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Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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??/??/???? (Legend of Legaia)
The door clicked shut behind Alchemist as he and the others returned. Player One and Beast Boy had both been chatting when the wizard and Kary had found them once they'd finally given up on finding any useful information inside of the defunct fortress.
That had been extraordinarily disheartening. Jette, Cort's right hand man, his 'dragon', he and Cort both were supposedly these brilliant scientists. They'd been two of the critical driving forces behind the first Mist Generator, back when the kingdom they'd served had been at war.
And neither of them had actually expressed any curiosity as to how one would go about reversing the effects of their so-called superweapon.
Either they genuinely weren't very good scientists, which Alchemist was ready, willing and able to believe... or the Mist had been twisting their minds from the word go. Which was actually the option Alchemist was going to go with. There had been some vague notions of researching the Mist in the earlier notes that Alchemist had read through but, as time went by, there were fewer and fewer notations about experiments or numbers and more references to the 'Salvation of the Mist' or the 'Harmony of the Mist'.
By the end? It was downright religious. Also creepy, disturbing and, worst of all, useless.
"What are you thinking, love?" Kary asked as they watched the kids walk into the house. He knew they were going straight for the food.
"...Frustrated," Alchemist admitted to the woman. "By a lot of little things. I plan on getting back to work on a wardstone, but that won't be cured and ready to use until tomorrow. How about you?"
"I'm actually quite satisfied," she told him, a smile on her lips as she looked down to meet his eyes. "I'd never thought to actually find someone who knew the arts of the Fell Blade, and you found a means of surprising me. Did you pursue them just for me?"
"Well... no," Alchemist admitted as he reached out to grab his lover's hand. He leaned back against the closed door and simply listened to the sounds of his artificial nature. "I wanted to learn them, too."
Kary laughed, once.
"...You know, I've heard of a man who mastered a number of such potent arts," Kary began to tell him. "The legends I'd heard claimed that this man, arisen to a god of the blade, wielded three swords at once so that he could strike thrice. Though... nobody knew his name."
"...Cidolfus Orlandeau. The Thunder God," Alchemist quietly said, his eyes blank as he sank into a memory. "He wasn't a god, really, it was just a title. He was... he became something that was more than human as he gave up his flesh to use his spirit as a seal upon a god. He... resonated, I think, with the ideal of Scorpio and took on a form that would fit that."
The man looked up to the false sun, now mostly blocked by the mechanical shell that imitated night and day.
"He was a Sword Saint," Alchemist explained. "With one blade, he called forth holy lightning and radiant light. With another, he could manifest weapons that would specifically target equipment, shattering weapons and armor alike. With his third blade, carried by a tail, he commanded the darkness to swallow everything that was left. The method he used to ascend, it doesn't make someone a god. It's... close, yes. Just as powerful, in some ways. But I think he didn't have to sacrifice his humanity to become a Zodiac Brave."
"I'm not familiar with the 'Zodiac Braves'," Kary told him, a curious tone in her voice.
"I don't understand them all that well myself," Alchemist admitted. "I know that they're connected to a special kind of stone called 'Auracite'. A group of entities, fallen gods -I think-, can use them to manifest into hosts on the material plane. But they can also do more, if they're in the hands of people trying to use them for purposes that don't align with the Lucavi. I recall a girl who used one to resurrect her brother. Cid and two others; a woman named Agrias and a man named Mustadio, used the stones to extend their power beyond any mortal limit so they could seal away some goddess..."
The wizard shrugged and shifted his hand, intertwining his fingers with hers.
"It sounds like there's quite a story, there," Kary said aloud as she thought on what he'd said. "I think I'd like to hear it."
"I've got a copy of the game if you-" The wizard's words were cut off as Kary pulled her hand free of his and pressed one finger against his lips.
"No, Alchemist," Kary said, her words full of playful teasing. "I want to hear it, not play it. Would you tell me the story of these 'Zodiac Braves'?"
Alchemist closed his eyes for a moment as he tried to remember the details. What she was asking for wasn't exactly a short story. At least, not by his standards.
But then, by -her- standards? It would probably be a short, sweet little tale.
"...It all began in a land called 'Ivalice', following the events set in motion by an unwitting bastard child named 'Ramza Beoulve'..."
-----
It took a few days for Alchemist to get together the tools and materials he needed. The ward stones for Secure Cavern were ready to go and Alchemist had spent the prior day working in the kitchen over a smoking stew pot, producing a significant quantity of a potent, dangerous brew.
He'd made batches of Dreamless Sleep in the past, following the directions in a book from the world of Harry Potter, and a more effective potion was listed in the same text.
The Draught of Living Death, an advanced potion, would put the imbiber into an enchanted sleep that they could not naturally wake from. There was a specific antidote to the potion, and Alchemist had a handful of doses of that ready as well, but the mage was fairly certain that Esuna would be enough to break the magic.
Stepping out of the demi-plane in the dead of night, the mage waited by the door for a moment. After several minutes of inactivity, the only sounds being the local wildlife darting about and foraging for food, the man nodded to himself.
Yuffie and Tiffany would both benefit from coming along, from encountering more Seru for their 'Tutorial Equipment' to copy, but...
They would benefit more by not having to see the things Alchemist was about to do.
With a thought and a phantasmal pulse of magic, two Alchemists stood in place. One crouched down into a stable position as he took on the form of the Incorruptus, swiftly shrunk down via Shrink Object, whilst the other disappeared without so much as a pop.
The flesh and blood Alchemist appeared at the workstation underneath of Ratayu. Still locked away and untouched after the horrific undertakings that had already been done, that couldn't be undone. The wizard had looked around the city, a few days prior, and he was fairly certain that it would fade away due to population issues..
Alchemist didn't waste a moment, circling around the massive incubation bay to drop off the four wardstones of Secure Cavern that would mask his activities.
To produce the previous Juggernaut, the mind-controlled king of Ratayu, Van Saryu, had fed countless young women to the machinery that extracted their life-force and fed it to the Sim-Seru. The process had paralyzed the women as they were dissolved but it hadn't left them numb. It was gruesome, it was grotesque and it was, in so many words, evil.
There were a lot of men left in Ratayu of varying ages but women of child-bearing age were outnumbered twelve to one. Van Saryu, despite being innocent of his own crimes, might well be lynched within the next few years. Or else Ratayu would dissolve as the men of working age up and left to try and find a spouse elsewhere. Either way, the kingdom wouldn't exist anymore.
Regardless of the fate of the kingdom overhead, Alchemist actually did have work to do. The man pulled a vial out of his inventory, one filled with thin, red liquid and quaffed it, doing his level best to ensure he didn't actually taste the concoction.
It still felt like it left a trail of grit going down his throat and settled into his stomach like a rock. The man gagged and bent in half, supporting himself with the railing of the platform as he hacked and coughed, his sinuses burning as he struggled to keep from vomiting.
"I think that's the best part of being a clone," a third Alchemist commented as he came into existence, summoned through the Extract of Twin Form. "I don't actually have to taste that."
"Yuk it up, asshole," Alchemist, the original told himself. "You know your role."
"Ooh, look at me!" the extract clone japed, his tone mocking as he cast Bilocation and a fourth Alchemist appeared.
"I've got me a great idea! It'll only kill -another- city if it goes wrong!" the fourth Alchemist said, completing what its creator was saying. In the same tone.
"Just for a chance at making a god damned tick!" the extract clone finished, the mocking giving way to serious criticism. "Gods, if we actually had better options available? None of us would agree to this..."
As one, all three Alchemist's sighed and deflated. Mocking himself was... a self-indulgent habit, honestly, and one that the wizard tended to keep internal.
The clones just gave the wizard an opportunity to voice things and properly hear them. It made them a bit more real, helped him visualize and argue against his own thoughts.
"...Let's just get started," the first Alchemist said aloud as he reached into the inventory to extract a pair of vials.
The extract clones remained silent, but watchful, as they transformed out of the human disguise they'd been created in. Alchemist had expected the platform to groan and complain about the added weight but there wasn't even a single creak.
Both void dragons took a vial in their deathly sharp claws and carefully removed the caps before downing the contents.
"...I jusst ree-lized," one of the two clones hissed as it held the empty vial up to his eyes. "We did not ffaktor in ssize and-"
Alchemist stared as first one dragon, then the other, collapsed to the ground and began to snore.
When he'd made the Draught of Living Death, he'd fully expected it to work without actually thinking about dosage at all. While it was actually a very good question on his own part to ask, Alchemist supposed he now had a functional answer as to whether or not the dose for an adult human would still work on his draconic self.
Whether that was due to the potency of the potion or the near-anorexic form of his draconic form having less mass than most other dragons was an open question, however.
Regardless, Alchemist turned around and began working at the console. Extract of Twin Form didn't level up, didn't benefit from any of Alchemist's perks extending time and the mage had never bothered tracking down the recipe that would double the time limit of any potions he'd made if taken in conjunction. It gave him six seconds of duration per one of his own levels, so the extract clones would only exist for a bit over half an hour. He needed to hurry.
He did have one way around the issue, sort-of, but it would be counter-productive if he used it before the clones were in place.
As the man manipulated the console, a massive tube rose out of the berth. It snaked and twisted through the air as it followed the clunky commands Alchemist gave it until it was situated overtop one of the dragons. The mage spared it a glance to confirm it was actually at the proper angle before nodding and pressing the button that would send it down.
It opened, spreading wide as it latched on to the dragon...
And the dragon got stuck partway in.
"...Oh, for the love of-" Alchemist cursed as the tube made a disgusting sucking noise, part of it flapping up and down as it tried to consume the clone. The man pulled a staff out of his inventory after a quick search and used to poke and prod at himself until the dragon was moving through the human-sized tube like an egg through a snake.
The wizard grumbled quietly as he turned back to the console and watched the screen, ignoring the yellow warning symbols until they faded away as his first clone finally reached one of the dissolution tanks. Pods.
Stomachs.
The man quietly, but effusively, admitted how much he hated the entire process as he manipulated the now flaccid pipe into absorbing the second clone.
That one, at least, didn't get caught.
The tube, though?
Once it got done trying to pass the second dragon like it was a kidney stone, it just flopped over and landed half-on the edge of the berth. It wasn't made to 'eat' something larger than a human and Alchemist's draconic form, skinny and malnourished though it may look, was still several times the size of a person.
If the wizard cared to try and reuse the equipment, he might have tried casting Repair on it. Or, given its organic nature, possibly Regeneration.
As it was?
If the wizard left everything broken and useless by the time he was done?
It would be fine by him.
Stepping away from the console, Alchemist turned around and began to walk down the catwalk and back towards the feed tanks. The first twin clone was curled up in the middle of a giant tank, thankfully comatose. Across from that clone was the other, in the same position. Thanks to Libra, Alchemist could actually see their HP slowly ticking down.
The mage didn't want it to be slow, though.
Extracting a pair of diamonds, Alchemist focused on the dragons as he cast a spell through Wish that doubled the size of both creatures. They expanded, almost to the point where they were pressed against the walls of the transparent bubbles they were trapped in.
It caused the drain on their combined HP pool to quadruple.
Alchemist inhaled slowly, focusing on them instead of what his other half was doing inside of the Juggernaut. He raised his right hand to the air and cast the final spell needed to ensure the clones wouldn't break down.
Stop.
There wasn't a visible change. The dragons were already frozen in place, not even so much as breathing within the strange chambers they were sealed in. But their Hit Points continued to trickle down at a rate that far exceeded what the other, human, Seru Brides had been dissolved at.
Alchemist sighed in quiet discomfort as he pulled a watch out of his inventory and held it up so he could see it and his extract clone at the same time. The drain was... largely insignificant on their absurd pool of life, actually. Not quite one-hundred Hit Points per second.
Still enough to kill an average person in the span of two seconds. And it would kill the clones if he left them alone for...
Seven and a half minutes? Or right close to that, given that the clones didn't have Alchemist's perks, bonuses or equipment modifying their attributes.
The wizard cast Full Cure on one clone, refilling their combined Hit Points, and pulled a chair out of his inventory.
He was going to be there a while.
-----
The other Alchemist carefully navigated around the frozen Seru around the base of the entombed Juggernaut that had consumed Rim Elm.
Compared to his other self, his job was... just as bad, really.
Around the head of the Simulated-Seru was a massive red cone. A barrier, set up by Songi to keep out the Ra-Seru heroes. Alchemist had expected it to fade away considering Songi couldn't exactly maintain it anymore, but...
Well, despite being beaten and no longer in any condition to do anything about it, Songi wasn't exactly -dead-.
The mage had a glut of options for breaking the barrier but one in particular stood out. He raised his right hand into the air as he approached and whirled it about in a circle before thrusting it forward, towards the magical seal.
From the air next to Alchemist, a black rift formed as a Black Blade of Disaster took shape. The ribbon twirled in the air, twisting along imaginary axis before it launched forward towards the barrier.
For a long moment, nothing happened as Alchemist continued his approach.
Then the ribbon of annihilation magic twisted on itself, focusing a point against the shield and spinning. For a moment there wasn't a sound, then it started with a quiet 'grrr' and a bit of crimson light broke off from the mass and evaporated.
From there the grinding got louder and soon enough an actual hole had been cut through the 'impervious' barrier. The watching wizard tilted his head to the side slightly as he considered it before commanding the spell to widen the hole enough to let him through.
Yuffie and Player One would...
Alchemist shook his head in the negative and turned to the frozen, Stopped Seru.
They didn't need to come here. They didn't need to see this.
The mage snapped his fingers and the mass of feral Seru were teleported far to the north, to the empty plains in the heart of the Drake kingdom where one of the Mist Generators had been set up. It was destroyed now, even a cursory glance from the air confirmed that, but it would be an adequate place to store the Seru.
Terra and Mule didn't need to fight or kill an unresisting Seru to copy their forms. Keeping the prisoners within the Juggernaut trapped was just... cruel. Cruel, pointless and wasteful.
Alchemist's Incorruptus form couldn't breathe. It couldn't inhale or sigh in frustration at himself or the situation. All Alchemist could do was shake his head as he passed through the broken barrier and towards the head of the Juggernaut.
For a moment, a brief moment, he was tempted to cross his arms behind his back and stalk towards his objective but...
That would just be foolish. Downright stupid. He was confident, yes, but he wasn't that arrogant!
The mage pondered on the impulse as he came upon the giant head of the Juggernaut, covered over in the same pulsing, crimson flesh as the surrounding environment. If it weren't the peak of the mountain, rather literally, it would actually be somewhat hard to discern.
With just a thought, the Black Blade twisted around him and darted into the gaping maw of the beast. The sticky, tacky flesh didn't so much part beneath the spell as it was dissolved and a loud hiss filled the air as foul, damp air rushed out of the creature's unsealed mouth.
Alchemist gave it a moment to calm down before he looked down into the deep, black hole...
And jumped.
The mage dropped for... what had to be a good fifteen seconds before he reached a platform of sorts. It was squishy, kind of bouncy and coated in a slick, viscous fluid that Alchemist certainly should have slipped upon if he hadn't Fused Flight into one of the Materia empowering his form.
The chamber was pitch black but for a thin column of light that illuminated the mechanical knight frame...
But that did nothing to keep Alchemist from seeing the feral, mad Seru surrounding him. These poor creatures looked like a variety of curious, strange objects. Giant turtles made of steel, absolutely massive gauntlets with a thumb on each side and a trio of fingers between them, and finally was something that appeared to be a rotating, floating pod that silently flew around the mage.
The creatures seemed to be confused. Alchemist was not human, he did not breathe nor did he have a heart that beat. However, he was not Ra-Seru, either. The Seru likely didn't know what to make of him, had no idea what to do about him.
The mage simply snapped his fingers and his opponents disappeared, Teleported to the north to join the others.
Swiping his hand to the side, Alchemist dismissed the notifications he'd gotten about the various Materia in his blade leveling up. Teleport, unlike Stop, did meet the condition to consider a foe 'defeated' even if they were not dead.
He had more important business, deeper within.
During the disgusting trek, Alchemist encountered beasts that looked like giant snakes, flying in the air. Great, man-sized bats with razors for wings. Lions that breathed frigid air and froze the wet, disgusting organs around them. When the man encountered floating bits of metal with numerous eyes suspended among the disconnected junk, he knew he'd found what he was looking for.
"...Hello?" an old, wizened voice called out from the darkness. The voice was filled with desperation and, not at all hidden, pain. "Is someone there? Are you... are you real?"
"I am!" Alchemist called back. "Keep talking! I can barely see down here!"
"Oh, thank Rem!" the voice continued. Alchemist followed it and very nearly froze as the speaker came into view. "Is that Vahn? Have you come to help us!?"
It was an elderly man, well advanced in age. His skin was pale as paper and thick, black veins stood out harshly through his skin. Blank, milky eyes rolled in his gaunt face, searching in the darkness. The man was fused to a pillar of dark red flesh, oozing blood from the point where it met the man like severely infected gum tissue. There was no robe on the man, no clothes like there'd been in the game.
Not that it mattered. From the hips down, the man was covered over by a mound of the Juggernaut's flesh.
Alchemist would bet some very solid money on this, all of this, being the inspiration for the SCP 'The Flesh that Hates'.
"I'm here to help," Alchemist told the man. "I'm not Vahn but I'm here to help."
"What?!" The man leaned forward before gasping sharply at a sudden pain and stiffening straight up. "You- You can't be here! You need to leave! You need to get out before-!"
"It doesn't want me," Alchemist cut in as he pressed one hand against the man's bare shoulder. "But I can help. At least... let me try."
"...Please," the man whispered, begged the wizard. "It... It hurts. Every second in this place is agony. I can feel... I can hear the others. Help them. Just..."
"Just kill me and help them!"
Alchemist would have swallowed heavily if he had a throat. Instead, he had to settle for staring into the man's blind eyes as his free hand clenched and unclenched. He didn't have a jaw to work back and forth, he didn't have lungs to scream out his frustration.
He didn't...
He Refused.
"Just give me one moment," Alchemist whispered as he heard quiet voices in the distance. He opened his inventory with his free hand-
"Daddy?!"
-and froze as he heard a small voice, a child's voice rise above the others.
-----
In the facility under Ratayu, Alchemist pitched forward in his chair, tears burning at the edges of his eyes. The man balled his hands into fists, ripping through the fabric of his pants.
He didn't know if he could free the residents of Rim Elm. Not safely.
Not yet.
But this?
He would do something about this.
-----
"Here," Alchemist told the elder as he pressed a vial against the old man's lips. "Drink this. It should help, at least for now."
The man drank the draught without a word, without a moment of hesitation.
"I can't... taste anything," the man said, his unseeing eyes focused on Alchemist. "What...? What is...?"
Slowly, slowly the man leaned forward as his eyes drifted closed.
For the first time in literal days, the man slept. And, as he sank into the realm of dreams, the pain wracking his body faded in the distance.
"Daddy?" that distant child cried. "Is Vahn here? Did Vahn come to save us!?"
Alchemist wished he didn't have draconic blind sight. He didn't have eyes to close to the horrors that surrounded him.
"Quiet, Nene," a new voice, a woman's voice whispered to the child. "It's just the Seru. They're playing tricks again..."
The man clenched his fists and lifted one foot in front of the other.
He had work to do.
The nightmares would have to wait.
-----
Jinx blinked slowly, her slitted eyes dry and crusty, as she watched the credits play out on the screen alongside little clips of the world after the final battle. Carefully, cautiously, she set down the controller that her claws felt like they were molded around and got up and off the couch.
She had to be careful as she moved to avoid a pyramid of green cans, something she'd once heard Alchemist refer to as 'Gamer Fuel', and there were a few too many dirty dishes lying on the coffee table for her comfort. The dragon felt gross. And greasy.
And like she desperately had to use the bathroom!
After one embarrassing trip that was a little too close for comfort, Jinx looked over the mess she'd left in the living room.
"...How much time did I spend on that game?" the girl asked aloud as she considered the time and effort she'd put in to getting enough Crimson Books for everyone, one percent drops off of endgame enemies, and then leveling everyone up to ninety-nine so she could unlock the door in Ratayu to get the Evil Talisman.
And getting every Seru for all three characters. And leveling all of those Seru up to level nine. And getting the secret hidden Ra-Seru eggs from the minigames.
Jinx thought she used to like fishing.
...Then she destroyed a controller trying to catch enough high-value fish to get the water Ra-Seru egg.
The dragon shrugged and got to work, casting Prestidigitation on basically everything before tossing various bits and pieces into the inventory.
Cans? Cleaned and saved.
Flatware? Cleaned up and put awa-
...Leftover pizza? Cleaned by accident. And Jinx was halfway curious as to what 'clean' pizza tasted like. The slice was almost to her mouth when-
"Hey, have you seen dad?" Yuffie asked.
Jinx scrambled, dropping the clean pizza and making a mess on the hardwood floor.
"...No," Jinx told the girl before bending over to pick up the sorry slice of pie. "Actually? I'm kind of not sure what day of the week it is. Are we back in the other reality?"
"No..." Yuffie drawled out before the girl backed away and pinched her nose shut. "Dad's been hanging out outside the last few days. I thought he finally came in to tell you something."
"What?" Jinx asked as she finally decided against eating the floor pizza and began heading to the kitchen to throw it out. "What'd he need to tell me?"
"That you stink!" Yuffie shouted in a high, nasally pitch. "When did you take a shower? Last week?!"
"Hey!" Jinx shouted in indignation, a rebuttal on her scaly lips before she self-consciously bent her neck down to sniff at an arm pit. "...Just because you're right, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree with you."
"Well you should!" Yuffie yelled, pointing her free hand, index finger exteded, directly at Jinx's face. "You can either agree with Ninja Princess Yuffie! Or you can be- Hey! No-no-hey!"
Jinx, rather than agreeing with Ninja Princess Yuffie, pounced on her instead. And began to rather viciously rub the girl's head in Jinx's sweaty, musty armpits.
"Eww!" Yuffie whined as Jinx stepped off of the girl. "I got Jinx all over me..."
"You think that's bad?" Jinx had to ask, a smirk on her lips. "I got Yuffie all over me!"
"You..." Yuffie growled and crouched, pouncing on Jinx-
Pouncing on the spot Jinx was supposed to be.
"I'm gonna get a shower," Jinx called down the stairs at the younger girl.
"Cheater!" Yuffie cried. "Cheat! Liar! Meanie!"
Yuffie's cries of despair were almost as soothing for Jinx as the hot water she cleansed herself with.
Now clean, the dragon left the house and touched grass for the first time in... days, at least. What Jinx saw brought her up short.
A big, fluffy green werewolf was fighting with Robin while Raven, Starfire and Cyborg were cheering from the sidelines.
Jinx kind of wanted to ask.
Jinx also kind of didn't want to know.
Instead, she just opened the door of the demi-plane and stepped on out. The sun shone overhead, birds were singing, flowers were blooming and Jinx... smelled something cooking? Looking around, she didn't see anything but, following her nose, she quickly came across a small camp situated nearby but just out of sight.
"Yo."
And, sitting on a small folding stool, was Alchemist. The man had a notebook on his lap and looked noticeably tired.
"Alchemist," Jinx greeted as she looked around. He'd set up a tiny shed and had a grill next to it, on which sizzled a slab of beef. "What's going on? Why aren't you in the demi-plane?"
"Been doing some experiments," the man told her, in oddly high spirits. "Things I don't really want to get the others involved in."
Alchemist stood up and waved for the girl to follow him as he walked through a thicket. Curious, Jinx followed him.
What she found just a bit beyond where he'd been set up made her pause, however.
"You... haven't taken up masonry, have you?"
There were about two-dozen statues, in varying stages of 'destroyed', that vaguely resembled people. If they were small, ugly and had mouths full of massive fangs.
"I have to use magic to cheat," Alchemist admitted as he waved to the petrified remains of dozens of goblins. "I think I've got the expressions down, at least."
"Hah," Jinx fake-laughed. "Ha. Could I get an explanation? Please?"
Alchemist exhaled loudly in an almost laugh at her reaction.
"I've been trying to figure out how to remove people from the Juggernaut," Alchemist explained as he pointed at some of the more intact goblin statues. "It's... been a process. Turns out that I can't just teleport them out, even using Wish. The spell tries to target the Juggernaut, too. And, I mean, I could teleport the whole thing but... Where would I even put it?"
"The moon," Jinx fired off without a second of hesitation.
"Eh," Alchemist sounded out, disagreeing with her. "I've been thinking of putting a palace full of monsters and crystals on the moon. And I just don't think the meat aesthetic would fit."
"...So, what's with the petrifying?" Jinx asked as she pointed to... "And why don't any of them have legs?"
"I'm not just going to leave a bunch of corpses to rot," Alchemist said with a shake of his head. "I've got them organized so I can reference the damage that was inflicted when I cut them loose from the Juggernaut, which is also why none of them have a lower half."
Alchemist inhaled deeply through his nose and turned around.
"Come on, food's ready," the man told her as he started to walk back. The trek wasn't silent, there was too much life in the woods for that, but it was companionable.
"...Couldn't you, like, Wish they were better?" Jinx asked once they'd gotten back to Alchemist's small campsite.
"I tried," Alchemist admitted as he pulled a few plates out of his inventory. "Wish didn't work, not for that. The Juggernaut is a Legendary creature, which gives it a lot of protection against reality manipulation. Combine that with the fact that it's filled with the manifested will of an entity that the local god couldn't kill, a creature that the Juggernaut's controller was intimately connected to..."
Alchemist went silent for a moment as he cut the steak in half and pulled a lid off the side of the grill, revealing a handful of roasted vegetables which he began to split across both plates.
"It's not a matter of spell resistance," Alchemist continued to explain. "Or piercing through it with raw magical power. It's... trying to use Wish to fight against a thousand years of momentum that's backed up by the collective belief and fear of the people living in this world."
"...And carving people up is a better choice?" Jinx asked as she accepted her plate.
"With a combination of spells keeping them alive and a potion keeping them comatose?" Alchemist asked, sort of. It sounded rhetorical to the girl. "I'm pretty sure I've got the right order of operations figured out to make it painless and functionally seamless. I just want to run it through a few more goblins before I'm willing to test it on a person."
Jinx jabbed the fork he'd given her into a cube of meat and watched as red fluid was squeezed out.
"...Are you actually ready to do all of that?" she asked. "Cut someone apart to help them?"
"...No," Alchemist quietly admitted. "I'm really not."
Somehow, Jinx didn't have it in herself to blame him.
