"Nico" | Atypical Alchemy

The moment the sun was done with rising, Nico was walking out the door. He had barely slept last night, thinking about ratios and ingredients and arrays. There was so much to think about, so much to do, and in a way, he was quite excited for what was coming next. He had some big plans for that night, big indeed... but first, he needed to procure the ingredients for the first stage.

He knew an arcane market was open that day, a few blocks away from his house. They usually showed up once a month, selling all kinds of things an arcanist could find useful, regardless of which of the three arts they practiced. Walking down the stalls selling forging implements and cogs, or different styles of grimoires and inks, and even some that sold alchemical materials, but none were what he needed.

After walking for at least one hour, he finally spotted a vendor that seemed to sell exactly what he needed. He approached it, fiddling with his own bracers as he examined the items on sale, before turning to the person at the counter. “Hello, good day, would you happen to have any... bars of lead on stock? It's for a new formula I'm trying out for... uh...” He snapped his fingers a few times as if trying to force a memory. “What's that thing you put on walls to dye them?”

It was high noon by the time Nico woke up from his very poor sleep. He had spent the entirety of yesterday night awake, so it was understandable that he had passed out the instant his body made contact with the bed at sunrise. As his consciousness slowly came back to the world of the living, he couldn't shake off the feeling that he had forgotten something important... and then, he jolted up as realization hit him: he was late for work.

He practically bolted out the door, only sparing the time to hurriedly get dressed and to hide his huge eyebags with some whitening powder he had made a few weeks ago for his fur. He ran across town in a few minutes in a feat of athletics he had never before achieved, all to reach the small apothecary shop he works at. A huge line had formed from the entrance, so he snuck his way around the building and entered through the backdoor, almost getting run over by a speeding coworker carrying boxes of medicine.

Nico's boss almost immediately spotted him and beelined there, but was interrupted by Nico shoving his scarf on their face. “Sorry, I overslept, take it from my next paycheck or something, anyways bye!” The wolf then raced to the counter and greeted his customer with the most polite customer service smile he could possibly muster in his exhausted state. “Good afternoon, welcome to our establishment? What are your needs?”

A shadowy figure sneaks around town in the dead of night, weaving between the shadows. It was none other than Nico, an alchemist that worked at a local apothecary, but one could be forgiven for not realizing it in such a dark, moonless night. The cloaked wolf looked to be in a hurry, zigzagging around as if looking for something, until he abruptly stopped on an intersection of four alleyways and took out a piece of paper. Written inside were a few words: “Nektarios Chrysanthos, The Organizers hereby cordially invite you into their abode. We eagerly await your presence where four alleys meet."

Without hesitation, Nico snatched a bottle of ‘liquid fire’ he had prepared earlier from his pouch and poured a bit on the paper. Immediately, it began to burn with a lightless black fire that quickly engulfed Nico, and both vanished from sight in an instant. When the alchemist next opened his eyes, he was in an entirely new location. Stands and stalls littered the place wherever he looked, lit by candles, lanterns and motes of mystical light, and the sky, if you could even call it that, was a pitch-black void.

There was no doubt, he had found the black market. Nico had never been there himself but his family had described it to him numerous times. But he had no time to waste gawking, he had a purpose: find ingredients for the fourth stage. If his information was accurate, an abyssal Wyvern carcass was being auctioned later that day, so he still had time to look at some things along the way. Spotting someone standing idly, and itching to talk like himself instead of “Nicolai” for once, he decided to approach them and ask in a rather blunt tone: “Greetings. Are there any merchants specializing in alchemy in this area?”