Serah's private workshop comprised of a single long portable table, four jars of bio-luminescent mushrooms, a full set of alchemy supplies, and a black wooden board. The cave was brightly lit with a green tint and the small Gecori dragon from earlier was sleeping by her feet. However, this quiet peace wouldn't last long as a loud popping sound burst from her table. The dragon jumped away and Serah was thankful that raging waterfall masked her noise.
Smoke billowed out from her table and up towards her face as her latest concoction burst into ashes. She swatted the vapors away with her hand and as the smoke began to clear, all she could see was a bubbling mass of hot liquid in a small beaker. It smelled of heated metal, burnt cockroaches, and rotten eggs.
"Oh come on!" Serah sighed and slumped her head in frustration. "What am I doing wrong here?"
Serah asked out loud as she lifted the beaker with a pair of tongs. After which she walked towards a charcoal stove she brought from her house and poured her failed experiment on the burning charcoal. Serah then turned away to look at a Thaumaturgy guidebook she copied from Rasze while he was asleep.
"I must be doing something wrong here?" She asked as she flipped through the pages. "Am I drawing the symbols wrong? Is it in the wrong order? Damn it, dad! Why does this book have to be so cryptic?!"
As she said that her stove exploded in a cloud of fire and smoke, thankfully, most of it stayed intact. Serah jumped back away from the stove waiting for a second explosion but thankfully it didn't happen.
"Note to self:" she said as she started writing in her notepad. "A boiled mixture of fire dust, maggot juice, worm tail extract, and tree sap is flammable."
The Gecori that kept her company looked at the plume of smoke coming out of the stove before staring back at Serah
"I know your species is supposedly smart." She said as she looked at the dragon "But why do I get the feeling that you're judging me?"
The Gecori walked away from Serah and continued to mind its business.
"Why did I expect you to reply?" Serah slapped her forehead. "Maybe I'm getting tired."
Serah took off a glove and walked towards her bag near the cavern's exit. She sifted through the side pockets, pulled out a vial of fizzy blue liquid, uncorked it, wiped its mouth with a clean rag, and drank it. As soon as she drank it, she began feeling more and more energized. This was an awareness potion she'd created yesterday. The ingredients included sparkling water, sugar, Lazl's thistle, an ounce of orange juice, and an obscene amount of cocoa powder. This was among the new creations Serah had concocted for the hunt. A few days ago she made a mimic potion that could copy the scent of a person. After that, she even made a potion that could mask a person's scent from a dragon. So why was making a repellant so hard? She asked herself.
Theoretically, the mixture had everything that dragons hated and avoided smelling, but the fact that the Gecori was still in the room with her is proof enough of her failure.
Once again she looked back to the Thaumaturgy book. She read through the different alchemical sigils, as well as how they worked in unison. The book had a thorough guide on the principles of Thaumaturgy as well as the different effects the practice could make. It could create light, hasten growth, conjure the elements, and even copy an entire potion. While many of these Thaumaturgical effects could be useful to her at the moment, she didn't have the means to use them. They required expensive jewels and precious stones as a catalyst. Some of the listed catalysts were near impossible to get on short notice such as volcanic ore, Adracite, and even purple dragon teeth.
Right now all she could do was create heating and chilling effects at different extremes. Both effects only required a rough turquoise stone, one that she could easily get at the jeweler next door.
When creating the repellant, initially she used virtually the same one Rasze used for the freezing effect, except for her she changed the cold sigil for fire - this exploded. On her second attempt, she tried making the time sigil much bigger compared to the motion and fire sigils, which turned the mixture into a warm unusable paste. In her latest attempt, she made the fire and motion sigils larger compared to the time sigil and that didn't work either. Serah began racking her brain trying to get this repellant right, she skimmed through every page for an answer only to find none, were the ingredients just too volatile at any temperature? She thought.
But then she had a flash of genius.
"Alright one more!" she shouted as she went back to her small black board with chalk in hand. This time she would do something the book didn't tell her, something completely different She drew the same sigil she'd been using; the symbols of time, motion, and fire arranged in a V shape. Fire was the dominant symbol in this arrangement. However, this time she would draw a second sigil inside of it, a smaller sigil in a reverse V. This one would include the symbols for cold, motion, and time; the symbol of time being the largest of three.
"Okay, here's to hoping this doesn't kill me!" She laughed nervously as she held up the turquoise stone and activated the sigils.
As the symbols lit up with magical energies, an orange light could be seen bursting forth from the board. Heat waves fumed around the concoction but rather than exploding from the heat, the second sigil activated surrounding the concoction in a chilling mist. Steam billowed from the beaker and covered the cavern. As the steam cleared Serah saw what she had made. A dark pink mixture sat still and stable upon the wooden board. The beaker fumed with a pink gas that smelled like a mixture of bitter tea and graphite.
As Serah approached the concoction she noticed it wasn't boiling nor was it fuming with heat, so instead of using tongs she just picked it up with her hands. It was warm to the touch.
"Hey!" She said, trying to get the Gecori's attention. "Smell this."
The young dragon approached the concoction and sniffed around, taking a whiff of the potion. Its eyes dilated and wagged its tail uncontrollably. The dragon tried to jump towards the potion to try and smell more of it. Serah yanked the potion away, careful not to spill it anywhere, meanwhile the Gecori gently tried to reach for it - standing on its hind legs.
"Hey, get off me!" She laughed trying her best to push away the young dragon. "You're being really cute but shoo!"
She set the potion down on the table and clapped her hands together. When the Gecori came to it shook its head and calmly continued about its business.
"That is the complete opposite of what I wanted to do!" Serah jumped up and stomped her feet in frustration before trying to calm herself down. "This is fine, I can probably still use this somehow."
"But I would have liked a repellant and not...whatever that was." She said as she poured the mixture into three different bottles, closing them tightly with a cork, and hooking them to her utility belt. "I guess I should be thankful it didn't kill me."
"Anyway, I should pack up and go home for now." She said as she stretched.
Upon taking note of the time she realized it was late in the afternoon, if she wanted enough energy to keep tracking Iskadi she was going to need her mother's home-cooked meal. However before she could completely pack up she found herself surrounded by more Gecori dragons.
Three of them appeared in front of her and she could feel more sticking to the shadows. This was most likely a brood of Gecori and their mother must be close by, she thought. While she'd already befriended one of them she didn't have enough food to befriend the rest of them. The dragons circled her and kept a close eye on her movement. Green gaseous light poured out from their mouths as they prepared to spew their poisonous breath at her. These dragons were careful and calculating; meticulously observing her for whatever threat she posed to them.
Serah quickly pulled out one bottle of her new potion from her belt and poured its contents on herself.
"Gods below I hope this doesn't make me tastier!" She exclaimed as she shivered at the knees.
"Okay buddies, calm down." She said, trying to coax the dragons out of their violent tendencies. "I'm not here to hurt you."
As she got closer to the three in front of her, they got a good whiff of the potion. Almost instantly the dragons moved towards her, nudging her feet, and licking her all over. After seeing their siblings take kindly to the human stranger the rest followed suit. Soon Serah was swarmed by a tide of green dragons, all cooing and cuddling her as if she was their friend.
"Alright, alright!" She said, whilst getting tickled by the horde of young dragons. "Enough!"
She clapped her hands as loud as she can and the moment the dragons came to, they were calm. They then began moving around her, seemingly confused at what just happened, but they knew one thing for certain - Serah was a friend.
"I'll just go now..." She said as she picked up her bag. "Same time tomorrow yeah?"
As she tried to leave she heard a low groan, echo throughout the caves.
"What was that?" She thought.
As she pondered at the sound she noticed that the Gecori stood at attention, as if held up by a trance. Once the groaning had ended the young dragons began sprinting back into the far reaches of the cave. Behind her one Gecori dragon kept nudging her to go with them, she tried to deny them but as more piled on behind her she had no choice but to go.
At first, she was walking but as she got deeper into the cave she got pushed faster by the dragons. As the sound drew closer, Serah was practically running, otherwise the Gecori would have trampled her then and there.
Making one last squeeze through the network of tunnels, Serah emerged into a large open cavern. Smooth stone lined the walls and the ceiling hung hundreds of feet above them. Near the mouth of the cave's entrance, she could see the afternoon glow of the sun pouring into it. However, as she moved further into this open cavern she noticed that there was an adult Gecori dragon lying on its side.
"This was the brood's mother isn't it?" she thought. At first she wanted to move away, she didn't want to accidentally awaken an adult dragon, but before she could go she noticed something was wrong. As she went around to see the dragon's belly she could see a spear lodged deep inside of its chest.
"Oh Nidhogg's balls!" She yelled "Oh gods what do I do? What do I do?!"
Serah shook her hands as if flicking water in her panic. She tried to calm herself down with heavy breaths but her hands were still shaking
"Okay!" She said as she set down her bag "I think I can do this."
From the bag. she pulled out three things: a numbing potion, a disinfectant solution, and an expensive healing potion she'd been saving for dire injuries. Serah slowly and carefully pulled out the spear, as she did this the creature began to weakly flail its arms and legs at her. If it had an ounce of strength left, Serah thought she would have died.
Once the spear was out blood splattered on her face; her body was drenched in its red, viscous, liquid. Powering through the blood and gore, she then applied the numbing potion followed by the disinfectant to make sure the dragon didn't feel the solution's biting sting. Finally, once she was sure the numbing potion had taken hold, she splashed the healing potion onto the wound. Normally it would take a few minutes to heal a wound with this potion but due to the size of the injury and the amount she had on hand it would take a few days, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
Serah's breathing was rapid but as she saw the bleeding stop and the wound close she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Over here!" A voice yelled out from the mouth of the cave "I think she went this way!"
Marked hunters! Serah's eyes widened with joy upon hearing that voice. Marked hunters were watchers of the forests and protectors of dragons. They were devoted to keeping the balance of nature and protecting its denizens from foreign poachers. If anyone knew how to treat a wounded dragon, it would be them.
"Over here!" Serah shouted.
"Over here!" She repeated as she heard footsteps grow closer. "It's over here!"
From the mouth of the cave, she saw a red-scaled dragonkin man who carried javelins on his back.
"The white devil?" He said as she approached "What are you doing in here? Where's the Gecori?"
"Yeah, yeah I'm the village menace yada-yada. Don't worry about that right now." She said "I just saw the dragon and treated with some potions, but I don't think it's enough. Do you have anything that could save it?"
"Save it?!" He yelled in disbelief. "What did you do?!"
"Wait should I have not used potions to heal it?!" She said as she started panicking again "I'm so, sorry I don't know what I'm doing here!"
"No, not that you idiot!" He said as he pulled her away from the depths of the cavern "That was a rogue dragon!"
From inside the cave the adult Gecori stood tall and angry. It began spewing its poisonous breath around the cavern, filling it with an ominous green glow. Serah stood in awe and escaped out of the cave. As she put on her mask all she could think of was one thing:
"Oh...Tiamat's teats."