Chapter 18: Chapter 18 – Through Deeds And Joys Are Paths Opened

An injection cylinder was largely what it said on the tin: you pulled the pin, and the air compressed by the motion propels the contents of the cylinder.

In this case, the contents were a careful mix of some astonishingly acidic lemon seeds, ground into powder and mixed with what was labeled simply as Luminous Dust. What they were reacting so rapidly with was in turn a mix of capsicum oleoresin and a highly basic cleaning liquid, and the results were exactly as I’d predicted.

The reaction frothed up almost immediately, as the acid-base reaction turned citric acid and something into carbon dioxide, water, and something I vaguely remembered as being a food additive—well, assuming the chemistry of lemons was the same here. The resulting turbulence did a great job getting the rest of the dust in contact with the liquid, and the entire mixture turned into a churning, pressurized cloud.

A glowing cloud, glinting and scintillating in every color of the rainbow.

I allowed myself one manic half-giggle, half-cackle on my first pump of the atomizer. The moment it compressed, though, I was all business, watching the mist spray out in a narrow, powerful jet that splattered all over the inside of the primary containment. There was a beam of light that, in defiance of all physics, seemed to be spraying out with the mist—it refracted partially off of the inner surface of the glass in exactly the same way that the spray did.

Not all of it did, though. It was glass, after all; enough passed through the vessel to cast a brilliant spotlight on the stone wall. A narrow pinpoint, it looked like it had all the concentrated light from a flashlight more powerful than anything I’d ever touched, and I pumped again as it started to fade, grinning broadly as it brightened up again.

I pumped it a third time, and a sense of distraction flooded me, a demand for my attention from that immaterial connection to the System I’d been calling my bridge.

“Kelly. You have the baton?”

“I… what?”

“System’s calling. Take over the experiment, or at least make sure it doesn’t break.”

“Yes! Yes, yes, I’ve got it!” She didn’t push me aside—which was good; I’d have been mad about that—but she all but leapt to grab the pump and run her fingers along the sides of the flask. “This is great and I’ll be fine and have fun, now go!”

I snickered, stepping away and making sure nothing was out of place or unsecured. Leaving her to enjoy a moment of mad science, I crossed the room to a bench near the ramp, well away from the experiment. Even keeping my attention on walking that far was difficult, but one foot went in front of the other until I sat down. Only then did I let the connection snap into place, and the words washed over me.

 

Your Divine Flame Is Enriched!

The Designs Of Your Mind Lead To Insights: Brightly Burning Mist Potion (Discovery)

Behold, The Feats Of Your Legend Increase: Advanced Creation

Those Who Perform Feats, Grow By Leaps And Bounds: [Compounding Intuition]

The World Observes Your Skills, And Confirms Them: Nothing Left to Chance, Chemical Calculation, Mechanisms

Your Gaze Locks Upon Your Future: Mystical Chemist (Path Chosen)

Lo, A Step Upon Your Path Clarifies: Classes Unlocked (Alchemist, Chemist, Novice Sacred Artisan)

Word, Deed, Offering; These Gods Hear Your Prayer: Hermes (Aspect: Trismegistus), Hephaestus; Dedication Accepted (Primary: Hermes, Secondary: Hephaestus)

Divinity’s Journey Beckons: Class [Alchemist] Matches Your Path! Make Your Choice!

<Review Path (Mystical Chemist)>

<Evolve [Worker] Into [Alchemist]>

<Awaken, To Return In Due Course>

 

I felt the flow of the words stop, and paused for a moment to assess what the options felt like. I didn’t want to make a hasty choice, and it didn’t feel like this was a one-time offer. There was a sense of patience to the moment, an idea bubbling up through my head that of course I could choose to awaken and then return here, wherever here was, whenever I so chose.

I needed that. As tempting as it was to keep diving into this path, as incredibly curious as I was to find out more about my Path-with-a-capital-P, I had left Kelly in a room with an active experiment. I had left a complete novice, someone with absolutely no training, in a room with an ongoing experiment that paired volatile chemicals with magical reagents.

I didn’t think anything bad had happened or would happen, but it was still at least a little bit irresponsible of me.

I took a deep, entirely imaginary breath, and deliberately shaped my thoughts into the mental act of choosing to awaken.

Sensation, memory, and the memory of sensation flooded back into my awareness. Like a fog clearing from my mind, like a flash of recollection, I knew that in the approximately two minutes that had passed, very little had happened other than Kelly somehow turning the lights off—the windows were dark, too—amidst her escalating laughter. It had started as a delighted giggle and passed, in short order, into more of a maniacal cackle, and when I looked over, she was only just starting to wind down.

I could see her rather clearly, by the glow of the wall.

Kelly wasn’t pumping the atomizer anymore. Standing behind the bench at a respectful distance, hands clasped behind her back, she was bobbing her head and swaying her hips as though dancing. I stared, mesmerized for a long moment by the combination of that and her still-diminishing maniacal laugh—and then I rose, transferring my attention to first the flask and then the glowing wall.

“That looks verging on the edge of unsafe.” I nodded at the flask, smiling happily. “You stopped in good time, though?”

“Soon as the clouding started, ‘cause I was worried about what that meant for, I dunno. Anything?”

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“That was the right call.” I put as much praise into my voice as I could, drawing on memories of hapless undergraduate interns. “The clouding meant that it was going to absorb more of the heat, and it had already started affecting the structure. No telling what was going to happen then, and we weren’t set up for the flask exploding.”

Kelly was silent for a long moment, and I looked over at her, raising an eyebrow. She seemed lost in thought, and I let her be as I double-checked the state of the ditch-valve—something, some twitchy but contented instinct in me, was telling me that this incredibly resilient bit of the apparatus had been the most likely single point of failure, and it looked fine after the experiment.

I made to walk towards the wall, but stopped after a couple of steps, whistling in surprise at the radiant heat coming off of the stones. “You know,” I murmured, “I hadn’t thought about what it means that the stone is glowing enough to light up the experiment nook.”

“I’d say that was the other reason I stopped, but.” She giggled, a little watery and a little exhausted. “I was enjoying it.”

“As is proper.” I couldn’t stop looking at the stone, watching it shift just ever so slightly, deforming. “Is that going to, like, be a problem?”

“Nope!”

I turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow in my best unamused-supervisor face. I held it for about a half second before I started snickering, just long enough for her to plant her face in her hands. “Sorry, sorry. That was just too funny.”

“Mean, mean!” She walked up to me, bumping my hip with hers and giving the emphatic lie to the petulant whine in her voice. “I guess it was a little funny.”

“So why exactly is this not going to be a problem?”

“Well, I mean, it’s not gonna make the building fall down, right? And the Stone Team can just fix it real quick tomorrow, or Kan can just do it himself, ‘cause that’s easy peasy. Little job, barely a breath in and breath out.

“And he’ll want to, ‘cause he won’t believe us! That stone doesn’t melt easy. The floors, that’s one thing, they’re tiles. The walls? The wall’s bonded, I’ve never seen something like this.”

“Brightly Burning Mist.” I clasped my hands behind my back in a conscious mimicry of her earlier pose, stretching and enjoying the lack of pain in my shoulders. She’d carefully not answered whether she was a budding pyromaniac who was going to violate lab safety procedures in a fit of fiery fun, but she hadn’t done so this time. “I guess that’s a fair name. It’ll light a whole lot on fire.”

“Two doubles. Overlap.” Kelly and I spun around, startled witless—or at least, I was—by Hitz’s voice. Prosthetic notwithstanding, they’d walked up to a few feet away from us; they stumped over, every step loud. “Clever. Journeyman potion. Base of five?”

“You’re gonna—Kelly, you’re gonna have to explain that to me, sorry Hitz, don’t mean to impose. While we break this down?”

“While we… oh, Thousands. Shiuai bless, I lost track of the time!” Kelly grabbed my elbow, effortlessly spinning me around to face the ramp. “We’re gonna be late for second sitting! We can’t miss it, we can’t, not after getting that big of a basket, Thesha would have words for me. But as long as you get there as fast as you can, it’ll be fine.”

“Kelly, we can’t just leave—”

“I’ll take care of it. You need to go.” Her voice was emphatic, intense. “I already vented the leftovers into the ditch-valve and neutralized it with the sand. I’ll put the other flask in a hardbox and put that in a drum, leave the cyclers running with enough mana for a day, and catch up, I might even beat you there. But go! Take the ring road through Tome!”

I started walking, stripping off my protective equipment. “Make sure nothing’s near the drum, point the flask at a wall.” Gloves, goggles, and mask went onto the bench I’d been sitting on. “And anything with residue—”

“—goes into an autoclave, I’ll be fine! Mother hen that you are! If I’m not sure about something, Hitz is here!”

I hesitated one brief moment at the threshold of the ramp. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Kelly, it was that… well, that I didn’t trust her, in my professional sort of way. But I needed to trust her in her professional sort of way, and I absolutely trusted Hitz despite not seeming them at work, and Kelly was telling me right now that I needed to make haste to the refectory on the other side of the village.

Besides, that little voice in my head, the one that had identified the ditch-valve as being the weakest link, was absolutely silent. And if I couldn’t trust what I thought was my new Skill, well, the other reasons were still salient.

I ran.

I’d never been much of a runner. The joints would have precluded it even if I’d enjoyed it otherwise, but I really didn’t. It wasn’t even the pain of it, since an exercise bike or a hard hike wasn’t any less inclined to make my muscles burn; it was the tedium.

Maybe it’d have been different if I liked listening to stories.

Running around the arc of the ring road in Kibosh was a revelation. The motion sang in my body, and I felt every beat of my heart as though it were pumping diluted glory through my arteries and veins. My boots were wrong for this, but it didn’t matter; every step propelled me forwards, and the sheer clarity of the air was such a joy as to fill my mind.

A scattering of people—from their shops or on their walks, from their work or from where they gardened—cheered me on or heckled me in turn. Go, girl, go and Now kiddo, that’s why we leave on time spurred me on equally, my breath going short as I laughed. A shout from a reedy figure of middle age and indeterminate gender rang out, a clarion call of [Arcane Endurance (Lesser)] resounding across my world, and the burn that had started to grow faded.

Now almost sprinting, I passed through Tome, the library on my right and the combined administrative center and guardhouse on my left. I heard laughter that was recognizably Meredith’s and caught a glimpse of a waving James. I waved back at him and ran on.

I passed into the quints near Fall, lungs starting to burn as I slowed down. The light of the noon sun and its reflections was almost blinding, and I didn’t see the oh-so-helpful woman who called out in heavily accented but perfectly comprehensible Shemmai. I waved to her, not really processing what she was saying, and in return she incanted one short, catastrophic phrase.

[Benison: Swift Movement]. She called it out to the endless plains, to the spirit of the dogs and the traditions of the herders, and the power swept around me and propelled me forwards.

I couldn’t see well enough, and I wasn’t prepared. I made it three steps, three vast, bounding steps, before my left foot caught on the end of the path. It didn’t matter how little the toes dug into the soil, at that speed; I sailed, gracelessly airborne, for a split second.

When I slammed back into the ground face-first, it was in shocked silence and two flares of pain, in no small amount of shock and a strangely bright lucidity.

That, I thought to myself, is some broken ribs and a fucked-up nose.

And then the shouting started, and the apologies, and the laughter; but at least the only one laughing was me.

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