(21 Days Left)

After about thirty minutes of non-stop running, I stumbled into the Axiom Apothecary. I pulled my tunic off, panting and nearly keeling over.

Mila Agamemnon spotted my askew, pale, sweat-covered face from behind the glass booth covered in reinforcement hexagrams. She unlocked the booth, walked past me with her white and gold robes billowing, and made an [out for lunch] sign flash on the front door. Then she pulled me into the booth, past the stained glass, into a dim storage space filled with boxes and medical jars.

“What happened?” Mila demanded.

I swallowed, collecting my words. Mila was five years my senior. At eighteen she’d been evaluated for a magical affinity as a healer and sold on the bidding market. Master Axiom had bought her for a fistfull of gold to work at the apothecary. When I was seven, she was the one who uplifted me out of the mire of ignorance and taught me how to read ahead of others, how to mask my intelligence, how to run and climb, and how to make an old hairpin into a lockpick. She did it all so that one day I could escape the orphanage and not be bound as a life-debt slave to some shop in Acadia like she was now. Mila treated me like her younger brother, cared for me far more than I deserved.

“I have the System,” I exhaled finally, bracing myself for her freakout.

“What?!” The girl balked with a yelp. “That’s impossible… Are you telling me that the old coot actually did it?!”

“Alaric figured out the alchemical mix and the spellchain hexagram to permanently bind a philosopher’s stone to a person,” I said with a nod, looking forlorn and angry.

Mila rushed to grab an enormous patient examination wand from the booth. She waved it over my body and her mouth dropped.

“It’s actually fused to your body and soul,” she finally uttered. “Removing it would kill you. Keeping it in… will also kill you.”

“The System said I have twenty-one days to live,” I said, nodding. “Master Milgrim used the biggest stone he had on me.”

“This is wrong, so very... very wrong.” Mila lowered the wand, her eyes filling with tears.

“At least we know the exact reason why you cannot simply fuse the heart-crystal of a dead human to another,” I uttered with a crooked half-smirk.

“Merv, you’re going to die,” Mila said, repeating my diagnosis.

“Probably.” I shrugged. “Mind breaking the tracking spell chain on my neck?”

“I… err… yes.” She nodded. She wrapped her hands over my neck. “Dispel.”

The armacus on her wrist flashed. I heard a distinctive twinkle as the runes around my neck shattered. It paid to have a trusted friend in the city who was a mid-level apothecarist.

“Now,” I said, “change my look as much as possible.”

“You’re running away?” Mila raised her wet eyes at me.

“I’m retreating strategically,” I said. “It’s a bit early since we planned to have me run a few months before the auction, but whatever.”

Mila nodded as she dug through the back room for bleach. She manifested a flickering shield over my scalp with an artifact headband as she began to highlight my black hair.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” she asked to fill in the heart-wrenching silence between us as my scalp tingled.

“Master Milgrim’s notes on the matter were unclear,” I said. “I’m after all a magical experiment designed to break an established arcane alchemical theory. Honestly, I really didn’t think he’d go through with it, and yet here we are.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“The Guild,” I said. “I’m going to find out who this heart belonged to.” I tapped my chest.

“What?” The apothecarist blinked.

“The Adventurers Guild has a National database,” I said. “It keeps track of all the soul imprints of people leaving and entering cities. The philosopher’s stone was some poor bastard’s crystalline heart. Yes, it’s been brewing inside of some wild beast for gods know how long, and yes, it’s been somehow alchemically altered by Master Milgrim to fuse it to my body… but it might still be recognizable. The Guild scanner might be able to awaken my alignment, tell me who I am.”

“Who you are?” Mila repeated. She was obviously in far too much dismay about my impending demise to think clearly.

“Mila, focus. What are crystalline hearts?” I asked her.

“Unique, crystalline-organic formations that grow within a person over the decades as they level up. Crystalline hearts define alignment and permit one to channel their magic in a specific direction,” she said after a pause, her eyes widening.

“The mad alchemist procured this crystalline heart from a monster hunter,” I said. “The mage that bore it died in the wilderness. He or she had a name, a rank, maybe even a bank account. An identity.”

“So?”

“So I’m going to use it to leave Acadia,” I said. “I’m going to see the ocean, like I always wanted. I’m going to find someone who knows how to stop me from dying. Say, would you happen to know someone like that?”

“I do not.” The apothecarist shook her head, looking despondent. “And I really don’t recommend you let another Acadian healer scan you with a wand because this is incredibly illegal from every angle. You’re a minor with an unlocked System. Even if there isn’t a specific law for this, the City Watch could hold you in a cell until you’re dead.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’ll search for the answer outside of Acadia, maybe one of the provinces… The people there are less uptight, I hear.”

“Be careful.” Mila fretted as she applied a burner wand to my face, producing dark freckles and pockmarks. “This is technically necromancy… Taking the identity of another mage is a crime punishable by death too.”

“I’m already dead,” I said with a shrug. “The System is quite polite to point out my exact expiry date like I’m a jar of pickles sitting in a pantry. Nah, scratch that, pickles last longer than three weeks. According to Epicuria Standard, properly heat-processed pickles can last up to one year unopened at room temperature!”

Mila ignored my jibber jabber and hugged me tightly. She didn’t let go for a few minutes.

“I have to reopen the apothecary,” she said, wiping her tears. “Good luck, Merv.”