Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 367: Red sunshine (Patreon)

“None of the stuff has really been helping,” says the red-wizard, sitting at their library table.

Fresh sits on the other side of it, doing her best to calmly sip a cup of tea that Basil has made for her. It’s a simple fruit tea, but the priestess had brewed it to be extra strong. She had said that the sharp taste helps one’s senses from getting stuck on other things, as it always ‘shocks’ one back into normality.

She doesn’t know if that makes sense, but it seems to be working and it helps her to have something in her hands while she listens to the red-wizard explain. Fresh turns her head, staring out into the library, through the many bookshelves. Rays of orange sunlight come in through the window, beaming through the bookless gaps in the shelving.

The glow of the outside world catches the particulate and dust of the room, holding it aloft as if it were suspended in time, as if it were floating in water.

Fresh turns her head back towards the red-wizard, who has taken her hat off and sits there on the other side of the table.

It’s obvious to her that none of the stuff they have offered so far has been helping. They haven’t really made anything that can really help in any tangible way. It’s all just been busy-work and distractions to give her time to think.

Is that a cruel thing to do, when a person comes to you for help?

- Perhaps.

But Fresh didn’t have it in her to be as kind as a saint, like Basil might have been in such a situation.

It turns out that after the night Fresh had arrived here in the central-city to curse the hero, that the high-priestess, the silver-haired woman had not only taken her advice to stop the crusade, but that she also had the red-wizard cast out of the hero-party for being affiliated with the terrible witch. A slight contradiction, but that’s how it is sometimes.

The hero himself, Garnett, the curse had turned into some form of mindless, obsessed entity that did nothing but walk, pursue and hunt, much like Jubilee’s old teddy-bear, that had followed them all over the world. The man had stopped eating, he had stopped talking, he had stopped breathing. The hero, summoned to be a great champion of a new day, had been turned into a cold, rigid, beastly creature that is controlled entirely by its obsessions.

- Alive, but not quite all there anymore, like a sunless day, it is in and of itself, perceptible, but wrong. What good is the day if there is no warm sunlight to kiss one’s skin? What good is the hero, if he will fulfill his determined task, but at the cost of everything else?

The rest of the party, the priestess and the archer had stayed with him, more or less trailing behind him as he wandered the land like a rabid animal, until eventually, it is assumed that they just got caught in the fray.

The red-wizard, of course, had initially been heart-broken by her dismissal from what was the greatest opportunity of her life. But after realizing what would have happened, had she stayed in the hero-party, the hard-working caster actually now holds Fresh as a person who had saved her from a horrible future.

The red-wizard truly believes that the witch of the north is some saintly entity, who, despite her own cruelty and betrayal of it, had actually gone out of its way to save her from the dark future ahead. As far as she is concerned, the witch, despite everything, had saved the red-wizard from the hero.

After all, she, the red-wizard, had worked so hard to get to this city. She had dedicated her life, every minute and hour of it, to fighting towards her goal, to find the last of her family, who she had heard lived here through rumors and whispers alone. Everything was for that single cause, every potion, every monster killed, every action including the betrayal was so she could go to the people who her heart had yearned for.

Fresh understands that, in a sense. But there’s a twisted knot here. While she shares these feelings in a sense for her own family, the red-wizard is the person who had really shown her the truth of this world for the first time. She had known before how bad it was, sure. But she had never really seen it in its fullness, until that night, back in the north.

Fresh sips her tea again, noticing that her other hand is playing with the nicked spot on the side of her ribs, where the bone had never quite regrown the missing piece there quite right.

“Medicine has side-effects,” says Fresh, staring down into her tea. “I told you, you were drinking too many potions,” she explains.

It seems that the red-wizard, in her over-indulgence of their potions back in the north, has indeed caused some kind of bodily damage to herself. But it’s really impossible to say what it is exactly. She doesn’t have any status effects or anything of the sort, but something’s just… wrong with her.

Her hair is falling loose, her energy is drained, her once toned muscles are becoming softer and weaker, her sleep is disturbed and full of night-terrors. She shows all the signs of a sickness of some sort, but they are all so vague and unconnected that it could just be anything at all. It might not even be related to the potions, but it’s a strong assumption, honestly.

“I know, but…” The red-wizard rubs her arm, looking across the table. “Isn’t there anything?” she asks. “I worked so hard to get here, to see my family again and I don’t want to just…” she lowers her gaze, staring at the wood. “To just…” The room is quiet for a moment. “They don’t know yet,” she says.

Fresh closes her eyes and thinks. She’s just going to assume that she wants to help the red-wizard to move this train of thought along, at least so she herself has an idea. That doesn’t mean that she’ll offer it, though.

The potions in the north.

Their primary ingredients were moonwater and mushroom-caps.

Moonwater is dangerous to drink if it is unprocessed through a spell or a crafting recipe, but all of the potions were made with her magic. The moonwater should be perfectly fine to drink, in that case.

…Right?

Fresh opens her eyes, staring down at the wooden table herself now, at the collection of fresh dust that has settled on its surface.

Their coughee and candy in the west, moonwater.

Their ice-cream in the east, moonwater. Not directly, but through the cooling mechanism, it’s possible that it often came in contact with it.

- Is it the moonwater?

Is that why she likes making things for people to eat and to drink? She hasn’t been following a passion of hers, realizes Fresh. She’s been poisoning the world, sip after sip, mouthful after mouthful, at the whispering behest of the fountain.

A breeze shoots through the house as someone swings the feather-duster down in the basement. The wind blows past her, tousling her hair and blowing away all of the dust that hangs around them.

Fresh follows the flowing cloud with her eyes, staring at the rays of sunlight coming in through the windows.

“I have an idea,” says Fresh, as she stares at the light of the new day that comes to shine in towards her, gently stroking her face with its warmth like the hand of a forgiving mother.

She doesn’t feel like she deserves it. But the sun doesn’t seem to care about what she thinks and she appreciates it for that.

If moonwater is what makes people sick. Then what about the opposite? What about the sun?