A Scale of Sapphire

Erica

My return home was met with minimal fanfare. At least, not much from the town at large. Cass said hi, Evelyn introduced herself, and Pete and I both fielded questions from a few of the more inquisitive newcomers. Willow and Aoife both made it very clear how much they’d missed me, and I did the same right back. The next day, we returned to business as usual.

Mostly.

We had more people, which meant more mouths to feed, along with more hands to help out. Our collective workloads decreased substantially. Correction, most of our workloads decreased. Willow was still working just as hard, if not harder, and I was honestly getting pretty worried about her. We had tons of new people. With the addition of the elves and the last lone human, we’d gained over a dozen new residents, but somehow our veggie rations hardly dipped at all, and Willow came home later and later every day with this hollow look in her eyes. She was pretty good at hiding it, and she did her best to put on a smile, but I could tell she was straining herself. I wanted to do something, but I just didn’t know what.

Then… she passed out in her salad.

We were sitting around the table, eating our dinner, when she just toppled over. She came to a couple seconds later, but that was the last straw. I wouldn’t let her keep hurting herself for us. She either needed to cut back or find some way to share the burden, because this couldn’t be allowed to continue. I expected resistance from her, she cared too much about being useful, about being a provider, but it seemed like whatever her magic was doing to her, it was enough for her to shove all that to the side..

“Fuck, I hurt so bad right now.” Aoife had carried her to the spare bedroom, the one I now referred to as plush mountain, and placed her delicately on a pillow. She was clutching her little head, looking pointedly away from the light. Tears dripped from her face as she struggled to hold herself together. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about this before. I just didn’t want you to worry. I thought I could handle it, but it’s all so much. I can’t just stop though. We need food, and not everyone can get by on just meat, y’know? I just- what the hell am I supposed to do?” She buried her face fully into the soft pillow. “I don’t know what to do…”

“I mean, I know what your first step should be.” Aoife was slowly brushing her hand through Willow’s hair, speaking softly as she did so. “House arrest. You’re taking tomorrow off, babe. The garden can survive a day.”

“Then it’ll just be more work the day after…”

“We’ll figure something out by then, Pix. I promise.” Honestly, I already had an idea brewing, it just needed testing. “Aoife, I wanna try some stuff with you tomorrow, ‘K? For now though, I think we could all use some sleep.”

It was then that I noticed the soft sound of a pixie snoring. Looks like Willow was ahead of us on that one. With great care and patience, I lifted the Willow pillow and carried it to the bedroom. The door was, admittedly, a little precarious, having to squeeze through while balancing my girlfriend, but I managed alright. I fell asleep with a pixie on my stomach and a dragon on my arm. We’d figure this out. We had to.

The night came and went, and before I knew it, I was having lunch in a clearing near the village with my two new test subjects. Aoife and Evelyn were both aware that I’d brought them out here to find a solution to Willow’s magic draining problem, but I hadn’t yet told them the particulars.

As Aoife tore into her meal, and Evelyn sat patiently nearby, I began to lay out my plan.

“So as we all know, Willow has been draining her magical reserves practically every day to keep this village fed. This isn’t something she can keep up forever, and she shouldn’t have to.” With a flourish, I produced several bottles and knives from my bag. “Thankfully, I think I might have a solution.”

Aoife seemed to realize what I was getting at.

“Are we going to make some pixie magic potions?”

“Kind of.” I passed Aoife a knife and several bottles. “The problem is, Willow’s tiny, and I don’t want to leave her anemic trying to fix our current issue. With Evelyn’s help, I want to find the most efficient way to share a magical ability.”

Aoife was about to cut into herself, but Evelyn stopped her, extracting much more professional looking equipment from her own bag. Where she’d gotten it, I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to complain.

“So what do you need me for, anyway?” Evelyn asked, expertly extracting a vial of blood.

“Well, drinking Aoife’s blood made you all frosty for a while, right?” She nodded. “That wouldn’t work for anyone else, not without making it into a potion first. I’m wondering if a potion made from blood would work better on you than it would on others.”

As we conversed, Evelyn drew another two vials from Aoife, and I added drops of my own to the mix, focusing on Aoife’s natural ability to cool the air around her. In the end, I had two potions, and one vial of blood. It was time to do some science!

I had Evelyn down the bottle of unaltered blood first, checking the temperature on a thermometer. We needed to test two things, first was the intensity of the potion’s (or blood’s) effect, in this case, how much colder its user could make the air. Second was the duration. A ludicrous amount of power doesn’t mean much if it only lasts a few seconds.

With an ordinary vial of blood, Evelyn was able to reduce local temperatures by just over 20 degrees, and maintain that state of cold for upwards of half an hour. That would make for a good baseline, at least, but we’d want to try for better if this was going to be a long term solution.

Next, I downed one of the potions. I lacked my own inherent magic, and I couldn’t absorb people’s powers through blood, so I thought I’d make as good of a baseline as any. Things played out roughly how I expected. Once I managed to wrap my head around actually using magic, I was able to reduce the local temps by nearly 50 degrees, but only managed to do so for about four minutes. There was some variability in the effects of potions, but generally speaking, from what I’d seen so far, they typically made very significant changes, and granted a hell of a lot of power, but the stronger ones didn’t last long. Potion of give me a human-(ish) face lasted almost an hour, but the water breathing potion I’d concocted from this messed up squid monster I fished out of the lake lasted less than half that.

A potion like that losing its effectiveness while you’re at the bottom of a lake isn’t fun, by the way.

The third test was the moment of truth. If Evelyn could reach a similar level of power to what I’d achieved from the potion, but could make it last for even just ten minutes, I would consider this a complete success. It would allow us to supplement Willow’s abilities, at least in the short term.

The strength she achieved when she actually drank it was certainly… similar. I dropped the temp by 50 degrees, she dropped it another five degrees cooler. More importantly, she managed to maintain that output for a ridiculously long time. It took a full two hours for her to run out of juice.

Oh yeah. This could work.

“Hey Evelyn..?”

“Yes, Doctor Erica?”

“Would you be willing to maybe, just for a little while, at least, help Willow with some of the gardening?”

“You could be like a plant-vampire. A plant-pire, if you will.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Aoife.” I scritched aggressively around her horns. “You’re lucky you're cute.”

Evelyn just smiled at the dorky dragon’s antics.

“Of course I’ll help out. Willow deserves that much, with all the shit she does for us.” She rose to her feet, standing from our alchemical picnic and turning towards the village as she did. “I can be a plant-pire, if you need me to be.”