Homunculus Diaries Ch. 04

Fourth Excerpt

Midday 4 Sectem, 515 K.E.

Dear Diary,

Hoyt left really early today. I saw him going out to meet Sir Wilkes through my window. Sir Wilkes asked Hoyt if he was ready for a fight. I heard Hoyt say he could beat an army today. Then he saw me through the window and waved! I waved back and he smiled at me before walking off. It made me so happy! I've been humming and smiling all day long! I can't wait till Hoyt gets back so I can tell him the first thing I want! Over breakfast, Master gave me some hints on how I should say it. I can hardly contain how happy I am!

Master didn't have any orders today, she said something about leaving me fresh for tonight too. I don't get it. She's practicing her magic in the lab right now. I can't help with that, so I've just been cleaning the house and minding the storefront while I'm writing to you. I'm looking forward to Hoyt getting home, but I'm also kinda nervous. What if he doesn't want to be with me? Master told me I didn't have to worry about it, but I just can't stop stressing over it. I wonder if normal human babies have that same moment when their whole life is ahead of them and it's so scary to think about all the possibilities. Maybe that's why they're always crying?

I saw a baby for the first time today too! It was so cute! This nice looking couple came to buy some supplies we had in stock for the alchemist in Misty Pass. I thought it was really interesting to see both the mother and the father combined in the baby. The mother had red hair and eyes while the father had blue. Their baby had the cutest looking purple hair and eyes because of that! They let me hold the baby while they browsed. It was so soft and adorable! I just wanted to rub my face all over it, and I kinda did! I wonder how I can make one this cute? Master never said anything about how I would make babies. I know it's different from alchemy, but aside from that I'm clueless. Master said you're supposed to use a penis, I wonder what for? Stirring something maybe? Would Hoyt and me do it together? What would combine between us in the baby? Just thinking about all this makes me so happy I laugh!

Sorry I'm rambling. There's not much else to say, anyway. I'm just so anxious about tonight that I had to do something. It sounds like somebody is coming to the shop so bye bye for now diary.

***

Daylily closed the cover on her diary and looked up just in time to see the door burst open. Sir Hedran Wilkes, looking worse for wear stomped into the room. As he turned his face to Daylily something about his expression filled her with dread. The big knight seemed almost in a panic himself, turning around as if he had forgotten something. He made no effort to explain himself, he simply shouted.

"Get Vivian!" With that, the knight went back out the door. Daylily, moved quickly. She knew that the man wouldn't have acted so without good reason. Running down the hall she barged in on the lab. Vivian was dressed in her casting clothes, as she called them. A pointed hat with wide brim, dark violet cape and a robe that fit tighter than her usual choice. She had her wand poised mid incantation as she looked over at Daylily in shock.

"Lily what's wrong?" Vivian said as she lowered her wand and dispelled the casting she was working on.

"I don't know, Master. Sir Wilkes ran in and told me to get you, then he went back outside." Daylily said. No sooner had she finished than Sir Wilkes burst through the door carrying someone else. Vivian looked shocked at first as Sir Wilkes hoisted the limp form onto an empty workbench. The person on the bench had familiar features, but the sickly pallor of his flesh, combined with the drained look of exhaustion all over the person's body made them almost unrecognizable.

"Hoyt!" Daylily shrieked in one of her rare exhibitions of fear. The homunculus ran over to hold him, her first moment of true terror broadcasting on her expression. Vivian's face hardened, and her posture became straighter as she walked over.

"What happened?" Vivian asked Hedran, her voice precise and full of command. Sir Wilkes seemed to snap out of his shocked stupor and spoke as if being inspected on a parade ground.

"He got hit by a spell. Pushed me out of the way, and it hit him in the chest." Hedran's voice was steady, but it was obviously a forced calmness. The two men had been close friends their entire lives.

"What color was it?" Vivian asked, as she checked Hoyt's pulse.

"Huh?" Hedran said.

"The spell bolt. What color was it? What did it sound like? Be as specific as you can." Vivian said without stopping her examination.

"Uh, green... like snot green. It sounded like a big bee as it flew too." The big man frowned in concentration as he recalled the details.

"That's good. The caster was in a hurry and flubbed his incantation. Makes it less potent. Hmm, it's probably a wasting curse. What did Hoyt do when he got hit?" Vivian motioned for Daylily and Hedran to start taking off Hoyt's armor as she checked his eyes.

"Well it didn't seem to do anything to him at first. Didn't even make him budge. Hoyt even cast a counter-spell at the other guy and blew his brain right out of his skull. Then he kind of felt his chest for a bit. He looked right at me and told me to get him to you as fast as I could. Then he cast some spell on himself and passed out. Normally, I would have let the medic take a look, but he was pretty clear about what I should do." The knight explained.

"Good thing you listened. Better thing he cast a slowing spell on himself. It will be tough to treat him like this, but he'd be dead before any normal healing spell took effect." Vivian mused aloud. "We have to be careful here. I gotta figure out a way to get the healing started without interfering with Hoyt's spell. That's the only thing stopping the curse from killing him quickly. Let's see, any magic I use will be slowed just like the curse. If I could get some medicine down his throat I could cast a flash digestion spell on it to bypass the slowing, but a healing potion would never outrun a curse either..."

As Vivian racked her brains, Daylily sat next to the bench clutching Hoyt's hand. The sheer terror at the thought of losing the first thing that she had ever wanted threatened to take her reason from her. If thinking and wanting resulted in such anguish when fate determined it was not to be, then what use were they? That thought seemed familiar somehow... A memory from before Daylily learned how to think flashed through her brain. That was it!

"What about my tank?" Daylily asked.

"Your regeneration tank?" Vivian said. For a moment her eyes lit up with hope, then she shook her head. "No, that's made for homunculi, you can accept more chemical stimuli without risk than a normal human. If we stick Hoyt in there he could heal too much. He might even grow extra limbs or something."

"Not if everything in him is slowed." Daylily countered. "He cast a slowing spell on himself to keep anything from happening too quickly. If the curse was slowed down, why wouldn't the healing also be retarded? It's just like how you cast freezing spells on mixtures that need to have their reaction slowed while you add all the ingredients."

Vivian's mouth dropped open as Daylily recited the principles used in her own manufacture to her creator. Her eyes then went to her brothers face. Her sibling had trusted her to do everything she could to save him from this dangerous magic. She looked back at Daylily, her sweet young science project that had grown into an intelligent young woman who her brother had fallen in love with. It was a chance, where usually there would be none. It was decided.

"Go fill the tank, then come back when it's ready. Hedran!" Vivian's voice was once again full of confidence. Hedran practically snapped to attention.

"Yes ma'am!" He replied in a voice that would make his drill sergeant proud.

"Get his clothes off. All of them. I need to get the pumps ready." Vivian said as she cast off her cape. Hedran's eyebrows shot up as the revealing robes left nothing to his imagination about Vivian's figure. Even so, he dutifully began removing Hoyt's uniform.

"Pumps?" The knight asked as he struggled with his friends boots.

"We need to remove the curse. Everything else is just a stopgap measure to keep him alive while we do." Vivian was moving an unusual looking bench to rest near an equally unusual looking device. Hoses, suction cups and other oddities were arrayed on the machine and a sucking sound came from the device as Vivian tested it's connection to the magical generator. "For that we need a cleansing tonic. I don't have any on hand since it doesn't last very long without refrigeration. We'll have to make it from scratch."

Daylily came back and helped Hedran remove the last of Hoyt's clothes. Then the two of them took the stricken warlock to Daylily's room and submerged him in the tank. Hedran left his hand upon the tank as he watched his friend float in the healing liquid.

"Why didn't you just let me get hit? You would have been able to handle this better for me than I could for you, moron." The big knight said.

"Hoyt would never let his friends get hurt." Daylily said adamantly. Hedran turned a shocked look Daylily's way at her tone of voice. "You're Hoyt's best friend, he told me so himself. Friends don't let each other get hurt when they can stop it." Daylily's voice was shaking as she spoke. Her eyes were locked onto Hoyt's floating form. Hedran snorted a laugh and laid his hand on Daylily's head, rubbing her affectionately.

"Right you are, Lily!" The man smiled broadly as he patted. "Right you are! Come on, let's go make that tonic. Oh! When this guy wakes up, tell him to quit wasting time and kiss you already."

"He already did! Last night." Daylily said as they began to go back to the lab.

"Is that why he was so chipper this morning? Well good on him! He's been too timid with how he feels about you. Let's save this late bloomer, so we can fix that." Hedran said. The two returned to the lab as Vivian finished preparing the apparatus for harvesting the ingredients for the cleansing fluid.

"All right, Lily. Strap in." Vivian said as she mixed some chemicals together. "How was Hoyt? He didn't start growing another eyeball did he?" She said to Hedran.

"He looked fine. He got some of his color back when we put him in there. He looked less with..." The knight trailed off as Daylily stripped nude and began strapping herself to the bench. "Withered." He finally managed to finish. His face reddened as he watched Vivian secure Daylily completely and begin rubbing oil onto her breasts. "Um... What's going on?"

"Alchemy." Vivian replied curtly.

Swinging the bench on a hinge, Vivian carefully lowered Daylily onto the suction cups. The homunculus gasped erotically as the machine sucked itself to her bosom. After a few quick adjustments to the position of the cups, Vivian wasted no time putting the machine to work. Suction began in earnest as small needles within the cups periodically pricked Daylily's nipples. More prods and vibrating probes pinched, kneaded and prodded around each breast as the machine went to work. Soon a steady flow of breast milk was being pumped into the collection tank.

Hedran seemed unsure of what he should be doing or where he should be looking as the process continued. Twiddling his thumbs awkwardly, he eventually began to pace the room. Vivian, likewise had little to do as the machine did its business. Sitting in the room with the erotic sounds of Daylily supplying alchemical compounds, the two tried their level best to pretend that the other person wasn't there. After a bit, Vivian went to check on Hoyt. A few hesitant moments later, Hedran seemed to make up his mind about something.

"Hey, Lily..." Hedran began awkwardly.

"Ah! Ah! Mmm?" In lieu of responding, Daylily turned one of her gasps into a question.

"Um... does... does Vivian ever... help out?" The knight asked.

"Aaah! Aaaaalll the tiiiimmme!" Daylily answered through her pleasure. Hedran made a goofy expression. The kind one might make when told the winter festival was coming early this year. He was still smiling when Vivian came back into the room. The alchemist looked at the collection tank with a concerned expression.

"Not fast enough..." She mumbled.

"What?" Daylily and Hedran asked in unison. Vivian bit her lip as she mused for a few seconds.

"We need to get the curse removed soon. At the rate we're going we might finish by midnight." Vivian explained. "The tank is working, but it can only do so much. The curse has already started to affect his vitals. If we don't finish the cleansing tonic before nightfall, I don't think he'll last."

You could have heard a pin drop. If there hadn't been a machine sucking breast milk and loudly mixing it into a potion, that is.