Book 2: Chapter 50: Recovery
While Sen had thought he was exaggerating about how long he would sleep, he did spend nearly a full day doing nothing but sleeping. He only came around a few times. He found food and drink waiting for him, fell onto it like a ravenous beast, and dropped almost immediately back into deep unconsciousness. He didn’t really wake up like a human being until the next evening. Even then, he barely spoke with anyone for more than a moment or two. Instead, he found his way into their kitchen, commandeered a spot on the stove, and began making himself an elixir. His needs were varied enough that it took him nearly three full hours of work to fashion something that would do all of the work. His concentration was so absolute that he didn’t even realize that Lifen came in and watched nearly the entire process with a concentration that almost matched his own.
When it was finally done, the elixir glowed a pure sapphire blue. Sen did take a moment or two to appreciate the beauty of the thing. Then, with zero ceremony, he upended it into his mouth and swallowed. It was only Lifen’s distressed cry that brought her to his attention. He blinked at her a few times, trying to understand the horror on her face. She pointed at him, seemed to grope around for words, and finally yelled at him.
“You drank it!”
The incredulity in her voice was so profound that Sen didn’t quite have a place in his mind to slot the reaction. So, he fell back on stating the obvious. “It was an elixir. What else was I supposed to do with it?”
“But it was beautiful,” she objected.
Sen started to think that he might still be asleep. “I repeat, it was an elixir. One made specifically for me. If I didn’t drink it, it didn’t have a reason to exist.”
That answer didn’t seem to satisfy Lifen at all, because she sniffed, and walked out of the kitchen muttering something under her breath about men. Still not entirely sure he was awake, Sen pinched his own arm. Hard. The bright little flash of pain was a relief because it reassured him that he hadn’t so badly misjudged his own state. Yet, it wasn’t a relief because it meant that surreal little episode with Lifen had actually just happened. She’d been legitimately upset that he’d drank that elixir because, as near as he could tell, she thought it was pretty. Deciding that he must still need more sleep, Sen returned to his room. He expected that he’d have some trouble dropping off after sleeping nearly an entire day away, but he slipped into unconsciousness within moments of climbing back into bed.
He had strange dreams that night, although he’d never remember more than fragments of them after that fact. All he could really hang onto was a feeling of intense dread, the image of ruins deep in the desert, and the disquieting certainty that his steps would lead him there one day. When he woke up again, Sen made a firm commitment to himself to avoid the desert, if not for as long as possible, at least until he’d managed to reach core formation and, ideally, not until he reached the nascent soul stage. He wasn’t sure what was waiting in those ruins, or why he needed to go there, but he was damned certain he wanted as much power available to him as possible when he did eventually go there. He had tried to decide that he just wouldn’t go, but his intuition told him that fate had other plans in store for him on that front. All the stories held one thing as true. You could run from fate, but you couldn’t avoid it forever.
Those gloomy thoughts made going back to sleep an impossibility, so he dragged himself out of bed. After examining himself, he decided that a bath was not only in order but a priority. It was only after he’d gotten clean that he really felt like he was awake enough to interact with other people in a reasonable and coherent way. He made his way downstairs and found Lifen’s mother. She looked him up and down before nodding.
“You seem almost human again,” she said conversationally.
Before he called her in, though, he should finish sorting through the missives. At the very bottom of the basket, Sen found what he considered to be a divine lifeline of procrastination. There was a letter from the manager of Grandmother Lu’s local shop. May the gods bless that man a thousand times, thought Sen. Not only had the man done as Sen asked, but he had inadvertently given Sen the perfect excuse to ignore all of those invitations and go do something that he actually wanted to do. It might even be to the point that it was something he needed to do. Feeling much more cheerful, Sen dressed in clean robes, arranged his hair into some semblance of order, and went looking for Lifen. He found her issuing some polite commands to some of the servants who worked in the Silver Crane. He waited patiently until she finished before he approached her. He gave her a bright smile. She looked back at him warily.
“What?” she asked.
“How do you feel about helping me pick out an alchemist’s shop to buy?”
Lifen’s eyes narrowed a little. “Are you sure you don’t need more rest?”
“Okay. Okay. I’m not going to buy a whole shop, just half of one. It’ll be something of an investment for me.”
“But how are you going to buy half of an alchemist's shop?”
“With beast cores. Dozens of them.”
“What? Where did you get dozens of beast cores?”
“Oh, that’s a funny story,” said Sen, before a flurry of memories forced him to reconsider. “Well, it’s a story anyway. Get your things, I’ll tell you on the way.”
While Sen got the impression that Lifen was convinced more by his manic energy than anything else, they were soon on their way to the first of three shops that might be open to an investor.
