Chapter 204: Chapter 189 – Sponsored Research

"The Dragonfire brew was by no means a secret concoction. Its base combinations and ingredients had been well known and spread through the alchemical community of Ur-Teros a millennium ago, and from there brought to Alcidea as well.

 

The damned recipe has also been the number one cause of death for young alchemists in that timespan. Every now and then a cocky youngster would get the idea that surely he could do better than centuries of alchemists, and try to meddle with the formula.

 

In ninety nine out of one hundred such cases, the result was an explosion, almost always a ruined laboratory, and usually a dead alchemist, sometimes more. The worst disaster in the institute's record was seventy years ago, when an experiment gone wrong had blown up half of the alchemy faculty building.

 

Needless to say we had since banned the tinkering of Dragonfire Brew on institute grounds, on the pain of expulsion." - Petra Saqlovian, Head of the Alchemy faculty on the Levain Institute of Higher Learning, circa 649 FP.

It turned out that grandpa Aarin's interest in the goblin's experiments was genuine. He granted the goblin siblings a laboratory to work with - one for each, with Colin's being in a secluded corner of the palace - as well as a free reign on whatever alchemical ingredients they might have needed.

 

Aideen herself was more interested in Molin's research. True to what Illyana told her, the goblin woman had developed several sorts of draughts and brews that helped with healing, or health in general, some of which covered areas healers could not really handle.

 

As such, she often frequented the goblin woman's lab, where more often than not she already had other guests. Illyana, Mallard, and many of the other healers in Ptolodecca were interested in Molin's research.

 

Draughts that lessened the sensation of pain, ones that just improved one's overall health, down to more effective and efficient contraceptives, Molin's research covered a wide breadth of topics. Her dream was supposedly to concoct a potion that could heal like a healer does, but that was one which still remained a dream.

 

On the other hand, Colin's laboratory was more deserted. Usually it was just him and Cormin - his and Molin's distant cousin - there, and since the Bone Lord had given him the permission to further his research into the brew, his results were often… quite explosive in nature.

 

More than once Aideen had felt a distant rumble while visiting Molin's laboratory, though the rumbling was slight at most. The Palace of Bones was built of far more sturdy material, and besides Colin's lab was situated underground to ensure that his "accidents" would not inconvenience someone else.

 

When she happened to be present in the aftermath of said accidents, she would help regenerate the victims' bodies. It was usually just Colin, sometimes Cormin as well if he had the bad luck to be present when something blew up.

Fortunately, grandpa Aarin was quite strict in supervising the goblin's volatile research. He made Colin write down his findings on a daily basis and stored the notes far away from the lab itself, unlike before where the goblin often had to start from scratch by memory because his notes also went up in flames.

 

At close range, his accidental explosions were capable of damaging or destroying lower quality storage artifacts, it turned out, which was how he kept losing his notes in the past. They had been vaporized alongside him.

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He had apparently made progress in his research, as Aideen felt the rumbling get louder and stronger as time went on. Even so, the secluded, warded location of his laboratory kept the more mortal inhabitants of the palace safe.

 

As for Colin himself, and to a lesser extent his cousin Cormin too, they proved to be remarkably resilient. Most people would have been traumatized by the experience of being blown up many times like them, and gave up, but not these two.

 

They had instead poured themselves into their research with even more fervor and diligence than before, often locking themselves in the lab without eating or sleeping for weeks on end. Sometimes they would even spend all the time between two accidents entirely in the laboratory.

 

Surprisingly, grandpa Aarin had not been angry when Colin admitted to have traded the formula for the original brew to passing alchemists many years ago. He had, however, strictly forbidden leaking the details about the improved version the goblins worked on, an arrangement the goblins were fine with since they received all the funding they could ever need already.

 

Aideen stayed and rested in Tohrmutgent for a while, as she often worked with Molin and other healers, exchanging notes along the way and giving new ideas to the goblin woman. The infrequent rumbling of explosions became a constant accompaniment during that period.

 

Around a year and a half after her return, she was summoned to the Palace of Bones one early winter day. To her surprise, grandpa Aarin had asked her to come along towards the south, where he could use her help in testing some "results" from Colin's experiment.

 

Colin himself, along with his cousin Cormin, came along for the trip, as did Drietven, Mimia, Éirynn, and some of the Bone Lord's younger disciples Aideen didn't know that well. None of them had any idea why the Bone Lord had asked for them specifically, though Aideen thought that she detected a rare mischievous feeling from his skeletal figure.

 

She guessed that she would only know once they arrived down south, and not before. They took one of the larger carriages, drawn by the Bone Lord's own bone beasts, so the two and a half week trip could likely be covered in five days, including the breaks the more mortal in the group required.

 

Aideen noticed that they headed straight south, instead of towards the two major ports in the south-east and south-west. When they arrived at their destination - one of the larger coastal towns in the south - five days later, they were welcomed with loud cheers and bows of obeisance, the town's inhabitants acting as if their salvation had arrived.

 

She found out why soon after.

 

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