Fresh from a bath to wash the road dust off of her, Ash settled into a chair in her living room. The book Luna gave her lay open in her lap as Ash perused it. She wanted to be familiar with all of the steps before attempting to make anything.
Eventually, she was satisfied with her understanding of the process. She set the equipment up on a small table Luna had acquired that looked as if it had been through a battle. It was perfect for alchemical experimentation since Ash wouldn't worry about damaging it.
She contemplated starting with the spirit flowers, used in mana potions, that she'd gotten as part of the beginners kit. She had a quest for healing potions, though, and had held back ten flowers from her adventurer's guild quest.
Since she had more room for error, she decided not to work on potions that would be of direct use to her first. She started by plucking the petals from one of the deep red flowers before drying them using a spell that had come with the kit.
She waved the notification away and moved on to grinding the dried petals. Once that was done, she began the process of boiling and distilling the essence from the flower.
The book had mentioned that experienced alchemists infused their potions with mana to enhance the effectiveness. She was at the step where that was possible and curious as to whether she had the control necessary to do so.
Ash began channeling a small thread of magic into the mix as it came to a boil. Its color changed a bit, a slight glow settling into the liquid that remained even when it was fully distilled. Keeping up the mana transfer, even at such a small level, was rather taxing though.
Only when she bottled the potion did a number of alerts appear in front of her.
She frowned at the plus and examined it with her Unicorn Eyes skill alongside one of the other beginner health potions she had. The created potion was of uncommon quality rather than common like the other. It also had a description tag that declared it to return more health due to use of advanced crafting techniques.
With a slight nod, she moved on to making more potions of all three types using the same technique. She experimented slightly with drying things more or less as she made the health potions, eventually settling on a method that seemed to always produce a slightly advanced potion.
Only once she finished processing all of the potions did she take note of the late hour.
It wasn't so late that she was worried about oversleeping or anything, but late enough that she didn't bother to clean up the potion bottles littering the tables. With the protection magics on her grove, it was unlikely they'd go anywhere but into the storage chest when Luna walked in the front door and saw them.
Ash paused as she sat on the edge of her bed and sent it gently swaying with the shift in weight. She'd grown used to sleeping in the hanging bed once more, she enjoyed Fantastoria immensely. Still, sitting on the bed facing into the bare room she was confronted with the reality that her actual body was in terrible shape. She couldn't even wake long enough to take care of the routines necessary to maintain herself anymore.
Pulling the goblet out of her inventory, she tried to remember the last time she'd drank from it in her own world. The only memories that came to mind, though, were her strict adherence to all of her routines during the journey to cleanse the world's magic.
Her fingers almost immediately started to tremble as she thought about the journey and the number of sightings there had been of the hunter on or near her paths. No matter how she changed the routes, signs would eventually appear. Seeing the cup shaking in her hand, Ash stowed it back in her inventory and laid down.
The first dream was a familiar one, the forest smelled of fear and pain and blood, of magic spilled upon the ground and lives lost by the dozens. The remainder of the herd slaughtered, its youngest member left alone, Ash ran for her life, teleporting wildly to try to find safety. The dream continued, growing darker and more frightening as it morphed into the nightmare where she was caught alive.
She jolted awake, soaked in sweat and feeling uneasy, feeling something very wrong that she couldn't place a finger on. Dragging herself out of bed, she turned the shower on without bothering with hot water. It was still warmer than the bath in the starseeing pond so it didn't really annoy her. The scent of fear washed away, she dried and changed form after cleaning the clothes and hanging them on a clothesline. She settled by the pond instead, the one location she hadn't slept while in Fantastoria.
The pond felt near right to her senses, just a little different from her own. She wondered idly what kind of Starborn would have emerged from it, should they have existed in Fantastoria. That idle wonder carried her to sleep once more.
More dreams, those of watching a herd that was not her own live their lives in peace. She felt them slipping from her grasp, though, and feared what would come to replace them. Likely, it was more nightmares. She could distantly feel the connection to her proper body, could feel the hibernation spells bearing down on her to keep her from waking and breaking her magic further in the process. She had nightmares often during the hibernation, or at least they felt as if they happened often considering she rarely remembered the softer dreams.
She walked along on the path to her next cleansing destination. Once upon a time she'd have teleported to most of the destinations. Once upon a time her magic had been whole. Her heart wrenched at that thought and each step brought back memories that had her hanging her head low in shame.
She knew what some of the people of the temple called her when they thought she wasn't listening. She knew their impression of the perfect follower of Sidus was a calm and level-headed priest, priestess or paladin that had taken an oath of pacifism. She knew she didn't fit into their ideal of either what a follower of Sidus should be or what one of his sacred creatures should be.
'False Starborn' they whispered when they thought her inattentive. She was too wild, too rash, too fiery and hot-tempered compared to the mild-mannered Starborn they'd grown up watching. Even the newborn colt before her had been so much more even tempered, they would say quietly to each other.
Pain tore through her chest, a small sharp needle of agony that served as a reminder that they were right. She couldn't live up to the legacy the first Starborn had left behind. Where Stella had cleansed the world alone, growing a crown of horns much like Sidus' own in order to do so, Ash broke. Slowly and surely her magic cracked more with each massive cleansing spell cast and eventually she would be left stuck.
Her hooves had taken her along the path during her thoughts and she suddenly stood at the location for the ritual. There, awaiting her, was a trinket carved of a strange material. She'd never examined any of the things left behind so the nightmare created an inky black material that sucked in all light, something so dark it didn't seem real.
She looked past it to the place where she was supposed to cast her magic and certainty set in. It would be the last time and if she didn't die her worst nightmare would become her reality. If she lived through her breaking magic she would be left without it, a unicorn with no magic, a creature made of valuable parts with no way to speak and no way left to defend herself save her own hooves and horns.
Except, some small part of her whispered, that she'd broken all of her secondary horns. She wanted so much to be useful that she stopped thinking sometimes about the cost of her actions.
She thrashed in her sleep, crying and whimpering until finally, blissfully, she managed to fall into the Starseeing pond and wake herself up. She was still lying in it, her head resting on the dry ground beside it, when Luna came to start her morning routines.