Witches' Brew [Urs]

[Sivan]

60th of Frost, Year 121 Steel
Jacun's Alchemical Goods

An aristocratic Hytori and a red-robed old man were discussing something. It vacillated between good-humored pedantry to heated argument, which Sivan took to mean that they liked each other. With a thought to his sprites, they leaped into action, water coalescing and flying through the air in a serpentine stream, fire braiding through it so that it left a trail of steam behind. It coiled and climbed into the teapot the men shared, steeping a weaker encore to their first pot. He would make them another fresh one if they desired, but he tried to serve quietly. His wasn't an especially social temperament, so he liked to exist on the periphery when other people were socializing. It made him feel as though he were at least somewhat involved.

"I have a friend coming in for a consultation," he told them. "I hope you can keep each other out of trouble for a little while?"

He smiled faintly; his grasp of humor was tenuous, so he never knew if it would land. They assured him that all would be well, and so Sivan returned to the main room with all its various displays to await Urs' arrival. The man had been somewhat unclear about what he was after, whether he needed alchemical aid for his necromancy or some other project for his Tower masters. Sivan supposed he could direct him to Zef in the other room for a quick bit of tutoring, but the elf just hoped he could help his friend.

Sivan didn't know how he would have managed if he wasn't such an able summoner; when he had to do a quick bit of alchemy in the back, he could always leave Exael up front to mind the shop. If one couldn't trust a celestial, then something was certainly wrong with the way the world worked.

[Urs Wardell]

Urs wandered through the Plaza of Jeweled Arches blindfolded.

His magic yawned out away from him, a cloud of awareness. He’d spent enough power for only the most shallow understanding. Potholes and ice patches were easily avoided. People, decidedly less so.

Folks, usually, passed through his bespelled haze as only the faintest impressions. General size and shape. Occasionally, a wisp of curious amusement lingered like a spreading watermark. There were the few who needled with irritation. He felt their attention like light. Fleeting, he noted, as they moved along the cobblestone streets.

When the crowds thinned, he focused more on the finer details. The colors of their outfits. The coins in their pockets. He threaded through their mouths and his magic caught their words. He stumbled here, missing a crack that threatened to see him falling.

Eventually, he conceded and untied the blindfold. He squinted into the midday sun.

It wasn’t hard to find Sivan’s shop later. A few of his patients had requested specific tonics from Jacun’s Alchemical Goods. He had a list at the ready. He wasn’t familiar with alchemy - or, alchemy beyond what philtering Mother had practiced in her workshop. Herbal remedies ground into various creams and pastes. He wondered what alchemy would look like, under his Sight.

The bell rang when he walked in, a chime was heard around the shop.

“Sivan,” he says, smiling. “I’ve got an order from the Tranquil Gardens. This place is popular with the patients.”

[Sivan]

"Urs," he said, a genuine smile lighting up his face. "I remember."

The elf began to glow with a blue-white light, which then detached itself into a vaguely humanoid shape of light. Exael had shown him his truer form in his mind's eye, but he wouldn't be able to manifest as such until they performed their Sacrament, whenever that happened. The celestial acknowledged Urs with a sort of bow of its head, and then began to drift about the room.

"Exael will keep an eye on things for me. Come on into the back. Just don't touch anything or Master Jacun will get upset with me." He led him toward the door that led back into the workshop proper; Jacun was off meeting with a noble client. "There's a red-robed wizard in the other room. Taking tea with my neighbor, a noble from Sol'Valen. Kalzasi is a strange sort of place."

He thought perhaps Urs would want to question Zef Mirlind about something or other. Sivan didn't have all the answers, though he was rather adept with spirits.

"May I see the list?" he asked. "We probably have most of the things stocked already, but I can probably brew up anything else you need quickly enough. I've got my eye out for Daemithillium. It's so rare, I don't know that any will pass through the shop, but I think even the weaker stones could be used to improve some summoning rituals." He smiled once more, a bit easier now that he knew Urs better than he had that night at the bar. Of course, he wouldn't attempt such without Urs by his side, both for the backup and because he wanted Urs to learn as much as he could offer, and that would be a learning opportunity for the both of them. A truly powerful Daemithillium shard could enable them to work wonders.

[Urs Wardell]

Wisps of blue bled from Sivan, and Urs’ stumbled, a brief dally with confusion, before remembering the elf’s Aidolon.

“Exael,” Urs returned the creature’s nod, playing as perfect a reflection as he could muster. Celestials were not things his Mother dealt with. He’d tried to find something in his book about the higher Court. Nothing. Mother negotiated with flesh and rot and diseases, her book filled with names of things marked worse and worser.

Things to call upon only if he’d exhausted every other resource.

“I saw,” he said, remembering the man dressed in red. The Towers were so big, bigger than he’d imagined, and he was beginning to expect it’d become impossible to learn it all. “And, it is. I’m not sure what I expected, not really, when I left the Midden for the upper city. It wasn’t this.” Everything shined with hope and luck. The Midden was cold and dark and wet. They weren’t so far from each other, but they felt like completely different worlds.

“The list,” he said, handing the paper to Sivan. He blushed, ever slightly, when their hands touched. Urs tried to push the thoughts to the back of his head, remembering that they were student and teacher, friends if anything, but that the elf had drawn a boundary on the first day they’d met. “And this, too,” he says, handing Sivan a vial of silver liquid.

The drug he and Kala had extracted. The Tranquil Gardens had barely said yes to Urs’ suggestion that they identified the drug. Kala and Urs hadn’t been able, and while they had hoped to keep the drug in shop while they worked on other cases, they trusted Master Jacun enough that it wasn’t too hard a sell to let Urs bring it with him when he collected the items for his own patients.

“Could you identify it? You, or Master Jacun?” Urs asked, “A few patients have shown up, dead, from overdose. No one knows what it is. Or if it’s something the city should worry about.”

[Sivan]

The soon-to-be aidolon flared a greeting; it had shown Sivan its true form, but hadn't yet manifested it. Apparently, becoming an aidolon would allow it more power, more identity here in this realm. The complex rankings of the celestials were something he only half understood, though he learned more with each passing season renewing their contract.

"Mm," he acknowledged; he liked it when Urs talked about himself. He wanted to know him better, but they only got to see each other once in a while between their busy schedules. The Midden sounded as different from the upper city as Sol'Valen was from Dalquia, and Sivan knew a thing or two about being a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps it would draw them closer eventually. He wondered if Urs would still be attracted to him when he knew more about him.

In the workroom, he accepted the list and the vial. Compartmentalizing tasks, he still managed to update Urs as he looked over the list.

"I think my apprenticeship will be done next season, and I will be ready to fully bond to Exael if he deems me worthy." Urs already knew his plan to wait until he could perform a Sacrament to mark an eternal partnership with the celestial so he wouldn't have to spherebind and exclude other courts from his service. "Oh. Yes, I can manage all of these things." Then he turned his mind's eye upon the vial, letting his senses expand as he examined it.

"Hm, this certainly bears the markings of alchemy... but... sort of sloppy, actually." He frowned. "Your Semblance is stronger than mine so you must have examined it yourself. What can you tell me about it? Perhaps between what you already know and my background, we can suss it out together."

[Urs Wardell]

“Ah - we guessed it might be.”

Urs had been hesitant to work with Kala Leukos. Nobility wasn’t something he respected.

No. It wasn’t something Mother respected - and like everything else, Urs inherited her disrespect. He struggled to understand the use of noble families. Democracy, or his understanding of it, wasn’t something to be rewarded by birthright or greased only along the palms of the wealthy.

Miss Leukos was providing some challenge to that idea. “Or, a student of mine did. Sort of student.” It was hardly an official arrangement.

All it had cost her was a donation.

“...will you open a store? Like this one?” Urs asked - realizing he wasn’t sure if Sivan planned to stay in Kalzasi. He’d assumed he would - but at the same time, Urs planned his own escape, albeit a brief one, to the gray city to the south. Zaichaer.

[Sivan]

Sivan nodded at Urs' explanation; he could understand a 'sort of student' as that was what Urs was to him. He liked to believe that there was a bit of a friendship growing up between them, as well, but they were hardly as easy with each other as he was with Destyn or Torin. Perhaps it was because that first night had become awkward and neither of them knew how to move past it. Or perhaps Urs had and Sivan just didn't understand that sort of thing.

He was still scanning the silvery substance, but as Urs had followed a different subject, he just tried to soak up more about whatever it was in the vial while answering.

"I'm not really sure what I will do," he admitted. "When I came to Kalzasi, I thought it would be temporary, but I have a couple of things keeping me here now. Or, at least, encouraging me to stay a while longer. So I don't know that I would want to start a business until I'm certain I want to put down more permanent roots. I think enough people know me because of Jacun now that I could find some work in magic... I think Jacun might even hire me part-time to help with things until he gets another apprentice. My runeforger friend might even want my help with clockwork and artificing and such... So I don't think I'm going anywhere anytime soon, but I don't really have a plan for my future, exactly."

He smiled ruefully.

"So, you can count on me still whenever you need help with summoning or... I, uh... I don't know... if you wanted to get a drink or something... sometime..."

[Urs Wardell]

It was interesting to watch Sivan work.

The elf was curious and cautious, naturally. His focus was extreme. He wondered about his Semblance. Before, he hadn’t considered exploring another’s magic - it made little sense, when so much Semblance was so personal.

But Kala’s rune changed his mind. Now - without the rune, he couldn’t see much of how Sivan cast his magic. He might get a feeling of it, if he spent some power to cast Semblance out like a net, to catch the wisps of his intent, but it wouldn’t be the same. And - he worried if he asked, it might seem too intimate.

A part of his interest was, but he wasn’t willing to be so open. Not again. He still felt the sharp prick of his own embarrassment.

What a fool he’d been.

“You’re so talented - of course Jacun would hire you,” Urs said, completely confident despite not knowing Jacun or having more than a basic understanding of alchemy. It was impossible to discern Sivan’s skill, and yet, he did. He was sure - how couldn’t Sivan be anything else but talented in everything he did?

It was embarrassing how much he admired him.

And then -

“...a drink?” Urs felt a series of emotions, confusion, and then some more. “...yes. I - I would like that. I mean, if you would.”

He chuckled nervously. This was a friendship, he reminded himself. It could be nothing more. “You’ve been a good friend, Sivan. I appreciate that,” he said, smiling in turn.

[Sivan]

"Oh," he managed at the compliment, golden skin turning pink. Then when Urs agreed to a drink, "Oh, really? That would be nice... Oh. Right, you have been a good friend, too."

His metrics for friendship might not have been based on a great deal of data. His other friends were Destyn and Torin and he was comfortable around them. Sometimes uncomfortable things came up: past traumas, embarrassments. No matter what, though, they kept showing up. Perhaps that was what Sivan had now that he hadn't had before: people showing up. And Urs did, perhaps only for the free training, but here they were, spending time together, helping each other out.

Sivan's blush didn't dissipate.

"Well, I, ah... I could run some tests on this," he said, holding up the vial, "but I think it had probably better be Master Jacun doing it. I'll help him out, and I'll try to bring the results to you by tomorrow evening. But let's see about this list. I can definitely help you with that right now."

He slipped the vial into a pocket in his vest so it would be protected, and then began gathering reagents from various places. If he had minded Urs watching him work, he wouldn't have brought him back into the workroom, and it made him wonder what it would be like to watch Urs at work in the Tranquil Gardens or with his teachers in the Tower of Lore, though making deliveries there still made him nervous. He always worried that someone would come along and say he wouldn't be allowed to continue practicing magic unless he swore their oaths, though this was Kalzasi and not Zaichaer, and they were not the Order of Reconciliation or something like that.

[Urs Wardell]

He watched a sunset on Sivan’s face, gold flushed with pink.

Urs wondered if he confused his feelings. It’d been so long since he had anything. Everything and everyone he’d known had been left behind, down in the Midden.

Mother had made him swear to never return. He’d agreed. He’d let his past die with Mother and left them both to rot in wet and dark.

And here, everything had been so strange. The people here lived so differently. Here, where rooftops shone like colored jewels and the sky loomed so large and blue above them, and people flew. And yet, he’d never felt so alone. He’d had a family before. Friends. A home.

Urs hadn’t thought he’d find any of those things again.

But Sivan had been so kind. He wondered if he’d been so long without friends that anything felt…like more.

“Can I help you gather the things?” Urs asked, still where he was, “It isn’t much. Lavender, ginger, things like that. Painkillers, if you have any. Oh - and it isn’t on the list, but with Glade coming, anything to lessen allergies would be appreciated.”

The whole of Jacun’s shop reminded him of Mother’s store, he realized. All of the ingredients and vials and strange things lined the shelves. The strands of dried herbs stretched along the walls. The alchemy was strange, but the magic of it wasn’t terribly unfamiliar. He felt vaguely like he’d seen something like it before. But there’d been nothing like this at home.

A cauldron, yes, but a cauldron alone.

“...when we do get a drink,” Urs started, his voice soft, and his tongue felt heavy with something he couldn’t place, “I think - well, you’ve just been so kind. And good. You didn’t - not many people I know are. I’d like, if I could, buy you a drink.”

He swallowed, and then added, “As a friend, I mean.”