“Here he is,” Micah’s mother said as she led Micah into the kitchen. “He was in his room, studying,” she added.

Micah felt a pang of guilt when she said that, but then he reminded himself that he had actually studied earlier today and had done his homework for a few hours on end, so he wasn’t misleading anyone. He should have been proud if anything, but he wasn’t. It wasn’t really important to him, he was still behind on his school work overall, and most of all, there was something more important at the moment that demanded his emotional investment—the man in their kitchen.

“Ah, a scholar,” Mr. Faraday said, breaking off from his conversation with Micah’s father to turn and face them. The two stood around the table rather than sitting at it, with glasses of water on coasters beneath them.

The kettle was on the stove. His mother made no move to check on it. He would probably have to later, as was his duty most of the time when they had guests in their home. Children always were the gofers then.

It was strange that Mr. Faraday was their guest, though. Micah had seen the man around from time to time in the market or on the streets, and one time when he went to visit his store. He had learned back then that most alchemists worked on commission, especially in Westhill where they apparently didn’t work with Tower ingredients, or only did so sparingly to satisfy the local customers. They still guaranteed a high quality of their wares despite that, so it drove up their prices compared to other places. They had to substitute the ‘magic’ ingredients from the Tower with normal ones after all.

Micah wondered how.

The price increase wasn’t much, but it still enough that buying fire potions from one of them seemed like a luxury to him. Not that his parents couldn’t afford it. They bought two barrels of the stuff every other month, mostly for the stove and lamps. Micah’s father had his lighters manually refilled there, too.

“Mr. Faraday,” Micah’s mother said, guiding Micah closer and holding out a hand towards the man, “this is our youngest, Micah. Micah, this is Mr. Faraday, one of the local alchemists and a well-respected member of the community. You must have seen him around from time to time, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, “Dad and I always go to his shop.”

Mr. Faraday had given them his full attention when they stepped into the room. He wasn’t as heavy-set as the other two alchemists Micah knew either. He was about as tall as his father but much more gangly. And he smiled. He seemed polite, and it made Micah smile back, if a little uneasily.

“My surname is Faraday, but a fellow alchemist can always call me Ben,” he said, shaking Micah’s clammy hand. It was a good handshake. Those two skin-thingies between thumb and index finger that were supposed to touch touched.

Micah thought he might like the man, even though he’d barely said two sentences.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. uhm, Ben. I’m Micah,” he said, “but I guess you can call me Flower Boy then?”

He cringed immediately after saying that. He’d wanted to appear just as casually friendly as Mr. Faraday was, but the man just frowned at him afterward. What a stupid idea. Flower Boy wasn’t even a nickname Micah liked. Why had he offered it?

“Hm?” the man just asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just a stupid nickname …” Micah trailed off, embarrassed, and hoped he would let it go. Also, that he would let go of his hand. But Faraday did neither. He was still looking at him, still shaking hands lightly, as if he expected Micah to explain.

How had Micah boggled this already?

“It’s just, you said I could use your first name out of courtesy, but you’re already using my first name? So, uh, the next step would be my nickname, I thought.”

“Ah!” Faraday said, finally letting go of Micah’s hand and stepping back. “So your nickname is Flower Boy then? That must be an interesting story. Tell me, does it involve a wedding?”

“Uh, no,” Micah chuckled nervously. “Actually, it involves alchemy.”

That seemed to get their attention.

“The first potion I ever made was a perfume potion, you see,” Micah explained, “and I kind of laid it on too thick on my first try? The kids in my classroom noticed. They thought it was my mother’s perfume and the name kind of stuck.”

Micah shrugged then. He didn’t really mind the name that much, after all, though he supposed he would rather have a cooler one. You couldn’t really make a nickname out of Micah, though, could you?

‘Mia’? ‘My’? ‘Mick’? Those all sounded stupid to him, the first too much like his sister. Might as well say his full name. Some of the older boy’s used surnames, though. Being called ‘Stranya’ could be cool, maybe.

“You never told us your nickname was Flower Boy,” his mother said.

“Kind of a mouthful, too, wouldn’t you agree?” his father glossed over the question, looking at their guest.

“Kids will be kids,” Mr. Faraday agreed.

Micah felt lost, as he always did with adults making Smalltalk. You always had to smile and know what to say. And what you said wasn’t really interesting either way. It was just shooting the breeze. Why not just be more casual and earnest? This man was an alchemist. There were important things Micah wanted to talk about. He couldn’t let it come to that.

“Uhm, I guess you could use Flowers for short, then?” he offered, trying to put his thoughts into words.

“Sure,” Faraday said easily. “Flowers, then. So you made a perfume potion on your first try? Your parents told me you don’t have the alchemy Path, though. Do you have a superseding Path or where did you find the recipe for that?”

“Superseding?” Micah asked, confused. He didn’t know that word.

“It means a Path that includes multiple topics,” his father explained, sounding a little impatient. “Like how a [Farming Path] includes both planting crops and taking care of animals and such ... as well as many other things besides, now that I think about it, like maintenance, processing foodstuffs, protecting your property, and selling wares. It really is a broad Path, isn’t it?”

“Alchemy is rather narrow in comparison, I’ll admit,” Mr. Faraday said.

Micah disagreed with that. Doors closed, alchemy could do anything.

The kettle whistled and Micah flinched to go check on it, but his mother was there already. She put it off the stove and got the cans with tea out of the cupboard while they spoke.

“I think my Path might supersede—?” Micah said and paused, testing the word. His father nodded at him. “Supersede a lot of things, but uhm, I didn’t have a recipe or anything like that. I just used my imagination.”

Mr. Faraday’s eyebrows shot up a little.

“Micah is level 6 already,” his father said, putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking it lightly. “Even though he’s only thirteen. He’s quite the over-achiever, wouldn’t you agree?”

Micah cringed away as he said that. They didn’t even know anything but the basics of his alchemy yet, hadn’t asked about it in the last two days. Only Prisha had during dinner back then. And now his father was boasting about it? That was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid all those years ago.

“Well, I did have some help,” he said, trying to undermine his father’s statement, which meant he was trying to undermine himself, he guessed. Weird.

“I have a Skill called [Basic Alchemy],” Micah said, “that helps me figure out some things. It kind of gives me hunches? Like how hot I need to get the water for different potions, or when exactly I should add certain ingredients. Stuff like that. I honestly couldn’t have done anything without it. I’d still be stuck a level one.”

“A guidance Skill,” Mr. Faraday said, “and you got it at level one?”

He sounded impressed and his father was smiling. Oh no, had Micah just made things worse for himself? Why couldn’t he have a crappy Skill for once, like, uh, [Calculator] or something? That one was just supposed to let you do maths better in your head. One of Micah’s classmates had that and everyone agreed it sucked, aside from the teacher. But of course, the teacher always said no Skills suck. As if.

Micah was about to ask what a guidance Skill was when his mother spoke up, asking their guest which tea he would like.

“Oh, anything black will be fine,” he said.

“Alright,” she poured the water into a cup and set it down on another coaster. Then she added two more for Micah and his father. Finally, one for herself while she sat down.

“Why don’t we sit?” she offered. “All the better to talk over some nice tea.”

They sat, and Micah pulled his cup to himself, thankful that he had something to fiddle around with. The cup was too hot though — he knew by how vibrant it looked — so he played with the rim of the coaster instead.

Mr. Faraday took a sip despite that and thanked Micah’s mother for making it. Somehow, all adults had the strange Skill of being able to drink hot beverages without a care. Could their tongues even taste anymore?

“Oh, and I brought gifts,” he said, rummaging through his coat pockets.

Micah perked up when he heard a rustle, and then the man pulled out a few sheaves of paper from a small notebook in his coat.

“I don’t have an [Apprentice] at the moment,” he said, “so I didn’t have any proper manuals on hand. But I still thought I should bring something. Here are some of my own recipes that might be appropriate for a beginner.”

He held the papers across the table to Micah.

Micah made no move to take them. He saw the man’s scribbled script on the papers as well as black and white illustrations, measurements, numbers.

Proper alchemy recipes. Was he handing them over just like that? The alchemy guides he’d found in the city costed almost twice as much as school books!

“Micah,” his mother said softly, nudging him with her voice. “What do we say when someone gives you a gift?”

He looked at Mr. Faraday.

“I’ll pay you. I mean, I don’t have much right now, but I have a few crystals upstairs … no, wait, you wouldn’t want those. I have a bottle, though! It was-”

“Stop, stop, stop. What are you doing, son?” his father asked.

“It’s a gift,” Faraday added, placing the papers down on the table.

“But … “ Micah was lost.

“Just take them,” he said.

Micah glanced at the man’s sincere face, at his father, and then at the papers. He bit his lip and snatched them up.

Mr. Faraday chuckled.

“Such a proper young man,” he said and his parents answered something that Micah didn’t catch. He was busy deciphering his cursive writing style.

Fi-fi-light potion? Light potion! by means of dissiltee-something.

Equipment: Four glass containers, a sufficient heat source, a coolant pipe, a condensation pipe, a darkened space, sealants.

What?

Ingredients: 1 ltr. water, 3kg sunflowers, twenty rooster beaks, half the container size of glass shards.

Micah didn’t understand. Four glass containers? Three kilograms of sunflowers? Rooster beaks? Why would you even need all that? Micah could make one just fine with a single bottle of water and a handful of insects. Well, and his marbles. Were the glass shards meant to do what his marbles did and capture light essence?

The illustrations showed a complex contraption of pipes and bottles. The fire was meant to heat water, which then apparently boiled up into another bottle that held the ingredients? Wouldn’t that ruin the patterns? Most patterns got warped beyond recognition in boiling water.

There were tiny annotations that Micah tried to decipher, but couldn’t. The whole thing was confusing, and he already knew this one anyway, so he flipped the top of the page back to the see the title of the next.

‘Light potion by means of disillililili’ again!

This time, the recipe used 1kg of lightning bugs instead, and some other flowers Micah couldn’t place. How would you ever catch that many lightning bugs?

He flipped to the next page.

Calming potion.

Nope, Micah was not touching that again. Next.

Fire potion.

That was something he could use. But again, the title said ‘by means of dis- dissel- decision?’

“Excuse me,” he asks, at his wit’s end, “what does this word mean?”

He was interrupting whatever conversation the adults were having, but they didn’t seem to mind. They stopped and looked at him pleasantly. Micah pointed at the title and held the bundle of pages across the table for Mr. Faraday to see.

“Ah, which word?” he asked, searching until he found it over Micah’s pointing finger. Then he glanced at him.

Micah just stared back, confused.

“Distillation?” Mr. Faraday asked.

Ah, Micah thought, distillation. So that was what that said! He honestly couldn’t see the difference between the man’s letters. It was all just loopy-loops with him.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“You don’t know?” Mr. Faraday asked slowly.

“Nope,” Micah said, saw his parents looks and quickly amended the statement. “I mean, no, sir.”

“Distillation is the foundation of almost all alchemy. It’s, uhm, a lot like making tea actually. Maybe you’ve been doing it, but you just didn’t know what to call it? What kind of equipment do you use?”

“Equipment?” Micah asked, feeling a little self-conscious. “I have a glass bottle that I brew everything in. I keep it under my bed. And, uh, I use some candles to heat the water.”

His parents looked at him when he said that, their faces promising that they would want to talk about that again later, but they kept any responses to themselves for now. Mr. Faraday didn’t seem to notice.

“Just a single bottle? Then how have you been making potions?” he asked.

“I heat the water,” Micah started, feeling awkward. “I throw in the ingredients. I use [Infusion] and, uhm, I make a potion.”

“[Infusion]?” Mr. Faraday asked.

Micah’s left eye twitched. In his mind, he swore to all that was pure, if this man said that [Infusion] was some kind of super-rare Skill or a Skill he had never heard of, he would scream. Scream loudly and maybe break something. He had a coaster he could throw. That was an option.

“When did you get that?” the man asked.

“Level one,” Micah said, keeping his emotions in check, his face blank.

“Not [Dissettle] or [Dissolve]?”

“Nope.”

He ignored his parents this time.

“Why?” his mother asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Is this ‘Infusion’ rare?” his father added.

“No, no. Not at all. Most [Apprentices] gets it around level 7 or 8, but, uhm, every alchemist needs at least [Dissettle] to make the most common of potions in a workshop. They usually get the spell at level one.”

Micah frowned. So … he wasn’t special? He was just actually missing something?

For some reason, he broke out into a grin and asked to hear about normal alchemy for once.

“[Dissettle]?” he asked excitedly. “What does that do?”

He could guess what dissolve did, probably, but he didn’t know that word. Thinking back on problems he had with alchemy, he hoped it was a Skill that separated patterns into more specific types? It was always such a pain manipulating patterns into doing what he wanted. If he could just slice off the bit he needed, like the butterflies’ colorful wings from the whole that was its entire existence, alchemy would be so much easier.

“Uhm, I could demonstrate,” Mr. Faraday said. “Mrs. Stranya, do you have some oil on hand perchance?”

“Oh, of course,” she said and got up to get it from next to the stove. She handed the bottle to him and he took a quick sip of his water before pouring a liberal amount of oil into the glass. It settled at the bottom and made bubbles that looked like olives under [Essence Sight], where the water and oil wouldn’t mix together.

“[Dissettle],” he then said, still touching the glass. The fluids immediately seemed to collapse into one another, creating a diluted yellow mixture that was pure.

Micah’s eyes went wide, but his parents just looked bemused. How were they not impressed by that?

“Interesting,” his father said. “But how is that a requirement for alchemy?”

“I think young Flowers here understands, judging by his expression,” Mr. Faraday said. “Do you want to try and explain?” he asked Micah.

“Who, me?”

The man nodded.

“Oh, uhm, sure,” he said, facing his parents. How would he start to explain alchemy to someone who didn’t have any of the Skills for it? He needed to tell them the basics, right? Or else they wouldn’t understand.

Start at the beginning. That seemed best.

“So, uhm, what you need to know is— alchemy is basically infusing water with the patterns and essence of nature,” he started. Mr. Faraday chuckled a little so he paused, but the man gestured for him to move on.

“Like how wood burns? You take that ‘pattern’ and infuse water with it, or oil I guess, and then that oil will burn, too. Well, oil burns anyway, but you can still, like, change its properties somewhat, make it burn more slowly or last longer maybe?

Anyway, you can work with more complex patterns to make more complex potions, but then you’ll also have to do a lot of changing those pattern. Like, uhm, if you infuse water with a butterfly’s essence, say, and then with sunlight, instead of the insides and behavior of the butterfly, the two will mix and you get just the butterfly’s colors. Does that make any sense?”

His parents looked at Mr. Faraday and Micah followed their gaze.

“Does it?”

“It does to me, but I think you might be confusing your parents somewhat,” he said. “More than they already were, I mean. Maybe you should try again?”

Micah looked at his parents. His father thinned his lips and nodded. His mother said, “It’s alright. Take your time,” and so he did. Micah took a deep breath and considered it. How best to explain alchemy to someone who wasn’t in on it?

He needed something simple, a good example, and he thought back to the Honey Ants from the Tower. All ants did was work all day long. That meant they had a good pattern of working. But Micah couldn’t use a Tower monster as an example …

“I have something,” he admitted, “but it’s pretty macabre.”

“Out with it,” his father said.

Micah sighed.

“Alright, so imagine you have a [Worker] who carries heavy sacks of flour and goods across the city all day, every day, for his whole life ever since he started working.”

He paused to make sure they were following so far.

“He’d break his back,” his father said with a chuckle.

Micah rolled his eyes but smiled.

“He has a Skill,” he amended himself.

“Skill or no Skill, that man will break his back, son,” his father insisted, and Micah paused.

“Really?”

His parents both nodded quickly, even Mr. Faraday did.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, then let’s say he did it for ten years or so. This [Worker] is in his prime, and then he dies all the sudden. Every day for ten years, this man carried heavy things around his whole adult life. He created a sort of pattern in himself by doing just that, of himself doing just that. Now, if you were to take his dead body and put it in a tub with heated water, and if you used [Infusion] on that water, the pattern would transfer from him to the water.”

His parents didn’t look so amused anymore, but they didn’t say anything either. All three of them were paying attention, so Micah went on.

“Now, if you took his body back out and gave that patterned water fuel, essence — which is magic, basically — and healthy things like meat and vegetables-”

“Nutrients,” Mr. Faraday interrupted him.

“Huh?”

“Nutrients, it’s the word for what our bodies need to sustain themselves, what food is made of.”

“Oh, thank you. Nutrients, then. If you add those, you gave the pattern everything it needs to work on someone else, too. If someone drank that water, they would get the same capabilities as that [Worker] carrying that sack around for awhile, like a Skill.”

“Ten years, it’d be something good, too, like [Strong Back] or [Worker’s Strength],” Mr. Faraday commented.

“If he did it every day for that long it would more likely be [Familiar Burden],” Micah’s mother insisted.

“Really?” he asked.

“I’m quite sure.”

“Hm, how would you decide, Flowers? How would you specify which qualities you get, if you wanted to make the potion do a single thing?”

“Huh?” He didn’t understand why that was important. “Uhm, I’m not sure.”

“Think about it for a moment,” the alchemist offered, so Micah did. He supposed it was a good thought experiment.

After a short moment, he had an idea and grimaced.

“It’s pretty dark though,” he said.

Mr. Faraday just gestured for him to go on.

“I would … cut off head and legs respectively?”

“Micah!” his mother exclaimed.

“What? If you cut off his legs there’s no chance you’ll get anything but his back’s pattern. And if you cut off his head, you don’t have the familiarity aspect of the task. That way, it’s something like [Strong Back] for sure.”

“It was a bad idea to use a person as an example,” his father grumbled. “You could just as well have used a mule, right?”

Mr. Faraday nodded.

“The example aside, as well as his terminology, your son’s explanation is quite thorough. It shows an impressive grasp on the inner working of alchemy, especially for someone his age.”

“What about his terminology?” his father asked, focussing on the negative aspects of Faraday’s praise.

Micah frowned himself. That meant ‘word choice’, right? Like vocabulary?

“Well, it’s pretty archaic to say ‘patterns’ and ‘essences’,” Mr. Faraday explained. “We refer to these things as alchemical properties or qualities. But still, everything else was correct. We alchemists basically take the qualities of nature’s magic and make them liquid. Then we shape them into doing what we want and give them the ingredients they need to achieve that.”

“Nutrients,” Micah reminded himself.

“Exactly.”

“That’s amazing,” his mother said.

“It is,” his father agreed. “But I don’t think that answers why you would need [Dissettle] to do that? Micah said you ‘infuse’ these qualities and he has the Skill [Infusion].”

“Ah, hm. I regret that I don’t have a demonstration for that,” he said.

“It’s no matter.”

“Alright then,” Mr. Faraday said. “You see, alchemists need the three Skills [Dissettle], [Dissolve] and [Infusion] to free alchemical qualities from our ingredients. [Infusion] and [Dissolve] work differently, however. For those two, you need at least as much liquid as you have volume of ingredients and you infuse the liquid with all of the ingredients’ qualities. The end result is often too diluted, too broad in its qualities, too intense, or simply, but most importantly, poisonous.

[Dissettle], on the other hand, frees the qualities of one liquid into another. We use a process called ‘distillation’ to free these oils from our ingredients. We run steam through them in an enclosed container. The oils rise up on the steam and flow down a cooling pipe to be collected in another container. That oil carries the qualities of the ingredients with them. By cutting off only the parts we need before-hand, the legs and head in this example, and adjusting the temperature of the steam, we have much greater control over which qualities we transfer, and by using [Dissettle] we can control how diluted they are in the final product. It’s proven itself to be far more efficient in practice since you can create large batches of oils for storage beforehand.

There is also an alchemical principle that states the qualities of ten ingredients together, transferred as one, are greater than ten times the qualities of one ingredient transferred on its own. This saves us a lot of time and space. Sometimes, putting ten times the ingredients into a tub with more water than their combined volume, for [Infusion] you see, is harder than just letting steam run through those to collect their oils.

Because of this, most alchemical recipes use distillation and [Dissettle] as the basis nowadays. [Infusion] and [Dissolve] are of course also essential for some kinds of potions, but even those use [Dissettle] as a base. Just finding the recipes for such potions would be hard on the open market nowadays.”

“I see,” Micah’s father said, frowning.

His mother was looking out the window, with a considering look on her face.

Micah just said, “Oh.”

Well, that didn’t really change anything, did it? He was used to figuring things out on his own. Discovery was half the fun if it weren’t for the funding restraints.

“Plus, [Dissettle] can do something else that I’ve always found entertaining, and children most often do, too,” Mr. Faraday said with a levity, probably to keep the mood from going sour.

He took the glass of water and oil and started pouring it into the other glass.

“[FIlter Liquid],” he said, and the oil seemed to separate itself from the mixture and pour itself over the edge. What was left was water infused with the essence of olive oil in the one glass, and the separated mixture of the two in the other.

He took the first and started stirring it sloppily with his finger, causing the water to splash and bubble a lot.

“[Dissettle],” he casted while he did and the water started rising out of the glass, turning into mist in the air. The mist billowed and warped as it rose, forming small bubbles that looked like olives around the edges, and even one branch that grew leaves before disappearing again.

“Wow,” Micah breathed in wonder. He tried to pick an olive from the branch and it dissolved in his hand. Could his parents see that, too? They looked impressed.

“An amusing cantrip,” his father said with a smile. His mother even laughed a little, before going back to sipping her tea.

“It earned me most of my tuition when I was young,” Mr. Faraday said, “working as a stagehand for plays in the theatre. Having mist and other various special effects was quite useful for them, and an alchemist doesn’t run out of ‘steam’ nearly as quickly as a Mage.” He made an exaggerated wink to show the pun was intended.

“I was cheaper to hire then, too.”

He smiled, and Micah did him the favor of chuckling at the joke.

“Uhm, but,” Micah spoke up, “couldn’t I just use that distillation thingy to make the oils as well, and then mix them into the water and carry their qualities over with [Infusion]?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” his mother said.

“You could,” Mr. Faraday admitted, “but the end result often won’t be good enough for most recipes. You see, just like oil and water, qualities carried by oil and water don’t want to mix together either. And for some potions, you need the two to be mixed together perfectly, both qualities and fluid, like fire potions. Water doesn’t burn after all.”

He chuckled.

“I made a fire potion with just water,” Micah said.

“You did?” he asked, sounding surprised. “How? Do you have a recipe?”

“I do. Can I go get them?” he asked his parents.

“Of course.”

Micah sped off to his room, to prove Mr. Faraday wrong. Now that his joy at being below average had worn off, Micah felt a little betrayed by the man’s revelations. He’d been making potions just fine with [Infusion]. He didn’t need that stupid [Dissettle] or … well, [Dissolve] might be nice, if it really was what he thought it was and melted solid objects into water.

Plus, if you used this ‘distillation’ like Mr. Faraday said, weren’t you just wasting resources? When Micah put ingredients into a potion, that potion could later call on those ingredients as fuel. Nutrients, he reminded himself. [Dissettle] potions would just be oil, water, and patterns, right? You’d have to spend twice as many ingredients!

… unless the fuel and source of patterns needed to be two different things …

Micah groaned in frustration and ruffled through his hair. He took a moment to take a breath, got his journal and sped back downstairs, determined again.

“Here,” he said when he’d fished out the appropriate page. His father slid the rest of the journal over to himself and leafed through it idly. His mother leaned over to see, too, but they both still paid attention to the conversation.

“Well, it’s more of a firestarter potion,” Micah admitted, “but the water burns in the end. I added crushed coal and wood dust in layers on the bottom and poured in the water slowly, as to not disturb the two. Then I heated it and used [Infusion] while stirring. The dry capsules of the two’s ess- qualities, I mean, uhm got infused and then I had water that acted like dry tinder.”

“Dry?” Mr. Faraday asked, sounding amused. “In alchemy there is no such thing as dry, Flowers. Liquids are our lifeblood. But let me take a look.”

He did and Micah waited anxiously.

“Hm, this honestly doesn’t look like it should work at all. Aside from the proportions that are wildly unspecific — you should use a measuring cup — water infused with just coal and wood won’t burn. Not without some oil mixed in. At least about a quarter, I’d say here.”

“Well, I mean ... it doesn’t work,” Micah admitted. He was just a little disappointed. That didn’t mean he had to act like a child. This man was a font of knowledge, and he didn’t want to waste that. He wanted to learn. Improve. Level. “Not without [Candle] at least.”

“[Candle]? Ah, the cantrip, you mean?” Mr. Faraday asked.

Mican nodded, and he went back to considering his recipe.

“Hm, I supposed if you’re igniting the qualities directly instead of the fluid … still seems like a bad container for it, though. The flames must look weak and sputter, do they not? And you need something else for the fire to catch?” he asked.

“Yes,” Micah said, surprised that the man had guessed it right away. He really did know what he was talking about.

“Well, I suppose you should call it a Candle-starter potion then, and not a firestarter, am I right?” he chuckled, but no one joined in, aside from Micah smiling uncomfortably. His parent didn’t even seem to have heard him. They looked up from his journal, glanced at Micah before looking back to their guest.

“I hope this won’t be a problem,” Micah’s father started, “that Micah only has [Infusion]. He is only level 6 after all. Surely, a [Master] could tutor him these Skills quickly, right? As you can see, our son is very driven.”

He leafed through the pages of Micah’s journal then, showing them to Mr. Faraday, and all the adults looked surprised all the sudden. Why? They were just pages of notes and scribbles, illustrations, half of which had been crossed out because they didn’t work anyway.

His journal was almost full, too, Micah realized. He would have to ask his father to buy another soon ...

He reached the end where Micah kept most of his butterflies, and Micah tried to warn him but it was too late. Some of them fell out and flaked to the table.

“Oh,” his father said and quickly laid the book back down.

He and Micah’s mother started scooping them back up and placed them back on the pages with a delicacy Micah had rarely seen from either.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Huh?” Micah asked.

Had his father just apologized to him? What was happening? Who were these people?

“The age-old problem of any self-trained Class,” Mr. Faraday said. “Of course, once your son becomes an [Apprentice], a [Master] could teach him the Skills over a few levels or so, to make sure he doesn’t miss them. However, the higher level Micah is by then, the longer it would take to do so.”

He turned to Micah with a pained expression on his face.

“It might be wise to not practice any more alchemy until then,” he said. “Or you might run the risk of leveling up.”

“What?” Micah asked, dumbfounded. “Risk?”

“If you level up too much and don’t get [Dissettle] or [Dissolve], it could take months for a [Master] to teach you one of the Skills, and even longer before you can learn the other. You might stunt your chances at getting an apprenticeship, despite how bright you are.”

“But … but that’s still two years away!” Micah protested.

“Micah,” his father said softly. “What the man is saying is only right. I can see now how much you love alchemy, but you have to think of your future. You’ll be fifteen by the time the next school year ends in the Summer. If you work hard, I’m sure you could simply skip the last year of the classroom to get an apprenticeship early.”

He glanced at Mr. Faraday and the man nodded in confirmation.

Skipping a school year? Micah wondered. But only prodigies .... he trailed off, defeated. He was a prodigy. To them at least.

How was this all going so wrong?

“In the meantime,” Mr. Faraday offered. “You could study recipes and instructional tomes, brush up on your jargon, and you can make the potions you’ve already made again and again for practice. Repetition makes perfect after all, but only discovery creates growth.”

Repetition? Healing potions. Cutting his hand for blood. Micah was right back where he’d started. Worse, even. And all he had were a few levels — a hindrance now — and a little bit of loot left to show for it.

He shouldn’t have given Ryan those boots.

No, he should have.

He shouldn’t have to not be allowed to level up for a year!

“Why don’t we take a look at those notes you made and see if we can translate your recipes for distillation, hm?” Mr. Faraday asked softly. He was trying to cheer him up, Micah knew. “We can also try and see if we can translate some of my recipes for [Infusion]. It would be a good thought experiment for a learning alchemist.”

“I’d rather do the first one,” Micah said, pouting. “There’s no point to [Infusion], after all, am I right?”

He had every right to be sad. A year without leveling up, of making healing potions over and over, of his parents boasting about him to strangers, and everyone talking about him behind his back, of him having to sneak around and lie while he was stuck under house arrest. His life was about to become tedious. The only good thing he had to look forward to were Prisha, Neil, and Ryan.

Hopefully, he could start working at the bathhouse tomorrow already. He needed out of here.

“Well, it’s not as bad as that,” Mr. Faraday said. “While almost all recipes have [Dissettle] as their base nowadays, the first generation of alchemists didn’t even know what to do with the Skill back then! They all used [Infusion]. So you could say what you’ve been doing up until now was something like ‘traditional alchemy’. And when you start your apprenticeship, you’ll be learning as alchemists have through time. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

Micah perked up a bit as he said that. It did sound exciting, progressing as alchemists progressed through history, but he didn’t quite understand.

“Why did the first alchemists all use [Infusion] back then?” he asked. “Ben?”

“They hadn’t discovered distillation yet, you see? And as everyone else in society, they were all dependant on the first Tower for —”

Micah’s father cleared his throat loudly, and Mr. Faraday broke off, looked at him, and had a look of realization on his face.

“Ah, but that’s ancient history,” he said, glancing at Micah, and Micah was painfully aware of his left-over bandages and wounds.

Most of his scratches had healed over already, but he still had that scar on his right arm from the fire. Some of the others looked like they might leave scars, too. At least he would look manly from those, one day.

“Why don’t we see about translating these notes?” Mr. Faraday asked.

“Yes, please,” Micah said, to save him the discomfort, and sipped his now-cool tea while his parents watched them work.

They threw in questions every now and again, and Mr. Faraday always made Micah try to explain before he clarified or corrected any mistakes. They got through half a dozen recipes before he had to leave.

From the beginning, Micah thought all the while, beneath the learning and the explaining, the interacting with his parents, playing gofer by making more tea, all the things a diligent young son should do.

From the beginning, his Class even agreed, he was headed towards the Tower.

Whether or not he would secretly do any alchemy in the next year besides—the answer was yes, by the way. Yes, he would—he still had two whole other Paths to explore. A wisp of Tower essence peered through their kitchen window and Micah peered right back at it. Someday, he thought, he would understand.

He glanced at his parents talking quietly with Mr. Faraday in the hallway.

But they wouldn’t.