The Segmented Empire

Chapter 6

(TW): slight yelling 

  These last few days have been overwhelming. It was hard for the boy to make sense of his thoughts, his dreams seemed to mean something, but he couldn't think about that without the scene of his brother's corpse popping back into his brain. He needed some kind of break, something to take his mind off things, and being the young potions master he was, he decided to retreat to the brewing room. It was a small room on the third floor of the palace, brewing stands lined the counters, and chests were filled to the brim with any potion ingredient his brother had found on his adventures, ranging from rabbit's foot and phantom membranes, to blaze powder and glowstone dust. It wasn't everything but it was close. He grabbed his journal out of his bag and flipped through the pages, passing pages of information about ingredients to the effects of each potion he was able to make.

  He finally stopped on a page, looking closely at how to make it. He walked over to a chest, grabbing three small glass bottles and filling them with water at the cauldron next to it. He moved quietly, sliding the bottles into place and walking over to another chest, grabbing netherwart and carefully putting it into the small brewing pipe. He continued to look through chests, quietly listening as the water bubbled with completion. He dug through another chest pulling out two spider eyes and walking to the crafting table, turning one of the eyes fermented with the help of a mushroom and sugar. He shuffled back to the brewing stand, sending the spider eye down the pipe and watching as the now awkward potion boiled and shifted into a sickly green. Listening once again, he waited for the sizzling of the eye to finish before sending the fermented spider eye down, then moving to another chest to grab glowstone dust and gunpowder.

  The potion sizzled and popped until finally, it came to the right state to empower. He carefully grabbed some of the iridescent powder into his hand and gently watched it flow down the brewing pipe, making sure to wash his hands thoroughly before going back to add the gunpowder. Glowstone dust and Gunpowder couldn't mix without creating some sort of explosive reaction, and he wanted to make sure that didn't happen, carefully grabbing the Gunpowder in his hand, he let it down the brewing pipe, finally letting the potion complete. It popped and bubbled, the heat causing the gunpowder to sizzle, he sat and waited, until finally the noises calmed down and the only thing he could hear was the small crackles from the gas heater.

  A potion of harming, he made it, but he didn't know why. It was as if he blacked out as soon as he entered the room, involuntarily making the strongest type of a dangerous potion. Of course, this wasn't the first time he'd made this potion, but it was still odd to him that he made it without explanation. He paused, taking a minute to just stare blankly at the glass bottle, the dark crimson liquid bubbling softly as the fire below continued to flicker. Reluctantly, he gripped the neck of the bottle and lifted it out of the brewing stand, turning off the gas-powered flames below, and walking over to a small desk that sat in the corner of the room. He placed the bottle down and dug through a chest next to him, looking for the proper container to hold the dangerous fluid.

  He looked well, but he couldn't, no matter how hard he looked, find what he needed. He sighed heavily, lazily closing the chest and making his way to another one on the opposite side of the room, digging through it like he did the first. Just like the first, he couldn't find what he was looking for, growing slightly more irritated, he closed the chest and continued to look through the others around him. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn't seem to find the correct bottles for the potion, as if they had all disappeared into thin air. Annoyed, he grabbed the potion and stuffed it in his satchel, walking out of the brewing room and into the hall, making his way to his father's study. As much as he hated talking to his father about things such as this, it was mandatory that he put the potion in its correct container.