Tower of Memories

Episode 171: A Little Drop of Poison


Parting with Fethris wasn't dramatic. Finding the room for my Advanced Brewing class was a little bit harder. Somehow even further in the depths of the school than Geography was. Hidden away and harder to get to. I'd actually passed it twice before I realized I found it.

This class was small, I realized quickly. Smaller than Alchemy had been. I counted the coats in the room; seven green, five purple, and two red. Celica and Russel.

The desks were in three rows. Long tables that sat three at each and there were only six of them. Most were already full. One was empty and the other had Dragons. I chose the Dragons.

Russel smirked as Celica looked up from her hands. She seemed back to normal for now. She gave a side glance towards the empty chair. The desk was on the right side of the room and the chair was on the left, meaning I was sitting in the aisle seat.

"Did you get lost?" Russel asked.

The professor wasn't here yet so it didn't really matter.

"A little, why would someone make a door the exact same color as the walls?" I grumbled. Then after a moment of thought I remembered why we'd taken this class. And it'd had nothing to do with the subject at all.

In theory, this teacher was like us. Just older. What exactly that meant was anyone's guess. He wouldn't have spent any time in Dragon Tower, but it still chose him. Like it chose us. Assuming he'd gone here when he was our age. We didn't exactly have our pick of role models. M couldn't tell us what it meant to be a Dragon in today's world.

It was a long shot, I knew. But maybe this could finally shed some light on what it meant to even be a Dragon. We'd been muddling through finding that out, but a clue wouldn't hurt.

There wasn't much of note in the room. No cauldron bubbling away, no shelf of crazy bottles, not even some unknowable plant on the large desk in the front of the room on an elevated section of floor.

The only thing I noticed was the lack of professor.

"You don't think he forgot classes started today, do you?" I asked and I turned to the other two.

"I would hope not. It's a terrible first impression to make," Celica grumbled. "How is he expecting us to take this class seriously if he doesn't?"

"Well, what would we do?" Russel asked. It sounded mostly like a joke but it was a fair point to consider. Would one of us keep an entire class waiting? Why?

"Assuming we're even right about him," I considered in a low tone.

"I'd show up on time. This waiting is getting on my nerves," Celica complained.

I took another look around the room. Nothing had changed. I held in my sigh and tried to not let impatience get the best of me.

That's when I smelled something strange. It was almost floral, but acidic and sweet in the worst of ways. It was almost enough to make my eyes water. There were a couple of coughs around the room, confirming that I wasn't imagining whatever this was.

That's when I realized the ceiling was covered in a red fog. It reminded me of fresh apples, despite the smell. The fog was billowing towards the front of the room like a storm cloud. It condensed as it cascaded down the walls and onto the desk. Pooling and collecting and forming something solid.

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Someone.

First was the equipment on the desk. It was a familiar looking setup, with tubes and beakers and connectors. It was for combining liquids that you couldn't touch. In one side, a pile of crimson petals that were long and thin. They were being exposed to steam from above and a clear red tinted liquid was dripping out into a tube that led into a different beaker that had a strange pink solution. The exposure caused even more gas to form, a heavy one by the way it moved down a different tube and through what looked like a coffee filter to me. From there it turned into drops of orange liquid and combined into a final beaker of a green liquid.

The person observing this reaction wasn't much at first glance. He was leaning against his desk not paying attention to us at all. Tanned leather gloves that only covered his palms, a very pale green button up shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a vest the same material as his gloves, dark brown pants, black shoes, and around his neck was a red scarf that matched his magic.

It had to be Professor Julian Carmine.

No one spoke as he continued to ignore the class of students. No greeting. He reached behind the apparatus on the desk to grab a mug that looked like it was covered in shattered glass. He reached into a drawer on the side of the desk and pulled out a cone of sugar. He dropped it into the mug and grabbed the beaker that wasn't being fed anymore liquid. It had turned a similar candy red.

He then dumped the beaker into the mug and drank the entire thing in one gulp.

He then placed the mug on the desk and snapped his fingers. Clearing the entire thing in a swirl of more red fog.

That's when he finally turned to face us. He clapped his hands once and then with a big toothy grin, "Hi class. Wow, I'm impressed there's so many of you this time." He sounded outright jovial about it. Like this was all a game.

A moment of silence.

Then he laughed, "Don't worry, that setups only for me. It's not easy getting a poisonous flower to be drinkable, but I always find the taste worth it. Spider lilies are a favorite of mine."

What.

Then he sat down on the floor in front of his desk, his hands clasped between his knees. "So why don't we go around the room and do introductions? I'm sure you all know each other but I'm still learning this whole keeping-track-of-students thing."

I was suddenly filled with a sense of regret for going along with this. Was it too late to take a different class?

It probably was. Celica, to my comfort, was appraising him with a raised eyebrow that was clearly not impressed so far. Russel's face was blank. Which was probably not a good sign.

"How about we start with you, in the red with the badge?" Carmine pointed to me. "Name and favorite tea ingredient."

Oh great. Just what I wanted in any situation. Being singled out.

"Serafina Stewart," I introduced myself. I felt a rush of panic and then just named something off the top of my head, "And I'll go with mint."

Please go back to pretending I don't exist now.

"Huh. And here I would have better serious coin on ginger. We'll get better at it. Elf, you're up."

I knew I wasn't the only one to feel a sense of doom in the air because all of the Krakens flinched at the same time. Even Russel let out a very quiet, "Oh no."

Celica's fury was enough to make the air feel cold for a moment, her Dragon Red nails digging into the wood of the desk. "I'm Celica Fel'Graces. I like lemons in my tea." The words were choppy, she was saying them through gritted teeth that made her temper in Botany seem like sunshine.

But Carmine was a professor. Celica couldn't do anything to him about it. Not when he hadn't said any insult.

Carmine either didn't notice that he'd upset her or didn't care at all. His carefree stance and expression didn't even change. If anything he looked like he was having more fun now than before. Oh boy, this was going to be our entire semester, wasn't it?

"And the last of our flying dinosaurs?" Carmine had turned his attention to Russel.

A small amount of the tension released. "I'm Russel Kingsley and I'll pick pomegranate."

Carmine laughed like it was the best joke he'd ever heard. "And risk being stuck in the underworld half the year? If you're sure about that pal."

Russel was thankfully less upset, even with the laughter. But he was far from amused.

Carmine looked around the room. "Let's see…" he drifted off before he settled on a familiar Kraken on the other side of the room. "Your turn."

"I'm Athanor Darkwell." I was pretty sure we'd shared Alchemy together. The voice was familiar. "I like elderberry."

"Wow. Somehow you've managed to be unique and boring. Round of applause. I have to say so far I'm unimpressed with all of you. Last semester had the same problem. So let's skip all of this and let me ask you another question, anyone here have an ingredient they have to bring from home?"

Nothing.

"It's fine, I won't tell. Do I look like I care about rules?" I wasn't sure how to feel about any of this, but he probably had a point.

No response.

"None of you? Not even stuff you have to grow yourself? Random stuff you find in the woods?"

Did he want us to admit to doing drugs or something? What was his goal here?

He sighed, genuinely sounding bored. "And here I had such high hopes for you all. Ah well, we'll work on your guys' taste."

I didn't like the sound of that.

"We'll start with holly. There's enough of it around here, should be fine," he said as he stood up. "I'll throw together a lab by tomorrow."

We were not going to learn anything constructive in this class, were we?

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