Wraithwood Botanist

My brother's eyes lit up like shameless Christmas lights when he saw the elixirs, and I sighed. Family was a different breed.

"What are those?" Mom asked cautiously.

I shrugged. "Cleansing elixirs, channel boosters, sensitivity enhancers. I'm not sure what these things are worth money-wise, but they're pretty valuable."

"Can I see?" Felio asked. "I have an appraisal skill."

"Go for your life." I turned and let her pick out tubes from my hand.

Felio hadn't even finished when her mental fortitude broke, and she collapsed into a hailstorm of sloppy snorts and giggles. Continue your adventure at empire

I frowned. "What?"

She couldn't stop laughing.

"What?" Tyler asked frantically.

"Money says those things are worth crazy money," Aiden guessed.

"Y-Ye…" Felio couldn't even finish her confirmation.

I shrugged. "Y'all are acting like I care about money. If I had a million hawks worth of elixirs, I'd still be passing them out like party favors."

Felio almost screamed with her giggling.

"What?" I cried. I was so exasperated.

"S-Sorry. It's just… it's just… everything here… is a theoretical elixir. These would get a few million each."

An outbreak of activity exploded, and soon, my family and the guards were hovering around the elixirs.

"What does that mean?" I asked. "I don't understand… I had recipes for these."

"No…" Felio laughed and coughed and forced herself to calm down. "They exist… but that's because the properties of the plants are recorded to their composition. So the Oracle can generate recipes from them, even though they don't exist. Does that make sense?"

I laughed mockingly. "No. That doesn't make any sense."

"It's like cooking," Malo said from beside us. He was staring into the forest, as usual. "If you know a vegetable is edible, you know you can fry and salt it without it killing you. And the books left behind here provide a full composition of the plants."

"That's not the problem," I said. "First off, these books aren't completely accurate. Second off, if you don't know the missing elements, how do you know they won't react to certain chemicals?"

"Because Brindle also left behind alchemy books," Felio said. "So, we know about these compounds — we just haven't seen them before. That's why they're called theoretical. In theory, we know what they'll do — but we've never seen them."

I keep forgetting Brindle's name is on the books… I thought.

Everyone knew Brindle Grask lived in this forest, but most thought he either died or decided to live in the Seventh Ring. The part Brindle and the Oracle kept hidden was that he left the forest and became a god — a secret that would spark a never-ending gold rush to conquer the forest if it came to light. Still, Felio's knowledge of him was irrelevant.

"Yeah, but…" I said, feeling frustrated. I couldn't believe people would drink these despite knowing they were hypothetical. I'd drink them with Diktyo water. But rich people are obsessed with eternal life? I just couldn't see it.

"They normally buy two—one for a guinea pig and one for themselves," Felio clarified, appeasing me. "But for the most part we can treat Brindle's notes as reliable. There's only been six known discrepancies in over a hundred thousand harvests, and they always applied to unknown plants. Why would Brindle write these books if he was just going to spread paranoia?"

"True…" I muttered. I also reflected upon my studies with Lithco.

Hey Lithco. How concerned should I be about plants that aren't highlighted?

Don't you ever read?

I do, but… I was raised on Google.

You kids… He rolled his eyes and said: You don't have to worry much here. Such cases are remarkably rare to the point they're not even worth discussing. But once you reach the Fifth Ring, you'll need more skills like Poison Sense and your soul pact skills.

"It would also be a dead giveaway that something valuable is hanging around," Cassain added. "A century or so ago, a Calgan family troop walked into an area surrounded by thorns that shot out at all angles. It killed all but one, and the guy who survived was a living disaster. We couldn't even treat his wounds because his arm was bubbling and popping and releasing this terrible gas that was killing people. Those are the type of plants that aren't written about."

I immediately thought of the thorn bush outside of the crypt. My body webbed with a striped rash like I was a zebra and bubbled with blisters that rotted like cherry tomatoes—all within a minute of touching it. If I didn't have Diktyo water and cleansing creams, I would be a skeleton whose only purpose would be to serve as a warning for others.

"I thought it was crazy that teams wanted to go back, but it turned out that all the other cases of undocumented plants led people to powerful plants. So we went back, and we found a flower whose pollen cured a rare form of mana sickness. It wasn't even written about, but just being around it made your channels burn with power. Someone suffering from the sickness paid money to get near it, and sure enough, it cured him in twenty minutes."

I folded my arms and leaned against a tree.

"Have you found any crazy plants?" Tyler asked.

I smiled wryly.

"I'll take that as a yes," Aiden said.

"Wait, seriously?" Felio asked excitedly.

"I didn't say anything," I said. "Though it does make me curious about this place."

I looked at the ground beneath us.

"What does that mean?" Mom asked sternly.

I kept silent.

"Mira Isabella Hill."

"Some things never change…" I whispered, chuckling. Then I looked at them. "We're literally standing on the death site of a third evolution beast… It's strange…"

"Does that mean we're treasure hunting?" Felio asked excitedly.

"Absolutely not!" Cassain said. "Didn't you just hear me?"

"She said it's dead, right?" Felio turned to me expectantly.

"Yeah. It's dead. It's the first thing I ever killed, actually."

"Wait, what?" Tyler cried.

"What happened?" Dad asked.

"I'll tell you tonight," I said. "For now… who wants some theoretical elixirs? You'll only find them here. So step right up…"

My exceptionally lackluster ringmaster introduction elevated the mood a bit, and everyone agreed to put off the story. Twenty minutes later, we were back in the bathtub, just my mom and me, as she emptied her stomach from a cleansing elixir. She kept declaring that she would never trust me again, but when the hell ended, and she finally walked out of the bathhouse and saw herself in the mirror, she was a perfect advertisement for the elixirs.

And that was natural. Her wrinkles shrunk, and her skin smoothed. The white and black age marks on her skin vanished, and the mole on her neck was gone. Her teeth were porcelain. It was so overwhelming she started crying, and soon there was a stampede to go next, consequences and warnings be damned, and Felio just thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

"Oh God," I said. "Why'd you give her a mirror?"

Felio watched my mom look at herself in the mirror from every angle and giggled. "I think it's cute."

"I guess…"

It was cute, but it was also kinda vain, so I was worried she would get a bit of an ego and start wearing a feather boa and speaking to servants. I mean, she already had the money. But when Dad came out and got squealed at by Mom, he hugged me, apathetic to his own improvements, and said, "Thank you for making your mother feel special." That was all it took for me to remember why I was doing this:

To improve the lives of my family.

So I smiled gently as Mom flashed smiles in the mirror and wiggled her shoulders gleefully, saying things like, "Saina and Easile are going to lose it when they see us next."

That night, we celebrated our new bodies by poisoning them with extravagant amounts of wine and brandy. Dad taught his daughter how to cook a steak properly and vowed to bring me a grill next year — as he was obviously coming back.

Once we finished eating, I told them all about the Wandering Reaper and how I killed it with my mycological knowledge.

"So, yeah, you can kinda say that the oyster mushroom experience saved my life," I said.

"They ate our wall!" Mom cried.

I forgot to dispose of my storage container of oyster mushrooms before a two-week trip up the Rockies, and they ate through the tubs' plastic, the drywall, and a stud within the wall. It obviously didn't cause the house to collapse, and it wasn't as bad as termites, but it looked terrible. Dad had to spend a buck and two weeks replacing the stud at my mother's insistence.

I told that story, and Felio giggled her head off. And then I returned the giggle when I got a story about Felio from Cassain, who was practically Felio's mother.

It was a good night, and I wish it never had to end—

—but it did.

My family and I would have two days to travel together on the way back to base camp, but it wasn't the same as vacationing. Still, we had no choice. The Harvest was only a week, and if we missed the deadline, they would be here for a full year, so we set out with Malo and Aiden after breakfast and a detox elixir to ease the hangover, leaving Felio and the Hellara behind with a lurvine, a year's supply of dried meat, Diktyo Water, and a box of cleansing elixirs.

Then, our second adventure began. It had a rough start because Tyler wouldn't stop trying to convince mom to stay.

"Come on, Mom… you saw how safe it was," he pleaded for the tenth time.

"Just… stop," I finally said. "You're asking the wrong person. I'm the person you need to ask — and the answer's no. I already told you my conditions — those aren't going to change."

"What are the conditions?" Dad asked.

Tyler turned away.

"To exercise some patience," I said. "And he's already bombing it."

That shut him up, but he was soon talking about his friends and the nonsense he was doing on the outside, and before we knew it, we were already camping for the night. We set up our tents in a wide meadow and enjoyed the sight of a family of herbivores passing through it. Dad then cooked steak, and we got right back to drinking with Aiden, making the most of my detox elixirs and numbing our feelings about separation. As we finished, I sat next to Tyler and snuck him a bag of elixirs, creams, and tempers.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Good stuff," I said. "Powerful… stuff. The guide'll tell you."

He smiled ruefully. "Sorry for being a dick."

"Nah, I'm sorry," I said. "I spent the first few months feeling worthless. Kline fought everything. He brought the meat, protected the camp, and what'd I do? I just sat around, trying to learn a simple spell. It sucked…"

His eyes widened.

"But…" I searched for words. "I wasn't worthless, you know? I made us elixirs… got us cores. Made poisons and aphrodisiacs… used fungus to kill things… And at some point, I did catch up. But it took patience and doing things right." I punched him in the shoulder. "Do it right."

I looked into the forest. "And enjoy it. It makes it fulfilling."

Tyler nodded solemnly. "Okay."

We hugged, and Mom got all sentimental, saying, "You have no idea how happy it makes me to see you two getting along."

I smiled and nodded. "Me, too."

Then she leaned back drunkenly and said: "Goooooood. Why did you bless my daughter with such a fine home? I wish her comfort, God, I really do. But with this… there's no way she's coming back."

I giggled. "You can join me," I suggested.

"Lord God," she said. "Forgive me. I believe I've raised a foolish child."

"Hey!" I cried.

"Right?"" Tyler said.

"Oh no you didn't," I said. "I don't want to hear that from you."n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"Wow…" Dad said with a mellow, sleepy smile. "We couldn't even make it one night being civil."

We paused and then burst into laughter. Even Malo seemed to crack a smile before drifting off. It was a good night. It was just hard knowing it would be the last for a year. On the morrow, I would finally finish out another harvest and start moving gear to base camp. A new era was beginning — an era of friends and family staying with me.

I knew it. 'Cause next year, once Felio's parents got a billion hawks' worth of elixirs and saw how strong their daughter had become—everyone was going to try to live with me.

Soon, I would pursue my passions while living with great people. But first, I had to survive the legacies. It was a hard road, but I would stop at nothing to make it happen.