Fortune Telling Your Love Life

Oltan didn’t look up from his paper. “You sure about that echo-oil? Heard it makes your dreams louder.”

I chuckled. “I’m sure.”

He huffed and started ringing me up.

Ravela leaned on the edge of the counter, watching me while pretending not to. “You really shop like an old man,” she muttered.

I had gotten an unexpected surprise when I came here to bathe in the memories. Ravela, that deadly woman in a corset, kept showing up in the corners of my memories of this store. I really thought it was going to be Meredi that I had the best starting relationship with, but Ravela was there, accompanying Timaeus more often than not. I was starting to understand why Meredi was so quick to acknowledge how Timaeus was Ravela’s henchman or tag-along.

“It’s called being thorough,” I replied.

“Oh, finally snapping back at her? ” Oltan added dryly, bagging the goods in brown paper and twine. He smirked at Ravela. “You must hate that.”

Ravela forced out a dead laugh. “Go huff fumes, old man.”

Something sitting on one of the counters to my left caught my eye, making me forget to reply.

“Kid? Something the matter?” Otlan asked.

I went to the counter, read the label, filled a small bottle with it and brought it back to Otlan. I held it in front of him. “Hey, what’s this?”

He raised a brow. “You know what it is. It’s an obsidian-based salt. A nice base to work with for the harsher stuff.”

I pulled out one of the shards and held it in front of him. “This thing is packed with mana. It’s practically a mana crystal.”

Otlan recoiled and took the shard. He held it up to the light, adjusted his monocle, and squinted. “What’s the tell?”

I took a second to formulate a response other than Mana Vision.

“A concoction that made my skin sensitive to mana discharges.”

Otlan froze. Then he let his head drop. “Come on, kid. My kidneys can’t take your brews anymore.”

I chuckled. “Alchemy. The eternal war on our kidneys, am I right?”

He chuckled back. “And sometimes our livers, too.”

He handed me the shard again, and I purchased it without any trouble.

“I’ll do some tests to confirm what your ‘skin’ is saying,” he said, giving me a knowing glance. “Some of the others might like to know the salt’s got mana.”

“Let me know… I’ve got one more thing I need to buy from you,” I said.

Oltan gave a grunt, already halfway to pulling out an under-the-counter pouch of reagents. “What is it this time? Something volatile?”

I shook my head.

“A textbook. Traditional alchemy.”

He stopped. Slowly lowered the pouch. And for the first time since I’d walked in, he looked me straight in the eyes—across the full mess of the counter, right at me. His lips parted slightly, like I’d just spat on his floor.

“A what?”

Ravela leaned in closer and let out a low whistle. “Wow, Tim. I’ve never seen the coot this offended. You’re just messing with everyone now, aren’t you?”

I ignored Ravela and met Oltan’s stare. “I want to study the old stuff. Got anything that isn’t garbage or covered in mold?”

Oltan squinted at me like I was speaking a dead language. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“You want me to dig out one of those nonsense parchment bricks from the bin I use to prop the broken leg on my table?”

“If it still has the glyph diagrams and notes on mana flow? Yes.”

For a long second, he didn’t move. Then, very slowly, Oltan folded his newspaper and laid it down with uncharacteristic care.

“I’ve watched you since you were barely able to light a clean flame, Timaeus,” he said. “And not once did you give a speck of care about middle-world babble. It’s why you’re so smart.”

“Sorry, Oltan. I need to dedicate a day or two to being thorough.”

He scoffed, muttering, “Trash will give you the run around for weeks and give you nothing but a wad of spit on your face for your trouble.”

But he moved, shuffling through the door behind him and up the old stairs. Ravela, watching all this, looked confused. “Wait. Why is he acting like you slapped his mother?”

I exhaled. “Because I did. I just spat on the alchemy we spent our whole lives loving.”

That was the truth of it. Timaeus, like the moms in the prologue, had clearly been built with care. You didn’t give a background NPC a consistent alchemical philosophy unless you wanted lore-hungry players to dig. But like the mom’s, he just went nowhere. The only way to know would be to become Timaeus himself and read his notes.

Timaeus, Oltan, and a few others were the keepers—the torchbearers—of a relatively new approach to alchemy in Bastion Reach. They were considered “heretics” by the traditionalists—those who insisted that chanting, moon cycles, mana flows, alchemy circles and hand-cut runes were still relevant. Timaeus and the others thought it was mostly ceremony and theater that just happened to get lucky four times out of ten. The new style was the reason that I initially likened this world’s alchemy to chemistry with the nature of magic in mind. Modern alchemy brought controlled reactions, functional equipment, high-quality measuring tools, and above all, reliability.

What offended the traditionalists most was that modern alchemy had kept the philosophy.

You needed it, after all. Most of the old texts were still written in visual riddles and metaphors—books where “the breath of the moon” actually meant apply low heat while stirring counterclockwise.

Timaeus and the modernists had scoffed at it. But me? The man on a mission to save the moms?

I'd seen how magic moved in this world and I had realized something.

Modern alchemy didn’t guide mana. It removed it from the equation as well as it could because mana was the confounding variable.

That’s what mana stabilizers were. Blunt tools to keep the reaction from going wrong. Modern alchemy worked because mana was either restrained or not required at all. So many of our recipes may have been built around tricks to circumvent mana’s primal nature.

That was the theory anyway. Modern alchemy was more reliable because it gave up working with mana on a more intimate level. Traditional alchemy wasn’t as reliable because those guys couldn’t fully predict how mana wanted to move naturally. Not to say that Traditional Alchemy was totally on the way to extinction. They could produce the fundamental stuff slightly faster and with fewer ingredients, and there were some funky products they could make that Timaeus and the rest had conveniently disregarded as not very useful.

I was going to be different. I wanted the equivalent of the old-world tech that directed mana through its miracle metal, but in my alchemical work, where my circuits were my ingredients and the recipes.

All for the moms. Any edge I could have, I wanted it.

“Here,” Oltan grunted, setting a dust-covered, cloth-bound tome on the counter. “Pages are dog-eared. Some of the ink's faded. But it’s the real deal. A trove of nonsense.”

The cover was black and wrinkled, with a triangle-inscribed eye and curling script that looked like it was from an era before the signage of the city.

“I’ll take it.”

“Have it for free,” Oltan muttered. “Can’t bear to charge you for trash that will rob your time.”

“Thanks.”

Ravela raised an eyebrow. “So you’re gonna start casting spells like the kids in books now?”

“No,” I said, tucking the book into my satchel. “But I’m going to see if there’s anything worth learning.”

I started saying my farewells to the man who was essentially Timaeus’s teacher when we heard a clatter from upstairs.

“Oh no,” Oltan muttered.

Before I could ask, a blur of floral fabric and jingling charms swept down from the upper floor. She ran up to the counter with a speed not befitting a woman in her 70s. Gray hair flowing, and smile lines prominent, she was the ray of sunshine in this cranky shop.

“Timmy!” sang the kindly old woman’s voice, high and bright and absolutely delighted.

Oltan winced. “Please, Mava, don’t—don’t harass the boy. He’s already overthinking everything—”

“Oh hush, dear,” she said, sliding up to Oltan. “How could I not say hello? Especially when he’s curious about magic.”

I didn’t mind. The flood of memories came fast and warm—her pressing cookies into my hands while Oltan ranted about improper measurements, her gentle fussing whenever I came in with a scuffed boot or a bloody nose. She always smelled like mint and bread.

“People don’t have magic. Only our materials do,” Oltan grumbled.

“It’s good to see you again, Mava,” I said, smiling despite myself.

She beamed and clasped her hands. “And you, darling! Oh, I knew you were coming today, I just knew it. That’s why I pulled the cards.”

Oltan groaned and half-covered his face. “Mava, please—”

“Hush!” she snapped. Then back to me, like a child sharing a secret. “Timmy, love, I’ve got a fortune for you. It came through very clearly. I just have to tell you.”

Normally, I’d roll my eyes and smile and nod and chalk it up to sweet nonsense.

But this was a fleshed-out game world. And there was a minor fortune-telling mechanic in the game. It had been a simple system. Someone would tell you if a natural disaster was coming, or if someone in town liked you. Pretty basic, but because it was a game with pre-programmed events, it worked. Heck, I think one of the plot points in one of the spin-off titles was that a village fortune teller had a massive prophecy.

I narrowed my eyes, activated Mana Vision and nearly gasped.

Her whole body lit up—not in brightness, but in complexity. It was like there were three different mana networks overlaid on top of each other. These things looked woven in places, especially around her fingertips and across her face. It was like someone had etched a thousand spell diagrams into her skin and set them humming just under the surface.

I nodded. “Alright. Let’s hear it.”

Mava clapped once, thrilled. “Good! So—love is blooming around you. Like vines on an old tower! Soft and strong and very, very close. Oh, oh, it’s like the vine is being watered!”

I blinked.

Then I grinned.

“Love, huh?”

The love fortunes were never wrong. They were reading based off the relationship chart, after all!

“And you just keep doing what you’re doing. Be kind. Be bold. It’s working.”

I could’ve floated through the ceiling.

I turned toward Ravela, who had been leaning with arms crossed, exuding maximum skepticism.

She met my gaze.

Then her face flushed deep red.

“Oh my god,” she muttered, backing up a step.

I tilted my head, all innocence. “You okay?”

“Fuck off, Tim,” she snapped, and spun on her heels.

The bells above the door jangled furiously as she stomped out of the store.

I turned back to Mava, who winked. I shrugged.

“Well, thank you. See you in a few days,” I jabbed.

“You mean weeks,” Oltan jabbed back.

I stepped outside, back into the filtered grime-light of the alley. Ravela was quietly leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

“So,” I said, sliding the paper bag into my satchel, “lunch?”

She tilted her head, then gave me a sideways look. “Only if I pick the place.”

“Sure. You have good taste.”