Theo hefted a box of ingredient jars off the ground, nearly throwing it over his head in the process. “Oh goodness!”

Adam stretched and yawned as he walked through the doorway into Theo’s workshop. “What?”

“I thought this box was a lot heavier than it is and I almost hurled it over my head. That wouldn’t have been good, all of these jars are glass,” he said, placing the box onto the table.

Adam picked up one of the jars and rattled the ingredients inside around. “You’ve been having mana leaks since the Snap, right?”

Theo rifled through the box, looking for the right jar. “I know it’s in here somewhere… As to your question, yes, unfortunately. That’s why I can’t make potions. Though Viktor said I may have problems even once the leaking heals.”

Adam stopped shifting the jar for a second, hesitation clear in his lowered voice. “Viktor?”

“My landlord. He’s a wind starborn,” Theo offered, watching Adam relax once more.

“Right. Yeah,” he grumbled, coughing once. “Anyway, I don’t think the box was lighter than you remembered. I think you’re stronger. That leaking mana has been infusing into your body.”

Realization clicked in Theo’s head. “It’s been so long since I advanced magic Tiers, and my last was so gradual I didn’t even notice the shift. It happened when I was growing up so the strength difference wasn’t very noticeable past the fact that I was bigger. Adam, this is so exciting! I’ve never been very strong before.” He lifted the box once more, reveling in how much easier it was.

“Don’t go thinking you can fight off muggers now. The strength compounds with your muscles, which uh, you have a little of, but not much,” Adam said, poking Theo’s arm.

Theo frowned at him. “I’ll have you know I do a calisthenics exercise routine every morning.” He crossed his arms, glancing into the window to see his small frame in the reflection. He crossed his arms harder.

Adam’s ears turned red. “N-No it’s not like that! I just uh- I’m sorry, Telsa always tells me I need to think more before I speak. It’s a habit my mom always harped on me for too.” He laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of his head.

“It’s fine. It’s… a fair assessment. I realize I’m a bit…” Theo frowned, acknowledging the height difference between him and Adam. “Small. But I try! There’s just not a lot of time in the day for it between potions, enchanting, running the shop…”

“It was stupid of me to say anything. You’re not an adventurer, you don’t need to spend hours working on your strength. Besides, it’s um, fine, that you’re little.” Adam steered his eyes away from Theo, his ears beet red now.

Theo opened his mouth to respond, his own skin blisteringly hot, but his voice caught. Embarrassed, he made an affirmative noise and cleared his throat, turning back to the box of ingredient jars. “Well! Potions! It’s fortunate you arrived towards the end of the day, it’s usually slow around now anyway so I don’t mind closing up a little early.”

Adam placed the jar he was holding back into the box, looking intimidated by it now. “Yeah, but, Theo. I’ve never made a potion before. My parents made me do enchanting, not alchemy.”

Theo waved a hand dismissively. “It’s not too bad once you know the spells, it’s just mana application at that point. Besides, I have a table that will tell you all the qualities and something in mind that’s a good beginner’s potion to try.”

“If you say so…” Adam said, staring at Theo’s alchemy table, his lips pressed in a line.

Theo strode over to the alchemy table. “Right, so, time for a basic explanation! I won’t bog you down with the details as you’ll only be doing this for three days.”

Adam followed behind him, running a finger over the gemstones set in the table.

“The basic idea, for the most part, is that you want all these gems to be cool colors, not warm colors. Though, the viscosity gem isn’t always bad to be a warm color as sometimes you want high viscosity, like in a salve, or medium viscosity in a syropp,” he explained, touching each gem.

“Ah. I definitely understand. Totally,” Adam said, humor in his voice.

“...Right. Okay, so, the most important one is this gem here. The green one. If that turns red, it means your stability is low. A potion will fail if you let it stay in the red. And uh, catastrophically fail and explode if it starts blinking red,” Theo said, eyes tracking to where the soot spot on the floor was earlier today.

“Green good, red bad. Got it,” Adam said, grinning and tapping his temple with a finger. “Locked away up here. Like a steel trap.”

Theo chuckled, and returned to his explanation. “Anyway, concentration is important because that’s the strength of the potion. You want to get this gem as purple as can be without the stability gem turning red. If it’s yellow, that means the concentration is really low and the potion probably wouldn’t even work.”

“Yellow is too mellow, purple is just… hurple?” Adam grinned, looking pleased with himself.

Theo sighed. “Sure. If that helps remember it. Solubility is next. This one is more informative than anything else. It’s what could be considered the limiter of concentration. Blue indicates high solubility while orange indicates low solubility. If solubility drops too much, the potion can’t integrate more of the ingredients. Things like higher heat or low viscosity increase solubility but if you’re starting with something like water, it’s about as non-viscous as it’ll get in the beginning so heat is your only real option.”

Adam already had a trollish grin on his face. “Blue is coo’, orange is… badorange.” He stared expectantly at Theo.

Theo facepalmed. “Adam… that one was just terrible. You can’t just remove a letter from a word to make it rhyme. Or just add ‘bad’ to the beginning of the word.”

“I can and will. Besides, I’m pretty much a master now that I know all your secrets,” Adam said, jabbing Theo in the side with a finger.

Theo shifted away from it, yelping slightly. “Very well then, tell me what this teal gem does, Adam.”

Adam cupped his chin scholarly, adjusting glasses that he didn’t have. “Oh well, you see. It’s the magicosity, of course. The latent magical power inside the potion, waiting to empower the user.”

Rolling his eyes, Theo let a small laugh out. “Viscosity. If it’s teal, the viscosity is low. If it’s pink, it’s high. Like I said earlier, this is the one exception to the rule of ‘cool colors are good, warm are bad.’ The viscosity simply affects how fast the potion will distribute itself and the staying power. High viscosity does assist in keeping the potion stable, however. But it’s not very pleasant to drink a viscous potion so I don’t recommend it for philtres.”

“Oh right, there’s a bunch of potion types. Am I going to have to memorize all of those- I mean uh, steel trap. Yeah. I got this,” Adam said, patting himself on the back.

“...I’m sure you do. We’ll just focus on philtres and salves for you. Poultices too. Those are just the scrap material left over from potions in a bag, after all. I think things such as tinctures, syropps, and inhalations would be beyond you. They can have much stronger effects, but the stability can be a bit more… erratic, for the inexperienced,” Theo said, frowning.

“Fine by me. Philtres use water and salves are just… any kind of skin cream, right?” Adam said, taking an empty bottle off a shelf and staring through it at Theo.

“Yes on philtres and… sort of yes on salves. They can be based on oils with emulsifiers and thickening agents, honey, or any sort of skin-applicable ingredient that’s naturally viscous. Some are sourced directly from plants. My personal preference for my salves is tira nut oil mixed with drenum beeswax. I use some Infusion spells to change up the viscosity a bit in the end, but I find those make a good base,” Theo said, pointing to the jars of each on his shelves.

“That… sounds like a lot of work to make,” Adam said, nudging each jar with a feigned pout.

Theo shrugged. “It’s not very much work at all, just takes time. The good part about salves is that they can pull a lot of power out of magical ingredients and the materials that go into them don’t cost very much. The issue is that they apply their effects quite slowly so they’re not always preferable for adventurers like yourself. You know that much at least.”

“Yeah, salves suck. Sorry. They were the best I could afford for a while so I kinda hate them now,” Adam said, mimicking Theo’s shrug.

Theo pat Adam’s arm, immediately snapping his hand back as he looked over. “That’s quite alright. Anyway, the potion you’ll be starting on is a classic for beginners. It’s the first potion I ever made. A stardust philtre.”

“Oh, the super shitty mana potions? I mean uh, they’re great and all but-”

“I realize they aren’t particularly powerful, but they’re about as low on ingredient costs as one can get with a potion. Their mana restoration isn’t that bad. It’s just… slow and… ineffective. Okay, they’re bad. But they’re a good example of the basic processes!” Theo said, holding up a finger as if that would make his point.

“Alright, is the name as obvious as I think it is?” Adam said, setting the bottle he was holding onto the table.

Theo nodded. “Indeed. Just stardust and water. You need to dissociate the crystallized mana into the water. It still requires all the basic alchemist infusion spells, however. I’ve never even heard of it exploding either. There’s just not enough reactive material for it to explode, I think. The most you can do is fail the potion, which wastes a bit of stardust, but that falls from the sky every night, so it’s not a real waste.”

“Wait. I don’t know any spells for alchemy,” Adam said, his voice pitching slightly higher with worry.

“Not a problem. I have my family rune books. Those spells are so popular that the formula is highly mana efficient at this point. I only learned a Named Spell version of each of them for the convenience. They’re quite easy to manual cast as they’re all singular-function spells,” Theo said, pulling out a thick tome from a box.

“...You really haven’t unpacked much yet, have you?” Adam said, glancing around the room.

Theo’s cheeks heated up. “There hasn’t been a lot of time for it, okay? I’ve been busy. L-Let’s just get to potion-making, okay? Use that faucet over there and fill this container until it’s about three-fourths full.”

Adam took the container, flourishing a hand across the faucet to activate the runes. “Got it.” He smiled at Theo.

His heart rate increased seeing that smile. “Now just add stardust to the bottle. It’s in that bag over there. I have plenty.”

Taking a handful of the white crystalline dust, Adam put it in the water all at once. “Now what?”

“That uh, was a lot. Um, that’s probably fine. Anyway, let’s just… have you set the container on this central rune on the table to start boiling it,” Theo said, a bead of sweat rolling down his back.

“Let’s do this! Aw yeah, makin’ potions,” Adam said, grinning and setting the glass container on the table. “Oh, I need to put mana into the table, right?” The runes and gemstones lit up at his touch, beginning to heat the water.

They waited together, watching small bubbles begin to form in the water as it heated. Theo took the time to explain each spell’s function during the wait. Adam was perfectly confident in his ability to manual cast them.

“Okay, now cast the Distill spell. This one right here. Go slow with it, not a lot of mana at first. Less is more with alchemy. You can always add more, you can’t take any out,” Theo said, holding up the book in front of Adam just in case.

With a nod, Adam held a hand up to the container. A small amount of cloudiness from the suspended stardust crystals cleared as his spell made them dissociate into the liquid.

Theo watched him eye the crystals, observing the effects his spell had on each part of the process. Which ended up being… barely anything. “Okay, now a little more. You have a good gauge for how much you put in, right?”

“I uh, put in a lot of mana, actually. I was so focused on the spell formula I didn’t even really realize that you said to use a little until after I already cast it,” Adam said, looking at his hands and back to the container.

“Oh… I suppose you don’t have a strong affinity for alchemical magics. That’s fine… we can still work something out I’m sure,” Theo said, frowning at the container.

“Yeah, one of those small differences between same-type magic users, I guess. I’m sorry, Theo,” Adam muttered, his shoulders sagging.

“It’s… fine, I’m sure I can figure something out,” Theo said, sighing in defeat.

Adam stood there, fidgeting with his belt pouches for a moment, glancing at Theo and back to the table.

“What?” Theo asked, seeing the hesitancy in Adam’s eyes.

“We could always… Union Cast. You could use your Named Spells then if we did,” Adam said, occupying himself with adjusting his shirt and looking away.

Theo’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “A-Are you sure? That requires a lot of faith in me, Adam.”

His eyes glinted as he turned back to meet Theo’s. “I trust you. Don’t ask me why, maybe it’s because you trusted me with your shop that one morning, but I trust you. Just… don’t push any Primordial mana into me and we’ll be good.”

“My mana quality is Tier 3 now, is that… fine?” Theo asked, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest once more.

Adam glanced around once, seeming to check for anyone listening. With a lowered voice, he leaned in towards Theo. “Don’t tell anyone, even Telsa, but… I’m at Tier 4.”

A small gasp escaped from Theo. “How are- how can you- wh-”

He leaned in further, lowering his voice even more. “I’m noble-born, Theo. My family had… connections. I said people who Snap are idiots but… there are ways. I can’t say more, that information is dangerous.”

His heart threatened to pound out of his chest, so Theo took a deep, calming breath. “...Okay. Your secret is safe with me, Adam. But, Tier 4? You’re only three years older than me and I just Snapped to Tier 3. On accident, but still, even Viktor said I’m ahead for my age.”

“It… wasn’t pleasant. Can we move on to the Union Casting? This isn’t a subject I like to dwell on,” Adam said, a deep pain reflected in his steely green eyes.

“That’s um, that’s quite alright. But, you’re sure? Union Casting is quite…” Theo pursed his lips. His skin felt hot. “Personal. I’ve never even done it before. Have you?”

He nodded, his face tight. “I have. You just cast the spell and push it into me instead of the potion. I’ll control it from there. If I’m right about this, I should be able to trim off the excess mana you’re pumping out right now.”

“Okay, let’s try then. Just like… this?” he asked, laying a trembling hand on Adam’s back.

“Yup, now cast it. This takes some focus from me to let in foreign mana, so hurry.”

“Right.” Theo focused his mind, shifting his mana attunement to Infusion. “Distill.” Runes formed in his mind, flowing down to his mana pool. Energy coursed through him, the runes following it up his arm. Upon pulsing into Adam, Theo received a mental image of his mana pool. It dwarfed his own.

Goodness, Tier 4 is that much bigger?

“Fuck,” Adam hissed, aiming his hand at the container. The contents completely dissociated immediately.

“What?” Theo asked, his voice heightening.

“That uh, wow. You really are leaking mana, aren’t you? I… didn’t expect that much. I don’t know how much I filtered out there. Doesn’t look like enough,” Adam said, gesturing to the stability gem which was a dull red.

“We can fix that. Use a lot less of the mana in this one, okay? Attenuate.” Theo’s voice echoed, pushing the mana and runes into Adam’s mana pool once more.

Cloudiness returned to the mixture. “Shit. I’m sorry, I’m… more out of practice than I thought. This is hard.”

Theo readied his mana again. “It’s fine, we can just… Distill once more.”

The spell pulsed through Adam again - he cursed in response.

“No good?” Theo glanced at the stability gem, which was red once more.

“Working with someone else’s mana - it’s… tricky. You still have enough in you for a few more tries?” Adam asked, turning his head to face Theo.

He checked his pool, a fairly large amount still remained. “I’m okay for more. Are you ready? We only have a few more tries at this, the stability weakens even if we cast the opposite spells.”

With his teeth gritted, he clenched his hand. “Ready.”

“Okay, this time weaker again. Attenuate.” His voice echoed once more. The mixture glowed brightly for a moment before the suspended crystals recondensed, but only slightly.

Theo smiled. “That’s a lot better. One weak Distill and we should be good. Are you ready again?”

“I think so,” Adam said, his voice gruff.

“Okay, let’s do this, Adam! Distill!” Theo called out, his mana pool flowing in response.

“Gah! Too much, Theo!” Adam’s back arched as the spell fired through him. “Uh, Theo… didn’t you say blinking means an explosion? And that this potion basically can’t explode?”

Theo gulped, already preparing his box. “...Yes?”

“It’s blinking!” Adam called out, grabbing Theo and rolling on top of him. Runes glowed on his skin as what Theo assumed were defensive buffs activated.

“No, Adam! The box!” He held up his enchanted box, offering it to the man who had effectively just tackled him to the floor.

Adam spotted it, eyes widening. “Oh shit!” He snatched it from Theo’s hands, slamming the container in and closing it just before an explosion shook the box. He turned to see Theo still splayed on the floor from his combat roll.

Theo chuckled, feeling his face burn with heat. “So uh, that was quite the first experience in alchemy, wasn’t it, Adam?”