Chapter Forty-Three

“You rotting mangy toad snack!”

Harmony dangled Tun-knee above The Watering Hole floor using her fully expanded size, her armor Night, twitching with little barbs and spikes, as her fist held the front of his fancy suit. The other beast-kin in the club barely twitched a tail or ear at the scene.  

“So, you’ve talked to our royal bunny.” The Tiger replied with a toothy grin.

Harmony gave him a little shake. “You used me.”

Tun-Knee cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders to realign them after they got yanked out of place. “Like you’re using us. You think we couldn’t have stopped her from leaving? She deserved the experience of the chase and the growth that came with it. Becoming a furless’s pet was a surprise that will have consequences, but other than that, all of this was expected. Friendship, bonds, consequences, and responsibilities. It is how authority is built, but Loap will need to come home eventually because we can’t allow her to grow dull in some small corner of nowhere.

She would have told you to accept the offer eventually. It’s too good a deal, and we’ll do right by you. She’ll make sure of it. Her first vassal should be a friend. She cares so much. It’s why royal bunnies rule. My kind tried, and our dynasty nearly ruined the kin. Brother killing brother. Predator against prey. It is why she knows she has to return, and you’ll give her the most time free. She’ll be safe until you graduate. Some wanted to rip her home the moment they heard of her distasteful bond, kill the master, and rehome the heart.”

The tiger’s breath fogged up at those words as a chill took hold of the scene. Tyler might be a fool at times, but he was hers, never mind the pain Loap would suffer under that pain. “That would have been a poor decision.”

“Agreed,”  Tun-Knee answered.

Harmony let him hang there in silence for  several seconds. “Why aren’t you afraid?” Harmony asked.

“You could make me that way. But your hand is on my suit and not my throat, so you know I’m right. This is not a problem you can simply erase or punch out of existence. We’ll get you lessons on the levers of political power in Zotaria. Now, if you could please put me down, you’ve arrived at an opportune time because, as a token of goodwill, gifts for your progression have arrived.”

Harmony set the man down, and he straightened out his suit. It impressively survived the rough treatment. As calm as he acted, a [Keen Investigative Awareness] did point out a slight tremor. No need to mention that. Tun-Knee had done well. Loap had asked her to scare him a bit.

Harmony used the last of her time in Hazeldown to talk after the bunny had calmed down. Loap’s brief anxiety attack quickly shifted to a more disciplined approach, where the cunning from her cunning linguist profession was evident as she packed as much information into the time left for Harmony to process. When the girl knew someone could use [Recall] and a way to speed up their perception, there was a lot that could be done to transfer information.

Five seconds of what seemed to be a high-pitched squeaky chitter was, once slowed down, an extensive breakdown of the politics of power.

Physical threats and posturing were a part of that landscape. It was how Loap knew how Harmony would be perceived by her nation as a whole once she’d learned the Ascendant Games had been projected to them. Tyler was a bit too subservient to be popular, even with his victory. Winning was secondary to the image you showed.

Tun-knee, though he was her handler, would be inexperienced. Selected more for talent and potential, due to the fact that he would be newly evolved in order to take the position of her classmate. The Academy screened for seals. It was the primary function of the spell used to evaluate incoming students, before it was made into a ranking system.

But because of how politics worked at this level. The more she threatened him, the more “extras” she would get.

Tun-Knee  raised three claws.

Three club staff members arrived carrying trays filled with cubes. If Harmony hadn't made a scene, maybe only one would have been presented.  Aggression as currency tempered by civility.

“Alchemical samples to help with the production of Tasha’s half-step potion. A demonstration that we care about your advancement. Failing to produce a novel potion causes one to fail Verus’s class, which is one reason why so many wait until they are upperclassmen to take it.”

If she made him bleed, would there be a fourth tray? With a slight twitch, she discarded the impulse to bend her morals that much. These were basically free.  “It's a start. I'm sure my shin-ee wants to have minimal risk to my position here, considering what my departure would mean.”

“My stripes will remain true,” Tun-Knee answered.

In one final show of power, Harmony kept [Shadowed Graves] contained to the club, where the members knew of her powers, allowing them to feel a flicker of the field-level skill and share in equal parts of freeze and awe effects, the fear could produce for a moment in one last show of force before she had Adric come out and collect the trays.

Each Tray had nine cubes, and each cube contained four samples of the standard amount for a single-use potion of a material. Twenty-seven different materials, from Ack-Ack Brains in sound-sensitive casings to Slither Toes,  each labeled for a total of a hundred and eight doses. That math was simple enough that she could handle, since it required solid answers.

At Verus’s lab, it changed the game. One of the reasons her accounting of resources had driven her out, leading to the confrontation with the bear, had been the scraps left over for her to choose from. There were resources for every student, but those had been picked through, the best parts hoarded. The quality items were purchased in a lottery of seniority, where, even as a tertiary, because this was her first quarter, she was behind even the lowest who’d been at the school longer. Never mind students' personal stores of resources.

The choice had been to go to Alex and Tasha’s and see what she could glean from their souls or dive back into Oorty’s tomb and rip ingredients from the dungeon. Pure rust from the guardian, Clankers ,might be a desired material, but Harmony had no wish to become the drug lord with the deepest red rust available, even accidentally.

Now she entered the lab in a position of strength. [Dust] swept up the glass and dried remains covering the crunchy floor to create a path to her work table. She still needed to play with the free resources, but now she’d at least not be constrained by them. Watching the other students and asking questions earlier, she’d learned that they were all alchemists, brewers, chemists, apothecaries, pharmacists, muddlers, mixologists, water wizards, and whatnot, tossing random materials in and using their class and professional skills to try  to get the results they wanted.

That was the goal of this class, ultimately, for students to create signature half-step potions by aligning ingredients with skills and stats unique to them. Graduates who pass this class would always have a good resource they could sell in their shop, assuming they acquired the ingredients to make it.  

The idea of opening a nice little potion boutique fed the desires of neither her class nor profession. Hazeldown needed half-step potions as much as Tasha needed hers, but this was only one small piece to a larger construction; no, Harmony needed what Maester Gregor was after. These students could have their randomly lucky potion. Harmony wanted to be able to consistently find a way to push those bits of monsters into that quasi-soul threshold for people to rebuild their bodies with. Monsterification. Damn the definition the textbooks tried to use. This was necromancy, and she was going to find the key.

Not being a fool. She ran with the free ingredients first, relying on the almost never-ending supply of glassware. Harmony kept three flasks ready at all times.  Shaking, moving, freezing, [Disintegrating], using [Dust] to separate particulates, even stealing waste from the floor.  What caused things to explode? What caused things to shift into the soul space?  Part of the experiment in Mell’s Mortuary had been how sensitive necromantic wards were, and with the answer being not very, she freely tossed about [Manipulate Dead], using drops of her blood. Sliced, diced, and stirred with her sickle.  

News spread. The polite first quarter tertiary was now shattering her flasks at the rate of five an hour. Harmony was unsure how many students Instructor Verus had in this class, but eight stood outside of the blast radius, and some were taking notes.

“Have you asked about…?” Asked a tubby kid wearing green goggles.

“Shhh…  Let her cook.”  He was immediately shushed.

Why was this attracting such a show? She’d taken everything she’d memorized from copying her potions book, used it, tossed it out the window, and was throwing every skill from authority, to pushing fear from [Shadowed Graves] on the powered blue beetle butt that was a common catalyst that was free in an attempt to get any reaction. Every win was cataloged by [Recall], labeled as easily repeatable, or to be figured out why it worked later. It was a grind, but she was making headway.  

Not enough for a complete win out of the junk, though.  A touch exhausted, and not wanting to let this ruin any future attempts. Harmony ended the trial-and-mostly-errors, with a head chewing on the problems and answers they created.  But she had a crowd to quiz about her performance. Questions, tips, advice?” She asked, using [Poise and Bearing] and excessive authority to practically beg for help.

“You went through the standard tuning sequence, then re-ordered it. Why?” Asked a blond girl.

The girl noticed that. That was from the book. “While the standard recommends you insert the ingredients based on density, I was getting better results from the quickness of solubility for these ingredients.”

But it’s not like any of the results ended up as successes. Still, that started a wave of questions. They wanted to know what  class skills she used, which got awkward when the answer was necromancy, but it often was parsed down to refinement —[Disintegrate], purify or removing grit— [Dust], material manipulation for the necromancy bits, or even reality bending when [Claim] or even a bit of fate was used to thin that barrier she wanted to pass.

“And what should I do better or explore more?” Harmony demanded of them, putting more of a deadly edge to her voice this time after very politely answering most of their questions so they’d feel indebted enough she could tug on whatever authority she gained that way off of them.

“Some materials just work better together, or you can make them work better together. There is a reason why all the natural recipes come from single dungeon sources. If you can find those synergies or connections, it helps. That’s often what we’re trying to do with our skills.”

Synergies and connections were something she had plenty of.

“An informal class, students, and without me?” The dry, cold voice sent whatever crowd was remaining this late scattering.

It was revealing how quickly Harmony found herself alone with Verus. Like they were all nocturnal animals, and a glowstone had been activated. “How are they so afraid of you?” She asked.

“You’ve only had one class with me, Student White. All of them have had several. I sometimes invite students into this class, hoping it will fail them out of The Academy. At a certain point, they can’t refuse the invitation. None of them are as bad as Garry and Don, so your little lesson, which might salvage some of their educational careers, will not be held against you this time.”  Verus answered in his flat voice.

“The teaching wasn’t a planned thing. Since you didn’t follow any of them out, I assume you’re here to see me?” Harmony asked.

“Correct, Miss White. I would rather not be here, but Professor Swoop and Potionmaster Esop are above me in the department; they are having me issue a formal request for the source of your pure rust.”

[Poise and Bearing] kept Harmony’s face still. “I’d rather not say.”

“While it is a common alchemical ingredient. There are unsavory uses; it is those two professors' concerns that you might have gotten yourself involved with those kinds of elements. They’d like the source so they can rule that out and not feel the need to report their suspicions to campus security.”

Harmony did not forget those scary people who went in to deal with the Djinn who’d gotten loose at game night.  

“I resent that accusation. I would also not ruin someone's trust over such low-minded thoughts. Would the professor and potionmaster be satisfied if they had their own personal samples of the material to evaluate, and leave me and my sources out of this further?”

Verus nodded slowly. “That would satisfy them.”

This was a shakedown. Give in once, and they might want more. As long as plausible deniability was available to them, they’d be an issue.  “I appreciate you going to me as my instructor, Verus, with this being an alchemy department issue, but please tell both of them to have any other educational or security concerns be passed to me through my academic advisor, Maekus Von Trell. I know his reputation can be quite off-putting, but I find him quite pleasant.”

That warmed Verus’s eyes a little.”Of course, Student White, I’ll inform them of this requirement.”  Clearly, he’d been leaned on to do this dirty task. And if anything was to have someone hesitate before bothering her, it would be the need to deal with Maekus first.