It was nearing midnight when Vil suddenly received a message on his smartphone and turned it on. Upon seeing the message on his phone, he narrowed his eyes and shoved his phone into his pocket and rushed out the door. He hurried past the lounge and out the main door.
The outside was frigid cold when he arrived before the greenhouse of the school with the lights still on inside. With one push, he was able to enter silently into the space. It didn't take long for him to make his way into the classroom where potion class usually takes place. Upon entering, Epel looked back when he noticed that Rook had done the same only for his eyes to widen in bewilderment, "D-dorm-!"
Rook had already slapped a hand over Epel's mouth before he could utter the next word and whispered to Vil, "Vil... You arrived just in time."
"Dorm leader Vil..." Trey whispered as he quietly motioned them to quiet down a little.
"Is he really going to do this?" Vil asked with a frown, "Any poison apple should be a simple thing to create, but no one has been able to recreate the Beautiful Queen's poison apple..."
"That's what he intended." Rook responded with a frown, "It's now his turn..."
Upon hearing his experiment, there was a quiet hush around them as Crewel cracked his whip loudly, "Quiet!"
Lotus stepped up with her hair tied back into a tight bun. She began to take out some materials that most were familiar with. However, her next step surprised them. Rather than plopping the ice salamander's tail straight in, she carefully skinned the amphibian.
"Why are you skinning the ice salamander?!" One of the students called out in disbelief and horror.
"Did I not tell you all to quiet down!" Crewel responded with a frown, "Everyone can ask questions later."
During their conversation, Lotus had continued to prepare the other ingredients with great precision as she pulled out some unexpected ingredients.
"Is that Sleeping Nightshade?" Vil pursed his lips in shock when he saw this.
"Isn't that poisonous?" Epel muttered in bewilderment.
Seeing the other herbs and raw ingredients she was using, Rook's eyes narrowed his brow in bewilderment, "I see... So, he's controlling the properties of its poison."
He had already left one of the cauldrons he was focusing on boiling on his table on a slow boil. It wasn't long before the concoction begin to grow thick and dark and gray. She quickly took apart a sewing string and tied it to the stem of a yellow-ish red apple and gently dipped it in. She softly whispered to herself, "Dip the apple in the brew. Let the sleeping death seep through. Then..."
After a dip into the brew, they could see the concoction began to flow to the direction of where the apple had gone into. After a long five seconds, she pulled the apple back out as the thick concoction began slowly drip off of it like caramel.
"Look! On the skin!" One of the club members cried out in horror when he saw the concoction pulling apart from the dark apple skin into the shape of a green skull!
"The symbol of what lies within." Lotus nodded satisfied upon seeing this and waited for the concoction to finish dripping off the apple as she said firmly, "Now, turn red..."
Vil's eyes widen in disbelief the apple actually became a beautiful red color! There was a loud cry in bewilderment and shock! Nobody could believe their eyes!
However, she simply placed the apple onto a woven basket and turned to the second cauldron bubbling away. After cooling the thin milky concoction in a glass vial, she took out a knife and a metal knitted glove before putting the glove on and turned to the apple. She sliced it open and placed a small thin slice onto a petri dish. she took the vial and dropped a drip onto slice of apple. They watched in bewilderment as the apple's red skin and white flesh returned to it's usual original yellow skin color.
Having finished her experiment, she took a step back, "Done."
There was a moment of silence as Crewel took a step forward and examined the items on the table and said, "Explain your product and your thinking process of all this."
"This is a replication of the Beautiful Queen's poisonous apple. However, the recipe was not the one designed by the Beautiful Queen. This is a recipe alternative to the steps that she had possibly used back then. Sleeping nightshade berry is a poisonous plant used by noble women many years ago before they learned of his potent poison. Because four is enough to take the life of a child, I dialed it down to one and used other poisonous ingredients to suppress its poisonous effects."
"Using a poison to suppress another poison?" Crewel looked to her in surprise.
She nodded, "It is possible for a poison to be suppressed by the presence of another poison as long as it is stronger than the present one. However, the poisonous skin of the ice lizard's tail is too strong, but its potency is diluted in the water. I've researched this for around a day's time and figured a ratio that could maintain the poison of the sleeping nightshade berry while suppressing its deadly killing effect. Moreover, the ice lizard's tail is capable of preserving the raw flesh of creatures as long as you can control its effects. That's why I threw in a couple cinnamon sticks and sichuan peppers inside. The spices we used today have other effects outside of preventing illnesses and they were once used to cure poison many years ago. I found this fact from a couple of books that talked of the spices and herbs used in Scalding Sands' and eastern countries' history and played with it a little myself before I found that the bark of the cinnamon tree and sichuan peppers are enough to prevent complete petrification of the flesh at a concentrated level. One drop is enough. I boiled the skin first to bring out the toxins of the skin and placed the sleeping nightshade in after all of the toxins have been removed as you can see from the dark gray color. The crushed nightshade needs to be boiled for fifteen or until it's liquid enough to disintegrate into the liquid. Then, I add in the spice last, so I do not let it ruin the lizard tails' cold effects by letting them come together thoroughly. Then, I place in the liquid sap from the rouge flower and soaked this string to it. With the lizard's tail, the interior of the apple became snow white and the heat of the spices on the exterior is enough to make the apple quickly take in the dye of the flower in. The result is the greyish surface of the fat of the lizard and the green thick liquid underneath in the cauldron and a ruby red apple. When you cut into it, texture and sound should be that of a fresh apple. The spice was able to hide the bitter poison's presence and unhindered the apple's to make it an undetected poison apple."
Hearing this, there was a lot of quiet whispers in the back as Epel muttered in confusion, "This... Does this really work?"
"Hm..." Vil frowned quietly in deep thoughts.
Rook and Trey shook their heads with a frown as Rook responded, "We don't know... Vil?"
"... It's possible..." He responded with a heavy sigh, "Sadly, we have no way of telling if it will work or not. These theories and concepts he came up with are intriguing, but it's never been tested out. Nobody is foolish enough to try it either, I hope."
"And this?" Crewel pointed to the vial of white liquid and the apple experiment.
"This is the herbal antidote to the poison apple." Lotus responded.
"Herbal antidote?!"
They looked to her in disbelief as she continued, "According to records, the antidote was recorded as a true love's first kiss. If it were like that, then it should be something that circulates the blood in the veins and gives the others a shock. Many would be shocked by a kiss anyway. My guess was that when it specifically said that, it means a strong shock. So, I've brought together herbs containing a lot of Capsaicin and a seed of the luminent ghost pepper. The sensation from the shock can wake up a person and the spices are enough to fight off the poison. In the east, they make a thick congee boiled with large amounts of hot peppers and use the term 'burn away the illness' to fight off poisons. I utilized that idea against the symptoms of the cold effects and rice to help absorb the toxins from the body the same why we use charcoal to attract alcohol from an intoxicated patient. The result was the white concoction. I tested it on a slice of the poison apple and found that it had turned the poison apple back to its former state."