He awoke with all of his body aching. His back was pressed against his mattress, and the rafters of the ceiling of his temporary room stared down at him. The fading remnants of day seeped in through the rose facade on the easrwardly facing, stained glass window.
"What happened?"He mumbled to the empty room.
He tried to stand, but felt his legs wobble, and he fell backward. The wooden frame of the mattress squealed as it caught his weight and held it there as he sat on the edge. Staring out into the quickly darkening room. He looked down at the clothes he wore: a rust colored blotch started from his neck down to the middle of his stomach. His nose itched and throbbed. He reached up and touched it. It didn't hurt like the last time he had broken his nose: perhaps Gillium healed him again.
Did he really lose that quickly? He had been in a fair few scraps: it was a necessity when living hand to mouth, as he was for the most part of his life. He had lost a few, as well, but every time, he was at least able to put up a fight and leave his attacker with a few bruises and scratches. He couldn't even react to Kael this time. He shook his head, looked at the cold bowl of stew and stale piece of bread on the table beside the carving knife, the copper ore, and the mortar and pestle, and felt his hollow stomach rumble. He stuffed his embarrassment deep into his belly and grabbed the food from the table. It didn't take long until every last drop was soaked up by the piece of bread, and the bowl sat empty.
As if aware of this, there came a knock on the door.
"It's me, Aster." A timid voice from the other side of it came.
Jein groaned as he stood and stumbled to the door. Colors were still swimming and dancing at his peripheries. He opened the door to see the young acolyte standing there. His auburn curls had been shorn clean off, and his bright blue eyes shone like a pair of azure lanterns in the darkness beyond the door. Gillium was sitting with his back against the wall, and his chin dropped into the middle of his chest: his sword lay across his lap, and a book opened halfway on his lap. His shoulders rose in rhythmic meter.
"Have you finished eating?" Aster whispered.
"I have," Jein whispered back.
"Can I have the bowl? They're doing dishes soon."
Jein nodded and tiptoed across the room, picked up both the bowl and the spoon, and handed them to the waiting Attendant.
"Thank you," Aster whispered.
"How did I get back here?"
"Kael went to get Gillium after you wouldn't wake up, and Gillium healed you…"
Jein felt his ears burn. The boy he had just been fighting with was the reason he was waking up in the room, and not in a coffin.
"I have to get going…" Aster said. "Ah, the High Priest said for you to have this,"
The Attendant handed Jein a small vial: about as long as his ring finger, and as thick as two of them together.
"He said, put a drop in some water before you drink it. Drinking it straight could hurt a lot."
Jein nodded and allowed the boy to leave without any further questions. He shambled back to his bed and looked at the clay pitcher and glass on the edge of the table. When had it gotten there? He didn't know. He took the pitcher up and brought it to his lips, draining it down his throat in large gulps. The burning sensation in his body temporarily subsided, yet his head still ached.
"Could hurt a lot, huh? How weak do they think I am?"
He bit the end of the cork, pulled it out, and spat it on his bed before tipping the rim of the small vial. The reddish liquid rushed down his throat like boiling water. Jein sputtered and coughed and dropped the remainder of the liquid on the floor. The burning rushed up into his sinuses and forcibly aligned them and his nasal bone with a loud snap. Dizziness overtook him again, and he fell back on the mattress, coughing and choking as the potion then worked on every small injury within his body. The cuts on his hand burned red hot. The bruises were still apparent across his body from his father's last rage-filled beating as he was shunted from the house. The malunions along his ribs, where they healed all wrong, snapped and crunched as they rebroke all at once and realigned.
Hours felt as if they crawled by as every single disorder within his body was set in its proper order. When it was all finished, he was left with his body covered in sweat. He pushed himself up with surprising ease, however. The weariness of the day seemed to have come out of him in that deluge from his pores. He stripped the soaked shirt off and dug around in that small chest by his bed until he found another and slid it on in its stead.
Alchemy was also incredible! Wouldn't it be an incredible boon to learn how to make potions like that? To have one readily available should you be near your death? He had to finish up his enchanting first, though. He sighed and glanced at the table. As his eye was traveling from the ground to the tools on the table, the broken glass from the vial caught his attention. Was that…
He picked up a piece of the glass and held it up. The shards of colorful light cast by the sun filtering through the stained glass window caught within its bent array, and he had an idea.
"Light. All is light. You breathe as I breathe, and grow as I grow. Light, come to me."
The phantasmal candle burned into existence by his head. He held up the piece of glass.
"Oh glass, lend your…" Jein wrestled with what word would be appropriate for what he was trying to do before finally landing on… "glare."
A flame erupted from the sharpened point of the glass and licked at Jein's fingers. The flame sank into his candlelight. A quick, bright beam shot out across the room in a very similar manner to what Kael had done to Jein during their match. Jein smiled: why not do the same to him?
He looked to the table, full of the tools and twigs that Aurrior had lent him three days prior, and sighed. If he wanted to learn Alchemy, however, he had to do this. And alchemy would help him become even stronger in the future, until no one could stand against him. So The Boy sat down at the table: crossed his legs, dropped the ore into the bowl of the mortar, and thanked it before he began the rote work of enchanting his twigs.