The tired warlock pushed a rickety wheelbarrow inside the secluded cave chamber yet again. He spent the whole morning coming in and out of the cave at the behest of the alchemist.

“Was that all of them?” He whinged and thrashed a blend of seeds, spores, and slimes out of his increasingly worn robes.

The alchemist shook his head, never looking up from damn near the inside of his simmering cauldron.
“No. But you should be pleased to hear that this is the final batch.” The answer was shortly followed by a derisive scoff.

The warlock sighed quietly. He endured nearly a full year working for this lunatic; he wasn’t going to let one final stack of incubators keep him from getting his form signed.
As the warlock knelt down and lifted six of the inconspicuous crates at a time, the strained sounds of his struggle finally made the alchemist look.

“Be careful with those! If you damage the internal components, the substance could be dosed out incorrectly!” he reprimanded his assistant.
“Then all we’ll be left with will be boxes of dead insects…!”
“…Arachnids, rather!” He amended himself without losing any of his amassed outrage.

The alchemist’s fury failed to inspire much of a reaction from the warlock.
Seeing this, the alchemist rolled his eyes.
“Do you have any idea what we’re doing here?”

“Setting traps for people… with a side of eco-terrorism…” the warlock drawled without a hint of judgement.

“WHAT?!” The older man erupted. “ECO-TERRORISM?!” he demanded in utter shock and disbelief.
“If I wanted to terrorise this ecosystem then…-!” He strangled the air before him.

“Hey, I keep work and principles separate,” the warlock assured him easily.

The warlock was little surprised to see the alchemist’s scowl grow at his admission.
“Fine, fine,” he relented. “Why are you doing this?”

The alchemist went from practically growling to practically grinning as the topic of conversation landed on him. “To make a difference…!”

“A difference in the sizes of some mites?” the warlock asked sardonically.

“No, you ignorant buffoon…!” hissed the alchemist.
“To make a difference in history – a bigger signature than nature feels I’m owed!” he asserted grandly.

“And that actual specific difference that you’ll be making is…?” The warlock asked, trying to tease him to what felt like the obvious conclusion.

“This is not about the blasted bugs!” insisted the alchemist.
“This is about barging into nature’s house and punching a hole in the wall – a hole so big that she can’t fix it and just has to work around it…!”
“And every time somebody sees the hole and asks what caused it – was it a meteor? Was it some cataclysmic magic from before it was truncated?”
“But no. It won’t be any of those things; it will have been a human. Victor Ablasti. Me. I…!”

After a brief and slightly awkward pause during which the alchemist gradually wound down, the warlock shrugged his brows uncaringly.
“Sure, I’m inspired.” He said flatly.

The alchemist cleared his throat and raked back his long, tortured hair back.

“That does leave the matter of credit. Naturally you are technically responsible for some small portion of my success and-” The warlock quickly cut the alchemist off.

“That’s alright – recognition is the last thing a warlock wants…!” he insisted beneath a mask of selflessness and secrecy.
In truth, warlocks really did avoid the spotlight – at least generally.
But not even the doomsayers could get Daniel to confess what he did.

The alchemist’s face lit up with immediate glee.
“That is precisely the same conclusion that I have come to myself!”

“All I ask is that you sign my form,” he reminded the alchemist.

“Yes, yes, of course, I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign as soon as the job is done.”
“Remember the plan. As soon as you’re done with the incubators, head to the tavern in Moorwell – we’ll regroup, and I’ll sign your papers.”

“Promise?” tried the warlock.

The alchemist produced a petulant groan, “I swear on my excellence as an alchemist!”

On his way out with a wheelbarrow of boxes, the warlock didn’t question the – as far as he was aware – unplanned vermillion concoction bubbling away in the cauldron.

Free from the threat of blizzards and avalanches, the people eagerly flocked to the woods.

The local artists' guild ventured into the bountiful meadows, sketching budding fruit trees and capturing the ephemeral beauty of spring in every medium from watercolour to clay.

A half-elf in the customary white beret and dirty apron perused the scenery, searching for the perfect model.
Suddenly his foot made contact with something wooden.

He looked down and noticed a small wooden crate stashed beneath the cover of rustling leaves.

A second later, the half-elf knelt down and began faintly sketching the evocative scene with a crude pencil.

Downhill from the artist guild’s outdoor expedition, the alchemists busied themselves around crops of poisonous plants.

They knew from experience that snipping the older leaves typically didn’t upset the druids.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, they were also forced to wear gloves.

The dwarf alchemist let out a weary sigh.
He eyed the young, juicy leaves with contempt, mentally cursing the tyrannical druids for getting in the way of alchemy.

He wiped the sweat from his brow before crumpling his gloves and cramming them into his pocket.
The alchemist shuddered as he downed a concentrated stamina potion.

He slipped the empty potion bottle into his pouch, where it rattled alongside other glassware.

As he looked around for a comfortable spot to rest, he spotted a very man-made-looking crate lying in the open, only lightly bespeckled with minimal forest litter.

He cocked his head, ready to investigate, when he noticed a colleague from the spectroscopy lab already heading towards it.

The dwarf immediately switched headspaces, from inquisitive researcher to petulant toddler, and raced to claim the seat for himself.

Above both groups, high in the foothills, a group of children from the nearby village gathered on the side of a cliff with a pile of carefully curated and painstakingly transported pebbles.

They took turns flinging the rocks at the twiggy targets constructed in the clearing below.

Many of the stones had ancient elven texts or doodles dating back to the earliest aeons of their civilisation.

As they continued their brutal barrage on their increasingly decrepit stickmen, they never noticed the incubating crate hidden inside a nearby tree hollow.

Even higher above, just below the alpine region, gathered a handful of wizards from the nearby guilds.

They discussed the newest wizard literature as they passed around a clay pipe of mixed brambles.

Somehow the incubator hidden in some vacated animal’s den was not only found and removed but also repurposed into a little table for their wine and salted nuts.