Origin Witch - A Hundred Pots

Corinne’s lungs burned with the sour stink of boiled dandelion root and scorched iron.

Steam didn’t rise in neat little plumes when you had a hundred cauldrons going at once. It blanketed the Spire’s interior like a wet gray quilt that smelled of boiled dandelion roots, sulfur dust, and scorched iron. Corinne hovered three inches above the oak floorboards of her ground-floor workshop, her dead legs hanging limply in their loose, familiar shape beneath her dark linen tunic. Her black frames were fogged with green condensation, forcing her to wipe the lenses against her sleeve every four minutes. Sweat ran down the back of her neck in thin, stinging rivulets, soaking her collar until it stuck to her skin like a wet bandage.

Around her, the Spire was roaring.

Thirty iron cauldrons sat bubbling on the ground floor, forty more lined the second-floor laboratory, and thirty were crammed into her third-floor observation room. Beneath every single pot rested a three-legged granite array base she’d hand-carved over the last four days. The golden glyphs etched into the gray rock flared with a continuous, honey-colored warmth, sending waves of heat through the dark blue star-metal and cast-iron pots.

Tss-tss-tss-tss.

The bamboo plumbing network she’d rigged from her hundred-liter Anseic water tank was groaning under the pressure. Water trickled down from the wall taps, splashing into the boiling cauldrons in steady, measured streams.

“Pot forty-two is too hot,” she rasped to the steam-filled air, her voice dry as tinder.

She pushed off a timber support beam with her left hand, floating through the thick green haze toward the eastern wall. Her right hand held the Moonstone Carver. She used the crystal blade’s tip to nudge the corner of the granite base beneath pot forty-two, dimming the glowing rune lines just enough to drop the wild boil to a smooth, rolling simmer.

Her head throbbed with a heavy, rhythmic ache behind her left temple.

Managing one pot was work. Managing ten was an assembly line. Managing a hundred across three separate floors while the purple Ether Tide raged against her shelter’s protective ward outside was pure, unadulterated torture.

Her mind felt like an overstretched bowstring. Every second required her to monitor a hundred separate mana-circuitry loops, check the solvent-to-herb ratios in three different floors, and make sure the Anseic spring water didn’t boil dry and crack the iron bottoms.

Mana Points: 12/80.

Her mana bar was flashing red.

She drifted over to her worktable on the second floor, her weightless torso trailing through the thick steam, and grabbed a small stoneware bowl sitting beside her notebook. Inside was Piper Bell’s Volcanic Fish & Tuber Noodle Soup.

The soup was lukewarm now, covered in a thin, greasy film of red chili oil and fish fat, but Corinne didn’t care. She scooped three large, gelatinous mouthfuls into her mouth, swallowing the thick potato noodles and ground earthworm powder whole without bothering to chew.

Status Buff: Volcanic Mana Regen (600 MP over 10 Minutes). Mana Points: 13/80. 25/80. 42/80. 80/80 (Max).

A sharp, burning wave of liquid magic bloomed in her stomach, rushing up into her chest and clearing the gray fog from her brain.

“Move, steel-ball,” she grunted, nudging Steelwool with her knuckle.

The owl chick was curled up inside a damp, folded towel on the highest shelf, its metallic feathers tucked tight around its beak, its round honey-colored eyes staring at her with quiet, bewildered misery. The bird hated the heat. It hated the steam. But it refused to leave Corinne’s side, hopping from floor to floor whenever she shifted her brewing station.

Corinne picked up her Verdant Rod, the green, leaf-covered branch from Thane’s cellar, and glided back down the heartwood stairs to the first floor.

Row three, pot twelve.

The Bitter-Grass roots inside had completely dissolved, turning the Anseic spring water into a thick, glossy turquoise syrup that bubbled like boiling honey.

She lifted her wooden scoop, filled a two-liter copper carafe with the boiling potion, and poured the fluid straight into her oak-barrel filter setup.

Sssssssss.

The liquid trickled down through the charcoal, sand, and cotton layers, exiting the bottom spout in a crystal-clear, emerald-green stream that glowed like melted neon in the dim room.

Corinne didn’t bother filling individual ten-milliliter test tubes with cork stoppers. There was no time for individual packaging.

Instead, she poured the clear green fluid straight into ten-liter iron kegs she’d bought from Jasper Finch in bulk.

One keg held a thousand doses. Ten thousand Mana Points in a single iron barrel.

Clang-clunk!

Up on the third floor, a loud, wet pop echoed through the ceiling hatch, followed by a frantic sizzle.

“Dammit!” Corinne barked, her hands flailing as she pushed off the stair railing, shooting up to the third story like an arrow.

Pot seventy-seven had overflowed.

The Yellow-Tail flower paste inside had boiled over the rim, spilling onto the hot granite array base below. The wet plant sap had shorted the golden glyphs, causing the stone base to crack right down the middle with a sharp crack.

The yellow flame underneath vanished instantly.

Corinne hovered beside the smoking pot, her face dark with soot.

“Fissure in the stone,” she muttered, inspecting the cracked granite with her spectacles.

Durability: 0/20 (Exhausted / Broken).

She didn’t waste ten seconds complaining. She grabbed the heavy iron pot with her Moonstone Carver’s Strength-boosted arm, hoisted forty pounds of hot herb sludge off the broken base, and kicked the cracked stone slab out the open balcony door into the storm outside.

She pulled a fresh, uncarved granite slab from her storage bag, set it flat on the floorboards, and pressed her right index finger against the rock.

Channel.

Her fingernail flared with amber light. She drew the outer circle, the inner triangle, and the twin M-runes in twenty seconds flat, her movements sharp, practiced, and unhesitating.

The glyphs sank into the rock, turning gold. The stone legs sprouted upward.

She set the iron pot back onto the array, tapped the center rune, and reignited the fire before the fluid inside could lose its thermal momentum.

Time: 04:15 AM.

She had been brewing for sixteen straight hours.

Her dark gray tunic was ruined, stained with black soot, green plant juice, and salt trails from her own sweat. The skin on her right wrist was red and raw from holding the Verdant Rod for hours without a break.

She drifted over to the Spire’s Ward Engine on the northern wall of her bedroom.

The inverse rune array was pulsing an intense, angry violet as the purple Ether Tide raged against the invisible barrier outside her balcony glass.

[Tier-3 Ward Engine (Grade-D)] [Energy: 4,120 / 30,000] [Status: Critical Low]

The counter was dropping by sixty points every minute.

Corinne picked up a two-liter jug of fresh Grade-E Mana Potion, uncorked the stopper, and poured the emerald fluid directly into the hollow stone socket at the center of the wall array.

The liquid drained away in a rush, gone before it touched the stone.

The liquid vanished instantly.

[Energy: 14,120 / 30,000] [Energy: 24,120 / 30,000] [Energy: 30,000 / 30,000 (Max)]

The green light on the wall array stabilized, casting a cool, soothing emerald glow across her bedroom floorboards.

Corinne let out a long, shuddering breath, her forehead leaning against the cool timber wall beside the array.

Her Magic Desk on the ground floor was pinging continuously.

Jasper Finch’s private trade node flashed for attention.

She opened the transfer window remotely through her spectacles interface.

[Jasper Finch]: Corinne! The southern ridge fortresses are running dry! Garrett Thorne’s wood piles were completely burned through an hour ago! They need liquid mana right now!

[Corinne]: Sending ten 10-liter kegs. That’s ten thousand doses. Tell Thorne to pour two kegs into each fortress Ward Engine immediately.

[Jasper Finch]: Ten kegs?! Where the hell did you get ten kegs of pure potion?!

[Corinne]: I have a hundred pots burning, Finch. Stop asking stupid questions and move the barrels.

Ding!

Ten heavy iron kegs vanished from her ground-floor storage grid, transferred instantly across the system network to Jasper’s central warehouse.

A second later, Jasper’s return transfer hit her account:

[Received: 12,000x Raw Iron Ore, 4,000x Refined Copper Slabs, 80x Grade-E Monster Cores, 20x Obsidian Blocks.]

The raw material wealth of Sector 666 was pouring straight into her Spire.

While thousands of outcasts were screaming in the dark, watching their wooden huts dissolve under the purple lightning, Corinne Mercer was sitting on a mountain of metal, stone, and magic cores that could fund a small army.

She didn’t stop to count the profit.

She floated back down to the second floor, picked up her Verdant Rod, and stepped up to the next row of boiling cauldrons.

Hour twenty. Hour twenty-two. Hour twenty-four.

When the sky outside her glass balcony doors finally began to shift from deep purple to a pale, hazy gray, signaling the arrival of dawn on Day 21, the fire beneath the last of the hundred cauldrons went out.

Corinne didn’t float.

Her mana bar hit zero, her Zephyr Float talent clicked off, and her body dropped flat onto the straw mattress on her bedroom floor.

Her dead legs lay limp beneath her dirty tunic, heavy and motionless. Her right hand was frozen into a stiff claw around the handle of her stirring rod, her knuckles covered in black ash and dried red chili oil.

Beside her face, Steelwool hopped out of its wool scarf nest, nudging her nose with its cold, metallic beak, letting out a soft, questioning click.

Corinne didn’t open her eyes. She reached out with two stiff fingers, patted the owl chick’s round head once, and let the full weight of the marathon settle onto her bones. The last thing she registered before sleep took her was the steady hum of the Ward Engine overhead, still holding, still burning, still hers.

— Origin Witch —