The Written Lore

His mate Willow had gifted him three sons—Thistle, Ironwood, and Wildwood. But the births had taken their toll. Three healthy fawns had entered the world, yet even with all the knowledge of his craft and the wealth of medicines at his disposal, Alchemy could not change the course of Willow’s fate. It had simply been her time.

Just over three full seasons later, the wound of their loss that had barely begun to heal cracked open again. After a day spent playing in the field with his brothers, Thistle collapsed at Alchemy’s hooves and did not move, the dark juices of the Aldenseed berry staining his lips.

Alchemy recognized Thistle’s symptoms instantly. The Aldenseed berry, so easily missed when warnings of caution were all too often ignored by fawns at play, had taken hold of his eldest son. 

Such a cruel fate, that the young could so easily nibble one black berry instead of red and never rise again.

Thistle had looked so peaceful that day, even with his concerned brothers hovering over him, as if mere sleep and not the toxins of the Aldenseed had held him. Closed lashes soft against his cheek. Chest rising slower, slower, until the space between breaths had become a gulf Alchemy could not cross. 

He had counted each of his son’s breaths like its own promise, then watched the promise thin. From whatever place the Aldenseed had taken him, Thistle would never return. 

Days later, Ironwood and Wildwood helped their father return Thistle to the earth, laying him to rest beside Willow in the garden above their den.

The weight of renewed grief settled over them yet again, but Alchemy’s crippling guilt bore down on him alone. Where his healing skills had done so much for the Clans, he had failed to keep his own family from harm.

Over the following seasons, Thistle’s absence haunted Alchemy’s den. The scuffed stone where three sons had once skidded and leapt now remained undisturbed, overgrown by moss. The crumpled rushes where a third fawn had lain, never removed. The laughter of free spirits once echoing around him had fallen into a subdued hush Ironwood and Wildwood dared not break. 

It was this renewed pain and the guilt of his helplessness that urged Alchemy to make his vow. 

In service to all four Clans of the realm, he had developed countless potions and elixirs to heal any deer seeking his aid. Now, he only sought the creation of one. 

An antidote to the Aldenseed poison. A cure that did not yet exist. The gift of life instead of death promised by a single black berry. 

With this antidote, he could then spare others from the agony of loss. And through that gift, perhaps Thistle might still live on in the fawns who would survive.

Under the light of a crescent moon, Alchemy worked, driven by a compulsion he could not shake. 

Nor did he realize that, while he strived to satisfy this new obsession, his two remaining sons still grew, as did the distance between them.

Seasons turned. Winter gave way to spring, again and again, and Alchemy met nothing but failure. He measured time only in cracked mortars, sleepless nights, and vialskins that had dulled from hope to dust. Nothing hinted at his progress. None of the elixirs he’d tested on himself against the Aldenseed toxin, one after the other, provided the results he sought.

Until, one night, a new concoction in a long line of fruitless trials revealed something entirely new. Something he could never have predicted.

A pale blue glow grew and strengthened within the single skin holding his latest brew, hanging where he’d tied it among countless others. The tonic pulsed softly, illuminating the surrounding instruments, alive with something Alchemy could not name.

If this was the true antidote he’d been compelled to find, he would not know until he tested it. No other potion of his had ever glowed, and he did not know what gave it this inexplicable quality. 

But he would treat it like he’d treated every other experimental potion on his road to discovery and healing.

He would test this one on himself as well.

Alone, without witness to either his success or the devastation of another hopeful spark smothered by failure, Alchemy steadied himself for this next trial. The Aldenseed’s familiar bitterness filled his mouth when he cracked the flesh of the black berry and waited for the toxin to take hold.

Only to the young was the berry’s poison lethal, though adults still suffered its overwhelmingly severe effects. Alchemy had endured the suffocating lethargy countless times before. He would again.

The toxin overpowered him in minutes. Blurred vision.  Shortness of breath. Pulse quickening briefly until it slowed, dragging Alchemy down with it. He fumbled for the walnut shell holding a single dose of the glowing elixir and, with what little of his strength remained, he drank. 

His body seized, twitching as he collapsed upon the cold stone of his den. Blinding pain seared through him. Alchemy screamed, but his swelling throat squeezed out only an empty whimper. Then he waited for the toxin’s blanketing darkness to settle over him, welcoming the relief he knew it would bring.

Darkness swallowed him, and Alchemy knew no more.

Time passed. Moonlight spilled across the Veylspire range. Life endured. Alchemy knew none of it until he woke and rose to all fours, unsteady but unbroken. The pain that had consumed him had vanished, replaced by a foreign sensation of having been cleansed of more than just the Aldenseed poison. 

What remained in its place felt like an awakening.

A new voice inside him, unfamiliar and alluring, called him into the night. With a cautious step toward the cliffside alcove beyond his den, he gazed across the sprawling valley and understood.  He had been changed.

Not in ways he could put to words but in what now thrummed through his veins. 

The scuttering tick of insects darting through the grass, every green blade its own world among the vastness. 

The wing beats of an owl leagues away, seconds before he saw it crest the trees, each feather rippling in perfect rhythm to a heartbeat Alchemy could somehow hear.

All around him stretched the world in which he’d lived and worked, healed and loved and grieved, and at the same time, every inch of it was new.

The urge to run tore through Alchemy like a summer storm. He took off from his den with breathtaking speed, his hooves a rolling thunder across the Greenlands.

As he raced the wind, with no destination and for no other purpose than to fly, all obstacles crumbled away. Time. Distance. The limitations of his own form. 

Every deer in the realm bounded with him. Their breath in his lungs. Their movements in his limbs. Their presence pressed into the earth for Alchemy to absorb through his blistering hooves.

He was all of them and so much more. Reborn a tempest across the Greenlands. Not even the rapids of the Stormrush could stand in his way. In a single bound, he leapt the surging river. Impossible. His landing carved deep furrows into the earth of the eastern bank, where he stood now within the Foothills. Imperion territory.

With the rushing river at his back and his den in the Greenlands some twenty leagues behind, Alchemy paused. This new power was unlike anything the Clans had known. A power he had harnessed. A power he had crafted from an obsession fueled by heartbreak. 

This Tempest had unleashed something inside Alchemy, yet as he stood on the eastern bank of the Stormrush, still and silent for the first time since awakening, caution called him back to his senses. He could not let himself be overtaken by the power of his new elixir. Nor did he have cause to be here, in Imperion territory in the dead of night.  If someone were to see his new and impossible feats before he understood it all himself, while he lacked explanation for how he’d traveled so far from his den in so little time…

He turned back, leapt the rapids reaching for his belly, and bolted across the valley like lightning. The journey that should have taken hours passed in mere minutes, and then he was home. 

Exhausted. Shaken. Invigorated. 

Moonlight spilled through the mouth of his den, illuminating his instruments. Gathered herbs and meadow medicines strewn across his crafting table. Rows of vialskins hanging in various stages of steep.

The walnut shell from which he’d dosed himself lay on the ground, cracked where it had fallen, the last few droplets inside shimmering like beads of glowing blue dew. He had not imagined any of it. This was real.

A deep thirst twisted Alchemy’s belly in an angry grip. Burning his throat raw. Beckoning him toward his well. On trembling legs, he submerged his face into the cool black water, drinking away the arid pain, as if each gulp could drown a lifetime without rain.

When he lifted his head again, the well was glowing too. No, not the well. Not the water. Alchemy’s reflection.

Two brilliantly glowing blue eyes stared back at him from atop the watery ripples. Each of them veiled in soft, trailing tendrils of luminous blue mist.

After gazing upon the product of his obsession, he pushed himself away from the well and collapsed upon his bedding. Exhaustion alone pulled him down into a sleep too deep even for dreams. 

By dawn, he was himself again, his own reflection restored. Painfully aware of the power he’d unleashed in the night, Alchemy took down the glowing vialskin and buried it in the darkest corner of his cellar. The proof of the Tempest's power could never leave his den, and he swore to keep its secrets, no matter what wonders it might yet reveal. Some discoveries were too powerful to share, and Alchemy feared what might become of the realm if others learned what he had created.