The Peculiar Alchemist

13 ||The Witch's Helper

Whenever Agnes is absent from her cottage, the place would become very quiet and only the sounds of her potions sizzling or her cauldron bubbling would be heard. Whenever these rare peaceful moments occur, Kellen would find himself having to busy himself with something.

Usually, he'd be in the basement cutting up fresh ingredients or experimenting with rituals, but now there are new additions to this place.

A dumb errand boy and a very peculiar rich boy.

Really, Kellen couldn't help but hover curiously over Aubrey to see what he was doing, and it seems like he was more focused on studying stones now rather than try his hand again with mixing potions. Maybe his last failure discouraged him, but according to Agnes, he actually exceeded her expectations. Alchemy wasn't easy to begin with, and Agnes saw potential in him. So maybe not all rich snobs were dumb.

And this one was honestly starting to become interesting.

There was a collection of stones in front of the blond apprentice, and some had runes or inscriptions inside of them. Kellen could vaguely remember Agnes creating some of these stones, and it seems like they were the samples given to Aubrey as a study material.

Sadly, she didn't give him any of the cursed stones. It would have been fun.

"You are being a creep." Aubrey said this as he flipped the stone he was examining, but Kellen continued standing over him just looming there for no reason whatsoever. The words did not bother him at all, instead they just made him want to stand there even longer.

"It's okay, just ignore me."

"Just a question," There was a hint of annoyance and nervousness caused by being observed like this when Aubrey set the stone down on the table, and Kellen tilted his head in curiosity to what the question might be as he let out an urging hum telling Aubrey to continue. "Are most of Agnes' potions-"

"Poisons." He corrected.

Aubrey continued, not very fazed by that. "Are her poisons deadly?"

A grin appeared on Kellen's face already knowing what Aubrey was insinuating. "Yes, very much so. Why do you ask?"

With an innocent shrug, Aubrey grabbed another stone to study. "Hm, no reason."

"Right." Kellen played along enjoying this, but then a creak caught his attention and his eyes went to the front door. The door remained closed, but faint careful steps could be heard making Kellen finally leave Aubrey's side to investigate.

Relieved by his annoying company leaving, Aubrey let out a sigh as he happily relaxed in his place and continued his examination. There were many patterns he was noticing the more he studied them, and his engrossment made him completely unaware of his surroundings.

He had his back to the entrance of the other room, and did not even care that Kellen was cautiously approaching the other room's entrance with an unhappy expression.

Alchemists like Agnes – no matter their skill and brilliance – often faced a very unfortunate and common problem due to the rarity of their craft. People are always after their creations, especially potions since they had effects no spells could produce, and that made their creations incredibly valuable in both usage and price.

It made thieves attracted to them the way flies are attracted to honey, and it seems like a fly decided to try its luck because Kellen found a few potions floating from their shelves and into the hands of the intruder. It was a woman who was much quieter than those before her, but she should have paid more attention to who was in the cottage before she decided to steal.