Altesse

“Are you stupid?”

“...No?”

“Good! Then you’ll be able to make this.” Altesse nodded at her apprentice, pouring some snail slime into the cauldron. “Now stir!”

Mono, who’d partially zoned out, fumbled with his staff and dipped it into the mixture, stirring the potion absent-mindedly.

“Faster!” She demanded, which made Mono jump slightly. He began stirring quicker, spilling some of the mixture off the edge.

“Eek!” Mono exclaimed, taking his staff out of the cauldron and propping it against the side to get the piece of cloth from his pouch. “Sorry!”

Alteese grinned at him. “You’re insufferable.”

There was a slight pause before Mono replied, thinking of what to say next. “I’m surprised that wasn’t a pun.” A little giggle escaped his mouth as he began to wipe up the spillage.

A wicked grin spread across Alteese’s face as inspiration struck her. “Well, now that you mention it...”

“No.” Mono declared in a voice so stern Alteese would hardly recognize it came from him.

“You’re so... brew-ther-some.”

Altesse looked at Mono with wide eyes, expecting a reaction - whether it was a groan or laugh, she was ready.

“Honestly, I’m just impressed you were able to come up with that on the fly.” And, with a shrug, Mono returned to stirring.

Altesse watched Mono put the required components into the potion mixture within the dilapidated cauldron. She immediately saw that despite his focus, he put in too much of one and too little of the other. Additionally, one still had water droplets on it from rinsing. The liquid would react poorly in the potion. But he would learn from those mistakes.
As the concoction began bubbling up around the components, Mono began to stir with his staff of withered wood which was stained with hundreds of different alchemical compounds. His movement betrayed his exhaustion and ire. She knew he had already done this several times today and didn’t want to work any longer. Still, he continued, because he had yet to correctly concoct this potion.
As she had expected, purple mist started rising from the cauldron as it reacted with the water droplets. Her apprentice frowned but continued stirring silently for several minutes.
As the mixture turned an off-color shade of green, Mono asked, “Is it done?”
Altesse shook her head. “About five more minutes of stirring. It needs to be bright yellow.”

Mono’s head fans angled backwards indignantly as he stirred the mixture Altesse was forcing him to make. He had been training for so long and trying to formulate this same mixture for so long that he was ready to dump the cauldron over and quit. He couldn’t even stir a potion without messing up. His face and scarf were covered in multicolored splatters, some of which were sizzling on his skin despite how hard he tried to wipe them off. Also, the mist rising from the cauldron was making his eyes and nostrils sting. Between the pain and irritation, he finally broke and snapped at Altesse, “Is this another one of your pranks, or am I just a failure? You can’t give me a break to wash off my face? You just make me stand here for hours remaking the same potion until I get it right! Which, if you haven’t noticed, I haven’t managed to do yet. Each finished product I show you, there’s something wrong with it!”

Altesse shook her head. “Practice makes perfect. You need to keep going at it until you succeed.”
Mono’s expression soured further. “A good portion of those potions looked fine to me. You were just making up problems!”
“No, Mono. That’s stuff the alchemy schools would genuinely grade you on. Maybe I’m being a little extreme, but it’s to help you catch small problems and see little-” she waved at the fog around the cauldron “-mist-akes.”
“You didn’t have to do any of this, did you? You were born with Runes and naturally good at this.” Mono stamped his foot on the ground, tail lashing. “You didn’t have to stand for hours a day making nonstop mistakes until you miraculously got it right!”
For a moment, Altesse stood silent with her mouth cracked open, staring at him angrily. Then, she snapped, “Do you even realize the amount of work I had to do to get where I am? I wasn’t born with these runes. I had to train, hard, until they manifested on me physically. You don’t become a great magician without any struggles and labor. I had twice as many issues as you, Mono. I’m trying to protect you.”
Mono set down his staff, turning towards her. “Protect me? How do you call ‘rubbing all my failures in my face’ protection?”
“Because when I got started I walked on a path of revenge and anger. It caused others and me to lose a lot of things that shouldn’t have been lost. With you and your beginning path of necromancy, I had to make sure I helped you. I saw potential in you and I wanted to help you grow.”
“At least I was good at necromancy. I had good grades until that final incident. This sort of alchemy just isn’t my thing.”
“You had good grades because they were afraid of what you could do if you were angry with them, Mono. They were looking for an excuse to kick you out. That incident of yours was more than enough. Besides, you’re doing fine with alchemy. You’ll get to my level one day; I know it.”
Something behind his eyes changed; a hidden but still noticeable expression of hurt. “That’s not true.”
He fell silent for a few seconds, then finally shook his head. “Neither of those statements are true. They weren’t scared of me. And I won’t get any better at alchemy.”
“You will get better. With every concoction you im-brew-ve,” she said with a smirk.
Mono slammed his fist into the rim of the cauldron with an upset roar. “Stop with the brainless puns! You think everything’s a joke!” Then, before Altesse could stop him, he bounded out of the cave in the direction of their home, tail whisking like an agitated whip behind him.

Mono slipped inside his and Altesse’s cave den and locked the door behind him. He just needed to get away. Ripping off his scarf, he dropped it into a water bin filled with soap. He would wash that off later. Right now, he needed to wash up himself, as his hide was still burning with alchemical irritants.
After rinsing the colors off his scales, he thankfully found that they had merely left his skin irritated, not damaged. He’d been anxious about that for far too long.
As he washed up, he noticed the overhanging silence. The only thing making noise was himself. Without Altesse, the room felt too quiet and empty. Drying his face and arms, he stepped over to the windowsill carved into the wall, staring out at the trees. The gentle wind was refreshing, but it didn’t sweep his negative emotions away like he hoped it would.
A group of sparrows landed in one nearby and began chirping, so he admired those, trying to keep his mind away from his past and the troubles of alchemy and magic. He’d had enough of those things. He’d had enough of his thoughts and anxiety. And he’d had enough of Altesse’s careless puns.
Despite his attempts to be happy in the unbroken silence, his heart felt heavier with the moment. Altesse was probably his closest friend right now, and most certainly his mentor. He shouldn’t have just run off and shut her out, no matter how irritating she was.

Altesse strolled outside, the lines of her face creased with worry. She knew she came across as annoying to Mono when she was just trying to be fun. He was always serious, while she tried to keep things entertaining with puns and cool things she’d found. She loved to go to other places and Flights and find new things. She loved to show her friends cool bugs, plants, and stones she found on the ground. She loved to be chaotic, crazy, and most importantly, have fun in her work.
But Mono didn’t love that.
And that was why Altesse was concerned for him.
Because when she’d first found him, he was easily irritable. He was vengeful of other students who did better than him or talked down to him. Dangerously so. She could see the path he was headed down, and it looked quite a lot like the one she’d finally gotten away from all those years ago.
He wasn’t a bad student, for certain. Nor was he perfect. But Altesse could see that he had potential. She knew he had the ability and mind necessary to do great things and become very powerful.
Some days, he was better than others. Some days, he did his work well, was happy, and seemed to enjoy her presence. Others, he was irritable and unsuccessful. She could see that his attitude tied into his work, but she struggled to help him. Any advice she gave seemed to go over his head.
All she could hope was that he was listening to her.
Because if he wasn’t, if she was instead setting him up for a dark, yet powerful path, he might be too strong in his magic to stop. Normally, his magic was potent. But she’d seen him when he was motivated by negative emotions. Those emotions may have bogged him down in alchemy, but his sorcery outside of alchemy became treacherously powerful when he was upset. He would pose a threat to anyone he did not like if he became a villainous type.
She hoped the empathetic demeanor he had developed and her advice would help him to stay out of that. Usually, he was afraid of hurting new people with words or actions. But if he reverted to how he was back in the alchemy academy, full of anger and vengeful spirit…

Memories flooded Mono’s mind as he thought about what Altesse had said. The alchemy professors from his past had smiled quickly, almost nervously, when Mono looked expectantly at them for how he did on the latest assignment. They never really gave constructive criticism after one professor had yelled at him for a mistake and then the next day found a ghost wearing a top hat in his closet. They realized quickly that Mono was a natural necromancer, and they had been afraid of him.
But Mono had never noticed. He had just thought they were being nice. Whenever other dragons weren’t nice, he may have asked a favor of a ghost or come up with some nasty but harmless potion from one of the old books. He wasn’t particularly loud or threatening towards them at the moment. In fact, he usually was afraid of unkind people.
But apparently, the anger had still shown itself. He sometimes had gotten upset at rude dragons and thrown fits. He supposed that an angry necromancer could terrify the average dragon, even if the necromancer didn’t make any violent actions.
He hadn’t realized the professors at the academy had been biased by fear of him.
But that’s what necromancers were. Something to be feared.
That’s what he had been. A dragon who sought revenge, however harmless it may have been, for any dragons who did something he didn't like.
Living with Altesse had helped him overcome that, because he most certainly got fed up with her sometimes. But she was his real friend, and he wouldn’t ever hurt her for being who she was and saying what she said. He had Altesse to thank for helping him grow in the right ways and with the right powers.
He wondered what would have happened to him after he got cast from the academy had Altesse not asked him into an apprenticeship. Would he have become a dark sorcerer? Whatever way he went, he could have ended up a lot worse off than he was now.
Altesse had mentioned she'd followed a path of revenge and lost too much because of it. He realized she had been in a similar place to him at one point. When she met him, she had known she needed to do something to stop him from following a similar path.
After resting by the windowsill for a few more moments, he decided he needed to apologize and thank her. He stood and turned towards the exit.
Sighing, he stepped outside, scanning the forest for her. He felt guilty. He had refused to listen to her when she presented a steady stream of good advice and facts. And he knew they were good advice and facts. He just hadn’t wanted to accept them.
He spotted her runes shining in a nearby clearing and trotted over to her. “Hey,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Altesse looked at him for a moment, expression full of thought and worry. Then she replied, “It’s fine. Alchemy isn’t designed to be easy.”
Mono nodded. “Perhaps I should make up with you. First off, thank you for letting me be your apprentice. Second off, you’re right. You’re right about everything you said. It was my intolerance that was the source-ery of the problem. Get it? Source? Sorcery?”
Altesse snorted. “You goof head, making up puns when that’s my job,” she mock-growled, bunting her head into his shoulder. “Shut up and let’s go collect some shoots and butterflies for our next potion. A break from stirring a pot of goo would probably be good for you.”
Mono nodded, following her further into the woods and keeping an eye out for bamboo shoots.
The apprentice stopped by a nearby stream, scanning its banks. His eyes danced with mischief when he looked up at Altesse. “What happens when you put random items into a mix? Like… water, dirt, fleas, and some broadleaf plantains?” He waved at the ground near the stream, where those particular things were plentiful.
Altesse looked at the items pondering for a moment, a chaos-loving smirk twisting her face. “We could find out,” she offered. Mono broke into a grin. “Someone get the safety gear; we’re about to do some potentially dangerous stuff,” he announced dramatically, scooping up the assorted soon-to-be-reactants in his hands and placing them in his pack.
Altesse smiled as she bounded towards the cauldron room, Mono’s wingbeats following along behind her. It was good to see him in an experimental, fun-loving mood. Apparently, a break to reconsider and recover could do a lot for a dragon.
“So, how much of each thing should I put in?”
Altesse shrugged, mixing up a starting concoction of green goo. “Put a safety mask on and dump it all in,” she said, returning with two masks that made them look like plague doctors. They fastened the masks onto their heads and Mono did as he was told. The pair stepped away from the cauldron as it bubbled, and then…
Boom! The concoction exploded outwards into a red mushroom cloud. Then, Floomp! It turned into a solid, taking on the appearance of a giant red mushroom in the middle of the room, sprouting from the cauldron.
Mono let out a manic laugh, poking the solid crimson cloud. It had a light, rubbery texture. “That’s the coolest reaction I’ve seen yet,” he said. “What do you think did that?”
“Maybe it was the fleas? We should try just fleas next time.”

Biography by Sparrowe