Ice from the south pole's glacier which once had been trodden on by a dragon, a diamond stolen from a queen's tiara in the midst of a dance where she finds her love, the lock of a babe's hair taken at midnight whilst the father does paperwork, the tooth of warrior freely given before he wins victory.
What in the world potion will these make? -- Deathshead419
Impossible ingredients make an impossible potion. Something to do that which could not otherwise be done. The ingredients have circulated widely since the dawn of writing. Whispers told that if one could make the potion, then one could defeat death itself.
And since the world knew of Wraithvine, everyone chasing the myth believed ze had it. How else, they supposed, could ze have become immortal in the first place?
They also theorised that the story about a god's heart was misdirection at best, and an outright lie at worst. Nothing is more resilient than a conspiracist's belief, and they will bend the reality in their heads to make it all fit properly.
Wraithvine had never needed the potion, but ze had managed to acquire the ingredients through the millennia. All but the lock of hair. There was a story behind each and every one. Not that the Grand Duke Syrwadius Djankumar cared at all about that.
"I've given directions to my daughter's nurse," said Syrwadius. He was signing edicts whilst his guard held Wraithvine in chains. "The final ingredient will be in my hands shortly. Now tell me the steps to make it or suffer all the torments I could imagine."
Wraithvine sighed. Ze'd been through scenes like this a few times already. "The steps must be done by your own hand," said Wraithvine. "Or the potion will not work."
Syrwadius got out a new page, ready to take notes. He wrote the words, By own hand, in a hurried scrawl.
"Make yourself a cauldron of gold: deep as the length from toes to knee, wide as the length from fingertips to elbow on the inside, with walls as thick as the length from tip to first knuckle of your thumb." Ze waited for the jotting to finish. "Insert first the ice, then the lock, tooth, and finally diamond. Only then lay the fire underneath with balsam, rosemary, and aspen wood. You must start the fire yourself with tinder you have made, then boil it while stirring for two days without sleep. The paddle you stir with must be carved of oak by your own hand. Only then will the potion be done."
"Lock hir up," said Syrwadius. "If these steps result in a potion, you may set hir free."
"Sir," warned Wraithvine, "there is more I must tell you. An important warning."
Syrwadius made shoo-ing motions. Continuing with his paperwork while he waited for the lock of hair.
Wraithvine let hirself get dragged away and then locked up. Ze had been through this before, and it always ended the same way. Ze made hirself comfortable as possible in the cell and waited.
It took two months before the guards freed hir. "Per the Grand Duke's prior orders and upon the coronation of his eldest daughter and heir, you are hereby freed from incarceration," said the bored guard in a monotone.
"He drank it, didn't he?" said Wraithvine.
"Yes... shouldn't he have drank it?"
Wraithvine just smirked as ze left, making sure to destroy the Grand Duke's notes on the way out. In the unlikely event that anyone wanted to listen to the final warning, they'd learn that they had to convince Ereshkygal to drink it.
[Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash]
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