Origin Witch - Sketching the Nerve Elixir

Ink had dried beneath Corinne’s right thumbnail, leaving a dark crescent that no amount of scrubbing with Anseic water seemed to shift. Her knuckles were stiff from three hours of scratching notes across cheap vellum, the small brass ballpoint pen clicking whenever her hand twitched from a lingering spike of fatigue. Down in the second-floor laboratory, six iron cauldrons sat idle, their dark star-iron rims cold to the touch. The humid, sulfurous stink of yesterday’s brewing cycle had settled into a stale, metallic dampness that smelled like wet nails and river silt.

Beside her knee, the heavy pigskin cover of the Ledger of the Origin Witch lay flat on her oak worktable, propped open at page seventy-four with a river stone. Corinne didn’t look at the text on the page. She looked at her own dead legs. They dangled beneath her gray tunic, hanging motionless four inches above the floorboards while her Zephyr Float kept her torso suspended. She reached down, picked up a steel needle from her sewing kit, and drove it three millimeters deep into the calf muscle of her left leg.

Nothing. No pain. No sharp flinch. Not even the faint, dull pressure of cold metal pressing into flesh. It was like sticking a needle into a bag of wet grain.

She pulled the needle out, set it on the table, and tapped her spectacles.

[Blueprint: Nerve-Restoration Fluid (Grade-C)] [Primary Catalyst: 1x Grade-D Drake’s Spinal Marrow] [Secondary Catalyst: 1x Pure Water Element Essence] [Stabilizer: 10g Ground Dragon-Root Powder] [Effect: Permanently repairs severed or crushed human nervous tissue. Restores motor function to paralyzed lower extremities.]

“A Drake,” she muttered, her raspy voice barely carrying over the quiet drip-drip of her water tap. It sounded like a joke someone would tell in an emergency room back in Ohio. Oh, your spine was crushed by a two-ton SUV? Don’t worry, just go chop the neck off a flying lizard in an uncharted swamp and drink its spinal fluid.

She leaned forward, her chest resting against the edge of the oak table, her thumb tracing the anatomical drawing of the L3 vertebra in the book. The blueprint wasn’t magic in the sense of a miracle cure that fixed bone with a burst of pink light. It was an aggressive, terrifyingly complex chemical reconstructive agent. The Drake’s spinal marrow contained an intense, high-density nerve-growth catalyst that, when stabilized with pure water element essence and dragon-root, would force human nerve fibers to regenerate at thirty times their normal speed. It would burn. The book had two full paragraphs in the margin describing the sensation as molten iron running through the bone marrow for forty minutes.

“I don’t care if it burns,” she whispered.

She’d spent five years lying on vinyl mattresses watching fluorescent lights flicker on hospital ceilings. She’d spent three days in a mud ditch listening to two thieves decide if she was worth robbing. Pain was just noise. It went away when the nerve finished knitting. The problem wasn’t the pain. The problem was the Drake. A Grade-D Canopy Drake wasn’t a Mud-Swamp Hydrake that dragged its belly through the ooze at two miles an hour. It was an airborne predator with twenty-foot leathery wings, armored green scales, and a tail that could snap a six-inch oak beam like a dry pretzel. It lived in the deep, unmapped canopy of the northern border, an area where even Garrett Thorne’s war-band hesitated to set up patrol lines.

Steelwool let out a low click-click from its perch on the upper timber rack, its round honey-colored eyes fixed on her moving hand. The owl chick fluffed its gray metallic feathers, hopped down onto the edge of the workbench, and nudged Corinne’s wrist with its cold, dark beak.

“Don’t start,” Corinne said, rubbing the bird’s head with her thumb. “I’m thinking.”

She needed that spine. Not in two months, not when she finally figured out how to build a Grade-C high-tower, but now. The longer her lower nerves remained dead, the more the surrounding muscle tissue withered, making the eventual reconstruction that much harder and more painful.

She pulled up her private messaging interface, targeting Garrett Thorne.

[Corinne]: Thorne. What do you know about the Canopy Drake near the northern border?

The response took nearly two minutes to come back, unusual for Thorne, who usually answered within ten seconds. He said it was eighty feet up in the high cypress branches, its scales bounced iron bolts off like pebbles, and it had spat a stream of acidic green bile that turned two of his best scout shields into bubbling sludge three days earlier. He asked why she was asking about that monster. She told him she needed its spine, intact. Her left hand tightened around the ballpoint pen, the plastic casing creaking under her knuckles, and she wrote that she needed a twelve-inch section of spinal marrow, undamaged by fire or acid.

Thorne said the thing had a thirty-foot wingspan and a threat rating of Grade-D High, that it didn’t fight on the ground but stayed in the high tree-forks dropping venom on anything within a hundred yards of its nest, and that his boys couldn’t reach eighty feet into a cypress canopy without getting sprayed with acid first.

Corinne leaned back, her floating torso drifting three inches to the left as she looked at her inventory display.

Pouch of Preservation Contents:

– 15x Grade-E High-Yield Explosive Charges

– 10x Grade-E Corrosive Slowness Decoctions

– 12x Grade-E Flame Potions

– 5x Grade-E Anti-Fire Elixirs

[Corinne]: You don’t need to climb the tree, Thorne. I’ll provide the anti-acid ground salves and the aerial bombardment. I’ll float above its nest, drop slowness decoctions into its eyes to cut its Agility, and force it down into the lower branches where your boys can anchor it with iron cables.

[Garrett Thorne]: And what’s the payout? My boys don’t risk their hides against a Grade-D airborne beast for handshakes.

[Corinne]: Twenty Grade-E Health Potions for your squad, five Anti-Fire Elixirs, and I will carve three Grade-D Stone Array Bases for your ridge fortresses for free.

[Garrett Thorne]:…

[Garrett Thorne]: Three Grade-D stone bases?

[Corinne]: Three. Carved from obsidian.

On the northern ridge, Garrett Thorne stood inside his dark stone bunker, his broad hand gripping his Magic Desk frame so hard his knuckles turned white. Three Obsidian Array Bases. That meant his fortresses could run continuous thermal wards without burning through thousands of wood logs every night. It meant his war-band would hold the northern ridge against General Caldwell’s mercenaries from Sector 665 without sweating every time the wind blew cold.

[Garrett Thorne]: Tomorrow at dawn. Bring every yellow explosive vial you have in that Spire.

[Corinne]: Dawn it is. Make sure your men bring heavy iron winches.

She closed the messaging thread, set her pen on the desk, and looked up at her fourth-floor greenhouse ceiling. Through the glass dome overhead, the afternoon sky was turning a pale, washed-out gray, cold winter clouds rolling in from the north. She drifted up the heartwood stairs to her second-floor laboratory, pulled six fresh granite array bases onto her stone workbench, and ignited the golden runes beneath her meteorite cauldron.

She had sixteen hours before sunrise. She needed to brew twenty vials of health potion, ten vials of high-potency slowness decoction, and at least fifteen explosive charges, enough firepower to knock an eighty-foot flying lizard out of the sky before it could melt her face off. Steelwool hopped down from the upper rack, landing on the workbench beside her mortar, its round honey-colored eyes watching her every move as she poured five pounds of raw sulfur dust into the star-iron pot.

“Get ready, bird,” Corinne grumbled, picking up her Verdant Rod and stirring the boiling, yellow-green sludge in slow, steady circles. “Tomorrow we go hunting.”

Dawn over the uncharted northern border didn’t bring light. It brought a heavy, freezing mist that smelled of wet slate, rotten pine needles, and the sharp, sour tang of old swamp gas. Corinne hung suspended forty yards above the dark forest floor, her Zephyr Float talent holding her weightless in the freezing air. Her paralyzed legs swayed beneath the gray linen tunic, the bare heels knocking soft against each other whenever the wind came off the northern crags.

Beside her cheek, Steelwool was tucked deep inside her tunic pouch, its small gray head poking out, its metallic feathers flattened against her ribs as it let out a continuous, nervous click-click with its beak. Her black frames sat snug against her nose, their blue-tinted lenses casting pale diagnostic lines across the giant cypress tree sixty yards ahead. The tree was a monster, a two-hundred-foot ancient cypress with a trunk as wide as a two-story house, its upper branches tangled into a massive, dark green canopy that blocked out the morning sky. And sitting right in the central V-fork of those high branches, fifty yards above the ground, was a nest made of shattered oak trunks, iron-hard vines, and the bleached skeletons of large forest beasts.

Through her spectacles, a massive crimson text box flared in her vision:

[Canopy Drake (Grade-D High Monster)] [Level: 12] [Health: 850 / 850] [Properties: Armored Scale Hide / Corrosive Acid Breath / Aerial Agility / Wing-Thorn Strike] [Yield: Grade-D Drake’s Spinal Marrow, Grade-D Monster Core, Drake Hide, Corrosive Venom Glands]

The beast was asleep. It lay curled inside the high wooden nest like a massive, scaly green serpent, its leathery wings, each at least fifteen feet long, folded tightly against its broad, armored back. Its tail, tipped with a cluster of jagged, iron-hard bone thorns, hung down over the side of the nest, swinging gently in the wind.

Down on the forest floor beneath the cypress, twelve men were crouching inside a shallow granite ravine. Garrett Thorne stood at the front of the group, his broad, bearded face covered in a streak of black charcoal dust, his heavy iron chest-plate unbuckled at the sides for mobility. In his hands, he held a six-foot iron-tipped pike, while four of his men behind him were setting up two heavy, winch-operated steel crossbows mounted on tripod legs.

Thorne looked up into the gray mist, spotting Corinne’s floating white-and-gray shape forty yards above. He raised his right hand, making a quick, sharp gesture: Ready.

Corinne didn’t wave back. She reached into her Pouch of Preservation. Her muddy fingers closed around two round, yellow glass throw-vials sitting in her utility belt:

1x Grade-E Corrosive Slowness Decoction

1x Grade-E High-Yield Explosive Charge

She adjusted her position, using her hands to steer her weightless body through the cold mist until she was hovering directly over the sleeping Drake’s head, thirty yards straight up in the open sky. The wind was blowing three knots from the west. “Hold tight, bird,” she whispered to Steelwool.

She opened her fingers. The first yellow vial, the Corrosive Slowness Decoction, plunged through the gray fog. Three seconds of absolute silence.

The first charge bit into scale with a wet, tearing rip.

The glass tube shattered flat against the Drake’s dark green snout. A thick, mustard-yellow cloud of pressurized acid mist erupted across the nest, adhering violently to the beast’s scaly hide, nostrils, and eyelids.

The Canopy Drake didn’t just wake. It exploded out of the nest with a deafening, bone-shattering roar, shaking the high cypress branches and sending showers of dry pine needles and broken twigs raining down.

Corinne didn’t flinch. She leaned her torso forward, dropped her second vial, the High-Yield Explosive Charge, and pushed herself four feet back using her hands.

The second charge detonated in a flat, concussive crack.

The explosive charge hit the Drake’s left wing joint square at the base, detonating in a blinding, sulfurous orange flash that tore three leathery wing-membranes to shreds and snapped two outer bone struts. The beast let out another shrieking roar, its left wing collapsing limply against its side as it lost its balance, tumbling out of the high nest and crashing through the lower branches with a heavy, tree-shattering crash of splintering branches and snapping bone

“FIRE!” Garrett Thorne’s voice roared from the ravine below.

Crossbow bolts snapped past in pairs, each followed by the flat crack of a pistol.

The two winch-operated steel crossbows on the ground released simultaneously. Two heavy, six-foot iron bolts, trailing thick braided steel cables, shot through the lower foliage, driving straight into the Drake’s chest and right shoulder. The sharp iron barbs hooked deep into the armored scales, locking the beast to the heavy tripod winches anchored in the granite ravine.

“WINCH IT DOWN!” Thorne bellowed, his boots digging into the mud as he grabbed the nearest steel cable with his bare hands. “HOLD THE CABLE!”

The wounded Canopy Drake thrashed violently in the underbrush, its intact right wing beating the mud into a frenzy, its heavy thorn-tipped tail smashing an oak sapling into splinters. It opened its massive jaws, spraying a twenty-foot jet of bubbling, corrosive green bile straight at the four men holding the left winch.

The cooling brew hissed a slow, satisfied note.

The acid hit two wooden shields, eating through the oak planks in two seconds flat, making the men drop the winch handle with screaming curses as the hot spray burned their leather sleeves.

“Corinne!” Thorne roared, his face red with strain as the cable pulled him two feet forward through the mud. “BOMB IT AGAIN! IT’S BREAKING THE WINCH!”

Corinne hovered twenty yards above the thrashing beast, her white tunic dress fluttering in the wind, her face cold behind her black frames. She pulled three Flame Potions from her bag. She didn’t drop them at random. She pointed her lenses at the Drake’s intact right wing joint, the single engine keeping the beast from being dragged flat into the mud. Drop. Drop. Drop. Three glass vials plunged through the trees.

The blast rolled into a hot gust of displaced air.

An eight-hundred-degree pool of liquid orange fire erupted across the Drake’s right wing and shoulder, the volatile Fire-Bell syrup clinging to the green scales, burning through the thick flight muscle in seconds. The beast’s right wing collapsed into the mud, burning with bright, white-hot flames. With both wings shredded and its chest anchored by two steel cables, the Grade-D Canopy Drake was trapped in the narrow granite ravine, unable to fly, unable to turn, its health bar plunging down from 850 to 220 in less than three minutes.

Garrett Thorne didn’t hesitate. He let go of the steel cable, drew his heavy iron broadsword, and surged forward through the yellow acid smoke, his boots smashing through the mud. “STORM-CUT!” Thorne bellowed, his arms bulging as he brought the broadsword down in a massive, two-handed overhead arc. A pale, glowing white wind-blade erupted from the iron edge, slicing straight through the Drake’s exposed, unarmored throat.

Wet flesh gave a squelching crack.

Dark, thick green blood sprayed ten feet into the air, splashing across the granite rocks. The Canopy Drake let out one final, low gurgle, its heavy snout dropping flat into the bloody mud, its long tail twitching twice before going completely still.

System World Notification: Grade-D High Monster ‘Canopy Drake’ slain. Primary Kill Credit: Garrett Thorne / Corinne Mercer. Experience Allocated: +450 Points.

Silence fell over the deep northern ravine. Garrett Thorne stood over the dead beast, leaning heavily on his blood-stained broadsword, his chest heaving as he panted for breath, his leather sleeves smoking from stray acid drops. Above the clearing, Corinne activated Zephyr Float, lowering her weightless body down through the blue smoke until her bare feet hovered three inches above the dead Drake’s neck. She drew her Moonstone Carver from her belt.

Thorne looked up at her, wiping a streak of green blood off his cheek with his thumb. “Good drops, Mercer. Your yellow glass saved three of my boys’ arms today.”

“Hold the head,” Corinne rasped, her voice flat, unblinking behind her spectacles. “I need the spine before the marrow cools.”

She floated over the beast’s neck, drove her crystal blade into the junction behind the skull, and began to cut the spine free before the heat could reach it.

— Origin Witch —