Brinn’s voice echoed through the trees. Louder than he’d meant. Alexander met his eyes sharply, his broad frame slumped against a nearby oak. Heat mana still surged across Brinn’s skin, raising the hairs on his arms the invocation hadn’t simply burnt off. Spots blurred his vision.

  He stared at Favel, hands on his knees, breath ragged. The elf was exhausted. His hands trembled. Brinn’s were too. He was furious—and mana deficient. So was Favel. All three of them were. Brinn would make them mana potions later. First, the wizard owed him answers. Brinn crossed his arms and waited.

  “Now, Brinn,” said Alexander, “We all have our secrets. That’s the life of an adventurer, you kn—“

  “Fuck that,” spat Brinn. “This bastard brought us into this deathtrap, nearly got us all killed and now this? He owes us.”

  Alexander frowned.

  “He looks like he’s about to pass out,” said the man.

  “It’s—it’s fine,” said the elf, finally. “He deserves to know.”

  Favel’s robe were spattered in ectoplasm and ichor. His shoulders were slumped, even the points of his ears seemed to droop with the effort of keeping himself standing.

  “As you already surmised, Brinn I was involved in the civil war in Lindunn before we met.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “Let me finish, lad. I…was a war mage.”

  Brinn took a step back. Reevaluating Favel as if he might explode at any moment. Something clicked. The lies about fire magic. The insanely powerful invocation. He should have figured it out on his own, ages ago.

  The elf snorted. “The stories of us randomly blowing up are overblown, I assure you, we only blow ourselves up on purpose.”

  To an alchemist, Brinn thought, that was practically sacrilegious. A war mage.

  The troubled look on Alexander’s face deepened considerably. He stepped between the two men—Brinn having made ample space for the human’s broad frame as he interposed themselves between them.

  “We’re setting up camp for the night. We’ll keep watch in shifts. Then you can get your answers. I’ll take first.”

  True to his word, Alexander took the first watch—still sitting within listening distance, probably simply to ensure the two of them remained simple. ‘Setting up camp’ had been a bit of an exaggeration—they’d never intended to stay in this labyrinth for this long. They didn’t even have tents. But the damp, cold wood of the forest that surrounded them was enough to start a fire, and that was enough for Brinn to try and dry out his leathers and sit for what felt like the first time in days. None of them knew how long it had actually been. One night? Two? With the shifting reality of time in the garden, it was even harder to tell. Brinn remembered the sun on his face less than an hour before; but as he waited for Favel to finish his story, he stared up into a starless sky.

  “What do you know about war mages?” asked Favel, almost hesitant. The man felt vulnerable telling them this. Brinn might have too.

  “Not much. Very, very big booms—but with a penchant for going off the handle and killing thousands,” he said, and winced before the words really left his mouth.

  Favel was silent for a moment. Brinn remembered the haggard faces of those refugees from Lindunn those years back. A sudden wave of sympathy that Brinn didn’t know he had washed over him. He’d heard rumors of how war mages were trained.

  “Is it true that they…curse you?”

  To Brinn’s surprise, the elf barked laughter.

  “Cursed?! Of course not.” Favel was wheezing now, the question having taken him completely off guard. The signs of mana depletion had still shaken the wizard to the core, but at least the elf’s body was compensating by ramping up production. Brinn could see the energy course through his veins, thin wisps of mana exuding from the elf’s skin and drifting up from his dark black robes. “It’s mana exposure. They choose a mana type, and they…they put you in a box with it. For weeks.”

  Brinn stared, frowning. A…’box’ of mana? Wait…Brinn felt his face go white as he stopped what he was doing. Idly, he realized his hands had started the preparation on mana potions for he, Favel, and Alexander already. He hadn’t realized. Severe mana exposure. Of course.

  Alchemists were familiar with the subject. They had to be. The ultimate tool of the trade, the philosopher’s stone, was explicitly about exposing yourself to absurd amounts of life mana. The effect fundamentally changed how you worked with mana, it was what really made an alchemist an alchemist. Brinn had barely reached his nineteenth name day when he’d done it. It was one of the most defining moments of his life, and the beginning of his career as an alchemist and an adventurer.

  It was also, without a doubt, the single most painful event that Brinn had ever experienced in his life. The thought of doing that to a child—for weeks—was one of the most horrific things he had ever heard. Brinn was filled with a sudden mess of sympathy for the elf as his fury leaked away like the heat that drained from a forge. Slowly, he dropped an ingredient into one of his vials. Just powdered Frostwheat seeds and aqua vitae. He pressed some of his own cold mana into it and sighed as he pressed what little mana he had into the potion. It began to chill; but Brinn didn’t need the effects of the Frostwheat—he just needed what little mana he had left amplified. Any ingredient could make a mana potion. There was a reason it was alchemy 101.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said, as he spun the vial lightly in his fingers, mixing it evenly.

  Again, Favel snorted.

  “You don’t need to say anything. I’m not a child. But you were right, after all this, you deserve an explanation.”

  Brinn could piece together a lot more from there. War mages were…infamous. Magic that could take out entire battalions in a single attack. Most Folk didn’t even believe that war magic was real—although a look through the histories would prove otherwise. Too many massive magical explosions that turned the tide of too many wars “coincidentally” and the entire thing had become an open secret most kings held up their sleeves.

  “They really give children mana exposure poisoning?”

  “They do. It’s the only way for someone to be able t channel that amount of fire mana without killing themselves.”

  Brinn nodded.

  “You didn’t cast a spell there, did you? You invoked flame.”

  This time, the elf nodded.

  “I didn’t know you could do that with that much mana.”

  “After years of being exposed to high level magical phenomena, you’d be surprised just how much mana you can put through your system. But sorcery—“ Favel paused on the word, almost spitting it: sorcery was the ancient name, for casting without the structure of a spell, by invoking a concept and your understanding onto the mana and the world itself. “Sorcery is still dangerous. You still need to control the mana, even if you can handle channeling it all.”

  “And you don’t use your fire because it’s too hard to control?”

  “No,” said Favel. “I don’t use massive war magic anymore because they’re too hard to control—and because the reality of war isn’t worth it. Trust me, lad.” He seemed even more worked up than when he’d been talking about the mana torture. “I don’t use my flame…” he continued, but trailed off. Brinn noticed the elf’s fists were no longer trembling. They were white. There were tears in the wizard’s eyes. Suddenly, Alexander was behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. The elf seemed to slump, suddenly, but the look on his face was relieved. Brinn really needed to learn that Paladin party trick some time.

  “There’s no need to press him further, lad,” said the burly man, stroking his beard with his free hand. Favel didn’t speak. “If you must know, I can tell you. What kind of magical phenomena do you think you have to survive in order to fundamentally change your relationship with the concept of fire?”

  Brinn started to think about the question, but their leader continued before he could get to an answer.

  “If you’d experienced it yourself, you’d never want to be near an open flame again,” said Favel, now quiet. Calmer, after Alexander’s intervention—but Brinn could still see the pain lurking under the surface on the elf’s face. Alexander slinking back off to keep watch again, a ways from the campfire.

  Brinn nodded, sheepish. Finished with the simple brews, Brinn brought a mana potion first to Alexander, over by the woods.

  “Take it easy on Favel for tonight,” he said. “We’re going to have to do it all again in the morning,” said the burly man.

  Brinn then brought a potion to Favel—handing it to him as gently as he could. He didn’t want to spook the elf with any sudden movements, now that Brinn understood what Favel had just put himself through. Like Alexander, he accepted with an oddly grateful look on his face. Brinn felt useful for the first time in a long while—which is always a bad feeling. Proving yourself useful means you’ve got more work ahead of you.

  Speak of the devil—it was time for Brinn to take over Alexander’s watch. Thankfully, an alchemist benefited from a lot of boring free time and lost sleep. As he sat down, cross legged, he kept an ear out—but the forest had remained peaceful since Amelia had left it. Its eerie silence had almost become peaceful, and Brinn was certain an unexpected noise at this point would send them all scrambling for their weapons even if none of them had paid attention. Instead of gazing anxiously into the tree-line, Brinn got to work on turning those ingredients he’d found in the garden to use.

  He started with healing potions. He didn’t have the hartshorn on hand to make them gaseous, nor the vinegar—so instead, they were based in aqua vitae. Their effects would be slightly more potent, but wouldn’t be able to spread out and cover large groups o zombies in death-mana annihilating gas. He pressed the mana in slowly, watching as the bit of ground Bloodleaf powder was filled to bursting with mana. Alchemy was about amplifying your own mana through ingredients—but a little too much, and the whole thing went kaboom.

  Next he moved on to what Frostwheat he’d had left. He’d used much for the great blast of ice he’d formed in the fight with Amelia—but he still had plenty, and he could get a lot more oomph out of them with a little time to properly brew. They had to be ground, but one had to be careful not to grind them too finely—they needed to fill up with mana and pop to get the best effect from them. You also had to heat the potion actively while pouring your mana in, or else the whole thing would freeze, and you’d be pushing your mana in through ice instead of water. That was bad. Brinn held the potion over his alchemical flame as he twirled it, and watched the broken seeds of Frostwheat crackle into crystalline shards of ice in the mixture.

  Finally, the vines. He wasn’t especially familiar with them—but he knew a few plants of a similar type, and suspected they’d be a perfect substitute for Burnberries in his usual explosive vial mixture—Brinn stopped. A twig snapped near him. He stared to the left, and to then the right—there was nothing in the trees. He had the overwhelming feeling of being watched. He heard a rustling beside him and—no, it was just Favel. Silently, the man squatted down next to him. Brinn looked at him, made eye contact, but the man only jerked his head towards the fire.

  “Go warm up. You’re shaking.”

  Brinn blinked. Favel was right, he was shaking. It wasn’t the cold, though. As he curled up by the fire—not too close to Alexander, to avoid disturbing him in his restlessness—he waited for the mana deprivation to pull him into a rough, but deep sleep.

  He thought of Favel. Of an elven child forced into constant mana exposure.

  He thought of his own experience creating the philosopher’s stone for himself and claiming the title of alchemist.

  He thought of the bard, and the amount of souls he must have sacrificed to create a place this powerful.

  Eventually, Brinn fell asleep. The day—if it had really only been one day—proved too much.