Magic without a magic

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel wakes up. This is not where she went to sleep. She has a peek at the stream -

- And lets out a surprised yelp at the nonsensical cacophony.

"What in the blue hells is this place?" No answer is immediately apparent, so she climbs to the top of the ravine, carefully avoiding the various inexplicable things in the area. The snake-goat hybrid was particularly grotesque.

The top of the ravine has a road. She tries to fly, but can't. Again, very strange. This is a pretty nice road, physically, but magically it's completely undeveloped. She walks towards the city, peeking at the stream once in a while only to see fog, and seeking an explanation.

Comments

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Yeah, that sounds about right. You'll want to stay here for a few hours unless someone can help you get home. But it doesn't hurt, right?"

[alicornucopia]

"Naw."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Great!"

And she asks the surgeon, "I don't want to sell this stuff unless someone actually needs it, it can really mess you up if you take too much or if you take it for a long time, but can you see a lot of people wanting it?"

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, yeah," nods the surgeon, "it'll be very popular."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"It's pretty expensive to make, unfortunately. I was thinking one and a half seo per pill."

[alicornucopia]

"All the goddesses' tits, that's expensive, you gave him three - I can pass the cost along, suppose, it's still worth it to supply unless it goes bad quick."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"They'll keep for a year, maybe two. Tell you what, buy twenty pills at a time and I'll drop the price to twenty six seo - 1.3 each."

[alicornucopia]

"Effect's pretty linear with dose?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Pretty linear, yeah. Two pills probably would have done well enough for him, one will do for scrapes. I'll draw up dosage tables and wearoff times. And you can stock some of my aspirin for after-pain if you like, that's much cheaper."

[alicornucopia]

"Can I get another price knockdown if I invest in fifty pills at once?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hold on, let me do some math." She does some math. "Seventy seo for fifty pills. I won't go below that, I'm getting pretty close to ingredients cost now."

[alicornucopia]

"Fifty it is."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I've made twenty five so far, so twenty two are left. You want to pay half now and get them now, and pay half for the rest tomorrow, or just pay for the whole batch tomorrow?"

[alicornucopia]

"Just bring them all tomorrow," says the surgeon. "I'll close for the day soon anyway."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Do you want some aspirin as well? I sell those at eight pills to one seo. I'll give you a hundred for 10 seo if you agree to sell them at the same price."

[alicornucopia]

"What do you care how much I charge for them?" blinks the surgeon.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"If you charge for more than they help, it might give aspirin a bad name."

[alicornucopia]

"I could call 'em something else."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hm. Fine, I suppose. I still want you to tell people the safe doses and such, though. How many aspirin should I bring tomorrow?"

[alicornucopia]

"Of course I'll tell them the safe doses," says the surgeon. "I'll just call them soothers or something. I'll take the hundred."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"So that's 80 seo total, for fifty morphine and a hundred aspirin. And notes on safe doses. I'll be back maybe two hours after sunrise. Have a nice night!"

[alicornucopia]

"You too!"

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel goes home and mixes medicine. The moon tonight is not quite full, hopefully nobody wants to risk losing Aelare's blessing by being too hasty - it'll work best if they all do it on the same night.

The next morning she's back at the surgeon's place with the pills, and copious notes on them.

[alicornucopia]

And she receives money for them.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She leaves her address. "Pleasure doing business with you. Let me know when you run low."

Back at the shop, she looks at the record of sales and concludes that the sale of morphine means that the shop is now probably-profitable.

"Hey Aya, we are officially making more money than we spend. This calls for a bit of a celebration. Not that I don't like your cooking, but what's the nicest restaurant you know of?"