"Let me get this straight. You know that kid?"

"Yeah, that's Lex. He's in the orphanage, same as me," Kali answered unhappily, the anxious young man having departed already. "You know how I had a bit of a sticky feathers situation before? Well, turns out, I may have been a bit of a bad influence."

"Go on." She rubbed the bridge of her nose, having a pretty good idea she knew where this one was going.

"Well, you see, we're all broke. The orphanage is supposed to save a stipend for us when we're ready to move out, but…in practice? Doesn't happen."

"I don't suppose this is due to Glados and company's efforts to bankrupt Fiefdala, is it?"

"Yeppers. The admin woman who runs it complained that they were getting budget cuts. Given the financial duct tape of the past few years, I'm not surprised." Kali let out a soft hoot. "And I will remind myself, Lani had far worse."

"Interesting metric to go by," Fiona mused. Kali eyeballed her.

"It's not like that. She just got here! Though Avians are more common in Faredala. Fiefdala has more humans and elves, by census."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "I read," he added drolly.

"I know. You're smart. I probably saved you a lot of trouble, the day we met," she said, tapping her foot patiently. "I do like Lani. I hope I can help the poor girl catch a break. Besides, she seemed to take a liking to you."

His feathers ruffled in response. "Oh, no. Nah-ah. Purely professional, I assure you. Anyway, Lex is kinda like me, except less confident and probably more dangerous purely by his area of experience. He likes alchemy. And when you mix the wrong things or use the wrong proportions of chemicals, things can either not work, cause detrimental effects, or incinerate."

Her ears went on end. "I don't like the idea of teens incinerating things. So what's he doing?"

"Probably trying to make money so he has more than a pittance when he turns eighteen. He's already professed he wanted to be an alchemist." Kali glanced at the mana potions. "I think he might be making the singing blue? Oh, that's not gonna end well."

"The what?" she asked, confused.

"Okay, do you know why they restrict mana potions?"

"No? I haven't had to use them much. On account of beating things to death with my bare hands," she added with a grin. Kali looked taken aback. "Monsters, Kali. Monster slaying is nasty work. And the occasional cutthroats that needed a beatdown. Now what's the Singing Blue?"

"Uh…how does one put this politely? A recreational concoction of the sort that is not on your regular apothecary shelf."

"So he's trying to make magical dope," she concluded. He shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing in response. "Okay. We should put a stop to that. I'm full up on strays, lost causes, bad habits, and dangerous pets." It had occurred to her that she hadn't visited the orphanage yet.

"He'll just deny it, and if he gets kicked out? That'll exacerbate the problem," Kali cautioned.

"Oh, no. Kids shouldn't be doing drugs, let alone making them! Those anti-drug videos from the nineties are ingrained in my head, we're too cool to do the singing blue!" she declared.

She probably shouldn't have said that so loudly, as a few customers gave her a sidelong glance. "Anyway, I want to talk to this kid."

Kali let out a resigned hoot. "Anytime you say 'I want to talk to someone', an interkingdom incident happens."

She narrowed her eyes. "That only happened once! Also, watch it, chicken wing."

When they arrived at the orphanage in the evening, Fiona had a horrible mental image of a rundown, Gothic structure that served as an orphan crushing machine, designed to give false hope to everyone but those inside its dilapidated walls.

She was fortunate that her fears were unfounded. The structure was made of tan bricks, glossy windows, and a cement foundation that, while a little worn, looked quite serviceable. A single hanging sign marked it, and a few small evergreen trees decorated the lawn. "Well, this is home," he announced.

"Kali, I…Greg said something that didn't register with me a few days ago. Now that we're here… how did you…" she bit her lip gently. That sounded so insensitive. "I mean to say, didn't you have family elsewhere, like an aunt, or…"

"No. Just me. Mom and Dad are gone. Robbery gone wrong, on the path from Vale." He looked up at the structure and sighed softly. "Why are you asking now?"

"I'm not just visiting this world. I'm a part of it. And despite my personality in the shop? Yeah, I do want to know my coworkers and the people who also work there." That part about a robbery sounded…wrong. Too convenient. "They were killed over money?"

"I was seven. Bandits, just by the border, looking to snag people who go along the main road. Nothing worse than trying to leave that dump of a country only to lose everything you managed to carry out, or your life." The young avian's voice strained as he said that. "It's eight years ago, Fi. Let it rest. I have."

"You didn't really go into detail before." She let out a soft sigh. "You managed to escape?"

"Yeah. My mom told me to run and hide. So I did. Avians don't fly fully until they're ten or so, and before then, they get trained by their family." He reached for the dark glass door with a metal frame, beckoning her in. "A patrol of Greybeard's military picked me up, on the other side of the border. After that, they shipped me up here, not sure what to do. That's the long and short of it."

"Don't you find it bitterly ironic that you…" she trailed off. He gave her a knowing glance.

"Had a hobby of having sticky feathers, so to speak? I never tried to cause irreparable harm. It's not lost on me." He let out a soft sigh before continuing. "But, you also showed me there was a better way. I doubt Greg would have made the same decision."

Kali then waved to the woman in a dark suit and skirt, her hair tied in a bun. "Hi, Darlene. Sorry, I'm late, the shop's been busy."

"Oh goodness, and you bring the hero of Fiefdala here," the woman said in a rich, deep voice. Her expression brightened. "Miss Swiftheart, I don't believe you and I have met. I'm Darlene Kitziger. I run the day-to-day activities of the orphanage. What brings you here?"

"Oh, I just wanted to talk to one of Kali's peers. Is Lex around?" she asked casually. Darlene's lip curled at the mention of the name, which did not bode well.

"Oh, you're here for him? Down the hall, third door. C'mon, I'll take you there," she said while rolling her eyes, beckoning them with one lazy hand wave. Fiona followed closely along the finely polished wooden floor, noting the construction was fairly plain, but clean. "I keep pushing for him to spend more time outside, but nope, he's a shut-in."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She couldn't help but notice that the second they knocked on the door, there was a brief sound of surprise, then the rattle of glassware, and then the clasp of a door latch. "Lex, you have visitors," Darlene announced. "You didn't come down for dinner either."

"Busy." His one-word answer sounded pretty sus, at least to Fiona. Darlene wasn't going to put up with it, either.

"Lex, come on out, now! The hero of Fiefdala–"

"Juuust the owner of Fiona and Friends Emporium, please," Fiona proposed.

"You earned the title," Kali pointed out. "Just not when you thought you did, ya know?"

She decided not to argue with the avian's valid point. Lex opened the door, looking disheveled. There was a stain on his shirt of some liquid that Darlene took notice of. "Lex, you really need to do your laundry–"

"What is she doing here?" he demanded, looking wildly at Fiona. "This–this is harassment! I'm being harassed!"

"Cool your rolls, kid, I'm here to talk." She marched into the small dormitory-style room before he could protest, spotting a small closet and a bedroom on the far side. "Darlene, mind if I talk for a few minutes? This won't be long."

"Oh, alright then, no worries." She walked back down the hall to the administrator's desk, while Fiona observed the hastily cleared shelf filled with bottles, glassware, and stirring rods. And the closet door looked like it was practically bulging out.

Fiona cleared her throat. "Lex, look. Kali was worried about you. You also said he didn't do his job at the shop. Which he did, and doubly so, because you know him."

"I got nothing to say," he folded his arms, looking indignant. "I have alchemy interests. That's it."

Fiona swung the door open to the closet before he could protest, and definitely not before he put a warding hand out. Chemicals with ominous warnings were packed into the shelves, and a mix in a large beaker was visible, a small cloud of blue fumes wafting from the opening. When she took a sniff, she felt slightly euphoric.

Oh. That's a feeling I haven't experienced since my early twenties. She grabbed a rubber cork and capped the bottle; getting a contact high from just that little amount was slightly unsettling.

"Those are…experiments." She watched him practically dance as he waved to the gathered paraphernalia.

She let out a soft sigh. "Kid, making the Singing Blue to make a couple of extra gold coins, isn't worth the effort. Now fess up. This could have been a much different conversation if I had mentioned this to anyone. You were buying up half my mana potion stock for a day."

"Okay, fine. What are you, the fun police?" he snapped, eyes darting to the open door, as if he could escape. "Everyone does it! It's a little harmless fun!"

"No, it's not," Kali argued. He pointed to the chemicals, with a skull sketched on the label. Multiple skulls, even. If one was bad, four was probably cataclysmic. "Nightshade acetate? Concentrated mana solute? This is a fire waiting to happen. No. Wait. This is a bomb waiting to happen," Kali scolded. He glanced at a dried, yellowed substance in a canister, well-sealed. "Pure sulfur, too?"

Lex sighed softly. "Those are perfectly normal chemicals in any alchemist's kit. Bird brain."

"Oh, don't you start," Fiona growled. "Is a little extra coin worth the trouble if the head admin here sees this? Or the town guard? Or worse, if you blow yourself up with a chemical mishap?"

"Does she always butt into other people's business?" Lex said unapologetically. Fiona narrowed her eyes at him as he directed his ire at Kali.

"Generally, if Fiona's being stern with you, it's because you're in the process of, or about to do something stupid." Kali's feathers ruffled lightly, but showed no other irritation. "Lex, you can do better. I did better. I got out of the gutter and got a job."

"Yeah, and what about the rest of us? You know this place is on a paper-thin budget, right? Oh, I guess you forgot, since you've been working." Lex jabbed a finger his way. "Besides, the funds would have been for here, and for the people trickling up from Vale. That debacle your boss instigated is the cause of that! You, of all people, know what Vale is capable of doing to their own people!"

Kali's feathers bristled. "Don't you dare try to deflect, Lex. Remember how the dorm almost caught fire when you mixed the wrong chemical? If I hadn't been there, the whole place would have gone up in flames! And I know what Vale has done. I'd happily ship arms to the people looking to stick it to the slavers! But that isn't the right way to do things."

Fiona blinked. Did she miss a crucial detail? She might have–and the hint was the sulfur.

Sulfur. Mana concentrator. Plus some alchemical paste. Add in a bit of cordite and a length of metal tube, and you've got alchemical pipe bombs. Worse still, she could see uncut metal piping in the closet. Ooooh, fiddlesticks, this needs to be stopped, right now.

She put a reassuring hand on Kali's shoulder. "Did you guys both come from Vale?"

"We did," Lex said, his look darkening. "Just because your country next door is quiet, doesn't mean they aren't doing awful things behind closed doors. You realize what you unleashed, right, Fiona? A spark of bad memories between the kingdoms."

"That wasn't the intent; we were trying to normalize relations." She couldn't believe she was on the defensive on this one!

"Great job, hero," Lex said bitterly. "And your zaniness got Barry to dump the throne back to his dad. So yeah, I still can't do anything to escape this dump. No thanks to you."

Great. More fallout. She had counted on this reaction at some point, but…hearing it felt awful. Even the winning move came with consequences. "Barry was duped into a plot that could have seen this kingdom sold to or overrun by someone far worse. I know it doesn't look pitch-perfect, Lex. Adults make messy decisions, and we don't always know what the outcomes are going to be."

She let out a soft sigh. "But there are clearly wrong actions that we can avoid. Lex, go to school and get your alchemist class. Because I guarantee that you will get hurt or ruin your future, or both, if you go at it this way."

"Who are you to judge?" he demanded. She tapped her foot patiently while she reminded herself that she was dealing with a teenager who had not fully formed emotional control. "You, who could have wrecked a kingdom!"

"That's enough," Kali flapped, wincing as his wing shoulder banged into one wall. "Fiona has her flaws. We all do. What's important is that we learn from them. You want to get out of here with good prospects? Listen to her for a minute, okay? She's done far more for Fiefdala than most. And be glad she torched the deal with Vale."

Lex frowned at that last mention. "That doesn't make her any less of a battering ram."

"Oy, kid, you want to test my patience with a magical sky blue lab sitting in your dorm room?" she said, her teeth edging out. "I don't know about you, but I've done a lot of soul searching in the past few months. A lot more than I thought I would. I've made Fiefdala a home, and I'm doing my part to ensure it stays a cheery, wondrous country."

That finally got the deviant to go quiet. Just for a moment. "Lex, do you know what fortune I had when I was your age? None. My father took that from me. He left me with a stack of debt so goddamn high, I'd need a spyglass to see the top. It took years to dismiss it in the courts, while he got to defraud my future."

She clenched her hand tightly. It was so hard to let go of that hatred for him. "I know what it's like to rebuild, starting from a crater in the ground. And it was hard. I didn't have people looking out for me. Not at first. But I sure as hell looked out for other people, because I didn't want them to go through the same struggle."

She cleared her throat, feeling that clench of bad memories trying to crawl back into her life. She shoved them back down and told them, as she told them every time, not today. "Now, unless you want to become a statistic by inevitably incinerating yourself in an alchemical accident? Or worse, get arrested by the town guard when you inevitably screw up? There's a door number three."

Lex spent ten seconds considering her words, tapping his fingers on his arm. "What's behind door number three?"

Kali's eyes went wide, and his beak gaped. "Tell me we're not doing what I think you're about to say. Pretty please, with a sweet roll on top."

"Oh, we are. And I'll take that sweet roll, too."

Bonnie's muzzle was clenched so hard, she might tear her teeth through her lips. Sometimes, Fiona, I wonder if there are any thoughts inside your head.

Her new apprentice stood there anxiously, showing off his alchemy skills with shaky hands. "And then we add the nightshade acetate to…uh…"

"No, you need to heat it first, then collect the gas as it boils, and the residue in the flask is what we use," she said patiently. Lex at least somewhat knew his stuff, and she had only had to make minor course corrections to keep him from incinerating himself. "Remember, we need the powder at the end, then we patch it into molds, add the binder powder, and then we bake to make the runes. The aqueous mixture needs to be boiled off."

"This is some serious reduction. No wonder runes are expensive." He lowered the burner temperature by gently poking the fire elemental, who let out a crackly hiss. "Sorry, little guy, too hot, I don't want to break the glass."

Greg sauntered by, looking at her with curiosity. "Where'd we get him?"

"Fiona." Her one-word answer put him wide-eyed. "Just so you know, turns out I do need an apprentice, because I'm mathematically falling behind on orders. I can't make more without a second hand. And we put a hungry orphan to work with usable skills for a brighter future."

His response was to sink to his knees, throwing up his hands in resignation. "No, gods! No gods, please no! No! No! Noooooo!" He wailed.

"That's what I said, too." She chuckled contentedly as Lex stared at this public meltdown. "You get used to it, Lex. This is just a normal day for us."

"Should have followed the bird into petty crime," he sighed.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.