about it.

The cell’s giant was named Hura’gh, and he’d been a tax collector’s hired muscle. Other than the glares and the bad breath he didn’t seem to be too bad a guy. It turned out that he’d accidentally beaten a man to death while trying to collect some coin earlier in the week.

Normally, that wouldn’t have been a capital crime since he was working for the kingdom. Right now wasn’t exactly normal, and the powers that be were looking to make an example out of people like them.

The dwarf was named Kar’gandin. He was a merchant who’d worked hard his whole life to pay as few of the taxes and tariffs that he owed the crown as possible. When it was his turn to explain why he was awaiting the headsman’s axe he was pretty straight forward. He made no bones about the fact that he’d confessed to everything rather than let the royal confessor pry loose his secrets one tooth at a time.

He boasted “every deal I made was fair enough, but over the years, I managed to get away with keeping the crown’s cut almost every time. I’ll bet I earned my own weight in gold like that before it finally caught up with me.”

That just left Hardcore, and unfortunately, he was still out with a concussion on the floor. Lucas knew nothing about the man to share with his new cellmates. He seemed like a scrapper to Lucas, and he felt a little bad he didn’t have a single healing potion on his person to help the guy out. After all, a three-man crew was well enough, but a four-man crew would have been even better once they’d figured out how to escape and the guards sounded the alarm.

For a time, Lucas thought that the dwarf should have been in the other cell with the nobleman. However, the longer he talked, the more clear it was that he’d done more than embezzle and fail to pay his taxes. The man definitely had blood on his hands.

In the end, the only person that didn’t fit the pattern was the Viscount across the way. Lord Parin was rather tight-lipped about why it was that he was down here, so the three of them made a game for the next half hour, trying to guess what it was. It was valuable time, and Lucas didn’t exactly want to waste it. Not with the occasional scream coming from down the hall, but nothing brought a group together like finding someone who thought they were better than them to mock, so in the end he didn’t rush things.

In the process, they came up with ever more shameful reasons for why one of the crème de la crème of the kingdom was about to meet the headsman’s axe along with a mob of his inferiors. Theft, affairs, buggery, drug addiction, cowardice, and even unsavory acts with barnyard animals all made their appearance to the man’s obvious distaste. When he stopped reacting to their odious stories, though, the game quickly lost its appeal.

Finally, the little Lord said, “You can hear what it is I’m guilty of when they read the charges to the baying crowd but know that those are just the excuses, not the reason.”

Lucas nodded, “Well, I’m your one chance to avoid getting your head chopped off tomorrow or the day after or whenever they decide to do it, and if you want to get out of here with us, I’m going to need two things from you.”

“As if a battered runt like you could get us out of this hole,” the Viscount laughed. “If I still had my fortune, I’d bet…”

His words died away as Lucas lifted his arms to reveal that his manacles had been removed. “Sounds like you lose a lot of bets, man,” Lucas snarked as he turned to the half-orc. He started trying to unlock the hulk’s manacles with the same bent piece of wire he’d turned into a makeshift lockpick in order to keep working on building up some goodwill before he told them his plan.

“How did you…” the noble gasped.

“It’s called sleight of hand, and someday when you guys invent that shit, it’s going to be fire, trust me,” Lucas chuckled coldly, “So you can either tell us your story and join the crew or you can do the honorable thing and wait patiently for your final appointment. The choice is yours.”

“Getting free of manacles isn’t going to get you out of that cage,” Lord Parin shot back coldly. “There’s still two locked doors and a castle full of guards between you and freedom.”

“Easy,” Lucas answered, not bothering to elaborate as he moved on to the dwarf.

“What’s the second thing you need, anyway?” the noble asked.

“Besides your story?” Lucas laughed. “I’m just going to need your flask.”

“My what?” the man asked, playing dumb. He was a terrible liar.

“You know. The thing with your… I’m going to say brandy, but we can call it a medicinal herbal tonic if you prefer. Whatever gets you through the night.”

“I don’t—” the man started to say, but Lucas interrupted.

“I can smell it on you, even over the scent of Mister Smokey here,” Lucas smiled as he turned to the dwarf, “no offense.”

The dwarf shrugged indifferently as he took another puff, but Hura’gh snarled. “You holding out on us, rich man?!” he bellowed loud enough that the guards had certainly heard it, not that it mattered.

“It’s fine, man. Be cool…” Lucas told his angry friend. “He’ll contribute to the cause. Lord fancy pants over there might be too good to tell stories with the rest of us, but he wants to live, too. You can see it in his eyes.”

“Let’s say I had a flask, and I was willing to contribute it to your little cause,” the Viscount said. “What then? How does that open these doors to freedom? Past the guards, there’s a city full of men that would tell the guards exactly where any of us are for a few pence.”

“You want the whole plan?” Lucus smirked. “Okay. Here it is. I… let’s say I have a friend, who’s a gifted alchemist, and he’s taught me a few things. I’m going to take your flask to distill and isolate a few ingredients and make our friend here a strength potion. Then he’s going to—”

“Even with a strength potion, a half-orc isn’t strong enough to rip that door off its hinges,” the noble laughed.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Lucas shot back. “You think this is my first jailbreak? He’s plenty strong to bend the bars down here at the bottom where they’re rusted. Then our friend Mister Kar’gandin will crawl out, fetch the key, and unlock the doors. After that, we go upstairs to the cabinet where we’re keeping our shit; I get my hands on a dagger, pry up the bar holding that door closed, and then we fight our way free and lose ourselves in town. Between me and our merchant friend, I’m sure we got enough contacts to smuggle us out of the city, and then we can hide out in the greenwood until—”

“Why in the hell would you want to be in the greenwood?” the dwarf asked. “The place is fraught with dangers. Goblins, spiders, and of course—”

“Because that’s where the shit grows to make more blue,” Lucas barked. “Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been saying? You, me… hell - everyone in this cell. We go in business together. We get out of here, you keep the critters from killing me in the big dark forest, and when we get what we need to come back and sell it to blokes with the cash and quietly buy our names off the shitlist! It’s a plan so easy anyone could do it.”

Of course, that was the last thing that Lucas planned on doing. He’d learned the hard way more than once in his life that you didn’t shit where you eat.

So, now that he’d taken a big dump on Lordanin, he was going to have to skip town. These assholes didn’t need to know that, though.

They were only important for as long as it took him to get free. After that, well - they were on their own, just like he was.

“It takes a lot more than brandy to make a strength potion,” what do you propose to brew here exactly?”

To answer the question, Lucas produced two redcaps with a flourish. They were poisonous as hell, but they had enough strength on them that he could make it work. That was especially true with the widower’s root and the pipeweed they had on hand.

Red Caps (raw): Poison 10, strength 4, intelligence -2, dexterity -1. Those who devour or imbibe redcaps have a 30% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.

“How in the blazes did you manage to smuggle mushrooms in here?” the half-orc laughed. “If you tell me you stuck it up your butt, then I ain’t drinkin' anything made from those!”

“Well, they took my weapons, my coins, and all my emergency potions when they arrested me. I had these in my boot as a just-in-case sorta thing,” Lucas sighed. “I keep a lot of those, normally. I even had an invisibility potion in my pouch, too. Woulda’ been perfect for getting me out of here next mealtime. I do think we have everything we need to make this if we all pitch in, though.”

“I still don’t understand how you think all of this is even remotely feasible,” the nobleman declared. “Alchemy is a complex and delicate magic! It requires refined reagents, precise ratios, and very expensive equipment. I don’t see a flask or a retort in sight. I highly doubt that you can do anything of the sort.”

“See - that’s just your limited worldview and imaginations sticking out and embarrassing you further, your nosiness. Me, I don’t got those problems,” Lucas smiled. “You just toss your brandy over here, and I’ll show you exactly what I can do.”

The incredulous man looked at him, frozen and scandalized, and when he finally produced the flask and tossed it over, Lucas was under no illusions that it was the half-orcs glare that did the lion's share of the persuading. Hurag’gh immediately reached for it, but before the half-orc could grab it and down the liquid fire in a single gulp, Lucas pulled it away.

“Easy, easy…” he said. “This is for crafting, not for drinking. We get out of here first round’s on me, okay? I got a stash. I’ll hook you up.”

Brandy, 10 years old (Excellent): Purifying agent. Remove 50% of the negative effects of up to two reagents.

The half-orc glowered at him but said nothing, giving Lucas the breathing room to examine the thing. Then, once that was done, he smiled. It was time to do the shittiest cook of his life.

Ch. 4 - A Toxic Stew

The first thing Lucas did was borrow Hardcore’s iron cap. As it turned out, the cheap helmet hid a nasty head wound, but Lucas just wiped the inside clean with his shirt, and then he added the mushrooms and the brandy. He’d taken to carry them as his own private cyanide capsule after the last time someone had tried to force his secret recipe out of him, so they were clearly toxic. If he wanted this orc to stay breathing for even a few minutes, he was going to have to leach some of that poison out.

“Oh, sir dwarf, might I borrow your fire starter and a pinch of pipeweed?” Lucas asked next. If he was going to leach the poison from the main ingredient, he might as well do so from the second most toxic ingredient as well.

“Only if ye’ be tellin’ me why ye’ need me stash,” the dwarf answered with exactly the sort of stinginess that so typified his kind.

“Okay,” Lucas said, clearing his throat. “The short short version goes like this. Every herb and mineral in this big magic world of yours has properties. They all do something. If you prepare them right, they do that something better, and if you combine them right, they can do some crazy shit. Pipeweed dulls the intellect and has some strength, but mostly, it just makes you feel real good. I need every last thing that can give our boy here a little boost, you know what I’m saying?”

Grudgingly, the dwarf handed over the things Lucas needed. He got to work, crushing and mixing the pipeweed and redcaps in the bowl with a stick until it was a mix of red and brown. After that, he handed it to the orc and said, “Hold this for a minute while I build a fire.”

“Why can’t I just drink it now?” Hurag’gh asked.

“Because it’s not at full potency, you big lug, and it’s still got all sorts of toxins in it,” Lucas sighed. “Like… just let me do my job, please. I promise I won’t tell you how to bend bars when it’s your turn…”

Alchemical Mixture (8 doses): Poison 13, strength 5, euphoria 4, intelligence -3, dexterity -1. Those who devour or imbibe redcaps have a 30% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.

Honestly, they were going to need every advantage they could get. He was going to let that brandy sit for at least half an hour before he dumped it out. He needed to because right now, they weren’t creating a strength potion. They were creating a murder potion.

The only question was whether it would kill the person foolish enough to drink it before they killed everyone in sight, and Lucas wasn’t having that. It wasn’t just that he was more professional than that, either. He was trapped in a cage with the guy who was going to be drinking this, and he didn’t really want to get ripped to bloody shreds.

While his goo marinated, he collected enough dry straw and scraps of wood for the next portion and built what would become a tiny campfire just outside their cramped cell. Then, after half an hour of waiting and telling everyone to chill the hell out, he dumped the poisonous fluid out and ground up the widower’s root inside his mixture, turning it from a smooth maroon to a chunky brown that was pretty much the opposite of appetizing.

Alchemical Mixture (5 doses): Poison 8, strength 7, euphoria, 2, endurance, 1 intelligence -2. Those who devour or imbibe redcaps have a 15% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.

Still, it did improve the stats. They were definitely going in the right direction. That was good because they were only going to have one shot at this.

Lucas spent the next half hour roasting his helmet full of gunk over a very low flame. Everyone, including him, complained about the smell, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was just part of alchemy.

The heating step was the most important part of most potions. With some mixtures, it was transformative, but with others, like this, it was merely an amplifier. The longer he heated it, the more of the lesser properties were burned away, and the stronger the main properties got.

He watched as the intelligence component blinked out of existence, followed by the endurance one as well. It was only when euphoria started to decline that he pulled it off the heat and let the bubbling mixture cool.

Doing this shit with one hand was hard, but doing it with lousy ingredients was even harder. Lucas’s only consolation was that he wasn’t the one who was going to have to drink it.

Toxic potion of Strength (3 doses): Poison 10, strength 10. Those who imbibe this potion have a 10% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.

“Alright. Now that this is done, I say we—” Lucas started to tell everyone the plan, and the door at the top of the stairs began to creak open.

His blood froze solid in his veins as he realized that a guard was coming. “Act natural,” he hissed as he looked for the right spot to hide the helmet. Honestly, hiding it was the worst idea because if they searched the cells, then the guards would know it was important.

So, acting on instinct, he wedged Hardcore’s helmet between the unconscious man’s hands so it looked like he’d thrown up more than anything. Lucas wasn’t entirely sure that the metal had cooled enough not to burn the man, but then he wasn’t entirely sure that he was alive either, so it balanced out.

In the end, his cautiousness had been for nothing anyway. The squinty-eyed guard stayed only long enough to deliver a few moldy loaves and replace the torch before he walked back up the stairs.

“Wait, it’s not true, is it?” Lucas called, pretending to panic. “You’re not really going to execute us tomorrow, are you? I’ll talk! I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”

The guard’s only response was to laugh as he closed and barred the door at the top of the tiny dungeon, but that was okay because that’s exactly what the prisoners were doing. The guard could only hear the faux panic in Lucas’s voice, but his fellow prisoners could see the ridiculously exaggerated expressions he was making as he mocked the man.

After that, they all ate their meager portion, and Lucas gave their orc-blooded friend Hardcore’s share while he discussed the plan again. They were going to wait for the bell to ring midnight, then they were going to break out and make for the gate. If it was shut, then they’d go over the wall, but Lucas felt pretty good about their odds. It was better than a coin flip. They’d get free, so long as their muscle didn’t keel over in the first five minutes from the poison that Lucas was going to feed him.

It was only then after Lord Parin was at least a little convinced that this plan had the possibility of succeeding, that he finally shared his story with them. Well, they all reclined in their hole, waiting for the bell to ring the appointed hour. He told them all the sordid tale of how he’d cock blocked the Prince.

“If the man had set his eyes on one of my servants, or perhaps even a cousin, I could have looked the other way,” the noble explained. “But my sister? What was I supposed to do? Such a liaison would be out of the question. After all, her virtue, her prospects…”

“That’s fucked up,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “The man sounds like a little bitch to me. If I were, you’d beat his ass.”

“Well, that would certainly be one way to end up in the dungeon, which I did my very best to avoid. Instead, what I did was—” the viscount started to say, but Lucas interrupted him.

“See - you shoulda fucked him up!” he said with a laugh. “The result was the same, but it would have been worth it!”

“Perhaps, but it only took him a few weeks to decide that we were defrauding the crown by using grazing lands that belong to him without paying,” Lord Parin sighed. “Even now, he’d almost certainly let me out if I agreed, but… I just can’t. Not with such an entitled reprobate hiding behind his father’s good name. I wrote a letter to the magistrate, but it probably never reached him.”

“Dude sounds like a little bitch to me,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “You want to square up, and I got your back once my hand heals, of course.” It was an easy thing to say because the young noble was soft as cheese and had obviously never been in a fight in his life, which wasn’t a lot less than Lucas had been in.

He was still annoyed when their muscle laughed at that, though. “Have you ever been in a fight, Lucas?” the half-orc laughed.

“Man, how do you think I get a face like this without taking a couple beat downs,” Lucas asked, pointing. People laughed at that too, but this time it was funny, and not because he looked like a weakling.

He knew that this body wasn’t much. It was even weaker than his real body had been, and he hadn’t won any Mister Universe awards then either, but he was scrappy, and he’d give as good as he got unless the guys doing the giving happened to be guards wearing chain mail just waiting to kick his face in. Then he’d curl up in a ball after they cornered him in an alley and hope that they didn’t break anything important.

“Did you win your last fight, at least?” Hurag’gh asked as he chuckled.

“Fuck no!” Lucas yelled, “If I did, why would I be in here with you. The one before that was pretty tight, though. No one called the guards, so…”

His words trailed off as he heard the distant bell tower of the city’s church begin to ring in the distance. “...but that’s a story for after we’re out of here. I’ll tell you all over drinks down at my second favorite rathole.”

Lucas reached over, picked up the now cooled gray slime, and noticed that the two layers had mostly settled out. This hole was hardly a real lab, but as he very gently poured out the clear layer into the flask before emptying the sludge layer back on the ground, he was satisfied. No one could have done better with the tools on hand. He was just glad that few people had the identity skill to see this, or his well-muscled friend would have definitely balked at what came next.

Foul potion of Strength (2 doses): Poison 7, strength 9. Those who imbibe this potion have a 5% chance to go berserk for up to one hour.

With a smile, he slapped the helmet back on the Hardcore and passed the flask to Hurag’gh. “Alright, man, drink up!”

“You sure this is safe?” The half-orc asked hesitantly. “It smells like vomit.”

“The worse a medicine tastes, the more effective it is. That’s what my mama taught me, and that’s just the way it is,” Lucas said, sidestepping the question. “I’d drink it to prove the point, but given how weak I am compared to you, it would kinda defeat the purpose, you know?”

Hurag’gh gave him a hard look and then downed the flask in a single go. Drinking both doses was probably a little overkill, but it was what it was. Better him than me,  Lucas thought as their muscle dropped the flask and staggered a bit as he rose to his feet.

“I feel… I feel…” the half-orc said as he flexed his hands and gave Lucas just enough time to worry about that the berserk effect had triggered. “Strong.”

“Like I said, man,” Lucas sighed. “No trust these days. Jeeezz. Now bust us out of here before the shit wears off!”

Hurag’gh leered at him with a crazed look in his eyes and then turned toward the door and smiled.

Ch. 5 - Getting Out of Here

The huge half-orc lurched for the door so fast that Lucas had trouble getting out of the way. He was forced to land on poor Hardcore, who actually let out a low moan for the first time in hours, confirming he wasn’t dead yet.

“Easy there buddy - we’ll get you out of here soon,” Lucas said, even though they had every intention of leaving the man behind.

Lucas turned to face the orc, and saw that contrary to the plan, the man was trying to rip the door off its hinges instead of bending up the bars where they were rusted through at the bottom for their dwarf friend to creep out of. Despite what he’d said earlier, he was just about to tell the asshole how to bend the damn bars when he actually managed to tear the door right off its hinges.

With a grunt and a sudden metallic pop, the thing came free, and just like that they were free. Well, not really free exactly, he corrected himself. They were free of their cell, but still locked in the tiny little dungeon. That part was something Lucas felt well-equipped to handle, though, at least he did until he saw what Hurag’gh was up to.

“Hey! No! That’s not the plan,” Lucas hissed as loudly as he dared when he saw the half-orc testing the door on the far cell. “Hurag’gh… let me get the key, and I’ll get his lordship out of there…”

The half-orc stopped, but he seemed disappointed to do so. “I just… feel so strong, he growled. Like it’s burning inside me…”

“Yeah, I hear ya buddy,” Lucas answered as he peeled himself off their unconscious cellmate, “but this is faster, and more importantly quieter. If the guards catch us on the way out, you can show them how strong you are as you rip their fucking heads off, alright?”

Lucas grabbed the key and unlocked the noble's cell before anything else could get fucked up. After that he looked to poor hardcore passed back out on the ground.

With his helmet on, it looked like he was just asleep, and if you woke him up he’d be ready to throw down. Sadly, with that head wound, he probably wasn’t ever going to wake up again.

Lucas wanted to do something for the poor guy since he’d been so kind as to lend them his helmet, but it would take the whole vial of blue to give the man the painless overdose he deserved.

Sadly, even he still had that in his things upstairs, he wasn’t going to be giving it away. It was Lucas’s last bit of operating capital, and if he was going to be able to rebuild in some other city, he was going to need to give a way a couple free samples to the right sort of people to get the operating capital he needed to set up again.

“Rest in peace, man,” he told the thrashing body as he followed Kar’gandin Hurag’gh out the door of their tiny cellblock. It was there he faced a dilemma. The plan said he should just go upstairs and get away as fast as possible.

That was harder to do when he could hear the sound of someone screaming down the hall, though. Right now some asshole was going to town and getting his rocks off looking for a truth he was never going to find.

Even from here Lucas could hear the man in question trying to confess that he’d did it, but because the prisoner couldn’t tell him what was in the formula the confessor ignored him and continued.

“The recipe for a merciful death, is that not fair?” the man asked in a tone that was so ingratiating that Lucas wanted to punch him from here.

He didn’t do that though. Instead, he paused for a moment wondering if this was about evidence, or about the crown trying to steal his shit. Was it possible the powers that be wanted to go into business for themselves with his forbidden recipe? Lucas had to admit that seemed unlikely, but he wasn’t about to dwell on it right now.

He couldn’t exactly ignore it either, though, so he turned to Hurag’gh. “Hey man, I need you to do me a solid. Go kill that asshole to shut that screaming up while I get the door open, alright?”

“Why should we bother saving anyone else,” the half-orc asked with a look of contempt. “They didn’t help us out of our cell.”

“I don’t give a shit about saving them,” Lucas lied. “I just think a couple more dudes that are pissed off at getting carved up might be a good thing to have if the guards catch us out of our cell. I’d do it myself, but I don’t want you ripping the next door off it’s hinges too, capeesh?”

For a second the half-orc glowered at him, and Lucas was more than a little worried the man might just crush his skull, instead he turned and started down the hall.

Lucas saved the sigh of relief for later. Instead he made his way upstairs to check out their next move. At the top was the heavy oaken door that led to freedom, or at least the courtyard that was one step closer to freedom, as well as the locker where they’d dumped his shit.

He smiled at that and opened it up quickly, pushing the dwarven account books and the noble’s stuff to one side as he looked for his own belongings. He found his pouch after that but it felt a couple potions light. Attached to it was his belt, but the sheath was empty.

“Mother bitch!” he cursed softly as he went down to join everyone else and deliver the bad news. “Bad news guys. The dagger I’d planned on using to lift the bar that’s keeping us locked in isn’t with the rest of my shit.”

“Well, of course it ain’t,” Kar’gandin laughed. “Ye think they’re in the habit of locking prisoners in with their weapons? That wee niche is just where they keep the evidence their pet questioner might want to see again. Everything else they steal or sell.”

Lucas cursed as he opened his pouch and realized the dwarf was right. His healing and his invisibility potion were both missing, but they’d left the vial of blue behind, and he wasn’t about to touch that. “So what do we do now,” Lucas asked.

Brew of Mana Intoxication (lowest quality) (5 doses): Euphoria 12, poison 3, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 200% for 1 hour.

“I could rip off one of these metal slats and—” Lucas volunteered. It was a terrible idea, but the dwarf interrupted him before he could finish it.

“Too loud, too thick, and much too slow,” the dwarf said as he walked up behind Lucas.

Without explanation, the dwarf picked up the thicker one of his ledgers, and just before Lucas was going to berate the little guy about how this wasn’t the time for math problems or recording debts, he ripped the leather spine off ad revealed a very sharp, slender steel stiletto hidden in the binding.

“Just because they take everything obvious doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to take,” the dwarf said with a twinkle in his eye. Then, while Lucas kept a watch on the little barred window and made sure the coast was clear, Kar’gandin got to work. The dwarf slid his blade between the door and its worn frame as he sought the leverage to lift the bar on the other side.

He ignored that for a moment as he heard the tenor of the screams change downstairs. There were a few loud noises that were almost certainly their half-orc, and then there was only silence. Lucas figured he had a pretty good idea of what that meant, but chose to ignore and focus on the dwarf’s efforts, which were taking way too long as far as he was concerned.

“You sure that thing is strong enough?” Lucas whispered as he kept a wary eye out for any guard patrols. This time of night, the castle looked dead enough, and he could hear snoring coming from somewhere out there, but it was somewhere on the wall behind them where he couldn’t see it.

“I’m sure that if ye’ question the strength of dwarven-steel again, ye’ won’t live to regret it,” the dwarf said without missing a beat. “All things require patience, and all things done through a door of solid oak require a little more patience than usual…”

As the dwarf spoke, Lucas looked down, and he could see the thick wooden bar jiggling. The man was making progress, so it was hardly worth freaking out over. Still, he could feel his skin crawling with anxiety.

Hurag’gh picked that moment to start tromping up the stairs behind them, and Lucas let himself be distracted by that for a moment. The man had picked up a heavy iron bar to use as a club and was spattered in blood, but the fact that he was alone told Lucas everything he needed to know about whether or not there were survivors.

That could have been me, he thought briefly before he pushed it from his mind and turned his gaze back outside. Negativity wasn’t going to do him any favors here. He needed to focus.

Freedom wasn’t on the other side of this doorway, after all. The courtyard was full of danger, just coiled up and waiting for them. It was every bit as deadly as the executioner's axe but a hell of a lot less gentle. They were committed now, though.

Even if they went meekly back to their cell, the guards were still likely to hack them to pieces come morning.  No, we needed to get out and— as Lucas thought that the dwarf finally succeeded in prying out the timber, and it came out of the cross braces that held the door closed with a heavy double thunk.

In that moment, no one breathed, not even Hurag’gh. It was only after several tense seconds, where the pounding of Lucas’s heart competed with the sound of the nearby guard’s gentle snoring, that he cautiously pushed the door open.

The creaking sound that it made shaved another few years of Lucas’s life, but a moment later, they were one step closer to freedom, and he stepped out into the moonlight. He found the guard closer than expected, only a few feet from the door, where he was sitting on a chair that leaned against the wall and shirking his duty.

Lucas didn’t blame him; the dude had probably had a hard day of beating up on defenseless prisoners and decided he needed a nap. He smirked at that as he gestured to those who were following him and raised a figure to his lips.

Before they could come up with a plan or he could tell them what he wanted to do next, the half-orc reached forward and slammed the guard’s helmetless head against the wall in a wet thud that left a red stain on the wall as the man slid down it to the ground.

“Hurag’gh!” Lucas hissed. “My man. We need to be quiet. Let the man with the stiletto take this dude out.”

“That was quiet,” the half-orc grunted.

Lucas was forced to agreewith that, at least in part. It was quiet for him. Certainly quieter than he’d feared, but Lucas still winced at the volume.

“Forget it,” the dwarf grunted, “What’s ye’r plan now? The drawbridge is up, the gate is down, and as soon as someone sounds the alarm, it’s over. I have a feelin’ that all ye’ have done is take us from the roasting pan to the oven.”

“Well, what if we took this guy’s armor?” Lucas said. “I could put this on, and then we could get another one for his lordship, and then with a little rope, we could escort you two out for a little late-night questioning. I’ll bet the guards would buy it.”

All of that was off the cuff, of course. He’d been planning for the four of them to make it to the top of the wall and then find a good spot to jump in the moat and pray the alligators were a myth, but this was better. Men jumping over the wall would start the clock on pursuers eager to chase them down, but if they could walk out without anyone even giving a shit, that was pretty much best case scenario.

No one disagreed with the plan, and they quickly stripped the corpse. Hurag’gh helped Lucas don the heavy-scale mail jacket and skirt, and then he belted on the man’s sword and picked up the nasal helm that the man had been using as a footrest, and he was pretty much good to go.

“We’ll wait here, laddie,” Kar’gandin said with a smirk that told Lucas that he wasn’t the only one who thought he looked ridiculous in this uniform. “You find some poor bastard standing watch all by his lonesome and run him through. Try not to get blood on the uniform.”

Lucas was about to tell them that there was no way he was doing all that alone when Lord Parin said, “There’s no way he’s carrying back an arm full of armor without getting stares. We all need to go. Our alchemist can tell us when it looks safe.”

Lucas nodded at that. The viscount’s plan sounded better, but when he looked at Huragh’gh, he saw the big man was starting to look a little faded. They were going to have to hurry, or their muscle was going to become a three-hundred-pound sack of potatoes.

“Alright,” he said, “Let’s do this.”