---

H

e turned away from the door to Chorus Liliorum, taking in the closed store and began to get to work tidying up before opening hours. He wasn't usually the one to open, seeing as he and his sister weren't the only one's who worked there, but he'd taken the shift to earn some extra money as well as a few tips if he were lucky. Currently, with Lilith and his cumulative savings, they would need to work for their mentor for more than just a few months in order to buy the apothecary from him.

It'd be more like a few years, knowing his rate of pay and their current living expenses. But it would be worth it. He loved his job and the regulars who came in for Lilith's drinks, as well as the ones who only came to him for their poisons, teas, medicines, or even his lackluster drugs. The poison thing wasn't exactly a public advertisement, but he did what he had to, to make ends meet and still save the allotted percentage he needed to put away.

He had finished his opening duties and flipped the sign in the front window to open when the bell jingled, a rough and tumble individual stepping into the foyer and nodding at him. This was one of his regulars for the poison market– typically he bought a bit of nightshade's glare. The concoction swelled the throat of the victim and caused the irises to swell until they exploded, staining the whites of the eyes a dark purple, and Lucas was always happy to supply what people needed so long as they didn't come back at him for a failed assassination attempt.

"Welcome in, Tyrsi! What's it ya need for today?" His tone was jovial, but the steel weapon in its sheath at the Peredhel's hip warned he wasn't just in the apothecary's employ– he was its protector too. "Jus'a bit o' the us'al," Tyrdis placed a hefty bit of marks on the table, and as Lucas counted it out, he also reached beneath the counter and retrieved the amount of nightshade's glare that would be adequate for the sum of money given to him.

"Have a happy Midsummer Solstice! Come again!" He called, watching the half orc as he exited through the heavy back entrance. Why he'd thought to come through the front one didn't sit well with the Peredhel, and even though he knew he could handle himself if anyone connected the dots between the Skehl's hits and his own establishment.

While the day went by rather fast, he didn't encounter any others who were looking for his underhanded poisons. As the time chimed four in the afternoon, the bell jingled and a fellow walked in. He wasn't a regular and didn't appear to be quite the best character either, but Lucas wasn't one to judge a book by its cover so he would give the man a chance. Only one, though.

"Welcome in!"

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

Kerr made no hesitation about entering the shop, his saddle bundled up and hooked over his shoulder with is right hand and his saddlebags draped over his left shoulder and held in place with that hand. Half-plate armor in place and well-worn though in excellent condition aside from the occasional dent or scar from repair. His clothes, too, were sturdy and in good condition where they peeked out from under the plates and chain. He paused, however, as his eyes scanned the space and found... just the guy behind the desk. He could have sworn he'd seen a half-orc lumber into the place a minute or two ago... but he also didn't care that much at the moment. He wasn't hunting, he was shopping. So he walked easily to the counter, the weight of his gear obviously not at all bothering him and dropped the saddle unceremoniously by his right foot. At 6'1" now that he wasn't leaning against the weight of the tack he ran his right hand through his curly blond locks and gave a sigh. His hands nowhere near the sword or matching long war dagger on his hip.

"I've been on the trail too long, had to do some doctoring and some... opposite of that, and I need to restock on a few things. I've got the coin, will be in town for the festival, so if there's something you don't have but can get before it's over that'll do as well." He pulled his saddlebags off his left shoulder and set them on the counter, digging into one and pulling out a hardened leather case. He unbuckled the clasp and rolled the thing out, revealing a series of tools and a long row of metal encased glass vials and a couple of full metal corked tubes in leather loop-holders. Several of the glass vials were obviously empty, the others held powders and liquids of various colors and textures. One even glowed dimly in the light in the shop. "I'm not a traveling apothecary, I promise. Not going out here to compete with you." He gave a big smile. "Honestly, if I get going it'll probably drum you up more business. I have tarantula hair in one of these vials, if that doesn't send the victim running for a salve nothing will."

When he smiled it was like the grimness and hardship of the journey had been dismissed, his eyes lighting up and his demeanor relaxing. Never mind the fact that relaxing his muscles would make him faster in a reaction, not slower. "Hope I got here before the crowds have ran you out of stock."

---

L

ucas nodded, a smile spreading across his face. "We’ve got just ‘bout everything! Though I might buy some of that tarantula hair off of ya if ya don’t mind." He eyed the substance with a curious gleam in his eye. ”I ain’t never seen tarantula hair before– what’s it do, if ya don’t mind?”

He gave a small laugh at the man's jokes, responding with, ”Albeit you would!” before looking back at his satchel and the vials within. ”What’d’ya think you’ll be needin’ then?”

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

"I'd like to hope you'd never have a use for it," Kerr said genuinely but he pulled the vile out of its leather loop and held it up. Simple glass container, like a tiny wine jug, with a small cork in the top. The bottom two thirds of the container was encased in a metal cup sleeve, further protecting it from breakage beyond the hardened leather case it was stored in. The 'powder' was a bit clumpy and black, shifting almost like iron dust as he tilted the bottle from side to side. "You ever use this stuff on someone it'd best be a matter of hatred or survival. It's also a grade-A pain in the ass to acquire. As for what it does: it'll make you itch like you're going mad. Ain't much to do about it either, aside from numb the afflicted area for a couple of days. You tap a bit out into their bedroll, on their pillow, into their small clothes... really any piece of cloth you know for sure they're gonna have skin contact with but the more sensitive the better. Then they spend the next couple of days going insane and scratching themselves raw."

It was a great way to keep someone too busy to do the job they were supposed to be doing. Most folks couldn't identify the cause of the problem and so it would just come off like they'd acquired a rash. Replacing the muscle in a criminal conspiracy, turning away bounty hunters, leaving guards too distracted to do any guarding. It'd make a horse un-rideable for a few days too, though Kerr preferred not to indulge in that particular use. He put the bottle away for the moment and got back to the business of buying for himself. "A few things. Mineral acid, antivenom if you've got it or snake venom if you don't so I can make my own, grease, pigment in browns and greens, potassium ferrate and hydrophilic dust, whatever you're using for a burn salve here, some lycopodium powder or powdered aluminum, catstink or the like, water purifier of whatever type your using but tablets if you've got them, and zinc oxide and ferric oxide mixed together in a oil suspension so it's about a middlin' pink color."

Mineral acid was for breaking down stone. Antivenom was for the snakes, but he could make his own from the primary ingredient if he had to. The grease was for a lot of things, though he could mix it with the pigment and make himself harder to see in the wilds. Potassium ferrate and hydrophilic dust mixed together was pretty much instant scab, great for surviving a bad bleed. Burn salve was self explanatory. The lycopodium powder or aluminum powder would make fires flare if thrown in, great for a distraction or a dramatic affect. Catstink would keep the hunting hounds off his trail, water purifier kept him from getting sick drinking water from streams in all his travels, and the zinc and ferric oxcide mixture would treat the actual rashes he tended to pick up bushwhacking his way through the forests and fields (it's calamine lotion). A lot of mean spirited plants out there.

---

T

he male had his notebook out before the other had even begun his explanation, stopping his scribbling to inspect the vial from his place across the counter, noting the way the substance moved within and nodding along to the explanation provided. He was always willing to learn and he had no qualms on who the knowledge came from.

As the man listed off what he needed Lucas would turn to his cabinets and begin pulling things from the shelves that he would need to fill the order. The water purifiers that were wanted were in both powder and tablet form, so he pulled a few tablets down and set them on the tray that he’d set out in case of a big order such as this. Everything else didn’t take long to either make or assemble onto the tray so he had everything laid out in neat vials and bags aside from the ferric oxide mixed into an oil suspension to get the color the lad wanted, as well as the antivenom.

”Now, is there anything else I can grab ya before I start work on the antivenom and the oil suspended ferric oxide? I can start some tea for you while you wait as well if you’d like, on the house as it’s a big holiday this month. We’ve a few tables over there, so you can sit ‘n wait or ya can come back in a half hour– but either way I’ve gotta take your marks now.” He smiled again, happy for the change in pace from his usual day-to-day business of making medicinal cures, or the complete opposite: poisons. Having such a big order was also quite fun in his opinion– it meant he got to do what he loved doing. That was always a good thing!

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

He watched as the other man wrote out some notes, not at all perturbed by someone wanting to learn something they didn't know. "In some places it's called itching powder but I prefer to call things what they are. Especially when that nomenclature does nothing to inform others of what the thing does." He chuckled darkly but gave a shrug. "There's not a lot you can do about the rash but if you want to accurately diagnose it just run a magnifying glass over it and squeeze from the sides, the little spiky hair-looking things will present. You'd be at it for hours if you tried pulling them out and it'd just make the rash feel worse... assuming you could get them to sit still for it. Just gotta wait for the body to dissolve them and keep the area clean in the mean time." He actually knew a pretty easy way hasten the process but that was a business secret he didn't need getting out.

He stood by and watched the guy work at pulling down things, calculating what he thought would be a fair price in his head in preparation for the haggling portion of the contest, and otherwise making sure he wasn't being given fake materials or sub-standard goods. "Oh, tea would be nice. And I'd be happy to argue about the price now, if you insist." They went back and forth and settled on something that made them both reasonably happy with the result, Kerr was no miser just trying to keep enough held back to make a sufficient number of friends while in town. He always left broke, by design, but best bang for his buck was still important. Those three had come with a decent bounty on their heads so he wasn't desperate about it. Besides, apothecaries needed to make a profit too. "So," he said as he moved over to the tables. "I can't imagine you're the owner of this place. You still in your apprenticeship or just in town as a journeyman?" Always good to get a line on the new guys, might find a use for them when they were the masters. And Kerr was a curious soul anyway.

---

L

ucas glanced between the now boiling tea after they'd gone back and forth, settling on an agreeable price and excluding the tea from the cost. He right enjoyed some tea, and having a fulll pitcher of iced tea would combat the oncoming heat of Sondu's heady rays. The Peredhel poured himself a cup before pouring the other a cup, offering him sugar and honey and settling down across the counter from the lad.

"I've been under my mentor's teaching's since I was sixteen," He slid a side eye to the mans armor and weapons, as well as the saddle at his feet. "I'm nearing twenty-four right soon, though." He added, sipping happily at his tea.

"Are you from Sounnah? Or just visiting?"

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

Kerr had a preference for hot tea but it was born of a childhood in the chill north and not actually because he considered it better. It was funny the things people would do for comfort (and because it had a tendency to render quite a few poisons harmless). But somebody who had ice at midsummer? Kerr wasn't about to turn that kind of luck down. "Apprenticeship is good, I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have today without going through the process myself. Learned a lot of good habits from my time under the eyes of my ever watchful masters." Always looking for an opportunity to 'kick the cur' as it had been called at the time. Usually not literally, a beaten 'Boy' would have started a brawl with ol' Serbo and in his heyday there weren't many who'd walk away from such a fight without some serious injuries. He'd been their armorer and to this day Serbo had the muscles to prove it.

"How to care for my gear, how best to take advantage of it, the little tricks for surviving and even finding comfort on the campaign trail. The little tricks of the trade to be learned from those more experienced with it can be not just invaluable but literal life savers." How to find food, medicinal herbs, shelter, repair materials for unexpected breaks, how to make traps for man or beast, tracking, covering your tracks, so on and so forth. Most important had been the combat tricks he'd picked up while sparring with each warrior in the mercenary band. How to shrug his armor at just the right moment to catch or deflect blows he couldn't evade rather than taking wounds. He'd been blessed with great combat knowledge before he'd ever been pulled into the Judicars... though they'd had plenty to teach him as well. Things he might not have learned in his limited education period if he'd not already had such a thorough basis to work from.

"Always just visiting. I was a foundling in the northern Wild Lands, nobody has any idea where I was born. I was raised mostly up there by an old mercenary, running around underfoot of most of his merc company. When I was old enough I set out on my own to see the rest of the world and I reckon I'm making pretty good time at this point. Always looking for a road I ain't walked down but between the mercenary work, the dabbling in alchemy and a bit of merchant investment... those roads are getting a bit rare. I've happily wondered off down more than a few foot paths and game trails over the years as well. Seen things that would make even the most imaginative child green with envy. But I always end up where the people are, that's where the coin to fund my follies comes from after all. Somebody wearing silk throws a festival, might as well pop in and say howdy, right?" He chuckled, even when it came to socializing he worked like a mercenary apparently. If one got philosophical enough about it at any rate. "What about you, this your home town?"

---

L

ucas smiled at the mention of the other mans masters. "Aye, I admire my own-- mean as he can be sometimes." A reminiscent look would peek from the crinkle in his eyes as his smile only got wider.

After the Judicar finished his own spiel about what his master taught him, he would respond with a story of his own."There was one time when I'd spilled an entire thing of poppy seeds across this very shops floor-- and when I'd realized what I'd done I'd tried to use a spell to clean it all back up and put it away but I ended up making the jars all along this back shelf here," He paused to wave a hand behind his person to the many shelves lining the wall behind the counter, "explode. Needless to say I was on cleaning duty for a lot longer than I'd prefer."

"Growing up like that must've been hard on you, but it probably made you into the person you are today if I had to guess." Lucas would smile again, this time the crinkles in his eyes also revealed dimples in his cheeks and a rosy blush rising on his face. Why he would be even slightly embarrassed as to what he was saying was beyond him, even as he noticed the Judicar's physique. Now that he's noticed it, he can't help not notice it. He would turn away to keep work on the mans order-- he had promised a half hour turn around, after all, and it seemed the man would be staying to watch him work. "Ah, no. I'm actually from the countrysides of Brelan. It gets awful cold up there, y'know? Maybe that's why me 'n my sister are able to do this--" He raises a hand and frost licks at his fingertips, forming an ice ball in the air above his palm. "--or that's what I've been telling myself since I was little, anyways."

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

"In all my travels 'mean' seems to be the unifying factor amongst effective teachers," he idly gossiped. And it was true, mean but fair seemed to be one of the best ways to teach young men how to discipline themselves and enthusiastically take on new skills, habits, and mindsets whether they saw the value of those things at the time or not. Trying to make someone appreciate an obscure truth was a lot harder than making them fear angering the person who insisted on that obscure truth being put into practice on the regular. Fear was extremely motivational, especially fear of the unknown. If you asked a young apprentice what would happen if they didn't do as instructed most of them would say 'I do not know and I do not want to find out'. It made Kerr chuckle to himself. Nobody had ever asked him but he knew that would have been his answer too.

Tweezers and a magnifying glass, that's how he'd have made his student unscrew that particular screw up. An exercise that would stress that mistakes were easy and repairs were hard. Better not to make the mistake in the first place and thus emphasizing taking greater care in one's actions. But living in one place would have driven him insane so at best he would have been a dabbler as he was now. Traveling from place to place and trading his limited wares for a barn loft to sleep in and occasional ingredients. So... unexciting. "What lesson did you learn from that comedy of errors and your master's resulting teachable moment?" He was sounding genuinely curious, always interested in a new outlook on even supposedly well understood subjects. More importantly, he didn't seem at all put out by discovering the other man was capable of magic.

"It's my experience that growing up is hard on everyone. Even the people that don't grow up the hard way. Hardship builds strength, character, and lays the foundations for adulthood as you have so wisely observed. Which is why so many noble children grow up to be useless adults. Hard to produce steel when you never apply fire to iron ore." He relaxed in his chair, taking up a rakish pose with his legs stretched out but not quite straight and his unused arm hung over the back of the chair while he drank his tea between conversation points. "Got a little bit of the weather in your blood, eh? That'd explain the ice in mid summer being handed out like rock candy." He chuckled, didn't ask about a person that wasn't there, and shrugged at the theory. "It's as good a hypothesis as any, I reckon. Better than the daydreams I used to indulge. I long wondered after my own providence before realizing there's so much in the world to learn about that there's no point in worrying about that which can never be known. Thus the wandering down unexplored roads thing."

---

L

ucas smiled, mixing the dye into the concoction he had boiled alongside the tea before looking over his shoulder."Yeah, the whole 'unexplored roads' thing was me and Lilith's area of expertise when we were in our teens," He placed the jar of substance on the counter along with the rest of the standard things the man had ordered. Once the rest of it was placed neatly in a bag, he would look back over at the judicar before giving a broad smile. "If there ain't nothin' else I can help ya with, your order is ready for ya to take with ya."

---

tag: Kerr Blackwood

Kerr levered his armored ass out of the chair and over to the counter, inspecting the various items and then placing them in their spots in his roll of alchemical... threats. "So... you used to be a bit of an adventurer, eh? How do you feel about Elven ruins?" He smiled like the cat that'd just stumbled upon a bowl of cream...

The End... until the next adventure.