Chapter IV.XXXIV (4.34) - Owl’s Respite’s Restoration

  Kizu stood on his tip-toes down in the hull of Owl’s Respite, reaching for hooks he’d inserted into the ceiling. Once full of moldy crates, Kizu had spent his very limited free time to clear it of debris and filled it with his own wide selection of junk. This newly installed curtain was vital to the process. For behind it lay an object designed to inflict blissful peace upon those who dared enter it while at full capacity.

  A simple wooden tub. It may not look like much to the naked eye. Even those enhancing their spellsense to the fullest might miss what truly made this such a wonderful new addition to the ship.

  Kizu had implanted a small square of wood with glyphs carved into it to the end of the wooden tub. A gate linked to the abandoned hot spring town back in Hon.

  With the curtains fully installed, he held his breath, and activated the gate.

  Steaming water poured out of the link.

  Kizu laughed and barely held back from jumping for joy. This water was carried through space, across the world, to his bathtub. All in just an instant with only the swipe of his hand and the activation of his spell.

  While the bathtub was his latest achievement, Kizu had not been idle with decorating the rest of his new potions laboratory either. He’d sectioned it off into three areas with large curtains between them. First was the bathing area which he planned to make public to the other residents of his ship. The other two areas were a bit more dangerous.

  The next section was his new brewing station. A large cast iron cauldron sat in the center with newly installed shelves and counters lining the walls to either side. While he kept the majority of his completed potions in his spatial storage ring, he’d begun to unload the ingredients he’d collected over the last few months into the shelves and drawers, keeping careful track of all his potion components. He’d also been able to purchase tools for preparing the ingredients. He’d carefully organized them and stored them throughout shelves separate from the ingredients.

  And finally, there was the third sectioned off area of the hull. His garden. At this point it was mostly just flower beds and tilled dirt spread around. But already he’d begun to implant a few different funguses that required low light. A few of the fluorescent ones bathed the surrounding area in a purple light.

  “Now that this gate is complete, I can start on the next one for sunlight,” Kizu muttered to himself. “And then I can start on stretching the internal space of the hull to give myself even more room to work with. But this will be enough to get started.”

  “Only one pot?”

  Kizu nearly fell over in surprise.

  “I mean, don’t you need more pots to prepare separate ingredients before mixing them together? That’s a normal thing you brewers do, right?” Aoi asked. Rather than come down the entrance like a normal person, she’d dropped into the hull through the hole in the captain’s cabin’s floor. She stood before his large cast-iron cauldron, examining it.

  “Use the door. My soul nearly left my body just now,” Kizu complained, his heart rate returning to normal. “I have two smaller cauldrons stored under the counter over there. But yeah. I want more cauldrons. Preferably, I’d like to get some that are enchanted for heating so I don’t need to rely on open flames. But I do have a safety ward carved into the floor around this one that should keep anything flammable from spreading.”

  “Interesting.” Aoi crouched down and examined the glyphs. “You’re getting better at enchantments.”

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  “I copied them from a library book.”

  “You should come to my lab and help me set up wards there too. I have a disembodied zombie hand that keeps trying to crawl to freedom whenever I take it out of its sealed container.”

  “Don’t you have control over it? Just command it to stop.”

  “No. This is from one of the corpses I took from Necro’s batch. They’re difficult to impose control over. That’s the entire reason I’m studying it.”

  “You took pieces off of Necro’s zombies? Why?”

  “I want to learn about how to counter Necro’s ghoul infection. I’m going to unravel all the secrets of his work and reverse them. Then, so long as there is a competent necromancer around, his legacy can never be used to take anyone else’s brother away from them.”

  Kizu couldn’t argue with that philosophy. Instead, he let Aoi change the subject back to his new space in the hull. She crouched down next to one of the dirt filled flowerpots.

  “I was skeptical at first when you asked for an internal greenhouse in the ship. But this looks fantastic. I understand the potential. Both of us having our labs in the same space will let us collaborate on projects easily.”

  “What sort of collaborations?” Kizu asked suspiciously.

  “Well, you’re clearly growing death touched shrooms over here, for example. An ingredient used to feign death. I can sense fragments of the human bodies used to fertilize the soil in this pot.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I know you didn’t chop someone up and toss them in the dirt. You probably took the soil from a nearby cemetery. That’s how these mushrooms grow naturally in the wild. But if you’re experimenting with those, that means you want to work with souls in one fashion or another.”

  Kizu nodded slowly. That was exactly how he’d gathered the soil. He intended to use the mushrooms in one of his next soul fusion potions. Ingredients that inflicted soul altering effects were rare in the wild and required strict cultivation. Especially the more magical varieties. Several governments and religions decreed that any form of soul manipulation was evil and these plants were destroyed on sight. Even the academy kept extremely strict rules around what Professor Knoff was allowed to have on campus.

  “Yes. I’m doing a few experiments with ingredients that I’m not likely to harvest normally.”

  “Exactly. Having a soul mage will only help you with their cultivation. I don’t mind helping out so long as you help me with the occasional project as well.”

  “Do you have something in mind? Or are you just asking for nebulous favors in the future?”

  “Well, both really.” Aoi’s dark eyes sparkled. “You know that clone I’m growing?”

  “The one of Sojan’s body?”

  “Yes. The gnome necromancer vessel without a soul. Well currently I’ve made decent progress and everything is steadily moving forward as expected. However, the initial instructions require over a year of incubation before the body stabilizes and preserves at an adult form.”

  “You want me to speed up that process?” Kizu guessed.

  “Exactly! You know how to brew up something that could do that, right?”

  Kizu considered, thinking over all the recipes the crone had taught him. De-aging a subject was difficult, though a few brewers had developed temporary solutions, like the one he’d looked into while visiting Hon. But accelerating the aging process was just pushing the body in its natural direction, simply faster than before. In fact, he knew a few potions that had aging as a negative side effect to consumption. If he could isolate those traits from the ingredients then maybe…. Yes, he believed he could actually create something like that.

  “Not both safely and quickly. But toss out one of those conditions and I might be able to brew something up.”

  “Great! How quickly can you get it to adulthood?”

  “Maybe…within the next three months? You’d need to remove it from the vat to apply a salve over the body at least once a day. I’ll need to experiment and do a bit of research first though.”

  “Perfect!” Aoi beamed at him. “In return, you know haunted plants? I bet I can get you some samples.”

  That would actually be phenomenal for his progress. Not to mention, if Aoi accelerated the process of clone body growth, then Sojan would have a vessel to use again.

  Kizu needed to swim down and try to retrieve the enchanted dagger soon. He wasn’t looking forward to that. But Dog, Ione’s capybara, didn’t seem to mind sharing the cove with the monstrous jellyfish, so maybe it was safer than he’d first assumed.

  But the image of Inari disappearing into the water below still haunted Kizu’s memories. The death of the prince, while deserved, had been a grisly display.

  Aoi walked away, a spring in her step as she exited the normal door rather than returning through the hole she’d initially popped out of.

  “I should nail that closed,” Kizu mused, looking at the hole. One more task to add to his endless list.

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