Chapter 56: 57: Loose threads

It’s the middle of the night. Fresh is flipping through her grimoire, thinking about potential recipes for a stamina-potion, tapping her chin with her other finger. The tip of which is wet from opening the book. Jubilee has gone to bed and she sits downstairs alone, thinking about this future project. But she hasn’t come up with anything just yet.

On the bright side, literally, she looks down at the ferns that Jubilee had managed to buy for her.

Gully Fern

A lush, deeply green fern with a budding blossom on the end. Ferns generally grow in moist climates. Gully ferns in particular grow deep down underground, in particularly wet areas such as dungeon-swamps and morasses.

This is just what she needed for her night-light idea. Fresh smiles. A lot of things are coming together all at once. It’s been an exhausting few days, but they have been very rewarding and not just financially. At this rate, she’d have her debt almost entirely paid off by the end of next week. Not only that, but also just because of all the people she’s been meeting and all of these new ideas she’s been having. It’s not just spiritually fulfilling, it’s nourishing.

Fresh sets the fern back down to the side, shaking her head. One project at a time.

Instead, she reaches over to her left, grabbing two white feathers and one red feather from a sack and placing them down, together with a single goblin tooth and a bundle of cylindrical shafts that she had made out of wood from their stockpile. Tilting her head, she looks at the collection, curious, but still somehow confident that this will work. Fresh lifts a hand, hovering it over the single tooth.

The goblin-tooth rattles as the magic files it down into a sharp arrowhead. Pressing it against one of the smooth sticks, she lays the feathers loosely on top of the back end and raises her hands above it again.

This arrow is tipped with a sleek, bone-arrowhead that is permeated with dark energy.

Melee: +1 DMG

Element: +3 DARK DMG

Weight: 0.12kg

Value: ???

Fresh beams as she picks up the arrow and inspects it. The wooden cylinder has taken on a darker hue somehow through the crafting process, which makes the three sharpened feathers on the end stand out. Especially the single dark-red feather that Fresh had specifically chosen. Not only so that the arrow has a more dramatic look for the shelves, but the red was also to signal that it has dark damage. She isn’t sure how the thieves’ guild works, but she’s sure they have a lot of arrows. So they’ll probably appreciate a visual marker like this.

Satisfied, with a happy smile, she sets the arrow to the side, getting ready mentally to make a few dozen more tonight before she goes to bed.

Before that though…

She grabs the fern again and one of her soul-potions from the shelf and runs out the door to the dungeon. Jubilee had forbidden her from, as they said it, “playing with fire inside of the house,” which she personally doesn’t think is reasonable. She isn’t going to play with it, she’s trying to make things.

Stepping into the dungeon, she appears on the inside of it again a moment later and sets the potion down onto the stairs. Grabbing the fern, she holds it into the flame of a torch for a moment and sets it alight. The wet leaves hiss, but then begin to smolder surprisingly quickly. She yelps and rushes over to the bottle, as the fire grows rapidly towards her fingers.

“Iah! Hot! Hot!”

Not sure what else to do, not exactly having thought this through, she stuffs the burning herb into the neck of the bottle, shoving it in as far as she can by jamming the cork back down onto it.

The cork sets on fire.

“Jubileeee~” she cries, clutching her hair. But Jubilee isn’t here.

Fresh drops back down onto the stairs, staring at the fire sprouting out of the small potion bottle, not sure what to do now except wait for it to die down. The recipe said it needed smoke from a fern… “This counts, right?” she quietly laughs to herself in exasperation, watching the fire die down as the herb chars and the burnt residue falls down from the glass neck and into the potion below.

She stares at the potion for a while, her body sitting back against the wall of the dungeon, in the exact spot she had fallen asleep at during her first night here.

Nothing happens.

Fresh sighs. “Did I mess it up?” The girl purses her lips and gets up. Maybe she should just go to bed. Maybe -

A wave of light pulsates through the potion and it starts to bubble, the glass vibrating as it begins to rattle against the stairs. For a moment, she thinks it's going to fall down the step and speeds over to reach for it, stopping only a second before, as she realizes how hot the glass probably is. With a clever, smug grin, she pushes the potion back a little with her boot.

The bubbling stops and the potion sits still, as the light that shoots through the blue liquid becomes a constant, bright shine, which combines with the original blue glow into a very bright aura that paints her skin with a vivid blue. With pride in her chest, she waits for the potion to cool down.

Bringing it back to the house, she returns to her work, making a wood and glass frame for the lantern, before finally falling into a long, well-deserved sleep, the newly crafted lantern sitting against the wall of her room, filling it with a bright, yet gentle blue-light.

[Magical Lantern](Normal)

A magical-lantern made out of wood and a waterproof layer of thin glass. The inside is filled with an enchanted liquid that glows with ever-present shine, day or night.

Color: Blue

The next day comes and Jubilee inspects the lantern.

“Fucking hell, that’s bright,” they say, pushing the lantern back across the counter and throwing a bag over it to cover the glow. “Not bad, though.” Jubilee rubs the chin of their mask. “There’s one issue.”

Fresh tilts her head. “What’s that?”

“How do you turn it off?”

The girl looks at the covered lantern and then back towards Jubilee. “…Why would you want to turn it off?”

“To make it dark?”

“Why?” asks Fresh.

“Because sometimes you don’t want to be seen, goo-brain,” snaps Jubilee. “You can light or extinguish a normal lantern whenever you need to.” They point at the lantern. “This is a giant, glowing ‘shoot your arrows here’ marker.”

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Fresh thinks, rubbing her arm. She supposes Jubilee has a point. Her eyes wander around the store, over the shelves, past the door and land on the shuttered window.

“Ah! I have an idea!”

Jubilee flinches as she runs upstairs past them and then just shakes their head as she comes down a moment later with a piece of wood and some metal bits. She places the wood on to the table and saws off several thin, rectangular sheets.

Uncovering the lantern and placing one of the sheets against each of the four sides, she holds her hands around it and fastens the pieces with one metal hinge on each of them.

Fresh beams as she slides the lantern back to Jubilee, who reaches over and presses the four shutters shut. “It’s a little awkward, having to mess with four things to turn it off. But… hmm…” They lift it, reopening only one of the shutters. The blue light shines out in a loose, but vaguely directed stream straight ahead. “Huh… this is actually pretty useful. A narrow light like this, or a full area light if you open the other ones.” The close the shutter and lift it up again. “This could actually work. Fuck me. Hmm… the wood, the fern… a potion… some glass… Maybe we should use a light metal instead of wood? So they’re more durable?”

They look to Fresh who thinks for a moment, but then nods in agreement.

“But, fuck, I think these will go well… maybe better than the other stuff. We’ll start selling them in-shop if you can make some more tonight. I bet you it won’t take three days before we get the church and the guard asking for orders of them.” Jubilee scratches their head. “We can’t sell these for cheap.”

“We can’t?”

“No, we’re already selling everything for far under market value. If we don’t start making some big ticket items with a real price soon, people are going to ask questions about how we’re staying afloat.”

Fresh rubs her arm. “I guess that makes sense. So how much is an enchanted lantern worth?”

“A normal one made by a master-enchanter? Fuck-loads. But ours don’t work with classical magic and also we don’t have a reputation as enchanters, so people won’t pay as much.” They spin it around a few times, looking at it. “If we make the frame out of metal instead of wood… maybe three-hundred each? But that’s the lowest we can go.”

“Make it two-hundred-ninety-nine,” says Fresh. “People are more likely to buy it that way because it doesn’t sound as high.”

“That’s dumb,” says Jubilee. “Anyone can see the difference is only one Obol.”

Fresh raises a finger and winks. “Trust me.”

Jubilee just rolls their eyes and shakes their head. “Sure. Fine. Whatever.” Leaning over, they pick up an arrow from the first batch. “These are pretty good too. With three dark damage, they’ll go right through any armor. The cloaks will love that.” They spin the arrow around to look at the feathers, seeing the one red feather, they look down to the rest of them, seeing that they all share the same feature. “Interesting design choice. Very dramatic.” Jubilee sets the arrow back. “You know, this whole store thing is turning out pretty good so far.” They look up towards Fresh curiously. “You can’t do much else, but you do seem to have a knack for this kind of work.”

“It’s because I have you helping me!” says Fresh proudly, clasping her hands in delight at the praise.

“Obviously,” says Jubilee plain as day, walking past her as they get ready to open the store.

Business is off to a slow start today and the weather is slightly cloudy, bringing with it a subdued calmness to the previous spring energy of the city. It seems that the bright, fresh spring is finally coming to a close and making way for the summer ahead. Though the dawn of such a thing is still a few weeks away, according to Jubilee.

Fresh is sitting behind the counter, tinkering with a few metal bits, as their first customer of the day walks in. She looks up from her work. “Welco- Ah!” She smiles. “Hi, Basil!” she calls out, looking at the tired, sunken-in face coming towards the counter.

Basil waves, walking up to her. “Hello, how are you?” asks the priestess gently.

“I’m fine,” says Fresh, waving her off. “More importantly, how are you?” she asks, leaning over the counter towards the priestess. Basil stops for a moment, as if thinking, but then smiles and reaches into her pocket, placing a single, silver coin onto the counter.

“I’m fine too, thank you.” She slides the coin across. “I’ve come to repay my debts. Thank you for your patience,” says the priestess with a warm, but deeply tired smile.

Fresh looks down to the coin, taking it without arguing. This is obviously an important gesture for the priestess. “Ah! Thank you very much. That’s great! So did you find a new party already?” she asks.

There is a heavy silence in the air, which Jubilee breaks by coughing once from the far side of the room. Fresh realizes that her question might have been seen as somewhat cold. “Ah… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean -” she looks away. “- Sorry.”

Basil shakes her head. “It’s okay, no. There aren’t many parties missing a healer here at this time of the year.” She rubs her head. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I had to sell the sword.”

“Oh,” says Fresh, not sure what to feel about that or if she should feel anything at all. It must have been a hard thing for her to do, she thinks. The girl’s gaze wanders over to Jubilee who nods back to her once, silently.

“Anyways, I should be on my way. Maybe I can find something today, I better get to searching,” says Basil, turning to walk back out. “See you around!”

“Basil, Wait!” calls Fresh after Basil. The girl scratches her cheek nervously. “We actually wanted to ask you something…”

Razmatazz

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