(21 Days Left)

As I sipped some coffee Mila had offered to me, I attempted to pour power into the Space rune on the bag per her advice for the twentieth time.

“It’s not working,” I complained.

“You just have to keep trying.” Mila shrugged. “You have to grasp, master the feeling of your personal magic. It took me a long time to properly master Herbomancy, so I doubt that you’ll be able to manipulate Space overnight.”

I frowned and persisted in my efforts. Sure, I didn’t know magic, but the LV 47 heart of the Space mage in my chest certainly did. I just had to figure out how to activate it, and then the crystalline shard of Alessii Saint-Rian would hopefully handle the rest.

I closed my eyes and felt the edges of the Space rune on the bag, tracing them with my fingers, trying to understand the power that now belonged to me and doomed me to an early demise.

I could feel the frustration building within me, an impatience that threatened to bubble over. I let go of it, dropped it beneath the surface, let it sink far behind me, and thought about Space.

What is Space exactly?

I tried to recall what I’d read about the definition of Space in the esoteric journals of my dastardly Alchemist Master. My knowledge was fuzzy at the edges, difficult to grasp because I was feeling tired and nervous. I decided to rely on Mila’s eidetic memory to aid me.

“Mila? Could you recite to me Alaric’s exact words on the nature of Space?” I asked her without opening my eyes.

Mila took a few seconds to recall the lines.

“Space,” she started to speak, her voice even like the ticking of a metronome, “is not merely the emptiness between objects. It’s the canvas upon which existence paints its masterpiece. It is the fabric weaving together the universe, a delicate and intricate tapestry threaded between the smallest atoms, between oceans and roads, between cities and nations, between stars and galaxies.

“In the realm of alchemy, Space is depicted as a goddess named One in the shape of a door that once connected all dimensions and bound the greatest evil of all, her name Infinity. Space is not a physical dimension but an entity with her own will and whims. Not simply a void to cross, but an inorganic idea that one could interact with, manipulate, and explore.

“Space was a lawful goddess, orderly and proper, until she was struck down by the treachery of the goddess Infinity, who had come at her with a knife able to shear all. As Space perished, the door to everything was torn open wide. Now, we mages are free to pull upon the remnants of One’s divine corpse whenever we open gateways not merely between one point or another but the doors into elsewhere, into ourselves and others.

The divine gate of the dead goddess One can be passed through by those who dream of her, allowing access into the very souls of men, beasts, and even alchemical concoction. To bridge a true pathway between two alchemical materia, an alchemist must pay respect, utter a prayer to the corpse of Space. With enough dedication to the craft of alchemy, such a pathway helps forge the perfect fusion of two completely foreign materia, such as air and metal, flesh and steel, or soul and crystal. Space might be dead, but fragments of her will remain scattered between nothingness, wishing to restore what was once broken.

“Each offer to Space is a tiny pact, a desire to bring back order to the fractured cosmos...”

As I absorbed Mila’s narration, I pictured the shattered doorway between everything and nothing as my fingers crept along the edges of the Space rune.

“Goddess One,” I began my prayer, “grant me your power, for my time is running out. Know that I am not your dedicated servant Lady Saint-Rian, but if you grant me a fraction of your power with your divine fractured grace, I would be willing to serve you forevermore and think about you in my dreams. Grant me the power to open the door to my soul, to everything everywhere, to the distant beyond... grant me the potential to survive... and I promise to restore you.”

I did not expect for anything to happen, and yet I felt something click within me, like a key turning in an invisible door.

Yes, I was an amateur trying to manipulate forces beyond my comprehension. But within me, a different story was unfolding. There was a spark, a flicker of understanding that seemed to dance at the edges of my consciousness. The heart of the Space mage, a shard of arcane power, suddenly pulsed in my chest, sending a strange, tickling current running down my arms. It was a part of me, yet it felt incredibly distant, like an untamed beast lurking in the shadows.

I wasn’t afraid of it. This was my best option, my only chance. I would not falter so easily. The heart of the Space mage, like a sleeping dragon, was waiting to be awakened. And I was ready to meet it head-on, to master it. I pictured a door in my mind and turned the handle.

Sparks of power rushed through my arm from my crystalline heart into the rune. Runes on the interior of the bag ignited one by one, the space within stretching.

“By Grande Acadia,” Mila uttered as she stared at the blossoming interior of my bag. “Now that’s something I’ve never seen before. Genuine Space magic!”

Her words disrupted my concentration, and the power pouring from my arm sputtered. The chain broke, and the runes dimmed. I instantly felt tired, drained, wanting a nap.

A flickering notice woven from static flashed in my right eye. Right.

I swallowed the rest of my coffee to chase away the looming exhaustion.

“How much gold is in the apothecary?” I asked my friend.

“Erm…” Mila blinked, looking away from the interior of my bag. “Eighty gold, fourteen silver, and one hundred and eleven copper are in the safe. Master Axiom comes by once a week to collect it.”

“If I’m recalling things correctly... Aqua regia mixed with Dragon’s Breath moss and distilled in the Phoenix Flame furnace can burn through magisteel?” I asked. “Are those ingredients in the apothecary?”

“Yeah.” Mila nodded, her eyes growing wide. “Aurum Ignis Elix burns through magisteel with a brilliant blue flame. Don’t breathe the fumes in; they’re quite poisonous.”

“How long is the distillation?”

“An hour per liter,” she replied.

“Not bad,” I said, mulling the words. “That should give us enough time to put everything into my bag.”

“They’ll look for you.” Mila’s expression became worried. “Scritimancers can take their time, but they do not give up easily. If you stay in Acadia, you will be caught.”

“How can I leave the city without using Skyway Central?” I asked.

“Hrmmm…” Mila pursed her lips. “You could... hire a privateer. Eighty gold should cover hiring a mage with their own skyship. The Adventurers Guild has a database for these things.”

“I’ll bug Bolsh about it, thanks,” I said with a nod.

***

The cobblestone back streets of Acadia were dark as I crossed through dim alleyways bathed in the blue ring-light of Inaria. Mila was inside of my bag, and I was hiding under the eye-redirecting cloak. My feet made no noise as my boots were wrapped in old cloth.

Sometime around 2 A.M., I reached the back door of the apothecary. I rotated, and Mila pressed her palm to it from the bag. The door unlocked for us. According to her, the backroom lacked recording equipment, as all of the overpriced stuff and the safes were in the front of the building.

As the door slid shut behind us, Mila put on my cloak, climbed out of the bag, and went to prepare Aurum Ignis along with other concoctions we required for tonight. As she worked on the metal-eating acid, I pulled the bag off my shoulders and began to fill it with everything not nailed down.

Every ten minutes I took a break to let my arms rest, sat down next to the bag, and poured more power into the Space rune, making the interior much roomier.

The backroom of the apothecary had been meticulously organized by Mila. All of the pharmaca bottles were clearly labeled in her neat handwriting.

By 5 A.M., the backroom looked quite barren, and Mila handed me the bottle filled with Aurum Ignis.

I grabbed the dragon-scaled bottle and walked through the door into the front of the apothecary. Mila followed me under the cloak, staying in my shadow. I made sure to show my mask-covered face and armor to the image-recording crystal at the front.

Then I splashed Aurum Ignis over the defensive wards.

The wall in front of me ignited with flames of blue and violet colors, black smoke rising into the air.

I crouched in front of the safe. Mila touched the safe with her invisible hand, and it unlocked. I pulled the gold into my bag before I poured Aurum Ignis over the safe.

The same procedure was repeated with the expensive alchemical ingredients that were located in a much larger safe in the front.

I poured Aurum Ignis over the second safe, demolishing all of the hexagrams on it. Then I splashed the metal-eating acid over the front door. The smoke was beginning to make it hard to breathe within the apothecary.

An invisible hand wrapped around mine, pulling me away. I felt the bag twitching as Mila climbed inside. I didn’t know exactly how Space magic worked, but it was nice that Mila’s weight didn’t make the bag any heavier.

In another minute I was in the backroom. I put on my gray cloak as Mila handed it to me from the bag. I wrapped the eye-redirecting cloth over myself and rushed out of the back door. It wouldn’t be long before the Watch was notified that the apothecary wards had been thoroughly destroyed.

***

Mila climbed out of my bag, standing in her small apartment. She had a bottle of memory-erasing Allaweed grass in her hands.

“That was... fun,” she said as she poured the grass into the tea. “Too bad I won’t remember any of this.”

“Thanks for everything,” I said.

“Don’t get caught, Merv.” She turned back to me and hugged me fiercely.

I nodded.

Mila handed another bottle to me.

“The Vigilant Draconic tonic,” she said. “Once you take this... you’ll remain focused, won’t sleep for three weeks. Take it every twenty-four hours.”

“You’re the best.” I smiled at her, chugging down the concoction that would twice-extend my limited existence. The crushed Borkroot tasted like I was eating sand while the dragon heartstring burned as it went down. I tried not to heave, swallowing a cup of water after it.

Then she handed me another bottle. “Somniferous Twilight powder,” she said. “I need to be in deep sleep to forget the entire night. Make me inhale it in a minute or two.”

Mila drank the Allaweed tea, blanching at the taste. She walked to bed, her eyes slowly glassing over as the Allaweed grass began to consume her recent memory.

“Bye, Mila,” I whispered to her as I blew the Somniferous Twilight powder over her face. My trusted friend fell backwards into her bed, her eyes closing as the powder did its job of knocking her out.

I turned away from her, not knowing if I was going to see her face again.

As the sleep-removing alchemical concoction settled in my stomach, I felt my insides igniting. I was filled with renewed, impossible vigor.

It felt like I drank a thousand coffee cups all at once, like a skyship had flashed by me, nearly cleaving me in twain.

My head cleared as if a curtain that I didn’t know was there had been pulled away. My thoughts became crystalline and focused.

A determined grin slid onto my face as I departed from Mila’s attic apartment, climbing down the rickety metal stairwell.

The city was still dark, but it was about to wake up. A new day was beginning, and I had to locate a privateer with a ship before the City Watch started looking for me.