Long shadows crept across the heavens-reaching city as the summer sun staggered sleepily down toward an evening rest beneath the glimmering sea of the west. Roof tiles and walls were painted in a golden light with its descent. Overhead, twinkling stars peeked early through the flaxen sky. The summer wind still blew hot through the narrow streets and alleyways, even this high up.
Night was coming, and with it, it brought the city alive with the kaleidoscopic glow lantern lights, arcane magic, and flickering flames. Candles shone myriad in windows and nooks as the streets sang with gayness and restless mirth.
Twilight workers rose from their daytime slumbers, taking to the walls, towers, workplaces, and the underground to keep the city ticking over till day without accident or alarm. Of those awake during the bright hours, they now reached for drinks in the city’s merriment of taverns to wash away their exhaustion, or sought out strumpets and whores to provide for their souls and loins a pleasant exhaustion of a different kind.
Truely, Duskfields was a city that didn’t sleep.
Into this gloaming braved a trio of an elf, a demoness, and a human. They wandered and weaved through the liveliness of the crimson-lit district towards the sputtering coughs and faint booms of the alchemy-struck district next door with a bag of clinking jars and hope in hand.
Autumn felt wrung out like a damp towel.
The madam hadn’t been gentle in her interrogation. Over the length of a half-hour, she’d extracted the self-professed talents from Autumn’s disobeying lips using a concord of pointed questions, looks of stern gravitas, and practiced silent expectation, all the while using her matronly allure against the flustered gay witch.
Under this pressure, Autumn had reluctantly admitted that her singing voice was magically enchanted, that she could read, write, and speak any language she’d encountered previously, and that she could extract unwanted emotions from others with their consent. While she’d also mentioned that she could paint and fix things with magic, her first three skills were of more interest to the mature demoness.
Rather than take her on as a guard, which, let's face it, that duty was completely covered by Nethlia alone, the madam hired Autumn on as one of the girls to sing, read poetry, and to soothe the emotional woes of clients personally selected by Kharzina herself. Thankfully, she wasn’t expected to provide any
intimate
services.
However, Autumn needed to write down the songs she could remember. The madam wanted to hear what she was going to sing first, lest she pick a song that’d be inappropriate for the tone she’d long cultivated for her house.
Most of what she could remember were a mix of folk song, pop songs, and a handful of rock and rock-adjacent tracks that her gothically-inclined foster-sister had introduced her to.
Autumn’s mood soured upon remembering her foster-sister, Trian.
Did she miss Autumn? Did she even know what’d happened to her? Autumn hoped the other girl, and the rest of her foster-family and Lilly were doing well. If all went well, she’d see them again. Hopefully soon.
“We’re here!” Saphielle called from up ahead.
Looking up from her musings, Autumn took in the Alchemists’ Row.
While the entire city atop the mountain felt cramped with its narrow streets and tall building, the district dedicated to alchemy was even more so. Shops bearing gleaming glass fronts twisted and leaned on one another, looking as if they’d been built, destroyed, and re-built multiple times over. Charred wood decorated building frames like badges of honor while bubbled stones caught the inattentive feet of those braving the thriving, perilous district for potions, balms, and tonics.
Multi-hued, chromatic smoke flashed, blasted, sputtered, and coughed from crooked chimneys into the air, dancing together in swirls of color as they drifted harmlessly into the ether above.
Down at street level, floating orbs filled with a variety of alchemized sunlight of differing hues and strengths competed with each other just above head-height to illuminate the district, advertising their owner’s skills. It was like a battle in miniature. Infantry of light charged while glowing cavalry wheeled.
Wandering deeper into the fantastical collection of alchemical ateliers, Autumn excitedly gawked at the marvelous displays of luminous potions and whorling concoctions. Occasionally, she’d spy an alchemist, old or young, learned or learning, brewing potions that flashed with colorful light, illuminating her face with childish glee.
Magic! It was magic! Sure, she had her own, but this was different, brighter, more obvious, prismatic, and wondrous.
“Where are we going?” Autumn asked her elvish guide curiously as they wandered past shop after shop. “It’s getting kinda late, and we still need to get to the guild later.”
Saphielle grinned over her shoulder at Autumn. “Don’t worry, it’s not far.”
“What is?”
“The place that the bordello buys its stuff from,” Saphielle said. “I need to pick up some more supplies for the house, and I don’t want you getting a raw deal anywhere else. Ember’s a pain, but he’s good people. Hasn’t sold us a bum potion yet. Ah, here it is!”
Sure enough, Saphielle had brought Autumn and Nethlia to a cozy atelier nestled at the end of an L-shaped alley, hidden away from the general hustle and bustle of the district’s main drag. Above a red door hung an old signboard proudly displaying the name: Ember’s Elemental Elixirs!
The doorbell gave out a merry jingle as they stepped inside.
The interior of the store was no less fantastical than the others Autumn had glimpsed inside of while making their way here, if a little more cluttered. A vast array of glittering, glowing, sparkling, shimmering, flashing, and fulgurating glass flasks, vials, and ampoules adorned a chaotic collection of cabinets and cases along the walls all throughout the split-level space without rhyme or reason. Beside them rested sagging shelves burdened with strange and mundane ingredients, from fresh and dried plants to bottled monster parts and pixie dust.
Aside from the counter, the main space was dominated by a giant crystal sphere. If one were willing to peer into its murky, pink-fluid-filled depths, the curious might spy the body of a tailed, pale humanoid creature floating within. A mermaid, perhaps? Or something more foul?
Autumn wasn’t so curious right now. She turned instead to the shop counter where a strange girl of perhaps sixteen years sat, eyeing them with a lazy curiosity.
The girl was a planesforged – an anima. An embersoul, to be exact.
A head of fire flickered across her otherwise bald scalp like wild hair. Her eyebrows too were of flame and danced slowly above a set of lazy-lidded, orange-irised eyes. Ginger freckles lay scattered across her lilac skin, spread across her button nose like embers glowing across a sea of ash. A pair of gleaming glasses perched atop her nose, from behind which she blinked lazily at the trio.
The kindled girl had a tomboyish frame, clad loose by a soot-smeared dress that fell to her knees, under which she wore tights and a set of heavy workman’s boots. A pair of leather, elbow-length gloves rested beside her on the countertop alongside a set of fully-enclosed goggles and a fabric mask.
Nobody was quite sure where the planesforged originally came from. They didn’t develop like the rest of the races that called the mortal realm home, who reproduced in a fairly standard way, with a few exceptions. Instead, they seemed to spring up from the elements like weeds.
It was widely thought by the scholastic community that they were originally communicated from elemental planes like a virus, hence the name, and continued to grow and populate the world. Like Autumn, the planesforged kept their origins to themselves, alongside their means of reproduction…like Autumn as well.
Most people didn’t actually care, seeing as they weren’t rabid beasts. They were also highly skilled craftsmen when it came to their respective elements. Embersouls, in particular, made for excellent smiths, and in this case, alchemists.
“Pyre!” Saphielle cheered. “How’s my favorite alchemist?!”
The embersoul sighed as she glanced at the bubbly elf. “Oh, it’s just you. I thought I actually had decent customers for once.”
“Rude! I’m more than decent when the mood calls, and indecent when it calls for it too!” Saphielle giggled, to which the aforementioned Pyre rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I’m not just here to chat, but I’ve got a list for the house for your dad, and I’ve brought some friends who want to sell some stuff!”
“You do know we don’t buy junk, right?”
“Again, rude!” Saphielle crowed. Reaching out, she pushed Autumn front and center, placing her flustered form in front of the bored alchemist. “This here is a genuine, bona fide, indisputable, unadulterated, uh, – indubitable? Yeah! – indubitable witch! And she has some rare, hear it,
rare
ingredients to sell!” Turning to Autumn, she whispered. “They are rare, right?”
Autumn nodded. “Yeah, at least, I think so?” Reaching into her heavy pack, which Nethlia helpfully held for her, she withdrew jar after jar, placing them on the countertop before an increasingly interested Pyre.
The glass jars varied in size. Some were as large as her palm, holding a diverse array of esoteric ingredients, while others were as thin as her pinkly, containing single whiskers, hairs, or sinews. Thankfully, none had cracked during her perilous flight or journey to the city.
“Well, I’ve got a jar of eyeballs, some glowing goo, fairy wings, bat wings, some kind of dust, some other kind of dust, frogs’ tongues, a couple dozen different feathers, a variety of whiskers and hairs, slime and snails and puppy dog’s tails, another kind of dust – but this one sparkles –, a dancing purple flame, a fetus of some kind, and a jar of liquid darkness.”
“Stop, stop!” Pyre said as Autumn kept inexpertly listing off the jarred ingredients now covering the counter. “What, did you rob a witch’s hut or something?”
Autumn blinked. “Actually, yes, that is what I did. Although it was looting, since the place was abandoned.”
The young alchemist sighed. “I’m not qualified enough to deal with this. I don’t even know what half this shit is. Let me just get my dad.” Turning towards a door leading to a back workshop, she bellowed over her shoulder. “Dad!”
“What?!” an older man’s voice, presumably Pyre’s dad, the eponymous Ember, shouted back.
“Customers!”
Autumn shared an awkward look with Nethlia as the young girl shouted at her dad. Saphielle just looked gleeful. “Can’t you deal with it?!” Ember yelled. “I’m busy!”
“It’s Saphielle! And she’s brought trouble!” Pyre shouted, giving the elf a sour look.
There was a crash and clatter from the backroom, sounding as if something glass and expensive had shattered. Autumn winced. “What?!! That nuisance is back?!” The sound of angry footfalls approached. “I thought I banned the whelp from my store?!”
Nethlia looked to Saphielle with no small amount of suspicion. “What did you do?”
“Me?” the elf pouted innocently. Seeing as no one bought her act, she dropped it. “Well, I might’ve rearranged all the potions and tonics on his shelves. Not that it made a difference. Nobody knew where to find anything in this mess anyway!”
“I did!” Ember yelled as he emerged behind the counter. Like Pyre, Ember was a planesforged embersoul, although his flaming hair was wispier, his eyebrows were bushier, and his ash-toned skin was cracked like burnt wood. He eyed Saphielle suspiciously, before his eyes darted down to the jars on the counter, widening dramatically. “What’s all this?”
Pyre gestured to the trio of them. “It’s the trouble Saphielle has darkened our door with. They’ve robbed some old witch’s hut and want to sell it to us.”
“Loot!” Saphielle corrected for Autumn. “It was taken in full accordance with adventurers' rights!”
Ember cocked a flaming eyebrow at the elf. “Just because you call it a squirrel doesn’t make it one.”
“I don’t see any squirrels here,” Saphielle said, peering at the jars with a roguish smile. “Are you going senile in your old age? I’m sure Pyre can take over and give us a
good
price~”
“You!” Ember purpled, which was strange to see on his ash-toned skin. “You’re older than me, you pest!”
The elf gasped dramatically. “Don’t you know it’s poor form to disclose a maiden's age?”
“Maiden? Hah!”
“Um,” Autumn interjected awkwardly. “Can you not fight? We do have other places to be, and I want to sell this stuff before morning.”
Saphielle patted Autumn on her arm. “We are! We are! This is just a bit of pre-haggling banter!” she said, reassuringly. Notably, while the older alchemist still looked disgruntled with their presence, he didn’t gainsay her. “Its just part of the process. Trust me!” Turning back to the father-daughter pair, she slapped the counter, making all the jars, and Autumn, jump. “Now, all this wonderful, legally-obtained loot could be yours for the low, low price of only a hundred gold coins!”
Autumn stilled, doing her best not to gasp. That was a lot of money! …right?
Evidently, the alchemist, Ember, didn’t have her calm. “One hundred!!!” he spluttered. His wispy hair blazed high, almost scorching the roof, raising the temperature of the room. “Have you gone mad, girl?! You think I’m made of money?! This lot isn’t worth ten, let alone one-hundred gold!”
“Ten?! Ten?! Now you’re insulting me, old man!” Saphielle slapped the countertop again. “The darkness jar is worth a hundred on its own! I’m giving you a bargain!"
“Hah?! Staying at that brothel has turned your mind to mush! It’s all about supply and demand out here! What am I to do with a jar of darkness?” Ember snapped. “Eat it? None of my recipes call for it! It’ll just be a decoration! I can offer you twenty for the lot!”
Saphielle snorted. “Twenty? I didn’t know you were so broke?! Maybe I should take my business elsewhere, huh?!”
Autumn watched on in shock with bemusement coloring her features as both Saphielle and Ember tore into each other, going back and forth with a collection of colorful curses and insults. Lightning seemed to spark between their haggling stares. She suspected that neither knew what the rare ingredients actually cost, let alone the jar of liquid darkness, although the older alchemist likely had a better idea.
Still, as she herself hadn’t a clue either, she decided not to interfere.
“Are they usually like this,” she asked the younger alchemist.
Pyre shrugged. “Most of the time. When they aren’t throwing things at one another, that is. This is actually a good day for them. Dad actually enjoys her coming around, for all he complains.”
“They act like an old married couple,” Nethlia added from the side.
“Eww,” Pyre scowled, her face twisting in disgust. She shuddered. “I didn’t need that image in my mind.” Just then, Saphielle slapped the countertop once more, causing everything to skip and jump once more. “Stop slapping the counter!” the younger alchemist yelled.
Saphielle poked her tongue out at the irate fire-haired girl. “Nyahh~ Not gonna!” Turning away from the disgruntled Pyre, she looked to Autumn. “Ember here has generously agreed to pay you twenty-five gold for the lot, alongside a store discount on your next purchases over fifty gold!”
“Hey! I didn’t say anything about a discount!”
Ignoring the blustering alchemist, Saphielle swept the gold into Autumn’s hands. The clinking coins jingled pleasantly as they fell into her pockets. She now had more than enough to pay for her guild admittance fee, and hopefully enough left over to attire herself later.
“Alright, now that that’s done,” Saphielle said, stretching and cracking her neck as if she was about to wade into another fight, before slapping down a long list on the countertop. Thankfully, there wasn’t anymore glass atop it to jump. Pyre still glared at her anyhow. “I’ve got the madam’s orders to discuss with you, Ember!”
Nethlia shook her head wryly as the pair of elf courtesan and embersoul alchemist launched into another brutal haggling battle. “We’d best leave her to it,” she murmured to Autumn, handing her back a much lighter pack. “She’ll likely be here a while.” Loud, she said to Saphielle: “We’ll see you back at the house!”
The svelte elf gave them a parting wave, too invested in insulting Ember to pay them much mind.
After a quick look around the potion shop, and after swiftly realising they couldn’t afford anything, both Autumn and Nethlia left the store, seen off by the cheerful tinkling of the shop’s bell as they strode out into the warm night. Their destination was the guild district. However, before they made it far, the door behind them chimed open once more and a voice called out to them.
“Hey, wait up,” Pyre called out. The pair halted, turning to watch the embersoul tromp towards them. “You two are heading towards the guild halls, right?”
Nethlia shared a glance with Autumn. “We are. Why?”
“Mind if I tag along?” the embersoul asked. “Those two started throwing stuff at one another again once you two left, and I don’t want to be the one to clean it up.”
After checking with Nethlia, who shrugged, Autumn nodded their acceptance. “Fine. But we’re just heading to the Adventurers’ Guild to sign up before heading back.”
A hidden, relieved smile briefly crested the corners of the young girl’s lips before she crushed it with practiced teenage dolefulness. “That’s fine. I’m heading there too. Oh, I didn’t catch your names. I’m Pyre, as Ella said.”
“You’re an adventurer?” Nethlia asked, somewhat surprised. “I’m Nethlia, and this is Autumn.”
Autumn waved. “Hey.”
Pyre nodded in reply. “Yup. I joined up last week.”
“Done any quests yet?”
The embersoul paused at Autumn’s question. She wavered. “...not as such, no. Not yet. Most of what’s been posted have been for larger teams or experienced folk. The ‘easier’ jobs are to fetch some old lady’s groceries or to clean out the evolved slimes from the sewers.” She shivered. “Trust me, you don’t want to head below Alchemist Row. All the runoff had done terrible things down there.”
Nethlia hummed in commiseration. “Ah, slime sewer cleaning. The right of passage for any new adventurer.”
A terrible premonition came upon the human witch. With a cold sweat trickling down her spine, she turned hesitantly to Nethlia. “We aren’t doing that, right? Going down into the sewers?”
The demoness smiled. It was a grim, dreadful thing. “I wouldn't dream of stealing such an experience from you, Autumn!”
“I wish you would.”
Nethlia laughed. Little more was said for a while as they trekked towards the guild district. However, there was clearly something on the alchemist’s mind. She chewed on her bitten lips for a long while, before suddenly speaking up shyly.
“Hey, um, it’s stupid, but were you two looking for teammates or something?” Pyre asked.
Autumn started, glancing at the younger girl. “We’d discussed it, but we’ve got some considerations before we accept anyone.”
“Right, right,” Pyre said, kicking loose stones. “But, like, if you were, I’d like to try out, or whatever. I’m a fairly decent alchemist, so I know my way around plants and stuff. If you want someone like that, that is.”
“Can you make healing potions?” Nethlia asked.
The younger girl nodded confidently. “I can. Not any of the bigger ones, but I make most of the regular healing potions that my dad sells, along with a bunch of other stuff. I could probably provide some at cost. Along with a few stamina pots.”
“Offensive?”
“I can make alchemical fire, if that’s what you're asking?” Pyre said. “Plus some stone-skins for defense, and a variety of antidotes.”
Nethlia looked to Autumn, offering a considering shrug. She seemed somewhat impressed.
Autumn herself wasn’t as sure. With what was chasing them, she didn’t know if it was wise to bring the younger girl along. However, she was a decent consideration at the very least. “We’ll have to think about it. It’s not a no, but we still need to join the guild. Re-join, in Nethlia’s case,” she told the embersoul girl.
Cool, cool,” Pyre nodded, shifting anxiously as she tried to look nonchalant. “You know where to find me if you change your mind. We’re here, by the way.”
Ahead of them, the Guild Distinct yawned, accepting their presence with a wave of sound as questgoers, craftsmen, and merchants milled about, moving to and fro, while performers and bards sang and played their drums and lyres to the heartbeat of the guilds.
Autumn stepped forward towards her destiny.