Sitting down in front of the dressing table, long after everyone else had gone to sleep, I stared at the vial of purple liquid. The viscous potion was not exactly inviting, but it was not like it was supposed to be. Surely, a weird fantasy potion was not going to look like an inviting vanilla latte…but still. Couldn’t be a bit less that.
Then, there was the entire ‘madman in the room’ situation to consider. Looking at myself in the mirror, I needed to question if Laura Mason was truly going to drink something handed to her by a wrinkly old weirdo who refused to get out of his room. Because let’s be completely honest here.
What!?
You cannot be telling me that I wrestle with the idea of actually using Magic all day long, read about four different books about how it all works, and then conveniently happen to get a vial which can give me the power? How? How does that even work?
Also, alright, fine. I did not actually understand anything that I read because of unfamiliar terms, which kind of means I wasted the entire day, but it’s really the effort that counts. Right? I did my best.
There was just one piece of information that suggested the vial might be kind of safe. That was that the man in the room somehow knew that I was not supposed to be the innkeeper of this place. Eventually, I would need to get some information out of the man about that. But just like the million other things that were on my plate, the time was not right.
I could die.
That, more than anything, stopped me. If the man needed information on its effects, it could potentially be lethal. And all jokes aside, I could die. That was something that I couldn’t just scoff off or turn into a snarky remark. The chance that I took this, went to sleep, and never woke up was very real. Along with that, they were very dangerous.
I gulped. The lack of noise outside made me uncomfortable. Almost made me sick to my stomach. Floating in space was scary enough, but now there wasn’t even any activity in the building. Everyone had gone off to sleep. The Ghost hadn’t shown her face in two days, but she was still here somewhere. And I had a vial of purple potion lying in front of me.
How had I gotten here?
That was a good question to ask. The best question, in fact, in situations like these. When you need to question if something is worth it, ask yourself why you ended up stuck with that question in the first place.
The answer, in this case, was that there were two people upstairs who could die at any moment. Bella would not use her Magic, nothing else worked, and this was all I had. A small sliver of a chance at gaining something. And it could, potentially, help those two people out.
Just a sliver of a chance.
What are you getting out of it?
I never did answer that question, did I? Two years ago, when I first got into internet detective work, someone had posed me that question. A man who had been doing this for decades now.
‘I wanna be like Holmes.’
That’s all I said. For him, that had been good enough. Or rather, it had been enough of a conversation stopper to never ask me that question ever again. Ever since I declared that, I became a part of the group. It became acceptable for me to participate in whatever case they were trying to crack. There was just one person who was left unsatisfied with the answer.
Laura Mason.
Yours truly.
The vial stared back at me. That question stared back at me. Would Holmes drink that potion? I wouldn’t know. I never managed to finish even a single one of those novels. Watson just felt like such a boring narrator. Sorry to all Holmes fans, but that’s that. I’m just a faker.
But based on the bit that I did read? I don’t think Holmes would take the vial. There was no chance in Hell that he would drink it. Assuming it might actually grant me Magic without proof was a fallacy. One that was clouding my judgement. At the end of the day, the two people on the Third Floor would find me more useful if I were alive.
Nobody in their right mind would do it. Obviously. It was so stupid. I would never be like Holmes like this. I would never save them if I just died. But then again. I wouldn’t save them without it either. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to be.
For maybe about a minute.
Because no matter what, I never did like Holmes much.
Opening the wooden cork, I poured the contents of the vial into my mouth.
_____________
Alright, I did not die. As evidenced by, once more, the fact that you’re reading this.
I did, however, throw up. So, you know…equally gross and embarrassing.
The moment I woke up, my stomach churned. Rushing out of bed and opening the door, I sent the dwarf waiting behind it flying back without a care. Ignoring Poltrick’s crying and groaning, I ran straight into the women’s washroom and found a sink. And then…commence throwing up.
There’s no way to make that sound even minutely pretty, so we’ll skip to the part where I freshened up a bit and got out of the washroom.
“Innkeeper! What kind of behavior is this? How dare you knock me back and ignore your customer like that?”
“Huh?” My head had still not come back from Dream Land, for some reason, so I just nodded. “Yeah. Sorry. What can I do for you?”
“Oh…” He cleared his throat, stepping forward with concern. “Was it that bad? Did you fall on your head, innkeeper?”
I blinked, trying to process what he was telling me. Fell on my head? Why would I do something that dumb? I shook my head, though, just to be sure. For some reason, things did not seem to be quite right. The dwarf had not registered as Poltrick Gregson in my mind. Not until now, at least.
Once he did, thankfully, I was able to give him the service that he truly deserved.
“I’ll make you fall on your head next. What are you here for?”
“Hmm, that’s more like that. Ha!” He got on his toes and gave me a pat on my lower back. “Now, innkeeper, get to your work. Make us some breakfast. I was about to come and knock on your door to wake you up!”
“Knock on my door? Yeah, good.” I pushed his hand away. “You really are a one-note character, aren’t you? Don’t you ever think of anything other than food? It’s not nice to keep knocking on the doors of girls who don’t like you, you know?”
“I think I know more on that topic than you do, innkeeper.” Poltrick puffed. “This is the first time I’ve even entered this corridor, however. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, yeah. Har har. You have your own washroom. Very nice burn.”
I started walking as he followed, questioning what I meant by calling his words a ‘burn’. I really needed to start paying attention to what I said around these people. Even a single modern word slipping out of my mouth could turn into a very long conversation about its meaning and origins.
Turning the corner like before, with the dwarf behind me, I found Bella waiting near the Kitchen.
“Innkeeper!” She exclaimed, stepping forward. “Are you alright? What happened? Did you take the potion?”
I nodded, placing a hand on her shoulder for some support. She smiled, and her body trembled with joy. Returning the favor by putting a hand on my shoulder, she asked if it had worked. To that, I shook my head.
“No idea. Didn’t try.”
“Oh. Right. Look, you just have to put your hands up and imagine it. There’s nothing more to it. Although…I don’t know if you got Conjoining or Unraveling, so I can’t be sure about the effects of what that entails. I don’t even know how you’ll imagine it if you don’t know whether it's Unraveling or Conjoining.”
“We should talk to the guy in the room, I think.”
“Oh yeah! We should!” Bella nodded, pulling her hand back as she turned.
“You’ll be going nowhere!” Poltrick slammed his feet on the floor, causing the wood to creak. Not just in an old way, either. It creaked very dangerously and very loudly. As if in the last two days, the inn’s wood had aged a hundred years.
Bella looked at the dwarf with her head tilted, hand on her chin, until her stomach started to grumble. Looking down, she cleared her throat and looked at me. No amount of enthusiasm could fix something like that, could it?
To be fair to them, there was a chance that the potion had worked. Even if I wasn’t feeling anything other than a weird lightheadedness, it hadn’t killed me. That alone gave me hope of opening the staircase up. That hope, for now, translated into a strange willingness to cook them breakfast. It might be one of the last times I had the pleasure, after all.
Giving her a pat on her head, I stepped into the kitchen and washed my hands. I hadn’t known them for long, but even then, I decided to do something for old times’ sake. With the old times being…three days ago.
“Would you like that omelet cheese toast again?” I asked, hoping to crack through their shared lack of memory this time.
No such luck, though. Both of them looked at me with a complete lack of understanding.
“Well, I still have no idea what you’re talking about, innkeeper. But that does sound. Two of those, I guess!” Poltrick nodded with a laugh. “That’ll be fine, right, Ms. Garlove?”
Ms. Garlove? That was the first time I had heard that. Hadn’t he called her Bella before this? When I first met them, I am pretty sure he had called her Bella. But now, she was Ms. Garlove.
Pushing the question to the back of my mind, I got to work. Partly because I just wanted to get done with it. And partly…because my brain still didn’t want to accept the implications of all the proof that had appeared before me already.
Anyway, counting down.
The bread was toasting, and I already knew where the cheese was. The chives were ready, and so were the chilies. I just needed to get their membranes and make the rudimentary chili paste to go on top. It was light work, all things considered. Cooking became so much easier when you did not have to make recipes on the fly and knew where all the ingredients were.
It did give you a sense of déjà vu, yes. But I was used to it. Going through the same process over and over again naturally led to your body coming to that conclusion. So, even as the environment around me felt eerily similar to my very first day in this place, I ignored it. That just happened sometimes. It probably meant nothing.
Right?
“Waaaahhhhhhh!”
Poltrick screamed. Yes. Do not let the continued vowels of the dialogue above confuse you. That very sound, strange as it was, came out of the dwarf’s mouth. And only after that did it come from Bella. By the time it reached my ears, however, I was already sweating.
The vibe, the location, the people around me. The food I was cooking. The way the knives were placed, and the manner in which the utensils on the wall swung. Even the exact tone in which the dwarf and the elf were screaming? It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be, right? There had to be something wrong with me. Something that I had missed.
I turned to look at the other side of the corridor, hoping that it was just one of the twins pulling a prank. But it wasn’t. The dark, slimy hand still stained the walls. The moaning, groaning, gibberish-spewing humanoid body of the mold monster reared its ugly head once more. And unfortunately, even the position in which Bella and Poltrick were standing was the same as before.
He was in front, and she was in the back. Bella’s hands, raised above her face, briefly glowed blue as the monster neared them. All that while, I did nothing. I couldn’t do anything, really. My heartbeat raced as my mind tried to convince me that this wasn’t real. That this could not be happening. This was the last thing that I needed.
Yet, the monster kept nearing them. Bella put her hand down and stumbled out of view. She had gone into the Bar and Restaurant to grab a chair, hadn’t she? I moved back, putting my hand on the counter of the Kitchen to bring myself to my senses.
I was looping.
Was that it? That had to be it. What a sucky outcome. Not because I was in despair or something. Just because I had spent months doing the same thing over and over again back at work already. Now, you were asking me to sign up for more of that.
The monster closed in on Poltrick, while Bella appeared from the back with her chair. She would smash that on the monster, it would fall down, and then try to come for me. That was the flow, wasn’t it? If this was a loop, then that was what I needed to be prepared for.
At the same time, things were different. I had read those books, even if I didn’t understand much. My head was still in the right space, and I hadn’t taken that vial for nothing.
The chair hit the monster, and the wood got absorbed into its body. It fell down, leaving behind a heaving and confused Bella. This was the first time they had seen one of these, after all.
Looking down at the collapsed monster, I did what the books had taught me. More than that, what Bella had taught me. I imagined the Banquet Hall in my mind. Conjoining or Unraveling didn’t matter. I didn’t even know what they meant. I just needed that exact thing. I needed the same Magic as her, and that was it.
Pointing my hand at the rising slimy creature, I closed my eyes. Blue blast. Blue blast. Blue blast. I repeated it inside my head without knowing if it would even work. My chest thumped faster than normal, and my legs buckled. My entire body was pulled down by a sudden exhaustion.
An unknown sensation welled up inside every inch of my circulatory system. My blood started to accelerate until I could feel it swirling inside my body and moving to my hand. Blue blast is all I thought. That was all I needed.
My eyes flew open, the monster rose up on its two feet, and a massive blast of energy rippled out of my hand. It was blue, but nothing like Bella’s. Violent ripping through and expanding into the air around us, it hit the monster altogether. Instead of causing it to blast in a controlled explosion, it pushed the creature back as the elf and dwarf got out of the way.
Legs giving in, I fell to the floor as the monster hit the wall behind it. And then, only then, did it die and splatter all over the wood.
_____________
The Kitchen