Whistling lightly, Alex felt much better the next morning. Having spent her own coin, Roselyn had purchased a low-grade healing elixir, which, while not powerful enough to completely heal the deep wound on Alex's hand, was nevertheless more than sufficient to heal all the small nicks and cuts on his hand and clear up his massive sunburn. A liberal application of the much stronger healing paste, along with a night's rest, and Alex was feeling on top of the world again!
"Many thanks, guys," Alex told Thorn and Roselyn cheerfully. "I truly appreciate you keeping it down so I could rest last night. That elixir put me on my ass, but I feel good as new now!" Truly, he wasn't certain if they'd deliberately keep their nocturnal activities quiet for him, or if Roselyn had actually brought back a muzzle for herself like he'd joked about to her. Either way, he truly was grateful for a good night's rest for a change!
"Umm… No problem at all, my lord," Roselyn assured him, squirming slightly as her cheeks shaded a bright hue of crimson. "So… umm… Are you going back to gathering more samples today?" Her clumsy attempt to change the subject was rather amusing in Alex's eyes, though Thorn seemed too busy eating breakfast to notice either of them.
"I am," Alex chuckled, deciding to let her off the hook and not tease her this morning. "I just wish I knew how to detect their nests, or tunnels, or them, or whatever the hell it is I need to detect to keep from being bit by them again. That one had sliced the crap out of my hand yesterday before I even knew it was there!"
"Well, I didn't get too close to the creature," Roselyn admitted, wrinkling her nose as she glanced in the direction of the corpse. "But, from what I've saw of it, they seem to be mutated moles. It probably digs tunnels and eats the grubs or whatever feeds off the roots. Was the soil any softer, or pushed up, rutted or mounded, where the beast attacked you yesterday?"
"I honestly don't know," Alex admitted, shrugging slightly. "It was hot. I was tired and sore already. I just wasn't paying close attention to anything like that — but I'll certainly watch for it from now on out," he promised fervently, before easing up from his own meal and returning back to his harvesting.
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As the next couple of weeks slowly passed, Alex's dread and worries grew exponentially. There was just so many things which he'd failed to take into consideration when he'd promised the young lady at the Golden Pavilion twenty vials of extract within thirty days. Mistakenly, in his mind, he'd assumed that he'd be able to harvest at the same rate – or even faster with repeated practice – but that wasn't holding up to be true at all!
Some days, when all went right, and it seemed that the fates were with them, Alex *could* harvest more than what he'd gathered that first time with just him and Thorn out alone. On a very good day, he might be able to even harvest twice as much as that first time! The problem, however, came from the fact that there were very few *good* days when it came to harvesting SilverSilk grass.
Rainy days seemed to stir up the rodents from their tunnels, increasing the chances of being attacked by them, slowing down progress. Windy days turned the razor-sharp strands of spidersilk grass into potential meat grinders which could peel the flesh off his fingers – or any other body part they encountered – in mere moments of contact. Even days that were just cloudy and overcast were hard to deal with – the lack of direct sunlight reflecting from the spider-thin silkgrass was enough to force him to slow work and increase caution to a much higher level.
The only "good days" were like the first time Alex and Thorn had come out to harvest on their own. As much as he hated it then, Alex was now truly learning to appreciate those days when the sun stood proudly in the middle of the sky, scorching everything in its path, without the single slightest hint of a breeze to cool things out. Sure, it was a miserable, scorching time to be out doing such tedious and dangerous work, but it was still the best time to do it!
"We're not going to make it in time like this," Alex warned Roselyn and Thorn, sighing heavily. "We've spent about two-thirds of the time I'd allocated for harvesting already, and still only have about half the necessary harvest. We're going to end up short by several vials, at this rate."
"Should I go in town and see if we can buy any materials? Or even any of the finished product? We'll take a loss," Roselyn sighed heavily, shrugging her shoulders slightly, "but at least we'd be able to fulfill the contract. As a first time supplier, fulfilling our promise is more important than making money. We'll just have to lower expectations in the future and make up for it gradually over time."
"I'd considered that," Alex sighed, looking just as dejected as she did. Only Thorn, in his simple innocence, wasn't the least bit concerned about the situation – his job was just to guard his brother from the stupid rats, and since his brother was still alive and healthy, he was doing his part proper! All that other stuff was somebody else's responsibility; not his!
"I'm just hoping we don't have to actually go that far," Alex told her, trying to sound as hopeful as he possibly could. "Rose, you're going to need to make a trip back into town for us today. Or tonight, when you can take Thorn with you," Alex offered, "if you don't feel comfortable going alone. What I need you to do is to head up into Jacob's room, box up some of his alchemy supplies quietly, and then bring them back out here for us."
"He's gone for the break and won't be back for at least another month and a half," Alex assured her, "so as long as you can avoid the cleaners and the other boys who might've stayed behind this break, and not let them see you, there shouldn't be any problem. I've… umm… Let's just say I managed to work things out once already with the school workers," Alex blushed embarrassedly. "His door's already unlocked, and there's a nice Do Not Disturb placard hung permanently on the handle right now."
"If the door's unlocked," Roselyn told him, biting her lower lip slightly in thought, "then I shouldn't have any issues getting in and grabbing a few things. Exactly what would I be looking for?" If the thought of breaking, entering, and stealing bothered her at all, she didn't show any hint of it on her face.
"If that placard is still hanging on the door, everything should be set to go," Alex assured her again. "If it's not, then come back and let me know as soon as possible. If his door is locked, we're basically screwed already. I was counting on using his stuff to do the extractions when the time came," Alex admitted, shamelessly.
"I'll do that," Roselyn promised. "Just tell me what I'm grabbing and if there's any special sort of precautions I need to take with anything."
"None really," Alex smiled warmly at Roselyn, enjoying the feeling of how dependable she'd became for him. "I can't cook the mixture, or do any of the extracting out here," he admitted sadly, "but I'm hoping I can do a little bit of the preprocessing by the campfire at night, hopefully reducing the extraction time a bit. If I can cut the processing and packaging time down from ten days to less than seven, then I might be able to finish harvesting enough materials with that extra time."
"It's definitely worth a shot," Roselyn agreed, getting up to make yet another trip back into town. "I'll bring back a bunch of fresh food again from the cafeteria as well," she promised. "Is there anything in specific you two would like?"
"MEAT!!" Thumping his chest like a caveman, Thorn wasn't the least bit bashful when it came to sharing his desires.
"Some of the honey cakes," Alex told her, chuckling lightly as Thorn loudly exclaimed, "MEAT," once again.
"MEATTY MEATTY MEAT!" Half dancing, Thorn was enthusiastically proclaiming his love for all things chicken, beef, fish, or pork.
"I'll bring you back some meat," Roselyn promised, laughing lightly as Alex slowly rattled off the list of supplies which he'd be needing for his work as well.
As soon as she turned to leave for her start back to town, Alex sighed heavily and punched Thorn lightly in the arm to get him to calm down. "Keep watch dufus. I've got to get back to work while I can. We can't just let daylight burn on us, you know."
No matter how tired and exhausted he became, he reminded himself, he had to do his best to see this thing to the end. After all, it wasn't just his ruined reputation as a half-man on the line anymore. Roselyn, Thorn, and even to a lesser extent with Granny Stone, were all depending on him to finish the job properly for their futures as much as his own now!
Like it or not, Alex was slowly starting to come into his own as the young Lord SkyBlade.
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Author's Note: Sorry for missing the updates for the last few days guys. I've been trying to work on this a little everyday, but I got sidetracked by the new season of Lucifer on Netflix and it knocked my schedule off a bit. Now that I'm all caught up with it, I'll try to pick back up where I left things off here. ;)
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