The two men and Felix moved back as Thom Green, three-star alchemist and Felix's adoptive father, made his way towards the patient. His very presence commanded obedience, the treatment room was his domain and others need not speak up or interrupt unless he prompted them.

“Tell me exactly what happened”.

Despite his panic, Felix recounted the events in a precise fashion, his hard work during his apprenticeship showing its fruits. He explained the origin of the wound, the unexplained overnight turn for the worse, his initial diagnosis, the antidote he administered to the patient as well as the way she had reacted.

Upon hearing the account, Thom paused for a second and then hurried to the shack. He was back half a minute later.

“Tell me Felix, can you think of any poison that causes the victim to suddenly lose all heat and die of hypothermia?” he asked, while mixing a green concoction in a jade mortar using a golden pestle.

“Death’s Kiss”, answered Felix immediately but then had a pensive look. “Death’s Kiss is a fast-acting poison, and the patient has been sick for a while, that can’t be it”.

Thom finished mixing the concoction that Felix now recognized as the antidote to Death’s Kiss. While applying the antidote to the young lady’s wound, he continued instructing his son, “Think about it, you have all the pieces to the puzzle. This level of difficulty is what you would expect on the two-star alchemist examination, but I believe you can come up with the solution on your own”.

Every patient was a teaching opportunity in Thom's eyes and this had allowed Felix to learn much.

As Felix was lost in thought and going over the possibilities in his head, the patient regained color in her face and her breathing stabilized. Thom put his fingers to her wrist and verified her pulse. Satisfied with the results, he turned towards the attendant.

“The young miss will be just fine”, he said with a smile.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” replied the attendant, his face similarly regaining color after having been drained of it from worry. He moved to the side of the young woman to check up on her.

“What is your name and role in the Toph household?” asked Thom, interrupting the moment of relief. His tone was serious and somewhat confrontational.

“I am Fabian Worchester, head butler of the Toph household”, answered the attendant, with a certain measure of pride. The Toph family was a minor noble family in charge of Reisberg. As a butler, he had the highest rank amongst the many attendants of the family. Furthermore, he was one of the most trusted of Frank Toph’s men, he had after all been charged with the young Lady’s well-being while the Master was away.

“Very well, considering your position, I can tell you this information and you can relay it to Master Toph,” Thom paused for a second, looking towards the carriage-drive who excused himself. Thom the continued, “the young Lady was poisoned using Death’s Kiss, a banned poison which is uncommon but not impossible to find in the black market.”

“As your son said, isn’t the Death’s Kiss a fast-acting poison?” asked the butler, confused but also worried. The urgency of the situation had stopped him from thinking about the fact that the young Lady in his charge had been poisoned. Now that she was fine, the realization that this was no mere spider bite but something much more sinister was dawning upon him.

“The Death’s Kiss is indeed a fast-acting poison”, interjected Felix, excitedly. His happiness at figuring out the mystery caused him to forget the rather dark nature of the current situation. “However, Death’s Kiss can be cured rather easily provided one has the correct antidote. If one does not have the antidote on hand, the patient’s situation can also be momentarily stabilized with various ingredients." He paused for a second, his eyes looking up as he was organizing his thoughts. "One of those ingredients is blue lotus powder. Furthermore, blue lotus powder has a negative reaction with Putrid Spider Poison. Finally, red lotus powder, which is used in the antidote for Putrid Spider bites is an ingredient that dominates blue lotus powder. With all this information put together, the sequence of events is quite clear.” Felix looked towards his father, who gave him a smile and nod, indicating he should continue. “The patient was first bitten by a Putrid Spider, that much is clear. Afterwards, at some point, she was poisoned with Death’s Kiss. To temporarily halt the poison’s effect, blue lotus powder was given to her, by either someone else or herself. This caused the Putrid Spider poison to activate and her fever to spike, which is why you had to rush her here. Upon giving her the antidote to Putrid Spider poison, which contains red lotus powder, the Putrid Spider poison was deactivated but the blue lotus powder which was holding the Death’s Kiss poison back was neutralized, which caused the patient to rapidly deteriorate into a death-like state, at which point my father arrived.”

The butler was silent for a moment, taking in the information. Felix looked towards his father and could see a proud smile on his face.

“I must leave at once and send a missive to Master Toph”, Fabian said. He hesitated for a second and then continued “I will leave the young lady in your care Master Green and will hurry back as soon as I can. You can expect me this afternoon”.

“She will be awake and healthy by the time you return; I can assure you of that”, answered Thom.

The butler looked at the patient one last time before hurrying outside. He called out to the driver who had moved to the other side of the road so that no one would suspect him of attempting to listen in to a conversation not meant for him. The sound of the carriage leaving was soon heard.

“You did well son”, said Thom.

“Yeah, I almost killed a patient”, answered Felix, thinking of how close to tragic the situation had been. The earlier elation at solving the mystery of the poisoning was completely gone.

“Listen son, you did everything according to book and performed much better than can be expected of an apprentice”, his father said, attempting to reassure him.

“Much better?!”, shouted Felix, “I almost killed a patient today! I lost the flame, I lost my cool and couldn’t act anymore, I froze under pressure, I choked! If I had kept the flame up, if I had concentrated, I would have been able to piece the puzzle together much earlier. Instead, I choked and if you had not showed up the patient would be dead at my hands!”

“Not at your hands, at the hands of an assassin, of a murderer. You were not the one who poisoned her.” Thom said, seizing the shoulders of his adopted son with force. Felix averted his gaze, ashamed, but Thom continued. “Look at me son, look me in the eye.” He paused as his son turned his gaze towards him. “You will make mistakes and because of those mistakes people will be hurt and may even die. That is the truth of our profession. All you can do is make sure those mistakes are not caused by negligence or lack of preparedness but because the situation is something you have no control over. All you can do is train. You lost the flame? Listen son, being able to maintain the flame under this type of pressure is something only a two-star, seasoned alchemist would be able to do. You underestimate the degree of your abilities greatly! You have studied under me for so long, yet you do not know how rare a talent you are. I have never brought this up because I did not want to you to become arrogant. I wanted you to work hard and that is why I praised your diligence instead of your talent.” He paused for a second, hesitating a bit before continuing in a quieter tone. “I am a three-star alchemist but only because of certain things I do not wish to discuss. When it comes to knowledge, I have reached the level of a four-star alchemist. You measure yourself against me but in the entire country of Astra, the highest ranked alchemist is four-star. You have already far surpassed the average one-star alchemist, to say nothing of the average apprentice. Very soon, sooner than you think, you will reach a point where I have nothing left to teach you and will have to embark on a journey, a journey which will lead you to greater heights than I have ever reached.”

‘A journey that will lead you to learn more about your origins’ Thom thought as he looked at the pendant with a sword and leaf around Felix’s neck.

Felix was stunned, not knowing how to react.

“Go for a stroll in the forest, go clear your mind, I will take care of the patient. And remember," his father paused, to drive the point home, "if ever a day comes where a patient dies on you, if you were prepared and diligent, then it is not your fault. Death is part of this life, we are humans, striving to do our best, we are not God."

Nodding, Felix left and headed towards the forest.

---

The sounds and scent of the forest soothed him as thoughts whirled through his head. Thoughts of what his father had said, thoughts of what the future held, thoughts of his goals and aspiration, thoughts of his friends. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t a bit proud at being told he was special, talented. He also knew how dangerous such thoughts were, how dangerous arrogance could be. He thought of leaving his town and father behind while it terrified him, it also awakened something in him, a longing for adventure. The furthest he had ever been from Greenville was Reisberg, and even that city seemed impressive in his eyes, though he knew it was nothing compared the major cities of Astra, to say nothing of the capital, Sirius. Lastly he thought about losing a patient. He wondered if his father had ever lost a patient before. He knew very little about the life his father had lived before coming here, but he did know that as a three-star alchemist it must have been eventful. For as long as he had been old enough to remember, the only patients that had died under his father's care in this village were a few elderly patients, but they had come to his father for palliative care, for any small measure of help his father could provide before they undertook the 'first step of their next life' as his father called it, though Felix preferred to call it death.

He stayed outside, lost in thought for a period of time, until hunger brought him out of his reverie, and he decided to head back. He had not eaten since before treating the patient and both the early morning training as well as the tumultuous events had left him famished.

As he got closer to his house and was about to enter it, he paused, hearing a conversation ongoing.

“… with your knowledge and skills, it surprises me you would make such an elementary mistake. Don’t! Don’t let me know anything, I am in no position to help you, you probably know that better than I do. If your father can’t protect you then there is nothing I can do, but I suspect your father will investigate and take care of the situation.”

Felix walked up closer to hear better but in doing so made some noise and the conversation stopped immediately. Not being able to listen in anymore, he decided to walk in, doing his best to pretend like he never had any intention of spying and was just arriving.

“Ah Felix, welcome back. This is Julia, she has woken up and is doing fine, as expected,” said his father.

Felix looked over to Julia. She was looking back him. She was very beautiful, but there was something in her eyes akin to disdain, which Felix thought almost completely destroyed the image he had made up in his head previously. She had seemed every bit the kind princess earlier but now seemed quite snobbish.

“I am glad to see you are doing well,” said Felix with a smile.

“Yes, thankfully Master Thom was able to heal me,” she replied, somewhat curt, emphasizing the words ‘Master Thom’ as if to imply that Felix had not even an ounce of credit in her recovery.

Sensing that Julia did not seem to think much of him or want to talk to him, Felix turned towards his father who was sporting what Felix could only describe as a wry smile. He turned back to Julia, while doing his best to maintain a smile. Being professional with difficult clients was part of his training and though she was standoffish, this could hardly be described as dealing with a difficult client.

“I am glad you are feeling fine. Now if you will excuse me, I shall fix myself a quick lunch and go train a bit”, Felix said. Not waiting for an answer, he headed to the kitchen before leaving his home once more.

---

Felix's days did not usually have two training sessions, but sometimes his father needed the house to himself and when that happened Felix would simply train instead of assist his father.

While hitting the training posts to practice his form and strengthen his body, Felix kept wondering about the snippet of the conversation he had overheard. ‘It seems that my father knows about more about the situation than I do, it also seems like our patient has a certain skill set that should have allowed her to escape her current predicament. Is she also an alchemist’s apprentice?’

As was his habit after studying new material or assisting his father, Felix reviewed the whole experience internally. He had been too overwhelmed to do so earlier, but now that he had, he found that the main weakness in his performance was his failure to maintain the flame. This had caused him to be unable to find the solution to his patient’s case, even though all the necessary clues were there. This type of failure was unacceptable to him.

The sounds of fists and legs hitting wooden posts could be heard for a while longer, until Felix had exhausted himself. Although Felix had always preferred mental cultivation, there was something healing about exhausting himself physically. He sat down to cool off and then headed home, skipping concentration practice. By the time he had arrived, the patient was already gone. He opened the door to the living room and found his father seated on his favorite chair.

“I’m home” Felix greeted.

“Welcome home son. How was your training?” his father replied with a smile.

“Good, I guess, all I did was punch and kick until my energy ran out.”

“And afterwards... no mental training?”

“No… after my failure earlier I was afraid to”, Felix replied, slightly embarrassed. That was the truth, Felix was afraid that something had went wrong and he would not be able to reach the flame or even absorption ever again.

“Go ahead then, no need to worry, I think you might be pleasantly surprised instead” replied his father.

Somewhat hesitant, but trusting his father, Felix sat down in the half-lotus position and concentrated on his breath. To his relief, he immediately achieved absorption. He then proceeded to try to reach the flame, a step that would usually take a couple minutes when he was at his best. This time, he reached it instantly which left him shocked.

“I’ve… I’ve reached mastery of stage two?” he exclaimed; disbelief evident in his voice.

Thom smiled at his adoptive son. “This is the power of experience. Had you not been thrust into a situation where you had to perform above your current comfort zone, then it may have taken years yet for you to reach this level of proficiency. This is why cultivators do not stay home and practice all day but head out into the world, progress can only be made when one pushes his limits to the edge.”

Felix remained silent, overwhelmed by the immensity of the progress he had just made, without even knowing it! He had been at this stage for months and months, barely progressing and now he had mastered it. Furthermore, he had already been way ahead of his peers and even most adults and now he had skyrocketed past everyone, reaching the level of the most proficient adults in town. As far as he knew, only his father had reached the third level of mental cultivation in town.

“It seems the time for you to leave has come sooner than I expected. I will make preparations to have you join the Green River Sect. Progress in your mental cultivation and alchemy will become increasingly difficult without real life experience to back it up. Your foundation is stable enough, much more than enough," his father said, calm and resolute.

“But… I thought…”

“That it would be a while longer before we parted? So did I, but you have progressed further than I thought and the entrance exams for the sect are coming up,” his father sounded sad, “there is no time like the present, as they say”.

Felix did not say anything in response, but the pain of potentially leaving his father was apparent on his face.

“You are destined for greater things than you know,” Thom said, glancing at the pendant around Felix’s neck, “if you stay here, I could make you a three-star alchemist, perhaps even a candidate to become one of the rare four-star alchemists. If you go out into the world… it is hard to say where your limit lies”.

Felix remained silent, pensive.

“Now go get some water and boil it, supper won’t make itself,” said his father with fake cheer.

---

A few days later, Felix learned that he would be leaving for the Green River Sect entrance exams in less than a month. It was a sect that focused mainly on martial cultivation but had an alchemy branch to which he would be applying. The sect mainly recruited from the ten or so surrounding cities, of which Reisberg was one of the largest, as well as from the hundreds of smaller towns surrounding those cities. It was one of the top five sects in all of Astra and certainly the best option in Felix's province. The competition was quite fierce, his father had told him that they possessed artifacts capable of measuring both mental and martial talent and that they also tested general alchemy knowledge during the entrance examination.

Since learning and accepting that he would soon leave the place he had called home for the past 16 years, Felix had surprisingly felt unburdened and excited. He had told his friend Reese and the rest of his classmates about his upcoming departure. While sad, they had been supportive and everyone had been having a surprisingly good time during training, with lots of laughter to be had.

Having now reached mastery of the flame, Felix had wanted to learn what to practice in order to attain the third stage of mental cultivation, but his father had told him no one could help him, that it would come to him eventually if he kept learning and growing. The only information his father had volunteered was that the third stage was called Illumination and that as far as he knew it was the highest stage of mental cultivation and needed to be attained by one's self.

Felix’s daily routine still consisted of early morning practice followed by studying under his father. Morning practice had changed however, as Felix would access the flame as soon as martial cultivation started and would then practice martial cultivation during the entirety of training, all while maintaining the flame. This had three benefits. Since he was spending the time normally allotted to mental cultivation training his martial arts instead, he was naturally making more progress than usual. Furthermore, the quality of his training was enhanced immensely, as training with the flame allowed for intense concentration and purpose. Felix was not sure if it was his imagination, but the rate at which he absorbed qi while training seemed to increase when he was holding the flame. He did not know, but this type of training was usually done only by advanced practitioners of the later stages of martial cultivation. Mistakes in his form and breathing that had remained hidden were now as obvious as bonfires in the middle of the night. Finally, it was extremely exhausting to maintain the flame, a state in which his potential was ignited to it’s maximum. This allowed him to train both his mental and physical endurance.

Felix was able to access the flame instantly but the amount of time he could spend in it was still limited, although improving every day. He had always been among the worse when it came to martial cultivation in his cohort, but he was quickly catching up and if he were to keep his pace, would probably reach stage two before any of his peers.

Unlike mental cultivation, martial cultivation had five stages which did not have particular names. Martial cultivation consisted of strengthening the body by absorbing the qi present in nature which could be done through physical activity. The stages one through five did not have any qualitative changes but were gauged simply by the physical strength of a person. The five stage convention was adopted throughout Astra but was somewhat arbitrary. Another popular convention was to refer to the entirety of stages one through five as preparation. Real martial artists were those who had trained their body to a point where it reached it's limits, at which point natural qi would accumulate in a person's mind and form a small well. Those who had succeeded in doing so were called Qi Cultivators and were able to accomplish inhuman feats. There were no Qi Cultivators in Greenville or Reisberg, except the rare passerby. They instead were found at the top level of sects, or of major organizations that spread throughout the continent, or among nobles of the capital. Some of the larger cities had a Qi Cultivator as a governor but Reisberg was not nearly important enough for that.

The days passed by quickly and happily, the events with Julia’s treatment slowly becoming nothing more than an interesting memory as the first days of autumn were approaching. Felix had been curious at first, a part of him still was, but he figured that the political intrigue of rich families had nothing to do with him. He was, at the end of the day, just a country boy who liked alchemy and nothing more.

A week before the day of the entrance exams, early morning, Felix was preparing to set off. His father had given him ten whole silver crowns as well as his own horse, Grace, a rather elegant and proud gray mare. His father had called it an advanced birthday gift. His friends as well as a few townspeople had accompanied his father to send him off. Even the mayor had come to say a few words, after all it was not every day that a Greenville resident set off to attempt to join the Green River sect.

“Be brave, be true to yourself, don’t be too trusting of anyone in the cities or the sect. The people of our town are kind, but the world is vast and dangerous,” Thom said, sighing, his hands clasped around Felix’s shoulders, a hint of chagrin in his voice.

Felix nodded, eyes teary but jaw firm, resolved not to cry.

“You can trust Master Urnus, head of the alchemy branch in the sect. He is an honest man, and his knowledge exceeds mine.” Thom paused, smiling, “Now go! Say goodbye to your friends and depart. This is a joyous occasion, the beginning of your journey”.

Felix gave him a halfhearted smile and turned to his friends. The normally jovial Reese was bawling his eyes out, crying loudly which drew good-natured mockery from the surrounding villagers. Felix hugged his friend, not knowing what to say. He drew back and looked upon everyone, standing tall and giving them his bravest smile. He caught a glimpse of Sarah, looking as lovely as ever, positioned towards the back of the crowd and smiling wistfully. Nothing had every happened between them, nothing more than a few glances and shy smiles, but somehow, he imagined that he could feel her regret and he thought that she might feel his.

Felix sighed, turned around, and mounted his horse, he looked at the crowd once more, his gaze meeting his father’s, who gave him a reassuring nod, and then Felix turned around and set off.

As soon as his back was to the crowd he burst into tears, but he did his best to stand tall, to prevent his shoulders from shaking and not to make any audible noise. He did not look back once, not until Greenville was well out of sight.