Death Cap - Thirty-One - Arthur's Alembic. Alchemical Supplies for the Insane Mycologist

Arthur’s Alembic. Alchemical Supplies for the Rarified Gent. I thought the name of the shop was a bit of a mouthful, but that seemed to be in vogue when it came to store names, at least from what I’d noticed.

I pushed the shop’s door open a little, noticed the bell mechanism above, then slipped in side-ways without opening it enough to make them jangle. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to make noise as it was... well, I was hoping to not make too much of a fuss. This wasn’t a candy shop, someone my age didn’t belong in here.

The smell hit me before anything else. I wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, but it made an old memory flash to the forefront of my mind, of one of those make-up and perfume kiosks in a pharmacy somewhere, where seventy-year old ladies would chatter together next to huge displays of colognes and perfumes.

This was different, of course. There was certainly a perfume-y smell or five, but there was also some more earthy tones, as if someone had emptied an entire spice cabinet onto the floor.

The shop was a claustrophobic mess of shelves and tables with glass domes covering all sorts of strange items. From glass ampules of brownish liquids to what I recognized as old medical kits.

If there was a system to the way the shop was organised, I wasn’t privy to it.

I walked over to one table filled with angled tin boxes with glass covers. Each box had a few dried herbs within, their prices written on a bit of paper next to the names.

The numbers had me wincing. Two shillings a gram for... Dried Dragon’s Hibiscus? Even looking at the stuff was straining my budget.

I backed off and started to move deeper into the shop. I was looking for something specific. Maybe one day I’d have the resources to gawk at all the neat equipment they had--even if it all looked horribly anachronistic--but that wasn’t today.

The back of the shop had a long counter behind which sat rows and rows of bottles on shelves. That, at least, reminded me a bit more of a pharmacy back in the before. The ads plastered to the walls were a bit dull, and there was more wood than plastic and stainless steel, but the idea was still present.

I hadn’t found any mushrooms so far, which was annoying. The place had a second floor, but the stairwell leading up was blocked by a length of velvet rope and I wasn’t sure if I could just go up there. It didn’t help that the upper floor was dark.

I moved around the ground floor some more, but my search proved pretty fruitless. The signs out front hadn’t been wrong, this place mostly dealt in tinctures and poultices and other household things. One section had cleaning supplies!

What good was bleach and lye to someone like me?

Sighing, I looked up at a whole rack of ladies hygiene products and grimaced. I had a lot to say about the world I was from, but at least consumerism was good about one thing, and that was advertising stuff. I don’t think they could make things less appealing here.

I moved on. I didn’t have to worry about that kind of stuff for a few years yet. Something to look forward to, I supposed, and all the more reason to look for magical solutions to all of my mundane problems.

“Oh?”

Suppressing a jump, I turned to find a middle-aged man staring at me. He wore clean slacks and a button up, with an apron over his front which had a few pockets sewn into it for some tools and notepads.

“Hello, sir,” I said. I didn’t want to look suspicious, or out of place, so the best thing I could do was look as if I belonged here. “I’m presuming you work here. Are you Arthur?”

The man shook his head and smiled. I think I landed on a familiar topic. “I’m his son, actually. Terrence Arthur.”

“Hello, Terrence. Wait, your family name is Arthur?” I asked. I think he wanted to get my name out of me there, but if given the opportunity to talk about themselves first, people tended to do so.

“It is! Strange, I know,” he said. “Now, how can I help you?” He glanced at me, then at the nearby rack of hygiene products and it was obvious he was making a concerted effort to be the friendly professional.

I casually stepped away from that section. “I’m looking for some materials,” I said. “Specifically, mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?” he asked. “Oh! We do have some herbicides. Did your parents send you here for gardening supplies?”

I shook my head. “No, but thank you. I’m genuinely looking for mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms.”

I nodded. “Or any other sort of fungi,” I said.

“Little miss, I don’t think you’re looking in quite the right place,” he said.

I pouted. “Yeah, I figured. Do you know where I could find that kind of thing?”

Terrence quirked an eyebrow. “It would depend, I suppose. The marketplace has all sorts of delicious mushrooms you can eat, I’m sure. I would strongly advise against picking random mushrooms up. Some of them can be quite dangerous.”

“I know,” I said. “Look. I’m an herbalist. It’s my class. And I’m looking for mushrooms that have already been plucked.”

“An herbalist, huh? Well, I suppose that would make someone curious. A bit young for a trade like that, aren’t you?”

“Is there an age?” I asked.

He actually nodded. “Yes, obviously. If you wish to join the Alchemist’s Guild then you must be in your majority. Though they do have probationary and junior members from the age of thirteen and up. I’m guild accredited, of course. The pharmaceutical arts share much in common with alchemy, though some members of the Guild of Practical Medicines disagree.” He shook his head, as if he’d just noticed he was rambling. “Anyway, come back in... a decade or so.”

“I can pay,” I said. “Look, I don’t need a million samples, I don’t even know what you have. Can you at least show me your stock?”

“You wouldn’t be able to buy it without a guild permit,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “I know how bribery works. Now, seriously. I don’t need the freshest materials either. I’m just looking for a few effects in particular.”

Terrence crossed his arms. “You’re lucky I don’t have any other clients or I’d have you out already.”

“But you don’t,” I pointed out. “It’s midday, and my coin spends as well as anyone else’s.” I reached into my pouch and pulled out a few coins. I made sure to have the two pence on top of the small handful I showed. It probably wasn’t too much for this guy, certainly less than some of the items I’d seen, but he didn’t know that it was all I had. “Fancy permit or no, coin is coin.”

Terrence narrowed his eyes at me for a long time, then he started walking to the back. “Follow me,” he said.

He undid the velvet rope leading up the stairs and I followed him to the shop’s second floor.

This one was a lot more spacious, with every wall covered by cubby holes that had little cases in them. Those cases had designs on their sides. Etchings of flowers, of animal parts, and most interesting of all, of mushrooms.

The back wall was strange, a big wooden contraption that I only realized was a massive passive cooler when I got closer.

“How is all of this organised?” I asked.

“That’s something you’d learn while going through the process of getting a permit,” he said. “Here, these are the fungi, most are powdered, of course.”

“Do you have any that are sold whole?” I asked.

“Whole? Why would you want that? The guild makes a point of discovering which part of a plant has the most potent effects.”

“Yeah, but it’s the spores I want,” I said.

He looked confused at that, but then he rose to the challenge and pulled some boxes from their cubbies. “I think this is all you’ll find that isn’t chopped up and cleaned.”

I had a whopping three options placed before me, boxes with labels on their sides that, when opened, revealed mushrooms sitting in little glass jars.

Stockholmes Flesh Eater, Finnegan’s Stinker, Seb’s Bells read the boxes.

I picked the first, the Stockholmes’ Flesh Eater and inspected the little glass vial it was contained in. The mushroom wasn’t anything special, a small grey button-shaped thing with some faint white markings on its cap.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom that grows on flesh, though it prefers the flesh of undead creatures and will grow with startling speed on those. If consumed whole it will make the eater more resistant to necrotic influences.

“Oh, now we’re talking,” I muttered.

***