Audree decided not to go straight home.
Not because he wanted to delay returning--but because something inside him itched. A pull. A push to try something.
His knowledge of potion-making had grown steadily over the years. A few basic elixirs, mostly--lesser healing tinctures, stamina boosters, and some minor enhancement brews, most of which were first made out of necessity.
The family horse, bless her stubborn bones, had been the first to benefit from his efforts. When she began slowing down, wheezing harder after every walk, he'd begged his mother Ina to help.
She'd said no.
"You don't meddle with life and death," she warned, not unkindly. "Not with potions. Not with magic. Let her live as she should."
So it was up to Audree. And he had done it--bit by bit. Painstaking trial and error. Each potion a puzzle. And to his surprise, a quiet pride had bloomed in both his mothers when they saw what he'd taught himself. Even Ina, for all her sternness, had offered a rare, thoughtful nod when he showed her his growing notebook of formulas.
What surprised Audree was how naturally it all came. Measurements, conversions, chemical interactions--he remembered formulas after a single glance. Math danced in his mind like music. It felt right.
Today's experiment was a culmination.
His most recent breakthrough was a heat resistance potion--strong enough to shield someone from moderate flame for a few minutes. It wasn't perfect. Not stable. But it worked.
Now, he wanted to test it, but with something flashy.
So, with his satchel packed tight with vials and notes, he stepped off the main road and made his way toward the quarry ridge, a scorched little basin beyond the forge line. The old quarry was half-abandoned, with singed moss and blackened stone from past accidents--his past accidents.
This was his space. His testing ground.
Audree dropped to a knee and pulled out the potion. A deep amber liquid shimmered inside the vial, still faintly warm. He had labeled it himself with chalk: Fire Resistance (Mark I).
Out came the notes. A cloth bundle revealed three vials: one red, one blue, one orange. Each sparkled faintly with mana traces. He poured the red first, tracing a wide outer circle. Then the blue, spiraling tighter.
His hand moved with practiced rhythm. Calm. Deliberate.
Then came the powder--milled from the mushrooms that grew on the glowing red toad he'd found weeks ago, carefully dried and ground. He'd never mixed this powder before.
His pulse quickened.
He stirred it into a bowl of shimmering blue liquid, watching for any sign of fizz or instability. Nothing exploded. Good start.
"Okay," he muttered to himself. "Just like the book. Just like the book."
He pulled the brush from his kit--a humble one, bristles stiff with dried paint--and dipped it into his new mixture.
Onto the circle, he painted runes. One by one, etched from memory: heat, containment, ignition. They glowed faintly as the brush swept over the symbols.
The final step was power.
From his pocket, he drew a mana crystal--small, almost depleted. Barely a spark left. But it was all he had at the moment.
He set it gently in the center of the circle.
Then, with all the grace of a scientist on his first day, he poked it with a stick.
There was a flash--a burst of red light, a shimmer of ancient runes lifting into the air.
For a moment, the entire circle lit up.
Then silence.
In the center of the circle hovered a small flame. Perfectly round. Floating.
Real.
Audree stared, unmoving.
His breath caught in his chest--not in fear, but awe. He didn't jump. Didn't cheer.
But his eyes widened. His chest swelled.
"Finally," he whispered, heart pounding, flame reflecting in his green eyes. "Something real."
He let the moment linger.
Then, slowly, the awe faded, and the reality of the scorched clearing returned.
The ground around him was blackened in an uneven circle. One more reason he was lucky he'd choked down that heat-resistant potion—his clothes had been a second away from becoming embers.
He sighed, eyes falling on the faintly glowing rune circle he'd etched into the stone for stability.
"Should just be able to pick it up..." he murmured, stepping closer.
But when he reached down to pry it up, his fingers scraped against the stone's surface—and the runes didn't budge.
He blinked. Then frowned.
"Oh... right. Writing into the stone makes it part of the stone."
His voice fell flat with that familiar tone of self-directed exasperation.
He sighed again, fidgeting with the bracelet around his wrist as disappointment crept in.
Then he pulled out his notebook and scribbled in quick, cramped handwriting:
"Spells that I want to move should be on moveable things. :("
Lesson learned.
"Now to clean this up before I start a forest fire..."
He reached for his "science stick"—a long, thin rod of iron he used for poking volatile ingredients at a safe distance. He carefully tapped at the glowing mana crystal resting beneath the center of the rune, dislodging it from its base.
The reaction was immediate.
Instead of gently fizzling out, the rune's glow spasmed. The lines cracked and warped inward, twisting like veins in a closing wound.
Audree froze.
Then the circle folded in on itself with a sickening pulse, dragging the air toward its center. The stone beneath it split with a jagged CRACK, and the remaining ingredients—powders, bowl, stabilizing salts—whoomped into ash, reduced in a flash of unnatural heat and a surge of destabilized magic.
Audree staggered back, shielding his eyes.
When he looked up again, smoke was curling from a spiderweb of fractures in the ground.
He stood in stunned silence for a beat. Then he exhaled, shoulders dropping with tired acceptance.
"...Right. Note two. Never remove a mana source from an active rune without a break sigil."
He scribbled that down as well.
Then, quietly, he sat down on a nearby rock, staring at the ashes.
"Still counts as a win," he muttered, and this time the grin that came back was crooked and tired
The rest of the day drifted by in the quiet rhythm of foraging.
Audree wandered the nearby woods, his satchel slowly filling with new and old materials—twisted roots that shimmered faintly under light, thick-leafed herbs that left a tang on his fingers, and dried spores he'd learned not to breathe in too deeply. He double-checked each one against his notes and the scribbled references from the borrowed books, careful to press leaves into wax paper or tuck vials into padded slots.
He made sure never to stray too far.
When he was younger, it had been the stories—whispers of child-snatching trolls, shape-shifting beasts, and voices that mimicked your mother's to lure you deeper. He used to sleep with salt around his bed and a rune of safety under his pillow, just in case.
Now, at seventeen, those childish fears had dulled. But something else replaced them.
People had gone missing.
Three, maybe four over the past year. It hadn't made much noise—just murmurs behind market stalls, glances traded when the name of another missing miner came up in hushed conversation.
No proof. No bodies. No answers.
And while no one said it out loud, everyone felt it.
The woods weren't safe. Maybe they never were.
Still, Audree lingered at the edge as the sun began to dip behind the forge-smudged horizon. He had work to finish.
By the time he made it back into town, the lamps were being lit and the haze of smoke was starting to settle into stillness. He turned down a crooked street and stepped into one of his favorite places to end a long day—Merrin's Menagerie, a tiny merchant shop tucked behind the glassworks. It was more cage than store, really, with rows of wooden pens and glowing jars lining every shelf.
Inside, the air buzzed with faint magical hums, chirps, and the occasional squeak.
Audree moved through the cramped aisles, eyeing the creatures within. Mana-beasts, most of them small—barely the size of a loaf of bread. A few resembled beetles with crystalline shells that pulsed softly. Others looked like sugar-coated bats, wings twitching as they dozed upside-down.
They were rare, weird, and supposedly sweet-tasting. Most of the town only came here for the occasional roast or festival treat.
But not Audree.
He crouched near a cage with a swirling snail-like creature whose slime glowed faintly purple. A low-level mana leech. Practically useless in combat or ritual work, but it had potential for mild spell stabilization—especially in potion suspensions.
He tapped the side of the cage gently. "Still alive, huh?"
"Barely," came Merrin's voice from behind the counter. "You're the only one who doesn't want to eat the poor things."
Audree stood, brushing dust off his knees. "Guess I'm not big on candy."
Merrin chuckled. "You buying or browsing?"
"Browsing," Audree said, then paused. "Maybe both."
He moved toward the wall of jars, scanning the rows of labeled tags: light affinity, mana residual: weak, shadow clingers—do not tap glass.
So much of it was junk. But every now and then, something useful turns up. The mana crystal being one, even though it was pretty much dead now.
And even if it didn't... this place made him feel like magic wasn't so far away.
After some time poking through jars of flickering beetles and overpriced half-melted mana cubes, something tucked near the corner caught Audree's eye.
A jar—dusty and half-forgotten—sat tucked behind a bundle of lesser wisp moths, its glass fogged slightly from within.
Inside was a small, sluggish blob of blue.
At first glance, it looked like any other mana-sick slime: listless, pulsing faintly, pressed against the side of the jar with barely enough energy to ripple. But then Audree saw the shimmer. The way its edges refracted light like dew in the morning sun.
Recognition struck like a spark catching dry powder.
He schooled his face immediately.
Casual. Don't react.
He stepped back, flipping open his notebook as if reviewing something unrelated. Fingers flipped quickly past rune sketches and incomplete formulas until he found the page.
Vaponea Slimes.
A hand-scrawled diagram stared up at him—alongside a note he'd copied from a dusty alchemy reference:
"Born of accumulated dew mana. Rare. Intelligent. Variable in size based on emotional state. Can divide temporarily and demonstrate understanding of force and water spells. Often bonded to high-elemental environments. Unstable when neglected."
Audree's heart picked up. He stared at the little slime again, watching as it pressed against the glass, eyes (if you could call them that) blinking slowly.
He glanced back toward Merrin at the counter, who hadn't noticed his sudden interest.
Good.
He closed the book with a snap and approached the jar, schooling his voice into something bored and vaguely annoyed.
"So," he said, leaning in slightly. "What's up with this little guy?"
Merrin glanced over. "Oh—that thing? Been here for weeks now. Weird little blob. Doesn't eat right. Sleeps most of the time. Real high maintenance."
Audree shrugged, masking the grin trying to sneak its way onto his face.
"Looks half-dead."
"Feels like it," Merrin muttered, wiping down a jar. "Tried selling it at a discount, but no one wants it. I'm thinking of just—y'know—recycling it."
Audree's stomach twisted at the thought.
He gave a dismissive grunt. "Huh. I guess I could take it off your hands."
Merrin raised a brow. "Seriously?"
"Not like I'm expecting miracles," Audree said, inspecting the jar with just the right amount of fake disinterest. "But it might be fun to see if I can keep it alive. You know. For practice."
The merchant scratched his head. "Well, if you want it, take it. You'd be doing me a favor."
Audree barely nodded, already reaching for the jar, careful not to show just how much this meant.
As he tucked it into the side of his satchel—secured tightly between a cloth roll of chalk sticks and his notebook—the slime pulsed faintly, its blue body glowing just a bit brighter.
He turned toward the door, already running possibilities in his mind.
Water-channeling. Spell focus. A reaction amplifier?
He might've just found something with a purpose.
Something real.
Something that could get him closer to the power he seeked.
Outside the shop, the streets had gone quiet, the smoky haze of evening settling like a blanket over Embershade. Lamps flickered with a dull orange glow, and the last of the forge workers made their way home, their footsteps heavy with the weight of the day.
Audree stepped into the nearest alley, away from the few wandering eyes, and fidgeted with his bracelet. The silver beads clicked softly as excitement buzzed beneath his skin. He couldn't help himself.
He slipped the jar from his satchel and crouched near the edge of a broken fence, holding it up to the dim light.
Inside, the Vaponea slime quivered.
Its form was still sluggish, a soft blue glow barely pulsing from its core. The moment it caught sight of him, it recoiled, flattening itself to the bottom of the jar in a shiver of fear.
"Still scared, huh?" Audree murmured. "Guess I'm not exactly the most comforting face."
He considered the slime for a moment, then reached into his satchel again.
From one of the deeper pouches, he retrieved the nearly depleted mana crystal—a dull shard that flickered faintly with residual magic. Not much, but maybe enough to show he wasn't a threat.
He held it up near the jar.
For a moment, the slime perked up—its glow brightening slightly—but then it looked past the crystal, directly at him.
And instantly backed away again.
Audree blinked. "Right. Big scary human. Got it."
He chuckled softly, placing the jar gently on the cobbled ground and backing away a few steps. Just far enough.
With a practiced hand, he tilted the jar slightly, allowing the slime a clear view of the open mouth and the crystal set carefully just outside its reach.
The slime hesitated.
Its body pulsed, stretching slightly toward the edge. Its "eyes" blinked once, slowly, then locked onto the crystal.
Then—without warning—it shot a tiny piece of itself outward.
The shard of slime launched from its main body, hit the crystal, and absorbed it instantly. The shard then wobbled back like a living liquid tether and rejoined its core with a faint squelch.
The whole slime quivered once, glowing softly.
Its eyes closed in what could only be described as contentment.
Audree smiled.
"That's it," he said quietly. "Not so scary now, huh?"
The slime didn't react, but it didn't shrink back either.
Progress.
He sat beside it for a moment longer, just watching. Then, with careful hands, he guided the little creature back into the jar and into the safe pocket of his satchel.
The library was his next stop, though it was more out of habit than hope. The door was locked, the windows dark.
"Of course," he muttered. "Guess I'll return these in the morning."
Still... he found himself lingering for a moment, gazing at the locked door.
The day had been long. A little chaotic. And maybe, just maybe, kind of amazing.
A new creature. A rare one. One that responded to him—not because of a keyword or innate power, but because of what he knew. What he'd learned. What he did.
He looked up at the stars barely visible behind the forge smoke, then turned toward home.
The jar nestled safely in his bag. The glow from the slime pulsed gently—steady, warm.
Maybe tomorrow, he'd give it a name.