September 19, 2152
Emory tapped anxiously on the arm of her throne as she tried to listen to Soren talk about the different fronts of the war. She really should have been paying attention, given she would soon be an active participant in this war. Unfortunately, she was thinking about her friends nearly a thousand light years away. While all four Witch clans had landed and settled on the outposts without incident, Nephenee's team had detected an inbound Apleem ship. Of course, Emory was already expecting it due to her dream, but the strike team on the ship included a Laxtros, three Uthid, and two Mantoan. After discussing the dream with Athos and then conferring with the Five, he and Soren agreed to go back with her to defend the outpost. However, Soren needed two days to talk with the Legion about the war before he could go. And since Soren had been helping Emory learn the Chaos sphere, she didn't want to go on ahead without him.
She was currently working out a general battle plan against the strike team because she wanted to just use the leaders if possible. Innes and Nephenee would take on the two Mantoan since they didn't possess magik, making them the easiest opponents. That left Athos, Clarine, Emory, and Soren against four top-tier opponents. On one hand, Emory could fight the three Uthid herself and leave the Laxtros to the three with the most fighting experience. However, this Laxtros in particular was known by her reputation to Soren; Selena was one of the highest ranking Laxtros the Elandrian had encountered, second only to Petrine. On the other hand, Athos, Clarine, and Soren could make quick work of the Uthid, which meant Emory would need to hold off Selena until the others finished their battles.
It only made her more nervous since she hadn't mastered the third and final step to learning the Chaos sphere. She needed to take the veil and cause it to explode into little particles in one single pop. This proved to be the tricky part as she could cause lots of simultaneous explosions but there would be pockets of the veil remaining. And because she didn't have a second sphere yet, she couldn't work on Meta Form either. In all likelihood, she would have an effective level of fourteen compared to Selena's probable twenty. Moreover, given her body's current tempering, it wasn't a guarantee that she would have the upper hand in terms of mana either.
As Soren finished speaking, Emory had come to terms with the uphill battle she would probably face. Once the Legion began to get up, her throne started fading as well. Athos got up and stretched before he and Soren approached her. Athos chuckled, "Before you ask, we need to collect our gear and hand out a few orders. We'll leave tonight."
"I suppose that's okay," Emory slumped her shoulders, "I'll be training on the roof when you're ready."
"Nonsense. You'll visit my house, so that I can send you with some extra supplies. We will send some raw materials with the forces we're sending, but I have some finished products you can take with you," Elimine insisted as she came along and grabbed Emory's arm. She tried to protest, yet resistance was futile against the elderly woman.
As they were opening the door, a blinding light forced Emory to close her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, the city street wasn't what she saw before her. Instead, they were in a bright foyer filled with incense so thick that the floor was slightly obscured by the smoke. Other people stood around the room in sleek white robes with their heads covered. Once Elimine took a step forward, the others quickly formed two lines on the sides of the carpet, and one in particular stood at the front, quickly removing their hood. This woman on the end had a bright pink bun, caramel skin, and piercing blue eyes, standing not quite as tall as Emory but taller than Elimine. She bowed quite low when the pair reached her while those still in line saluted them at this time.
"Madam, we have been waiting your arrival and have prepared several of our best products for your sampling," the woman spoke reverently.
"Thank you, Calill. Emory, this is my attendant," Elimine introduced the two, "Calill, this is Emory the Ancient." Calill's eyes nearly popped out of her skull, and her face turned bright red.
Calill stuttered, "If you'll please follow me, ladies." Her motions were very stiff at first as they walked from the foyer into a large hallway. Yet instead of normal walls, these were reinforced glass, allowing Emory to see into the rooms as they passed. Inside each room there was a team of people performing chemical tests like the labs she frequented back home. Beakers, vials, and all sorts of chemistry equipment filled the room while the raw ingredients appeared to be plants of some sort. Eventually, Emory stopped walking altogether when she saw a scientist boiling a liquid in a test tube with their own magik.
"We are always trying to improve our recipes, making some small successes with every couple of generations," Elimine pointed out as she too stopped, "My division focuses horticulture and medicine. These are the types of gifts I have in store for you. Shall we continue or would you like to see some of these experiments a little closer?"
"Just a moment longer, if you don't mind. I didn't mention this, but I was a junior scientist before I started military school. Science and magik were my two biggest passions. I miss the simpler times when I could spend all day performing tests and recording data," Emory sighed as she pressed her hand against the glass. After a couple minutes, they began walking down the corridor again towards a bright room at the end of the hall. As they got closer, the glare was reduced, allowing Emory to see a table covered with jars and boxes.
As they opened the door, she could see large chambers and tubes against the back wall and glass cabinets lining the walls on her sides. Three standard tables with covers were in the middle of the room: one with small boxes, one with large boxes, and one with bottles of different colored liquids. Finally, a large crate covered in symbols sat on the ground a few feet in front of the tables. Calill showed them to the first table and began opening the boxes. Inside every one was a different colored group of pills.
"These pills are for first aid or battle, with a variety of buffs and benefits," Elimine explained, "Inside each box is a script that tells you want they do. Some provide immediate healing, others restore some magik or stamina, and the final group contains temporary buffs like speed or strength improvements. They won't heal or recover great amounts, but if you're in a pinch, they're better than nothing. I've provided you with fifty doses of each for now." Emory's eyes bulged at mere mention of such a powerful arrangement of pills, and that was only the first table. Then they moved to the second table which Calill had already started unboxing. Much like the first table, these boxes also contained pills, though they were much larger like the size of strawberries. Despite there being six large boxes, there were only two colors of pills: a milky white one and a charcoal black one.
Elimine continued, "These are permanent elevation pills and are to be taken with caution. First and foremost, a person can only take one of either of these pills once every thousand years, so you must choose carefully. If you try to take a second, your body will not be able to contain the power and will disintegrate. Next, it takes two days for the pills to reach full effect as you can only eat half a pill a day. During these two days, the person taking the pill will be severely weakened and unable to cast magik, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. The white pills elevate your sphere one level while the black pills double your mana pool."
"I thought Soren told me the fruit from those special trees were the only plants that gave people permanent improvements," Emory interrupted, "Do you have other plants that have those effects?"
"Other plants exist but are not capable of direct consumption. Plus, we can eat from the fruit regularly due to the unique way it's produced by the trees. Most importantly, the fruit is a smaller, gradual change whereas these pills are a dramatic transformation," Elimine clarified to which Emory nodded.
As they got to the last table, Emory looked closely at the liquids because they seem to have little bits floating inside. There were four varieties: red, blue, yellow, and black, though despite different colors, they all seemed to be about the same consistency. Each mason jar was roughly the size of a liter bottle and had a couple runes inscribed on the lid. Calill moved one jar of each color to the front of the table but didn't open them.
Elimine picked up the red liquid and handed it to Emory, "This one is a health potion. It won't bring back the dead, but ingesting or injecting it will stabilize anyone, no matter what the wound is. It will even regenerate lost limbs or organs with enough of it." Emory's eyes lit up as she imagined the lives that could be saved with this medicine.
"This blue one is a mana potion which works like the pill but not exactly," Elimine explained as she took back the red jar, "It will give you all of your mana back for ten minutes, but after an hour you'll suffer the first stage of magik poisoning."
"Just a moment, if you don't mind, but how many stages of magik poisoning are there?" Emory gulped.
"Five, with the fifth ending in death," Elimine answered, "Though the fifth is a process which can be reversed until it reaches a certain point. But we'll come back to that in just a moment. First, this yellow liquid works for stamina the same way the blue one does for magik. However, this black one is a real miracle. One whole jar is transfused into someone suffering from magik poisoning to eliminate all effects. However, it can only be used once per month, and there can be a slight side effect depending on the stage of magik poisoning. Hopefully we don't have to use it then on someone."
Emory frowned, "You better give me the news now. There's a chance I might need it myself soon enough."
"Stage four starts with bleeding from your eyes, and stage five starts a process called dismantlement where your body begins turning into magik," Elimine elaborated, "If you have stage four, the normal recovery time is a month, but injecting this medicine will reduce the time to a week as well as put the user in a temporary coma during recovery. Stage five will automatically put you in a coma if you don't reach critical mass. Unfortunately, due to dismantlement, how long you spend in a coma is variable. We currently have a patient who has been in a coma for fifty years and still hasn't recovered from dismantlement yet."
"I see. Out of pure scientific curiosity, can you tell me a bit more about magik poisoning such as causes, progression, and such?" Emory asked hesitantly.
"As I'm sure you know, magik poisoning comes from overusing magik. Normally, your mana pool does a good job of preventing that from happening by only allowing you to use the magik you have. However, in true form or in special cases like yourself, you can bypass this safety feature," Elimine smirked as she knew Emory wasn't asking for academic reasons, "If you use twice your body's capacity in less than an hour, blood will start spill from your nose which is stage one. If you keep using that amount of magik for another hour or if you use three times your capacity, you progress to stage two or coughing up blood. Stage three and four cause bleeding from the ears and eyes respectively with the same time or usage constraint. But dismantlement is different."
Emory grimaced, "I don't like the sound of that."
"Dismantlement is a process that turns your life energy into magik. Using ten times your capacity for a mere minute or five times your capacity for an hour automatically starts the process. Once you've used it all up, you turn to magik. In order to use the transfusion, a person must still have a heart, brain, and viable injection sites which is roughly thirty percent of a person's life force," Elimine warned as Emory gulped hard.
"Well, I'll keep that in mind," Emory gritted her teeth, "On a lighter note, what's the crate for?"
Elimine laughed, "It's a storage crate like your bag. We'll load this all into the crate then it'll shrink to a size you can put in your bag. Let's load these up and then get you ready for the night."