The head librarian, as it turned out, had anticipated their needs and already found the time to correspond with Norhold’s committee of master alchemists. When Uriah and Bernt arrived, she presented them with a non-disclosure contract already bearing four signatures on one side, and two on the other – her own and that of archmage Carlan.

  While the alchemists wouldn’t be permitted to share any information with third parties, they would receive non-exclusive rights to use any alchemical secrets uncovered as part of their research. Bernt didn’t seem too happy about the arrangement, but Uriah didn’t see a downside. They weren’t even sure their recipe was real alchemy in the first place and if it was, they couldn’t afford to try to keep this knowledge contained. Nobody in their right mind would step on the toes of a major guild by trying to compete with them in their own field – especially one as vital as the alchemists.

  She prompted Bernt to sign beneath her own name, then they were off.

  The city’s largest alchemist’s shop was only a few minutes’ walk across Norhold’s massive central square, located right next to the Adventurers’ Guild who were undoubtedly their best customer after the military. The proprietor was a broadly built dwarven woman named Verene. She smiled genially at Uriah as he introduced them and spared a noticeably more neutral nod for Bernt.

  “Lovely to meet you,” she said, addressing Uriah and turning slightly as if to shut Bernt out of the conversation. “I’ve heard much about your project from Zaira – she’s an old friend, you see. Exciting times it must be, I’m sure. New magic! How long has it been since a mage could say that and really mean it?”

  “Ah, I don’t really know,” Uriah said honestly.

  “It’s been ages. Centuries, probably. I mean, sure, wizards are always announcing that they’ve solved one problem or another, but it’s always such small progress. This is big, far-reaching, and maybe interdisciplinary. If sorcery has new and unfamiliar applications in alchemy, I want to know about it! Have you got those recipes Zaira mentioned for me? You signed the contract, right?”

  “I did,” Bernt said a bit pointedly, as if to remind the woman he was here. “It’s my project.”

  Uriah wasn’t sure exactly what had happened between Bernt and the Alchemists’ Guild last year, but he knew it had started with a citation for illegal waste disposal that had resulted in a master alchemist’s expulsion from Halfbridge – something that just didn’t happen. It had escalated from there, though he’d never learned the details. It hadn’t really seemed that important at the time. Judging by the way this woman was looking at him now, he was beginning to reevaluate that. What had he done that would inspire enmity all the way over here?

  The alchemist ignored Bernt and held out a hand for Uriah’s folder, which he promptly handed over.

  “Sorcerers in southern Miria supposedly use alchemical pills that do something similar to alchemical augmentations” he explained, “but they’re supposed to work for spellcasters. Sorcerers, at least. We’ve managed to scrounge up what we think might be a recipe for such a pill, but we need your expert opinion, and potentially your support to make one if you think it’s possible.”

  “Really?” Verene wondered. “You know augmentations don’t work for mages, right? It ruins your investitures. You really want to try something like that?”

  She accepted the folder and opened it with a skeptical frown. A few seconds later, she flipped the lone page inside it over to check for any additional text. She grimaced. “Smells like a sunny day after rain in the springtime? Who wrote this?”

  Uriah coughed. “The sources were… poetic. That’s why we need to see if it’s actually real.”

  “Hmm, well… moon lotus, jade dragonflowers, drops of blood from an undefined ‘spirit creature’, rough salt, probably for grinding in a pestle... Those sound like real reagents, and moon lotus is something we import from Miria. Problem is, this isn’t how you use it. They just crush all this stuff up in some sort of ritual and roll it into a ball! That’s not any kind of alchemy I’ve ever heard of – how do they control the reagent interactions or monitor the results?”

  Uriah shrugged helplessly. None of them were alchemists, and the author of the book Katrin had copied this recipe from likely hadn’t been, either. They could only hope they’d actually seen someone make this pill before.

  Verene frowned severely. “Hmm. And what is it supposed to do, exactly? Body cleansing… does it cure diseases? Why not just use a healing potion?”

  “Ah,” Uriah said, happy to have an answer, “It’s part of how cultivators – those are their sorcerers – develop their abilities. They focus first on perfecting their bodies, and only seem to start casting proper, external spells once they’ve reached a milestone they call something like ‘energy storage’. The pill is supposed to help with this first part. It’s used to open what they call ‘meridians’, which sound like obstructed or maybe inactive mana pathways in their mana networks. It’s also supposed to make them physically stronger, improve their balance, give them better eyesight and extend their lifespan, but we don’t have any way to separate myth from reality here.”

  The alchemist stared at Uriah blankly for a moment, let out a breath and turned around, still holding the recipe. She rummaged around under the counter for a few seconds, and then a few seconds more. There was a click followed by the squeal of metal as the dwarf opened what had to be some kind of safe. She came up with an enormous, dusty book with loose papers stuffed between what must have been thousands of pages. Dust rose as she flipped it open and Uriah noticed that Bernt used an aeromancy spell to clear the air before they all started sneezing.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  He’d cast it almost instantly. Uriah tried not to feel a pang of jealousy at that. Even a light cantrip took him four seconds.nBut they were working on it. He would be a proper mage again. He had to believe that.

  “What are you looking for?” Bernt asked, leaning in curiously to get a look at the book. “Do you know of something similar?”

  “Back off!” Verene snapped at him, lifting one side of it to block his view of the text. “These are alchemical secrets – they aren’t for the likes of you. And no, I’ve never heard of a thing like that. I’m checking for references to different types of spiritual damage and insufficiencies. There’s no way a therapeutic for the spirit could have the kinds of additional augmentative benefits you’re describing, so I’m focusing on the part I can work with. We can mess around with improbable side effects once we have some idea of whether it’s even a real recipe.”

  “It’s medicine?” The sorcerer didn’t seem put off at all. If anything, he seemed excited. “I’ve done some work with spiritual injuries myself. Do you think they could be trying to fix some kind of alchemical damage to the spirit?”

  “Alchemical… what? No, that’s nonsense. If they all have to do this, they would all need to acquire the same kind of damage. We’re looking for something environmental or maybe hereditary. Probably something that interferes with the normal formation of a mana network. Maybe that’s why they don’t have any mages.”

  Bernt looked over at Uriah in confusion. He shrugged. He’d never heard of anything like that either. However, he did have a different quibble.

  “I don’t think you can blame it on their environment…” he said carefully. “The untamed lands south of the Free Cities are larger than Madzhur and, as far as I know, people and cultivators live scattered all across them. It would be like saying half the continent here had the same illness. And it’s not like the Free Cities have no mages. Their guilds work just fine, and they recruit children for the academy there, too.”

  Verene shrugged and flipped a few pages further. “Alright, hereditary then. We have to start somewhere.” She picked up the book and turned her back on them, still turning pages. “Let me compare a few recipes and see if I can find any kind of correlation to anything familiar. I’ll contact you if I learn anything, alright?”

  Uriah grimaced, but he nodded and turned to go, accepting the dismissal. She did have to start somewhere, even if she was ignoring most of the information in her hands.

  ***

  “You think she’s going to find anything?” Bernt asked as the door closed behind them.

  “Maybe?” Uriah sighed, blinking up against the bright morning light and noting a gurgle in his stomach. He hadn’t had breakfast yet. Maybe he could grab something before they went back inside. Katrin would probably be hungry, too. “I get why she wants to focus on the spiritual restoration aspect, but I think it’s wrong to ignore all the other information for a single detail like that. Cultivators don’t think about magic like that – not from what I read. They see everything as being part of a single whole.”

  “We don’t need to understand it the same way they do, do we?” Bernt shrugged. “Spiritual restoration seems like a good place to start to me. I mean, that’s how I figured out my whole procedure, right? It makes sense that cultivators would use similar principles for their pills.”

  “Maybe, sure,” Uriah scoffed. “Assuming, of course, that young cultivators have a fully formed mana network to ‘heal’. Have you even considered where all these channels – these meridians – are supposed to come from? How does a brand new sorcerer have what sound like twelve extraneous mana channels in their mana network?”

  Bernt stopped, eyes growing wide. “That’s it! Brand new sorcerers – they all have the same spiritual damage! Of course they would – think about it!”

  Uriah groaned. He hated it when Bernt got like this.

  “What are you talking about? There’s nothing there to damage. They wouldn’t have even had time to grow any channels, and there’s no evidence that they’re supposed to be able to cast any spells at this point in their development. Where would they even get the magical potential?”

  He’d known his colleague wasn’t a careful, methodical sort of person – he’d put a familiar bond on a demon, burned out his own spirit, and then, instead of cutting his losses like a normal person, burned it back to health. Recklessness was a common personality trait among pyromancers, if one that didn’t suit them very well. Unfortunately, Uriah had found that this extended to the way Bernt did research, too. Instead of thinking things through, he preferred to make wild intuitive leaps as if willing the universe to work the way he wished.

  Uriah wasn’t much of an academic himself – he’d always wanted to do practical work – but that didn’t mean he approved of guesswork.

  “Come on,” Bernt said, gesturing with his hands as if trying to manually make Uriah see it. “It’s so obvious. What’s there before? What makes the sorcerer a sorcerer?”

  “The spiritual sea...” Uriah trailed off, frowning. “You think there’s something wrong with their process? The ‘spiritual manifestation pill’?”

  “I don’t know, but you just said it – according to your stories, they can’t cast spells. What if the spiritual manifestation pill isn’t perfect? Or what if it is, but it’s not always compatible? I mean, we’re talking about grafting a deliberately shaped and physically manifested bit of someone’s spirit into a new person, right? Who knows what that would do to you?”

  Uriah pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyes and took a deep breath. The most infuriating part in all this was that, against all odds, Bernt’s chaotic, haphazard approach to research actually seemed to work for him. Sort of.

  “Why didn’t you have to do it, then?” he probed. “Yours was made from an elemental’s spirit. That sounds a lot less compatible than the spirit of your own ancestor.”

  Bernt shrugged. “It was made specifically for me by an incredibly powerful elemental who was in direct contact with my spirit seconds earlier? Also, I’m not sure exactly how many discrete circulatory loops there are in there, but it might be twelve. I’ve only clearly mapped out eight, so far, and I still haven’t figured out the full spellforms, but I think it would be about right.”

  Uriah nodded, pushed down his frustration and reminded himself that this was good. Every advancement in their understanding was another step closer to healing himself. And if Bernt was cheating, somehow, at least they were on the same team. He turned around.

  “Alright, let’s go tell Verene.”