Rather than neutralizing the original concoction, this can potentially cause an explosive, or otherwise dangerous, reaction.
The following ingredients are your best sources for basic elemental affinities.
Waterweed is the best representation of water. It is a bright blue flower with a long, thorny green stalk.
Firebloom is used in concoctions for the element of fire. It is a red bulb that glows softly at night.
I skimmed over the rest of the ingredients it mentioned, moving on to the next page, which discussed activating agents and how to mix each.
“I can…probably make something with this.” I glanced at the hourglass. It wasn’t draining particularly quickly — it probably was literally an hour. “I’m not confident that I can get the mixture right, though.”
“We’re just trying to get to the boxes, right?” Patrick asked.
“Presumably,” Sheridan replied.
“The solution determines the path. We may get different keys for the room based on how we solve it.” I waved at the boxes. “Getting the chests out would probably be pretty simple without bothering to use alchemy. There may be a penalty of some kind if we just brute force it.”
Sheridan shook their head. “Usually there isn’t a penalty for brute force, so much as a benefit for solving the puzzle as completely as possible.”
I nodded at that, remembering the room filled with all the keys last time. We’d explored it more completely than we needed to, and gotten an extra key out of it. It was possible this was going to work similarly.
“Okay. I’m going to try to figure out concoctions for neutralizing fire, water, and lightning. In the meantime, the rest of you figure out any alternate solutions you can.”
Fire and water were simple; they neutralized each other.
Lightning was trickier. It was a combination of fire and air, which meant I needed a combination of water and earth.
But that didn’t mean just mixing a water herb with an earth herb. Just mixing fire and air didn’t make lightning; that would make an explosion. Mixing water and earth would make…soggy earth, not whatever their combined element was.
“What’s the elemental opposite of lightning?” I asked Patrick. He was specialized in lightning, so I figured he’d know.
“Sand.”
Huh. Wouldn’t have been what I would have guessed, but I trusted him.
There was actual sand in one of the jars, but I didn’t think that was the same as the sand element, and Patrick didn’t think it would work either.
That meant I needed to find ingredients that represented the sand element, or maybe something that was designed to merge two primary elements into one of the more complex ones.
I rummaged through jars and skimmed through the book’s glossary of components.
Flameflower: A more powerful source of the fire element. Used in concoctions for granting temporary fire elemental power. Warning: Combusts when exposed to air magic.
Apprentice’s Berry: Represents mental mana. Delicious. Highly recommended.
Bird’s Foot: Represents transference mana.
Luck Lily Extract: Liquid extracted from a luck lily. When exposed to transference mana, causes teleportation to a seemingly random nearby location. Extremely dangerous.
Windbow: Represents air mana. Warning: Combusts when exposed to fire mana.
Dreamglow: Takes on the elemental property of a single spell that is cast into it.
Frostcane: Alchemically null on its own, but reacts to ice magic, creating an initial burst of ice and then taking on the ice element after exposure.
Mage’s Folly: Reverses the elemental affinity of a concoction.
Twilight’s Calclass="underline" Represents umbral mana.
Last Belclass="underline" Represents death mana.
Queen’s Crown: Used to enhance the potency of concoctions.
There were dozens of other listings.
The fact that the list wasn’t in alphabetical order bothered me deeply.
The hourglass was half way drained.
“Uh, Corin? Don’t mean to rush ya, but maybe we should skip the potions?” Marissa offered. “Is it really that important to do it that way?”
“Probably not, but I want to do this right if we can.” I started setting jars on the table.
Waterweed for water.
Firebloom for fire.
Those were the simple ones, and I found what I needed to mix with them for the most basic of potions. In both cases, just water and an alchemically neutral agent to “activate” the compound. I chose peppermint for that function, since it was the weakest one and in plentiful supply.
I opened the waterweed jar and found a green flower with a blue stem inside. I was in the middle of chopping it when I realized that was wrong.
“Son of a…” I set my tools down, turning to the others. “The jars are mislabeled. Find me a blue flower with a green, thorny stem.”
It took a few more minutes for me to assign out the descriptions of all the components I needed, and for everyone to find them.
Once I had real waterweed and actual peppermint, I made the elixir.
It didn’t look like much of anything, but we were running short on time.
I poured it on the fire.
The liquid seemed to cut right through the flame. It didn’t sputter and smoke like a normal fire exposed to water; it just made the fire vanish on contact.
I kept pouring until the water reached a near-invisible rune on the bottom of the container, which went out as soon as the liquid reached it.
“It worked!” Patrick clapped me on the shoulder. I ignored the moment of anxiety that caused. “Great work, Corin. Should we take this box and go?”
I shook my head. “Let me try the others.”
The firebloom elixir was just as easy to make, but it didn’t work as well. The “water” inside that box must have been something other than actual water.
After a bit of additional experimenting, I used flameflower instead of firebloom. That worked.
Our sand was running low.
I still hadn’t found any ingredient that corresponded to sand magic.
I lifted a plant in front of Patrick, then set it on the table. “Hit that with lightning.”
“Seriously?” He blinked.
“Yes.”
He shocked the plant. It glowed with electricity.
Carefully, I used a stone rod to sweep that ingredient — dreamglow — into a mixing bowl.
Then, I prepared the mage’s folly, and mixed that in.
The lightning around the dreamglow flickered once more, then faded. The flower turned gray-brown.
Fascinating.
“Uh, Corin, we really need to go.”
“Get the other boxes out and get ready.”
I finished the last elixir, which ended up being a gritty gray-brown compound, and poured it into the lightning box.
The lightning rune flickered and died on contact.
A musical chime sounded throughout the room.
The three boxes and the hourglass vanished.
The transparent gem on the door changed to white.
And a key appeared in the center of the room.