[13] One Evil SOB

Freja  is a few hours into making the new potions which is something she has made countless times but in the comfort of her own room or in a lab as part of her education. Freja found comfort in the fact that she could rely on her skills despite the dire situation. Having Bjorn there definitely helped her to calm her nerves. If she’d been on her own, had that troll really killed him, she too would have died. Whether it was by thirst, starvation or the shadow wolves. 

She looked at the familiar as he dutifully guarded her from the entrance of the cave. His tongues tasting the air while both heads on a swivel looking out into the darkness. She could not help but smile at the fact that someone cared about her so much that they would literally jump onto the back of a troll for her. 

She then realized that Bjorn must be confused as to what is going on. He is intelligent and she just mentioned a war and really only talked vaguely about herself and what was going on. She wanted to vent and for him to understand their situation.

“The war has been going on for the better part of three millenia.” Freja said while using her mortar and pestle on the ingredients for the last potion. “It changes in intensity from small skirmishes to large city busting battles with years of nothing in between. It is mainly focused around the Diredian Forest. The druids and the wendigo share a common ancestral home. Of course the druid claim to that land is false. Our True, the Forest Father, descended upon the mortal plane in Diredian and made us, his real children, the wendigo, in his image. The savages of that land, the druids, used their wild magics to steal the image of the Forest Father and claimed our home for their own.

“Because of that a war for control of Diredian repeats over and over. We have held the holy land for two hundred years now but they recently attacked and reignited it all over again. Helga, she was my older sister, she believed that she could make a difference in the war. She was the prodigy, the golden daughter, the next in line of the Salstar house. A starlight mage without peers, whose talent far outstript even my… eh-hmm… Ulfar Salstar.”

Freja emptied the finely crushed content of the mortar into a beaker. It would be enough for two lesser health potions one she would take to heal right away and the other as a backup. She used her wind hand magic to carefully place it on the bunsen burner. The potions would be done after the arduous distilling process which will require Freja to regulate mana in the brew every few minutes. 

Freja worked all throughout the night to refine the herbal health potion into a lesser health potion. The mana infusion process is the most sensitive to failure. Up until recently she would have had to have a professor or classmate assist her in this part because her magic was so unstable. Thanks to the familiar contract and this new magic that she was given, she can do it on her own. It felt quite surreal to, after years of failure, be able to actually create the lesser potion on her own. If she had better ingredients she could have probably made a petty potion but one could dream.

Freja guesstimated that they only had a few hours before sunrise and they would have to sleep for at least a few hours before heading out. Shadow wolves are deadly creatures and the last thing they need is to be caught off guard and exhausted. She watched the potion heat and pushed a little mana into it and its color shifted slightly. This was going to take a while. She looked at Bjorn who had been dutifully standing watch at the cave mouth for the past few hours. One of his heads would turn around and look at her every few minutes just to see what she was doing.

“When we leave we have to go west. I doubt we could climb the cliff face and even if we did we’d be going back into the Salstar domain.” Freja said as she pushed more mana into the brew. “Can you get us around the wolves territory?” Bjorn squawked in response so Freja continued. “Okay then, take a nap for a few hours. When I get done with the potion I will wake you and you can be my cute guard again.”

The potion was finally done and Freja managed to make two doses of the now crimson liquid. The light of the morning sun only barely peeked into the cave as she corked the second vial. She had been waiting until both were done before taking one of them just in case it knocked her out, which was possible with the level of injury she had. She called Bjorn a few times and the familiar roused from his sleep easily enough, both heads yawning wide showing off his rows of teeth and large fangs. Freja thought it was the most adorable thing she had ever seen.

Now that he was awake she told him to wake her in three hours and took the potion. It didn’t have a taste but the effects were immediate and painful. She felt her body heat up, her muscles tense and her bones force themselves to heal. The pain was numbed as the process continued but still sucked. As she expected she soon passed out.

“Wendigo, druids, the Forest Father? Do any of those sound familiar?” Bjorn asked mentally.

“No, but the races can’t be more than three thousand years old. After all this Forest Father guy is a True Wendigo that descended to this plane and created them according to her.” Failsafe responded with a yawn that Bjorn heard in his mind. “But we don’t have enough information or your memories to come to anything conclusive.”

Bjorn looked at his other head which Failsafe inhabited. “D-did you just mentally yawn? Never mind. You knew what shadow wolves were which means we know this region but not the people that lived here. I am pretty sure that means I was alive before the Forest Father descended and created Freja’s race.”

“If that is true then finding out more information about you will be more difficult.” Failsafe agreed, he thought for a second. “Well, we will get a little bit more answers after you level up.” 

Bjorn looked at Freja for a long moment. “I hope so, but for now let’s focus on getting out of here.”

Bjorn gave Freja four hours to rest. She woke up groggy but fully healed and ready to go. The young woman was so ecstatic to finally not have any pain that she picked up Bjorn and spun him around in a hug. The moment of course couldn’t last as they had to pack up. The first thing was her alchemy kit; it had already proven its worth and would be going wherever she would. The leather bound case wasn’t too heavy and she could easily carry it. In her backpack was only her unsoiled clothing as she would be leaving the bloody ones here. She also had a few toiletries, and her notebooks on alchemy and one textbook. Everything else was staying. 

As they were walking out of the cave Freja noticed the small silk bag her father left her when he gave her the health potion. She had all but forgotten about it and part of her wanted to just say fuck it and leave it unopened. However her rational mind would not let her disregard a potentially helpful item despite who it was from.

She knelt down and picked up the bag that was once white but had been dirtied by the ground and appeared  to be dingy gray. The jingle of the content told her what to expect even before she opened the bag. Still the contents surprised her as she saw sixteen golden coins. She was expecting bronze or possible silver at the highest but gold? 

According to the tradition of the shiagaunt the family that has removed an heir should give them a coin for every year of life so they may start over. However, her family left her in a position they no doubt thought she would die. In fact she should by all accounts be dead, why would he waste so much money on her? A gold coin is worth three months’ wage for most people. 

She wanted to throw up, they spent more money for her to rot in a field broken and alone then they ever have as their daughter. Her father gave her a fucking lesser health potion knowing full well that at most it would prolong her suffering. Allow her to starve to death or be eaten alive by scavengers instead of bleeding out. She bet that she was supposed to find the silk bag and open it just to give herself hope only to realize she was dead regardless.

She chuckled to herself in disbelief. “What an evil son of a bitch.” She tossed the coins into her book bag. “You ready to go, baby?”

Outside on her own feet for the first time in nearly a week she stretched out letting the morning sun’s warmth baptize her. She spoke the words of power for the wind hands spell and summoned two floating hands. The maximum weight the hands could carry was twenty pounds so she looked around for a decently sized rock for each hand to carry. Now that she had much better control of her spell she could swing the rocks around with frightening speed. 

The wind hands alone would disperse if they directly hit something and would barely have any impact but with the rocks they could hit hard. The down side would be that after she hit anything with the rock it would still dispel the hands and she would have to resummon them. Letting go of the stones right before impact would probably save the hands and she could simply pick up the stones back up if they were still in range. The hands had a range of  about ten feet.

It was the best she could come up with as a self defense weapon since she didn’t have any offensive spells. She was hopeful that she wouldn’t need them at all and they could safely travel around the wolves territory. She looked at Bjorn as he was patiently waiting and watching Freja’s makeshift attack magic. She liked to believe he was thoroughly impressed. She took another deep breath as she looked at the dark forest they would be traveling through.

“Okay, lead the way.” Freja said with confidence.

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