Teemo goes and gets Staiven so he and Queen can talk some shop. I’ll leave them to it, too. Queen knows what she should and shouldn’t relay, as does Teemo. She’s tried to talk some with me about alchemy, but it’s a bit outside my wheelhouse. I understand the concepts of mixing things, and most of the technical terms, but I’m a mechanical engineer, not a chemical.

It kinda makes me understand how Teemo’s been getting better at just relaying information without having to understand it. I guess this’ll be good practice for him, as well as good PR with Staiven. I’m pretty sure most magical stuff around here is either from me or him, and I prefer my competition to be friendly than anything else.

Speaking of friendly competition, the Trio have been coming back to tackle the hard gauntlet, and they’ve been behaving themselves. They do a few encounters on the way, but they don’t go trying to start crap with my scions or my Residents.

They’ve been making quick progress through the gauntlet, too. They’d be going a lot faster if there wasn’t an actual line to try it. From the chatter, a few of the more distant guilds want to be the first to finish it, but the local guild isn’t going to let them have it without a fight.

With the Trio having joined the local guild, they have quite the advantage, seeing as they managed to work through it to escape me. I’ve been sure to mix things up some, though, so they don’t have a free ride. My favorite reaction from them had to have been when they saw someone doing the salmon ladder properly the first time, instead of their little tower maneuver.

I’ve also added an element of time management in the final section, too. Even with me being easily able to change the specific answers, people were just endlessly theorycrafting what the solution could be. So now they get washed out after a couple minutes, though it resets with each section of the puzzle they manage.

I’ve also been wanting to talk with the halfling and see if she knows anything about scythemaws. From Leo’s opinion, she doesn’t seem the most “one with nature’s balance and harmony” of druids, but she’s still a druid of some flavor. Maybe she’s an expert in scythemaws and we don’t know because we haven’t asked?

I mean, I doubt it, but it’s possible.

Queen

Oh, the Emperor should try to keep this one. She can feel a thirst for knowledge from this one, and not like Honey’s thirst. The bee scion treats information like honey: something to be stored and appreciated for its own sake. She understands its sweetness, but doesn’t feel the need to partake, to apply it.

But to ants, like Queen? Sweetness is to be gathered and used, shared with the colony and utilized. Sweetness that sits there is just going to make a mess. Of course, honey doesn’t go bad, but the ant scion still likes her metaphor.

And this Staiven may look like the ratkin the Emperor uplifted, but he is an ant at heart. He hungers for knowledge, and is willing to share his own to get it. It also doesn’t hurt that he recognizes her talent.

“It takes that much of the bottled lightning to grant the essence to a denizen? You must have quite the lab hidden somewhere, then,” says the old ratkin, and Queen gives off a pleased scent at that. She’s so happy the Emperor’s Voice can understand her native language of pheromones. It makes things so much simpler.

Teemo smiles at him. “She thanks you for the compliment. Her lab really is something, but not for visitors, heh.”

“Can you show me anything here, then? I could give a few pointers or even a recipe for something in return?” says Staiven as he looks over the public lab. It’s not the best of labs, but it’s leagues ahead of her first lab. She still cringes when she thinks of how primitive the first lab was: dirt floors, go juice being produced atop small leaves and other things to try to minimize the contaminants. She still remembers how elated she was when the Emperor gave her her first bit of glassware!

She shakes off her nostalgia to focus on now, and on the alchemist’s request. Is there anything in specific he’d like to see?

“Anything in particular you want her to make?”

“Could she make the bottled lightning? I have the ingredients, at least as far as I’m aware, but I haven’t been able to make it myself,” Old Staiven explains as he pulls out some ochredill and spell spore.

Queen is surprised he hasn’t been able to produce it. It’s easily the simplest thing she can make, with her supply more limited by the growth of the ingredients than the difficulty in making it. She can’t even fathom the process is eluding the elderly alchemist, either. She takes a few moments to consider the process, checking and re-checking for anything the Emperor wouldn’t like to share, but it really is simplicity itself!

Well, the original version, at least. In her lab proper, she can distill out exactly what she needs from the reagents and get a lot more product. There shouldn’t be any harm in showing the most basic recipe for it.

Her mandibles quiver in excitement at the idea of him somehow still failing it. It’d make no sense! Or rather… it would mean there’s more for her to learn about alchemy, some fundamental she’s missed! While she doesn’t like the idea of missing something so foundational, she very much does like the idea of discovering something foundational.

She quickly relays the basic formula to the Emperor’s Voice, who gives her a strange look.

“That’s really it?”

Yes.

He shrugs. “Alright. Well, Staiven, she says all you have to do is grind them together in equal parts, with a little water to help everything mix.”

Staiven sighs at that, but nods as he produces a knife to start chopping the ingredients for easier grinding. “I was afraid it’d be something like that. I tried every method I could to get them to recombine after separating the sample I got the last time I was here, but nothing worked.”

Queen perks up at that, so Teemo questions. “Really? Is that a known thing?”

The alchemist nods as he sets aside a small portion of the chopped ingredients, and motions for Queen to do her thing. She sees no harm in it, so sends her ants to process the go juice in the old way.

“My old mentor used to say that, way back in antiquity, it was thought alchemy could only be performed in dungeons. The unique mana flows in them can influence the process in unknown ways. But as the ancients worked and experimented, they eventually started to figure out how to produce various things even outside dungeons,” he says as he works, his hands deftly grinding the herbs into a fine paste.

“The first true alchemist was said to have gained a unique affinity with his class, or so the legends say. Personally, I think he was the first to gain the meta affinity that most crafting classes get. Whatever the truth, he was supposed to be able to make anything a dungeon could.

“Nowadays, though, alchemists make all sorts of things that dungeons don’t. Maybe the processes are too complex for them? Who knows. But look,” he says, as he shows the results of his work.

The texture is perfect, the mix fully homogeneous, and yet it just looks like an unpalatable tea. He motions at Queen’s work, where she already has a few shining droplets of the go juice.

“There’s still something about dungeon alchemy that we just don’t know. I can tell I’ve done it just as she has, if only on a larger scale, and yet something eludes me,” he laments, though not too deeply. Queen very much likes this Staven and his ant heart. Setbacks happen, but can be overcome.

Teemo gives her an odd look at her request, but still relays it. “She wants you to put the mortar down so she can try something.”

“Of course,” Staiven replies, and sets it next to her busy ants. Quickly, she has them swarm the contents, specifically using her alchemical storage ants for it. This sort of thing is their job, after all. Her pleased scent returns as the mixture is quickly finished in her ants, and they start adding it to her sample in the little dish she was working in.

Staiven chuckles at what he’s seeing. “See? Something about dungeon alchemy is different. Or maybe I didn’t use enough ant spit in mine.”

Teemo laughs at that, and Queen can’t help but enjoy the joke. She does think he has a point, though. Not about the ant spit, but about the scale. She knows it takes mana to infuse the ingredients, but she and Staiven are working on a different scale at the conceptual level. If watching the zombie scion gain affinities has taught her anything, it’s that the conceptual level is vital when it comes to magic of any kind.