Suspended in the deep lifeline, the stifling halted. The liquid no longer burned within me, its violet translucency now a soothing wave.

Where is this? I pondered, manoeuvring through the lavender blood with new-born fawn-like movements. My fingers buried themselves desperately into the rim of dirt cratering around the amethystine water. Trembling with weakness, I pulled myself out the mystifying body of water.

Dirt walls formed a rugged dome structure around me, spanning large enough to barely see the far end of the pool. Was this a cave? I was underground somewhere and the darkness blinded me, but I soon noticed a faint light over yonder that beckoned to me.

A muffled sound echoed through the murky tunnel after a couple of forlorn minutes of an exhaustive gait. “-ly!” I heard an archaic, husky voice in the repetitious resonance of the tunnel. “Emily!” the voice resonated again. My heart shook a little when I realised someone called my name.

Me? I wondered. A cascading bewilderment showered the corners of my mind until I grew tired of my two-mindedness. “I’m here!” I yelled out. My throat’s walls quivered in pain.

The absence of light made it difficult to see the man’s face, that is, until he pointed his bent index finger upwards. A soft, yet somewhat bright incandescent light rolled off the tip of his decrepit finger and shadowed the old man.

He leered and observed a rather unique birthmark situated right below my left eye. His eyes interchanged indecisively between my birthmark and my eyes, as if identifying me. A trembling chill grasped onto his eyes and repelled his eyelids. A faint simper then adorned the edges of his bearded mouth. He confirmed something in his mind.

After three meticulous strokes of his greying beard, he held his staff out and made a large circle in the air. The old man effortlessly conjured what appeared to be a portal. I could hardly react, still dazed and unaware of many things.

We travelled through the fuzzy portal and into a small cottage deep in the woods. The abrupt stoppage must’ve shaken my addled brain into action and made me conscious of my nudity. My hands quickly covered those intimate bits boldly displayed in front of the old man, causing a scoff from him. “Please!” he doused his word in sarcasm. “You are no more attractive to me than a toddler. After all,” he coughed, a rhythmic wheezing to it, “you are my niece.”

What? I questioned this situation, but not aloud.

The lanky old man threw a blanket at me for the time being. “The last I remembered,” he scoured around his cottage, “you were just learning to walk.” A soft, wheezy chuckle fled from his lips.

His wardrobe – just a plain straw basket – was unapologetically crammed to the brim with black robes and mantles, the latter dropping right at his elbows. Those were the current raiment he wore, which came as no surprise.

“Wait right there, lass,” he ambled over. He clutched his wooden, serpent-headed staff, “Now I don’t know what girls your age fancy, but I reckon something is better than nothing.”

His bushy, greying beard moved about despite the silence, what was he saying? Suddenly, the end of his staff hit the ground with a quick lift and drop. A bluish-white circle formed with strange symbols filling inside it. Magic? I wondered, all misty eyed, but still a bit sceptical to everything seen and heard from the moment I awoke in the strange liquid.

My memories were blocked by something I could not see, only feel. I didn’t know anything. “Who are you?” I inquired, then realised the more important question to be asked was, “Who am I?”

He turned his head to the side, only watching me through the corner of his eye, “I am Chiron Crescent, your uncle.” Then he blurted, “On your mother’s side of course.” He tapped me on the nose, “And you, young lady, are Emily Crescent. Amnesia is but a side effect of inscription-based teleportation. It will fade with time.”

A high-pitched sound caught my attention, like the whistling of a kettle. Suddenly, a small bit of smoke appeared in the magic circle and coupled with it, a black robe and sandals. Transmutation he called it. It was a process that altered the physical makeup of almost any matter. This uncle of mine appeared a very knowledgeable man, albeit, lonely, by choice.

His hermit lifestyle became apparent to me a few days into my stay. Despite the fact that I was the only person he talked to in nearly a decade, he still unabashedly shunned me when he was working, studying, or meditating. Honest, simple, and hardworking, he didn’t have a single bad bone in his body. I, on the other hand, wasn’t even aware of who I was before I came here, to the land he called, Venreval. I’d never heard of the place before now.

I’d asked him multiple times, why I was teleported here, but he would give no real answer. Instead, he failed to appease my curiosity with, “You’ll remember soon enough.” What kind of person was I?

Being rude to my saviour seemed less than grateful, so I held my tongue for a while. But I longed to have my thirst for this knowledge satiated in some way. And satiated it would be, regrettably, not with the exact information it sought.

Huge, dusty, old books were sovereign to over a third of the already bite-sized cottage. What was I to do, stay inside and wait around for something to happen? I read. The first thing catching my interest was certainly the wonders of transmutation. Much like he did, I yearned to create something, if only for the sheer fun of it. Admittedly, I couldn’t and wouldn’t approve his sense of style – too dark, too drab.

In the coming months, I engrossed myself in the study of transmutation, getting a feel for the properties of every single thing I laid my hands on. Of course, he took notice and helped me along the way, finding more joy in teaching as the days went by. We bonded somewhat, but he still refused to tell me more about myself.

He was quite tanned for one who studied inside for days on end and only went outside to prepare food. He must’ve rubbed off on me because I began sharing his habits like a young child so ignorant of the world would mimic the ones closest.

In a few days to come, I began having dreams of an old house, a barn. In the middle of reading, where dreadful sleep would impose itself onto me, I would receive sudden flashbacks that riddled my brain. There was no logical sequence to them, just bits and pieces of memory. Old images of my past life strung together in a disorganised myriad.

I regained most of my memory after a week or two experiencing those flashbacks and dreams. I knew who I was – the daughter of a lowly farmer. My mom tended to a field of crops and a barn of livestock all on her own. All my dreams, flashbacks, and memories of my previous life led up to strange people clothed in white magician’s robes approaching our house. But my memories would always stop there. I was addled as to why this kept happening. It branded a desire to find out more into me.

I was troubled, quite a bit, until I decided to ask uncle Chiron about my past once more.

“Worry not, Emily,” he said to me with a smile and I let a frustrated grunt out, for I knew exactly where this was going, “all will be revealed in time.”

I pouted, showing a very angry and unsatisfied face to the quite unwanted poetic finesse his aged tongue brought to our conversations. In the middle of storming out the house, he called my name in a higher than usual pitch, “You’ve near mastered transmutation. Took you long enough. Now,” he enchanted a pebble on his desk with a charge of teleportation, “it’s time for you to walk the chemist’s path,” and handed me a small straw-woven basket with a book in it.

“What?” I asked, curious as to why he’d give me the basket.

“Fetch me the herbs,” he coughed, a sickening and time-abhorring cough that often times brought a trail of many others. “I’ve bookmarked the pages, find me the herbs on them.”

And so, my journey to the river began so that I could locate some water thistles and toad’s tongue, the latter being a royal pain to find. But I finally grabbed hold of the slimy yet sticky leaves just before the sun began its fall. “Teleport,” I whispered to the pebble he’d charged and it brought me back home.

I presented him the ingredients he asked for, and whilst watching him grind the herbs to a smooth paste, I wondered something that had to be posed to the sage. “Couldn’t I just pick random bush and transmute them?”

“Why, yes, you could’ve.”

“And you made me look around for them?!” I shouted angrily. He only laughed, mashing the herbs with his pestle.

“Emily, my girl, you can learn two things from that,” he smiled. “One, you should think before you act. There are many ways of achieving what you want, after all. And two, the effort you put in to do something should never be regretted, for when great opposition rises above you, you won’t be encumbered and overwhelmed. You’ll have built a resilience to hardship.”

His sleight of tongue really made me appreciate, or miss even, the beauty of laymen’s terms. I nodded at his lecture forcibly, not wanting to incur another life lesson.

And so, my path to alchemy became my grounds to master the basics of transmutation, as I constantly had to change random and useless junk into the actual ingredients needed to make potions, pills, and the like. It was a lot to learn, and even after I’d finished learning the alchemy book, to my horror, there were many other volumes with greater and more potent creations, however, he disallowed me to read or view them and placed a magical seal on them, forcing the books’ covers shut. How selfish.

I’d grown sick of the smell of herbs, sick of the constant boiling, sick of hearing the clatter of the pitchers, and especially sick of seeing the alchemy table. However, in time to come, contrary to my boredom spurred by repetition, I became more and more relaxed by everything that sickened me to the gut in alchemy. It became a soother to me, something I’d do to take my mind off those erratic memories.

Three more months would make it a year since uncle Chiron started taking care of me. Maybe it was the dwindling immaturity of a girl breaking seventeen, but the wonder we feel as children when exploring still kicked me up on mornings. I left the cottage, making sure to take a teleportation stone with me, wandering aimlessly through the woods. Discovering plants, picking them, examining their properties for transmutation. Anything new to me, I investigated, any place unknown, had to be seen. My lengthy cloak only felt like it held me back. So, this is Venreval.

I’d soon, discover, or more accurately, rediscover a place that would bring me a relaxation unlike any other and yet, fill me with an unbelievably strong, mysterious energy. It was the mountain from whence I came. I walked in, a little spooked by the darkness of the pathway, but a few minutes of strolling brought me to the great pool filled with the strange violet waters.

I set my basket down, walking closer to the crater in which it pooled. Like a moth to flame, I couldn’t help passing my hand through the enigmatic liquid. “What is this?” I whispered to myself, not wanting to have my voice echo and possibly awake something that I shouldn’t awake. Chiron’s paranoia got the better of me in that place.

To the touch, it felt, homey, like it was where I belonged. Strange. Off my cloak went, and my shirt, trousers and undergarments followed. I just had to soak, to sink into the mystifying purple. It was like a massage for my whole body, a rejuvenator, a loving partner. I knew this world of Venreval had many magics I knew nothing of, so my ability to breathe in this strange liquid didn’t set off red flags in my mind. It was probably just a magical spring, right?

I wasn’t sure when, but at some point, in my deep relaxation, I’d fallen asleep and woken up a new woman. I felt revitalized, invigorated, renewed in every way possible and didn’t once bother to ask myself why, for the blindingly good feeling entranced my mind.

I returned to Chiron as fast as I could, but it seemed I had no reason to worry. It was still quite early and the nocturnal hermit was out cold, or at least I thought so. He, along with his black garb went up into smoke and I heard a rumbling voice shower its animosity from behind, “Emily Crescent!” his black silhouette enshrouded by the light coming in from the door boomed, “Where were you?!” the tall and somewhat scary Chiron pounded his staff onto the ground in anger and a bubble of magical power flowed from him, knocking over some books and falling a stool. I was at a loss for words, I’d never seen him so furious.

“It’s been seven days!” he squeezed his staff with such force I could hear it scream.

Seven days? What is he talking about? “But, I-I only left this morning,” I pleaded weakly.

“You test me, girl?! You dare lie to my face?!” He brought his staff down again.

“I’m not lying to you!” I clenched my fists, a little annoyed that he’d think so low of me, “I only dozed off for a bit!”

“Where did you go?” he asked, his voice reaching a lower grumble.

“To that place you found me, the mountain.”

His eyes popped, for a second, the walking lexicon was wordless, then the terror came, “Are you insane?!” he shouted so loud that I was pretty sure magic was involved. “You could’ve died! Don’t you ever go near that mountain again! It’s a miracle you’re even alive!”

He paced about, fuming so much I couldn’t find an opening to insert my opinion, I felt like they’d be pushed away. His staff thudded the ground one last time before he stopped and looked at me to the side, “Do you feel any pain, discomfort, wooziness, or feel like you’re hallucinating?”

“No,” I said, taken aback, “I’m totally fine.”

“How far did you go into the mountain? Where did you fall asleep?” he stroked his beard.

“I don’t know how far I went exactly, but, well. There was this pool of water, I bathed in it.”

“W-wh-when you say pool, what colour was it?”

“A bright purple, it was really relaxing. I fell asleep in it.” I said, the words that would cause the composed wizard to go weak in the knees and fall over, being saved by a table behind him. He remained there, in that awkward position, staring at me. Without a hint of reluctance, he stood up and swiped his staff downward, removing every piece of clothing I had on.

“Hey!” I shouted, covering myself with my arms. His eyes latched onto my body like a lioness stalking its prey, he walked around me, examining me with detailed eyes.

“Remarkable! But, impossible! How?” he spoke to himself, which I’m sure were supposed to be thoughts. He took a hand and opened up my eyelids to see my eyes properly, telling me to look all around.

“Could, it be…” he thought out loud once more. With scanty legs, he dug around his shelves of books and pulled out an old, but obnoxiously large black book adorned with fancy gold metal near the spine and red markings on the cover. He opened it in a hurry, going through the pages in search of something.

You could at least give me something to wear! I quarrelled with him in my mind, taking my old clothes he tore off and stitching it back together by repairing the torn fabrics with transmutation. I dressed quickly, before he could turn around and see me naked yet again, but I had the feeling he really didn’t give a damn. It made me a little self-conscious, like I wasn’t a real woman. I was a little on the chubby side, but I had a pretty face, I think.

“Ah,” he said softly, squinting his eyes to read the text. I didn’t pick up on many of his words, as he often read aloud what he was reading, but soft enough for him alone to hear. He released a lofty breath of air, “Alright, Emily, it is perhaps time I told you the truth behind your birth.”

Those words piqued my ears up. The truth of my birth? Was it not a normal one? What happened? Why was he in such conflict with himself to tell me? What happened? “What? What is it? Am I a princess?”

He laughed at my optimism, “Perhaps. You’ll find out after you master enchanting. Besides, you can’t make more potent pills and potions without enchanting the ingredients first.”

I frowned, extremely disappointed. “I get yelled at for dozing off outside. You remove my clothes without a second thought. You fail to tell me what I wanted to know for so long, yet you still have the heart to do this to me?” I groaned miserably.

“You don’t want to learn it?” he asked, closing up the black book.

“Well, I didn’t say that.” Anything new here was intriguing to me, and learning new things that hadn’t existed in my past was definitely exciting, but I didn’t want to admit that to him.

He stood up, leaving to go meditate outside in nature’s ambience, “Oh, and Emily. You have permission to bathe there anytime you wish,” he said, a stark contrast to his displayed anger from before, “only if you carry a teleportation stone. Should you feel anything strange, or feel unwell, teleport back here immediately!”

“Okay.”

“No! ‘Okay’ isn’t enough. Promise me.”

I promised the old man, not seeing why the mountain water alarmed him as much as it did.

My routine for the next few months was simple. I gathered random, useless garbage, transmuted them into useful herbs or ingredients, enchanted those herbs with what little magical knowledge he passed onto me and made both pill and potion. After they were made, I would enchant once more and the final product would be finished, a double-enchanted pill and potion. After learning the properties of our creations through transmutation, I’d learned that potions were the weaker, less concentrated version of the two forms, but its effects took hold much faster.

A year of this had gone by, with me visiting the pool periodically. Life was comfortable, peaceful, and enjoyable. Until one day, Uncle Chiron had a few guests visit.

They busted the door’s hinges with magic and tore it away violently. Wizards. It was quite alarming. He hid me in the cellar that I didn’t even know existed with such haste that it made me wonder if he was really an old man. On top of hiding me, he gave me a teleportation stone and told me to use it if they discovered the door to the cellar. Whoever they were, he was prepared for them, yet fearful of them.

“Crescent! Where is it?!” one of them yelled, a woman by the sound of voice.

“Don’t you think I’m too old to hide something you want? Don’t you oh-so-powerful mages have better things to do?” He told them, a rather cheeky attitude to people I thought he feared.

“Watch your tongue, Crescent!” she threatened whilst others thrashed the place in search of something.

“We know you’re holding a drake in here. Stop playing games, old man,” one of the wizards said. He had quite a collected side compared to the hot-headed and rowdy woman.

“At least one of you can speak straight. I have no dragon, dragon eggs, drakes, or anything to do with such creatures except for my old books on them. Have a look around and see for yourself. Oh, Mandy, would you like some tea to calm you down? You won’t ever find a man with that flaming mouth of yours.” He spoke to them like this was a regular occurrence.

Dragons? The mythical, winged reptilians I read about in books and heard in tales? Impossible, right? They’ve got to be joking.

I peeped through the cracks in the cellar door and would see three people, two men and the woman Chiron seemed familiar in dealing with. To my surprise, their regalia matched the people I saw in my dreams, to a tee. The same men that looked to kill my mother and I. White robes, blue stripes.

After the ruction, they left. The woman, in her bitterness, threatened to be back. My uncle waited a while, then came to get me. He began packing a backpack, full of books. One of those books was the fancy black one he so doused his time into.

“What are you doing?”

“Sending you away. It’s not safe here anymore.” He enchanted a pair of silver rings and gave one to me. “For when you need to speak with me. Emily, what I’ve taught you for the past year is in extremely high demand. Royal courts, commoners, and everyone in-between would pay with their souls to have a skilled chemist or enchanter. You are both!” he strapped the bag onto me and I stood there, my mind unable to catch up to his pace.

“But you told me I was still a novice. How ca–”

“I lied. I lied, Emily. I’ve never seen anyone master those things as fast as you have. You have, a power, that everyone else would call a curse, but to you, it is a gift. I, cannot explain all of this now.” After he strapped the backpack onto me, he turned around and picked up two things, “This scroll, read its contents only when you’re alone and decipher it. You will find the truth of your birth. Also, you would be wise to learn teleportation, and portal magic.”

He stuffed the scroll into my bag, “No,” I said weakly, “I don’t want to go yet!”

“You must. I’ll open a portal to the mage school, Arcanist Academy.”

“No,” I said weakly, tears welling up. Was I always this emotional? “I won’t leave!” I folded my arms in rebellion.

“I don’t have time for this, Emily! If you stay here, you will be hunted, you will be drained of all your magical power and you will die a dog’s death! I, will not, let that happen!” he rested his hands on my shoulders, “Do you hear me? Nothing can ever happen to you! You’re the only family I have left! Now listen carefully. When you get to the school, seek an audience with Samael Winter and offer to become the chemist, you will live a comfortable and safe life there. Make no mention of dragons or anything concerning them! Now go.” He opened the portal, not even bothering with a goodbye hug and pushed me through it.